Joseph Lloyd Manor & the Jupiter Hammon Project

Treasures of New York: Joseph Lloyd Manor & the Jupiter Hammon Project Funding for this program is provided by the New York State Education Department We are at Joseph Lloyd Manor, a 18th century northern plantation house that is situated on Lloyd Neck, north of the town of Huntington on Long Island.

Curator Lauren Brincat is helping transform one of Preservation Long Island's historic houses, reinterpreting it to match the non-profit organization's mission: to celebrate and preserve Long Island's diverse cultural and architectural heritage.

This house is built between 1766 and 1767 for Joseph Lloyd, a grand symbol of the wealth of the Lloyd family.

The manor house displays the wealth and power of generations of the Lloyd family who claimed the land in the 1600s.

What is today called Lloyd Neck, which European colonists referred to as Horse Neck and which the Matinecock people who lived here for generations referred to as Caumsett, which meant place by a sharp rock, is 3000 acres.

Centuries later, preservationists are looking more closely at the whole story as part of the Jupiter Hammon project.

Jupiter Hammon is the first published African American poet and, while enslaved at this house, authored some of his most significant writings, which confronted the moral conflicts of slavery and freedom during the early United States.

Born into slavery in the nearby home of Joseph's father, Henry Lloyd, in 1711, Hammon was deeply religious, and his first known work begins, "salvation comes by Jesus Christ alone..." He authored his first work, An Evening Thought, while enslaved at the home of Henry Lloyd on Christmas Day in 1760.

It was published as a broadside and his works were likely published through the assistance of the Lloyds that enslaved him.

There were many laws in New York that restricted the mobility and agency of enslaved people and people of color in New York.

But it was not illegal to teach an enslaved person to read.

There are nine known Jupiter Hammon works; essays and poems that took on more than just religious themes.

He was more famous than the actual enslavers.

Melisa Rousseau included Hammon's writing when she taught English courses.

She joined public roundtable discussions Preservation Long Island hosted in 2020.

New York actually had more slaves than any other colony north of Maryland.

And a lot of people didn't know that.

And Preservation Long Island realized that there needed to be this understanding that these people had a story, too.

And how great to begin the story talking about this poet and this essayist who was published while he was enslaved for three generations by one family.

And his work is taught in textbooks all over America.

Rousseau helped make the house a literary landmark.

It's kind of cool, I mean, to be considered not just an historical landmark, but a literary landmark where there is recognition that on this land, in this house, that there is someone of great importance not only to the historical community, but also to the literary community.

A goal of the Jupiter Hammon Project is to bring throughout the house the stories and the experiences of the enslaved people.

Visitors are able to experience the difference between those who chose to live here and those who were forced into slavery.

Tours no longer focus only on the front of the house.

People are often surprised about how close quarters there were between the enslaved and the enslavers in this space.

You can notice in this room that it feels very different.

It is much darker in this space than other places in the house.

The ceiling is much lower.

The architecture is not as ornate.

So the building itself is also telling you what this space is and how it functioned and who used and occupied this space.

We have started to think about ways we can bring that history into this house and to have the Jupiter Hammon project be physically present in this space.

And one of the most powerful moments of one of the roundtables was when a artist poet named Malik Work did this impromptu recitation of Jupiter Hammon's, An Essay on Slavery.

And it was amazing and people could not stop talking about it.

So we commissioned him to do a recording of that, that we now play in the enslaved quarter in this house, to bring Jupiter Hammon's voice back into this house. "

...dark and dismal was the day when slavery began.

Our humble thoughts were put away.

Then slaves were made by man.

We are thy children, blessed Lord.

Tho still in slavery.

We'll seek thy precepts, Love thy word.

until the day we die."

What is interesting about An Essay On Slavery is that it was never published, and there are theories behind why that was.

The Lloyds were likely involved in the publication of his works, and because of this very strong anti-slavery stance that he overtly takes in this poem, it's possible that it was too radical for the Lloyds to support its publication.

This exhibition is an outgrowth of the Jupiter Hammon Project, which is a long term initiative that Preservation Long Island launched in 2019 to reimagine how we engage the public and tell the story of all the people who live, labored and survived here at Joseph Lloyd Manor, including Jupiter Hammon, the larger enslaved community and the Indigenous population as well.

Flanking either side of the fireplace are quotes from Jupiter Hammon's, An Essay On Slavery, and above the fireplace is a blow up of his own beautiful handwriting.

Jupiter Hammon is remarkable.

And because he lived into his nineties and so his lived experience of this house and this place is far beyond any of the Lloyd family members who lived here.

A sign in Huntington marks the place where jupiter hammon spent his last years living with relatives.

His exact date of death is unknown.

At the Joseph Lloyd manor, the Jupiter hammon project is designed to set the stage for more conversations, and a better understanding of American history.

There are some houses out here on Long Island where there were enslaved people living and they really don't talk about it at all, which is a shame because it's part of American history.

You go into a lot of historic homes and I feel like the conversation is more of an "us and them" conversation.

So you have the enslaved population and that's them and the population of these white merchants and their wives and their families and that's about us.

Rather than a "we conversation."

And what Preservation Long Island has done has created a "we conversation."

Funding for this program was provided by the New York State Education Department