Salt-glazed stoneware.
[JPG image-19KB]

Slip-trailed redware.
[JPG image-40KB]

Combed slipware.
[JPG image-15KB]

Green edge-decorated pearlware.
[JPG image-10KB]

Pearlware.
[JPG image-15KB]

Chinese porcelain.
[JPG image-10KB]

African-American Archaeology:
The Betsey Prince Site

Ceramic vessels were used for the large proportion of the food storage, preparation and consumption activities that occurred in the household. A minimum of 117 vessels was identified from 5386 ceramic sherds, comprising 76% of all artifacts. These included salt-glazed stoneware and buff earthenware crocks, jugs and bottles; redware jars, pitchers, large and small bowls, and slip-trailed redware milk pans and dishes; buff earthenware pitchers, large bowls, and combed slipware dishes; creamware and pearlware plates; creamware, pearlware, and Chinese porcelain teas.

Most of the clothing artifacts consisted of brass buttons [JPG image - 16 KB], representing six cast or stamped types. Other clothing artifacts consisted of milk glass buttons, iron belt buckles and a brass knee buckle. Personal items included a gilt brass loop earring, a gilt brass anchor and cross pin [JPG image - 13 KB], a chipped stone pendant [JPG image - 22 KB] apparently used as a sharpening stone, and Liberty head large cent [JPG image - 17 KB] pieces dated 1802 and 1807. Other artifacts included cutlery and dining utensils [JPG image - 36 KB], and fragments of cooking/fireplace implements.

In the years following the Revolution, New York State began the long process of manumitting its slave population, the largest north of Maryland. Initiated in 1785, this process was not largely complete until 1827. In Suffolk County, 50% of a total of 2224 blacks were free by 1790; 78% were free by 1820; and 98% were free by 1830. In the Town of Brookhaven, more than 80% of free blacks still resided in white households in 1790. The thirteen free blacks who had established independent households by this time thus represented a significant minority. Jonah Miller and three other heads-of-family who settled with him in an unoccupied section of North Country Road, at or near the Betsey Prince Site, were part of this small group. Over the next four decades many other freedmen joined Miller. By 1825, Betsey Prince, Mineus Lyman, Benjamin Davis, and Jonah Miller together owned contiguous parcels that stretched for more than one-half mile along North Country Road in this area.

Documentary sources indicated that despite a lack of change in the Prince dwelling and associated yard over time, the size and composition of the household did change, due to the apparent movement of different free black families through the house. This pattern was most evident during the early to middle part of the occupation, when many slaves were being freed and seeking independent homes. With eight of more people in the house, living conditions were tight, but not uncommon for farm families at the lower economic ranks. By 1830, when most slaves in Suffolk County had been freed and local free black settlement began to stabilize, only Betsey Prince and her family of three occupied the house.

Potential clues to African-American cultural influence were present in the architecture of the dwelling. The small, virtually square plan, was close to the 10 x 10 foot building block used in some West African cultures, and close to the plans of dwellings at two other African-American sites in Massachusetts. The use of a small pit in the cellar of the dwelling is provocative because of the known association of this feature with slave sites in the South. Cellar pit features have been identified as hiding places for valuables and as markers of African-American culture on the slave sites, and otherwise, as storage pits reflecting a non-cultural adaptation to living conditions. The apparent absence of these features on Northern sites could be related to an absence of data from certain classes of sites, including modest free black and white domestic sites, that often disappear from the archaeological record. The reason for the use of a cellar pit on the Betsey Prince Site will remain unexplained until other regional examples of these features are identified.

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Project Director: Mark LoRusso

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