Sandy Ground

Among New York’s several discrete neighborhoods settled by free Blacks in the pre-Civil War era was Sandy Ground, a community in Staten Island that dates to 1799. While a cemetery and a number of extant structures, including a few dozen homes and a church (which was a stop on the Underground Railroad), remain, continued development and under-recognition continue to threaten these remnants of an important layer of NYC’s history.

History

Beginning in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, Sandy Ground, located within the neighborhood of Rossville on the South Shore of Staten Island, was among the earliest communities for free Black Americans in New York City. It became one of several such discrete localities throughout the city in the pre-Civil War era, though most have since been eradicated. Another prominent example, Seneca Village, was razed to make way for the construction of Central Park; Weeksville, in Brooklyn, is perhaps the only other comparable example that remains to a similar extent today, with several retained houses from the early 1800s (protected under their designation as New York City Landmarks), and a dedicated Heritage Center to tell its story.

The name “Sandy Ground,” a reference to the soil type found in that part of Staten Island, is first noted in records dating to 1799. Composed of glacial sediment, the area was cultivated as farmland, and though the variably sandy, dry, and compacted clay soil was not ideal for many crops, the families who began to settle there discovered that several prospered, including strawberries.

By the late 1820s, soon after slavery was abolished in New York State, several African American families had purchased plots of land in the area. The community began to grow by the 1840s, when a number of free Black families migrated north from Snowhill, Maryland, in the Chesapeake Bay area, seeking the relative freedoms that the northern states afforded. The move was largely motivated by the oyster trade: while restrictive segregation laws were imposed in Maryland, obstructing African American participation in the oyster business that they had played a major part in cultivating, they sought work elsewhere, finding it in the oyster-rich waters of Staten Island’s Prince’s and Raritan Bays. Notably, though Staten Island is located mere miles from Manhattan, there was only one means of travel between the two at the time—via the Lewis Columbia ferry, which was operated by John Jackson, one of the first Black landowners in the community.

In the decades that followed, the neighborhood continued to flourish. At its height, Sandy Ground contained more than 150 Black-owned homes. As was typical of the free Black communities that developed during this time period, the church was an integral, and often literally central, asset to the community. The Rossville African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Zion Church was first established at Sandy Ground in 1850, relocated to a purpose-built place of worship in 1854, on Crabtree Avenue. The network of AME Zion Churches throughout the city had many renowned abolitionists among its congregants, including Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass; civil rights leader Reverend Thomas James called the Rossville congregation his own. In addition to serving its religious purpose, the church was a place for social gatherings, camp and school activities, and cultural events. By 1897, the congregation had outgrown its wooden structure, and a new church was built by local developer Andrew Abrams (the vernacular building was designated a New York City Landmark in 2011). The original church site, an important stop along the Underground Railroad, was demolished at some point in the first half of the twentieth century, though its cemetery, containing some 30 visible grave sites, hundreds of unmarked graves, and with a viewshed over the Wachtung Mountains of New Jersey, remains.

While several factors put a strain on Sandy Ground’s oyster industry by the turn of the century, particularly overfishing, and the pollution wrought by industrialization of the shoreline and nearby areas, it was a typhoid outbreak in 1916 that heralded the final closure of the oyster beds, putting many local Black families, who relied on oyster farming for their livelihoods, at significant risk. A 1930 brush fire, and an even more devastating fire in 1963 (known as “Black Saturday”), further jeopardized what remained of the community, while the construction of the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge in the 1960s both created opportunity (by forging a permanent connection between Staten Island and Manhattan), and threatened neighborhoods, including Sandy Ground and the broader Rossville, with encroaching overdevelopment.

While the cemetery and a number of extant structures, including a few dozen homes—three of which are city landmarks—and the church remain, continued development and under recognition of the significance of this cultural landscape continue to threaten these remnants of an important layer of New York City’s history.