Jupiter Hammon was the first black author to see his or her works published in what is now the United States. Hammon was born into slavery in the Henry Lloyd house on the North Shore of New York’s Long Island in 1711. The house above is his birthplace. Hammon was enslaved for his entire life, and he wrote poetry and prose as an enslaved man.
I visited both his birthplace and his later home with my Michele Ascione. I will tell you a little about our visit over the next several posts as well as offer some details on the sites, Hammon’s life, and his writings.
Here I am at the Henry Lloyd House in Lloyd Harbor on Long Island Sound, north of Huntington. Built in 1711, it was the center of a farm where the main source of labor was African slaves. In 1711 Jupiter Hammon was born there to an enslaved couple. He was educated by his literate father and schooled by the Lloyd’s.
The house was supposed to be closed because an episode of a TV show was being filmed there. Michele and I crossed over a barrier telling us to keep out and took a short hike down to the ancient building. I found the door ajar and let myself in to take in the view from one of the old windows:
Here is what the Lloyd Harbor Historical Society says of Jupiter Hammon’s enslaver:
In 1711, young Henry Lloyd and his bride, Rebecca, arrived on a 3,000- acre parcel of land owned by Henry’s family. The land, which was located on Lloyd Neck, (then called Horse’s Neck) had been left fallow by Henry’s father, James Lloyd I. It was here that Henry decided to make his fortune.
Since the Lloyds were Episcopalian gentry and owned a flourishing trading business in Boston, Henry already possessed the wherewithal to establish a manor upon his arrival on Lloyd Neck. He arrived with six slaves and such valuable trade goods as Bibles and needles, and was soon able to obtain the necessary labor to build his four room Manor home in the most modern mode of the day, the post-medieval architectural style. To this day, the Henry Lloyd Manor House is one of the few surviving examples of this style of architecture.
The manor itself is the size of modest suburban home today. It is restored to its appearance at the time when Jupiter Hammon was a slave there. Like many old homes in New York and Long Island, Delft tilework is employed for decoration:
The well-furnished quarters of the Lloyds were not shared by the slaves on the property:
Hammon’s mother and father were apprently owned by the Lloyds since the late 1600s. They joined Henry Lloyd at the new house in 1711, possibly helping in its construction. Jupiter appears to have been the first slave born at the new home. Jupiter’s father Obadiah knew how to read and write, and he taught Jupiter basic literacy. Jupiter would later be schooled along with the Lloyds own children.
I wonder if he might have had a familial connection to the Lloyd’s, although descriptions of him descibe him as dark black.
The 1764 barn next to the house is used for weddings:
BTW, the TV crew was trying to make the site look “more authentic.” they covered the blacktop road with plastic sheeting and spread gravel over it. It was 95 degrees and we were sweating just watching them.
In 1760 Hammon composed “An Evening Thought. Salvation by Christ with Penitential Crienes: Composed by Jupiter Hammon, a Negro belonging to Mr. Lloyd of Queen’s Village, on Long Island, the 25th of December, 1760,” which was published in 1761, thus becoming the first published black author in the colonies that became the United States. Here is a link to this religious poem.
After Henry Lloyd died in 1763, Jupiter became the property of Henry’s son, Joseph. In 1767, Joseph had a new house built a half-mile west of Henry Lloyd’s Manor. Michele and I went to visit it.
The house was supposed to be closed to the public that day, but Mark from the Society for the Preservation of Long Island Antiquities was there doing some restoration and he gave us an hour-long tour of the house.
The east side of the house has a large office where Lloyd and Jupiter Hammon worked. Since ships coming into Lloyd Harbor had to pay duties to the Lloyds, the door on the right side of the picture was put in so the business could be transacted without ships captains coming in through the residential part of the house:
More shots of the office:
This small room was believed to have been the sleeping quarters for the house slaves. Most slept on the floor on filled bags:
In Manisha Sinha’s book The Slave’s Cause the historian writes that Hammon’s deeply Christian writings have been mistaken in the past as fatalistic “resigned slave” expressions. She writes:
Hammon’s poetry was not a simple capitulation to Christian servitude. In his dialogue between a “kind master” and “dutiful servant,” the latter asserts, “The only safety that I see, Is Jesus’ holy word.” His master’s suicide, which resulted from his mistaken belief that the Americans had lost the war, only underscored his slave’s claim to spiritual superiority. [Sinha, Manisha. The Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition (Kindle Locations 708-711). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.]
From The Slave’s Cause:
In his political essays, Jupiter Hammon published two pamphlets in Hartford during the war that dealt with the problem of slavery and freedom from an Afro-Christian perspective, or what one scholar has called “biblical hermeneutics.” In the first, “A Winter Piece,” published in 1782, Hammon addressed those “who have had the advantage of studying” and objected to his writings. Here he made clear that only education, not inherent racial difference, separates him from his white critics. He refers to Africans as a “poor despised nation” brought by God to a “Christian land.” But rather than warrant that Christianization was a justification of their enslavement, Hammon wrote that thousands of slaves “have been born in what are called Christian families,” questioning the Christianity of their enslavers. He criticizes his “objectors” for failing to baptize and educate their slaves. Hammon subtly casts aspersions on the Christian nature of masters and encourages slaves to become exemplary Christians. While concerned with the spiritual well-being of slaves, Hammon approved of their longing for freedom from slavery: “Many of us are seeking a temporal freedom and I wish you may obtain it.” Denying the rumor that he had petitioned a court “against freedom,” he explicitly denied that blacks should restrict their quest to spiritual freedom.
The Kitchen at the Lloyd House. A reminder of who did the work: The kitchen door has a loophole that the mistress of the house could look through to see if the slaves were working:
There is an exhibit on Jupiter Hammon at the house:
The living room:
A child’s potty seat:
More of the white children’s objects:
You can find the text of Hammon’s Address here:
http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1011&context=etas
As you can see if you read it, this is not a fire eating abolitionist document, but it does assert points of racial equality.
