The history of African Americans in Aquacknonck(the area would be Paterson in 1792) dates back to the early Dutch settlers who owned very 1664 and lasted until 1702, black enslavement was encouraged by law. The proprieto's Consessions and Agreement offered an additional sixty acres of land for slaves imported during 1664, forty-five acres for slaves imported the following year and thirty acres for each one acquired in 1666. With such incentives, the insitution grew rapidily.
During the Revolutionary War, Aquackanonck was the scene of General Washington's retreat as well as several Hessian and Brithish raids. Lists of losses were published, including the number of slaves and their value. Michael Vreeland's will of 1789 mentions 10 slaves, but this was the exception. Most residents owned only one.
The Condition of the African American was to change little with the abolition of the new Jersey slave trade in 1786. In 1804 the stae legislature passed and "Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery." Under the new law, all children born of slaves after July 4, 1804, were to be freed after serving 21 years for females andf 25 years for males. Some Paterson citizens wanted to prolong Negro servitude and ran advertisments of this nature to attract labor and keep Negros in their subservient position.
On January 12, 1841, The Citizens of Paterson made an address to the new Jersey Legislature in Behalf of the Colored Population of the State "...we address you with the veiw of calling your attention to the disabilities, privations and suffereing, under which the colored population of our State labor, and which we believe can at least be mitigated, if not wholly removed, by wholesome legislation.... We think you look upon evenb the black man as a man, and entitled to all the priviledges and immunities of humanity." The address went on to request an extension of the provisions of the law of 1804, to abolish slavery completely. The address was signed by 17 abolistionists.
The 1846 Emancipation Act Abolished slavery by making all slaves apprentices and gave them the right of consent for the sale of themselves. Children born of these apprentices were free, but bound to service by the local overseer of the poor after reaching the age six. According to the 1860 U.S. Census, there were still six slaves in Paterson.
Paterson slaves frequently resisted their bondage. Some ran away, worked slowly or destroyed tools, animals, crops and other property. New Jersey was one of the few northern states that sanctioned the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Paterson had a particulary close relationship with slave states because of its economic reliance on cotton. This law permitted runaways to be seized and returned to the south. Underground Railroad had to proceed with caution in the state. Huntoon and William VanRensalier, his free black engineer have been documented as conductors on the Underground Railroad working from Huntoon's Spice Facory on the corner of Broadway and Bridge Street.
*This text was adapted from a hisorical essay by Candice Pryor & Kathy Trusty, originally used in the catalog for the Paterson Museum exhibit, "As I was saying...Reflections of African Americans in Paterson",exhibited during the Spring of 1996.