This 1787 sale of a two-and-a-half-acre woodland property in Northwest Woods by Mehitable Baker of East Hampton and Leffert Lefferts from New York City to Jeremiah Miller of East Hampton is not part of the town records. It’s a fascinating document for several reasons, including the partial ownership of woodlands in Northwest by a New York City resident of Dutch descent, but perhaps most important is that this document captures a moment in the life of “a negro woman named Aca and her son Silas,” enslaved people being sold as an aside to sweeten a land deal.
The Leffert Lefferts referred to here was most likely born in 1727 and died in 1804 and probably lived in the preserved Lefferts home in Flatbush, Brooklyn, although the name is repeated in many branches of the family. Mehitable Miller Baker (1733-1792), the widow of Capt. David Baker (1730-1774), signed this document as the other seller. Jeremiah Miller appears to have been a cousin of Mehitable’s.
Other deeds involving Mehitable Baker and Leffert Lefferts in this collection refer to parcels “near Daniel’s Hole” and “Cove Hollow,” and it’s likely this one could have been adjacent to those parcels. Land owned by Daniel Dayton is referred to in the metes and bounds document.
What is most significant and moving about this deed is the grouping of human lives with real estate. This sale records the names of a mother, Aca, and her son, Silas. We don’t know what happened to them, although thanks to the important work of the Plain Sight Project we know they were not the only people of color enslaved by Mehitable and David Baker. The Plain Sight Project identified over 700 individuals documented in records of life on the East End, and our next pop-up exhibition, on Wednesday from 4 to 7 p.m., will feature some of the documents capturing the moments from these lives that can be found in the Long Island Collection.
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Andrea Meyer, a librarian and archivist, is head of collection for the East Hampton Library’s Long Island Collection.
