The East Hampton Town Trustees are considering renaming their Captain William J. Rysam Scholarship Fund, which presents awards to high school graduating seniors each year, following the revelation that the scholarship’s namesake both owned and traded slaves.
Francis Bock, the trustees’ clerk, told his colleagues on Monday that David E. Rattray, co-director of the Plain Sight Project and editor in chief of The Star, had told him some months ago about Captain Rysam, who lived in Sag Harbor from around 1778 until his death in 1809.
“We need to discuss what we want to do with that information,” Mr. Bock said.
Founded five years ago, the Plain Sight Project aims to identify all enslaved people, as well as free people of color, who lived and worked on the East End and other Northern towns in America. To date, it has uncovered more than 1,000 confirmed names in Sag Harbor and East Hampton. Last month, the Plain Sight Project and the Sag Harbor Cinema received a $200,000 federal grant, sponsored by Senator Charles E. Schumer.
William J. Rysam came to this country from his native Wales as a sailor, according to the trustees’ website, and eventually became captain of his own ship. He and his five daughters arrived in Sag Harbor after his wife died, shortly after giving birth to their youngest daughter.
“A successful ship builder, commercial businessman in trading, Captain Rysam held a firm belief that all children should have the opportunity to be educated,” says the website, ehtrustees.com/shop/captain-rysam. He enrolled his daughters at Clinton Academy in East Hampton. “Upon his death, he bequeathed the town a $500 fund,” his will stipulating that the trustees apply the interest it generated to “the schooling of poor children whose parents were not able to pay for such tuition.”
In 1772, he captained a slaving voyage from Barbados to Hampton, Va., according to the Plain Sight Project, which cites a database of slave-trading voyages. Between 1782 and 1785, he was the enslaver of two men and a woman, and in 1804 became the co-owner of a merchant ship that was “almost certainly involved in the West Indies trade . . . where slavery was the basis of sugar production and the creation of wealth,” according to the Plain Sight Project. His estate inventory included two enslaved people.
On Monday, the trustees Susan McGraw Keber and David Cataletto suggested that the Rysam fund be renamed the East Hampton Town Trustees Scholarship Fund. Mr. Bock and John Aldred said the trustees might first confer with the Eastville Community Historical Society and the Sag Harbor Historical Society. “I think that we should open up the conversation to that community,” Mr. Bock said. The larger public should also be heard from, he said.
Sag Harbor’s Eastville section was home in the 19th century to a multiethnic population of free Blacks, European immigrants, and Native Americans. The community’s historical society aims to preserve that history and to tell the story of St. David A.M.E. Zion Church, built in 1839 by African-Americans and Native Americans and believed to have been a stop along the Underground Railroad.
Rysam Fund scholarship applicants are required to submit an essay in which they demonstrate knowledge of the history and current relevance of the East Hampton Town Trustees as stewards of the town’s natural environment and resources. Applicants are also asked how the trustees’ responsibilities contribute to the community, themselves, and their families.
In recent years, the trustees have awarded two scholarships from the Rysam Fund, one for $1,000 and the other for $500. On Monday, the trustees agreed to combine the awards this year, as there is just one applicant.
