Manumission is the process where an individual enslaved person is released from slavery by their enslaver. The earliest manumissions were recorded in county land record (deed) books. Between 1752 and 1790, the deed was the only legal document that could free an enslaved human-being.
Beginning in 1799, there were Manumission Acts passed by the New York State Legislature responding to the activism of enslaved and free black people as well as the New York Manumission Society. The 1799 Manumission Act required slaveholders to free children born to enslaved people after July 4, 1799. This meant parents could not freely raise their children. An 1817 act “freed” enslaved people born before 1799 on July 4, 1827, ten years after the law was enacted. The gradual emancipation of enslaved people in New York State created circumstances of familial and individual trauma.
The Hudson Area Library is the repository for the Black Legacy Association of Columbia County (BLACC) collection created in the 1980s. For this collection, local volunteers researched the local history of Black people from the time of enslavement on to the present. The bulk of their research, including the oral histories they gathered, show people rising from this trauma who were creating family, social, religious, and economic bonds with each other. They were forming communities, dignity for their own lives, a legacy for their descendants, and a lasting inspiration for all peoples. There are two copies of manumissions in the BLACC collection, the originals of which were found in a Deed Book at the county clerk's office along with 45 others.
The Hudson Area Library welcomes any information on the people, enslavers and enslaved, that you may have in your own repositories and/or through your own research.
