Bearing Witness
Exploring the Legacy of Enslavement in Ulster County, New York
BY PHILIP WHITE, SUSAN STESSIN-COHN, ASHLEY HURLBURT-BIAGINI & ALBERT COOK
Trade Paper, 6″ x 9″, 134 pages
43 illustrations including 3 Historic maps, photographs, and Historic Documents
ISBN 9798985692181 $16.95

“Susan Stessin-Cohn and her team of Ulster County, New York, researchers have produced a gem of local American history. Focusing on the life stories of Black Ulster County residents, the book amply provides the reader with evocative mini-biographies of slavery and freedom in this important northern rural region. Highly recommended for anyone interested in Black American life in the dawning decades of our nation’s history.” —— Graham Russell Gao Hodges,
George Dorland Langdon, Jr. Professor of History and Africana Studies, Colgate University

The 34 historical sketches in this book present insights into the lives of Black residents of Ulster County from the early days of enslavement in the 17th and 18th centuries to the blossoming of free Black culture following New York’s abolition of slavery in 1827. These stories provide a rare and invaluable glimpse into the lives of these men and women, chronicling their tragedies and triumphs, and dispelling the long-held popular assumption that slavery in America was a “Southern” institution.
In New York State, Ulster County in particular had high rates of enslavement of people of African descent owing to its vast, bountiful farmland and its early settlement by wealthy Dutch, English, and French families. The stories of those enslaved in Ulster County have long been underserved by historians, and the lives and identities of many are now lost forever, but new research continues to uncover important genealogical and societal information on who the enslaved and their enslavers were, what their lives were like, and the fate of newly emancipated Blacks and their families.
Illustrated with photographs, maps, and historical documents, and a table of census records enumerating white, enslaved, and non-white free populations town-by-town. Also featuring contributing essays by Wendy E. Harris, Arnold Pickman, and Donna Jeffress, and a new poem by Kate Hymes, Ulster County Poet Laureate

“With maps, census records, gripping stories, transcriptions of court proceedings, correspondence, births, executions, abolition, escape, churches, and most of all, names, Bearing Witness expands the story of enslavement and its aftermath in Ulster County. How we remember our history matters. This result of years of work is a model for the rest of the country.” — Debra Bruno, author of A Hudson Valley Reckoning: Discovering the Forgotten History of Slaveholding in My Dutch American Family.

About the Authors
Philip White is a recent graduate of SUNY New Paltz and has been involved since the fall of 2022 in researching the history of slavery in the Hudson Valley.

Susan Stessin-Cohn, coauthor of In Defiance, Runaways from Slavery in New York’s Hudson River Valley, 1735–1831 and former professor of social studies education at SUNY New Paltz, is currently the Historian for the Town of New Paltz, New York. She is a recipient of the Bruce Dearstyne Award for excellence in the educational use of local government records; the New York State Archives Award for the best use of primary local documents in a curriculum in NYS; and the Pride of Ulster County Award for research on the Ulster County Poorhouse.

Ashley Hurlburt-Biagini is a research historian and web developer in the Hudson Valley. She is the former Manager of Collections and Archives at Historic Huguenot Street, where she co-curated various exhibits. Ashley is on the research committee for the Sacred Place of My Ancestors and is the coauthor of In Defiance: Runaways from Slavery in New York’s Hudson River Valley, 1735–1831.

Albert Cook has been a member of the Social Studies Department at New Paltz High School for 25 years, where he currently teaches World History, AP American History, and Black History. He also has been an instructor in the Urban Education Initiative at Vassar College, where he co-taught classes on the Legacy of Dr. King, the History of Black Voter Disenfranchisement, and the History and Legacy of Mass Incarceration. He has lectured throughout the region on issues surrounding the history of African cultures and the development of race and racism in North America.