Category: African Americans

The Perfect New York City Tour for America’s 250th: Washington, Hamilton, and the Revolutionary City

January 16, 2026 Tags: , ,
250th Revolutionary Tour New York City

This year, the United States marks its 250th anniversary—the Semiquincentennial—an opportunity to reflect on how a fragile rebellion became a nation. There is no better place to experience that story than New York City, and no better way to encounter it than on the Hamilton & Washington: Secrets of the Past Walking Tour.

New York was not merely a backdrop to the American Revolution—it was one of its central stages. Long before the Declaration of Independence was read aloud in July 1776, New Yorkers were already locked in struggle over liberty, power, and the future of empire. During the Revolution, the city witnessed dramatic protest, crushing defeat, daring escapes, espionage, and—ultimately—the birth of the United States itself. Our Washington & Hamilton tour places you directly on those streets, where history unfolded step by step.

This immersive walking tour explores the Revolution and the early republic through the intertwined lives of George Washington and Alexander Hamilton—two indispensable figures who shaped America’s destiny. Washington, the steadfast Commander-in-Chief and first President, guided the nation through war and into republican government. Hamilton, an orphaned immigrant with towering ambition, helped design the financial and constitutional foundations that allowed the United States to survive. Their partnership—and their tensions—define the Revolutionary era.

As the nation commemorates its 250th anniversary, this tour offers something deeper than monuments and dates. You will encounter the Revolution as lived experience: the Sons of Liberty resisting British taxation, the devastating consequences of the Battle of Brooklyn, Washington’s providential nighttime escape across the East River, and his emotional farewell to the Continental Army at a Manhattan tavern. You’ll stand near the site of Washington’s triumphant inauguration on Wall Street and explore how Hamilton’s economic vision reshaped the future of the nation.

Importantly, the Semiquincentennial demands a fuller story—and this tour delivers it. Alongside Washington and Hamilton, you’ll meet African Americans who fought for freedom, women who sustained the Patriot cause, and lesser-known figures whose contributions were vital to independence. You’ll learn how intelligence networks like the Culper Spy Ring helped save the Revolution, and how ideas expressed in the Federalist Papers secured ratification of the Constitution.

For visitors inspired by Hamilton on Broadway, this tour provides historical depth behind the drama—grounded in scholarship, primary sources, and place-based storytelling. For lifelong history enthusiasts, it offers rare insight into New York’s Revolutionary past. And for the 250th anniversary, it provides something essential: context, complexity, and connection.

As America reflects on its founding at 250 years, join us to walk the city where independence was contested, nearly lost, and ultimately secured. The Semiquincentennial deserves more than a celebration—it deserves understanding.
👉 Sign up today for the Hamilton & Washington Walking Tour and experience the American Revolution where it happened.

Seneca Village: A Remarkable African American and Immigrant Community

May 25, 2025 Tags: , , , ,
Seneca Village Tour in Central Park

In the heart of what is now the Central Park landscape once stood Seneca Village, a vibrant and empowered African American and immigrant community that existed on the land between 1825, two years before the end of slavery in New York State, and 1857.  The community was between 82nd and 89th Streets and between Seventh and Eighth Avenues.  Seneca Village was established when white property owners John and Elizabeth Whitehead, uptown landowners, subdivided their property and sold off 200 lots. The first buyer was Andrew Williams, a 25-year-old African American bootblack (shoe shiner) who purchased three lots for $125.  Williams was soon joined by others seeking opportunity and refuge from the crowded, disease-ridden, and discriminatory conditions of Lower Manhattan. Epiphany Davis, a store clerk, bought 12 lots for $578, and the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church acquired six more.  By the mid-1850s, it had grown to around 50 homes, three churches, a school for African-American children, and burial grounds. White European immigrants began moving to Seneca Village in the 1840s.

Seneca Village was remarkable not just for its growth but for its diversity and autonomy. At its peak, the community numbered about 225 residents, two-thirds of whom were Black, with the rest being Irish and possibly German immigrants. More than half of the Black residents were property owners, a rare achievement since, at the time, only 10% of the city’s entire population owned land.  This land ownership also conferred the right to vote for Black men (a $250 property-ownership requirement and three years’ residency in the state began in 1821), as well as stability and self-determination.

Andrew Williams, the village’s first landowner, lived there with his wife, Elizabeth, and their family from 1825 until 1857, when the city acquired the land through eminent domain to create Central Park. Williams’s story is emblematic of the community: he built a home, raised a family, and participated in a thriving middle-class neighborhood that included churches, schools, and gardens.  Epiphany Davis, another prominent resident, invested in multiple lots and helped anchor the village’s economic and social fabric.

The landscape of Seneca Village was varied, featuring rolling hills, rocky outcrops, and meadows. Residents cultivated gardens, raised livestock, and drew water from a natural water source that became known as Tanner’s Spring, while orchards and barns dotted the landscape.

Seneca Village offered a rare sanctuary of Black property ownership and community in antebellum New York. Its erasure in 1857 for Central Park’s creation was a profound loss, but ongoing research, archaeological work, and public commemoration since it’s rediscovery in 1992—by historians Roy Rosenzweig and Elizabeth Blackmar—are restoring its rightful place in the city’s history—a testament to resilience, aspiration, resourcefulness, and community in the face of adversity.  Find more about Seneca Village on the Secret Places of Central Park and Central Park Experience walking tours, as well as a private tour focusing on Seneca Village offered for groups of adults, students, and corporate employees.

George Washington’s Real Right Hand Man

September 23, 2023 Tags: , , ,
George Washington and William Lee

While some may consider Alexander Hamilton George Washington’s “Right Hand Man,” the more compelling choice is William Lee, the African American enslaved valet who served Washington for approximately twenty years, including over seven years of the Revolutionary War. (1) From helping the command-in-chief arrange his personal business, to delivering dispatches, to assisting with sartorial tasks, to accompanying Washington on fox hunts, Lee was the ever-present assistant. (1)

In the 1780s, Lee suffered a number of falls that affected his knees. Washington noted in his diary, April 22, 1785, “My Servant William (one of the Chain Carriers) fell, and broke the pan of his knee wch. put a stop to my Surveying; & with much difficulty I was able to get him to Abingdon, being obliged to get a sled to carry him on, as he could neither Walk, stand, or ride. . . ” (2) When Washington became president in 1789, Lee travelled from Mount Vernon to serve Washington in New York City. On his way to the new capital, Lee needed took a detour in Philadelphia to be fitted with a steel brace. Tobias Lear, Washinton’s secretary, wrote that if Lee “is still anxious to come on here the President would gratify him altho’ he will be troublesome. He has been an old & faithful servant. This is enough for the Presidt to grafiy him in every reasonable wish. . . ” (3) Washington’s loyalty was evident, but Lee’s loyalty to his enslaver, was even more so. Due to his injuries, in the summer of 1790, Lee returned to Virginia to serve as the Mount Vernon cobbler. (4)

In George Washington’s will, William Lee is the only enslaved person freed on his death. Washington also left him with a $30 annuity. “And to my Mulatto man William,” Washington wrote, “I give immediate freedom; or if he should prefer it (on account of the accidents which ha[v]e befallen him, and which have rendered him incapable of walking or of any active employment) to remain in the situation he now is, it shall be optional in him to do so.” (5) Washington continued, “This I give him as a testimony of my sense of his attachment to me, and for his faithful services during the Revolutionary War.” (6). Lee was it seemed, Washington’s right hand man. See above for John Trumbull’s 1780 painting, “George Washington,” with the general accompanied by William Lee.

  1. “William (Billy) Lee,” George Washington’s Mount Vernon Digital Encyclopedia, https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/article/william-billy-lee/.
  2. George Washington, “Diary of George Washington (April 22, 1785),” Encyclopedia Virginia: Virginia Humanities, https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/diary-of-george-washington-april-22-1785/.
  3. “William Lee,” Encyclopedia Virginia: Virginia Humanities, https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/lee-william-fl-1768-1810/.
  4. Ibid.
  5. George Washington, “George Washington’s Last Will and Testament (July 9, 1799),” Encyclopedia Virginia: Virginia Humanities, https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/george-washingtons-last-will-and-testament-july-9-1799/.
  6. Ibid.

John Laurens and George Washington

September 5, 2023 Tags: , , , , , ,
John Laurens and George Washington

South Carolinian John Laurens, close friend to Alexander Hamilton, was fervent in plans to enlist enslaved people in the Continental Army. On March 29, 1779, the Continental Congress agreed to compensate Georgian and South Carolinian slaveholders as much as $1,000 for enslaved men serving in the army, even going as far as emancipation. The Continental Congress stated:

Resolved, That congress will make provision for paying the proprietors of such negroes as shall be inlisted for the service of the United States during the war, a full compensation for the property at a rate not exceeding one thousand dollars for each active able bodied negro man of standard size, not exceeding thirty five years of age, who shall be so inlisted and pass muster.

That no pay or bounty be allowed to the said negroes, but that they be cloathed and subsisted at the expence of the United States.

That every negro who shall well and faithfully serve as a soldier to the end of the present war, and shall then return his arms, be emancipated and receive the sum of fifty dollars.

However, in a letter to George Washington on May 19, 1782, Laurens reported that the plan was rejected by South Carolina. “The single voice of reason,” he wrote, “was drowned by the howlings of a triple-headed monster in which Prejudice Avarice & Pusillanimity were united.”

Responding to that letter on July 10, 1782 George Washington (in the letter photographed above) expressed dismay that South Carolina rejected the proposal. He lamented that “it is not the public but the private Interest which influences the generality of mankind.” Washington wrote:

The last Post brought me your Letter of the 19 May.

I must confess that I am not at all astonished at the failure of your Plans.

That Spirit of Freedom which at the commencement of this contest would have gladly sacrificed every thing to the attainment of its object has long since subsided, and every selfish Passion has taken its place—it is not the public but the private Interest which influences the generality of Mankind nor can the Americans any longer boast an exception—under these circumstances it would rather have been surprizing if you had succeeded nor will you I fear succeed better in Georgia.

Other states, such as Rhode Island enlisted African Americans into service. However, many more African Americans escaped and fought on the side of English.

Discover more on the Hamilton & Washington tour. You can purchase tickets on this page. Click the “Book Your Tour” button.

Sources:

“Journals of the Continental Congress, March 29, 1779” Encyclopedia Virginia, https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/journals-of-the-continental-congress-march-29-1779.

John Laurens, “To George Washington from John Laurens, 19 May 1782,” National Archives Founders Online, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/99-01-02-08462.

George Washington, “From George Washington to John Laurens, 10 July 1782,” National Archives Founders Online, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/99-01-02-08890.

The Appeal for The Central Park

February 16, 2023
Best Central Park Walking Tour

On August 19, 1853, the mayor, aldermen, and commonality of the City of New York announced an appeal to the state’s Supreme Court for the “opening and layout” of a “public place between 59th and 106th Streets and Fifth and Eighth Avenues in the [uptown] 12th, 19th, and 22nd Wards.”[1]  Earnest appeals for a public park first surfaced in 1844, when William Cullen Bryant—poet, journalist, and editor of the New-York Evening Post—called for an “extensive pleasure ground” in New York City, and one that matched “the greatness of our metropolis.”[2]  “Commerce is devouring inch by inch the coast of the island,” Bryant warned, “and if we would rescue any part of it for health and recreation, it must be done now.”[3]  “The only objection which we can see,” he prognosticated, “would be the difficulty of persuading the owners of the soil to part with it.”[4]  That remark proved to be prescient. 

            Four years later, Andrew Jackson Downing echoed the call for a park.  Downing was the foremost landscape designer in the young nation, a drafter of the prodigious grounds of the White House and the Smithsonian, and a contributor to the design of the Washington Mall.  The ambitious Downing also had his designs on New York City.  “What are called parks in New-York,” he scoffed, “are not even apologies for the thing.” [5]  A well-designed park in the divided and frenetic city would, he claimed, “soften and humanize the rude . . . and give continual education to the educated,” and thereby serve all classes.[6]  A park, he noted, could unite the class-conscious and divided city.

            The first plan for an urban oasis in 1853, was a $1.5 million conversion of a 153-acre privately owned plot of land.[7]  Jones Wood, as it was called, was on the East River between Sixty-Sixth and Seventy-Seventh Streets.[8]  It belonged to two affluent families, the Jones and Schermerhorns, so vehemently opposed to a coerced acquisition through eminent domain that they appealed to the courts.[9]  William C. Schermerhorn asserted that eminent domain was a “persecution” of him and his family.[10]  The government’s role, he argued, was to safeguard, not seize his private property.

            A New York County judge declared the bill to acquire Jones Woods unconstitutional.[11]  While some leaders continued their advocacy, others set their sights on a larger, more central location on the border of communities known as Harlem, Bloomingdale, and Yorkville—comprised mainly of immigrants and African Americans.[12]  The 778-acre rugged, swampy land was enormous, more than five times the size of Jones Wood.  Many believed the land could be acquired and converted into a spectacular parkland for roughly the same $1.5 million cost.[13]  Moreover, 135 acres already belonged to the Municipal Corporation of New York, and the rest could be acquired through the state’s right of eminent domain.[14] 

            The new Central Park board insisted that under eminent domain, the “citizen” is protected from “injustice.”[15]  “He is,” they continued,” protected in the enjoyment of his property, unless the public needs it.”[16]  Unlike the Jones and Schermerhorns who fought the surrender of Jones Woods, the African Americans and immigrants inhabiting the future Central Park—including those in Seneca Village—had little access to the court system to fight the justification of that  “need.”

[1] “Handbill declaring the intended construction of Central Park,” in “Seneca Village: A Teacher’s Guide Using Primary Sources in the Classroom,” New-York Historical Society, 2010, 13, Collection of The New York City Municipal Archives, Bureau of Old Records, https://nyhs-prod.cdn.prismic.io/nyhs-prod/05a15797-cc2c-4360-a804-0bae8d3cec80_Seneca_Village_NYHS.pdf.

[2] William Cullen Bryant, “A New Public Park,” Evening Post (New York, NY) July 3, 1844, 2, https://newscomwc.newspapers.com/image/32119902.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Andrew Jackson Downing, Rural Essays (New York: Leavitt & Allen, 1853), 485, Google Books, 2009, https://www.google.com/books/edition/Rural_Essays/MSa8zQEACAAJ?hl=en.

[6] Ibid., 142.

[7] Rosenzweig and Blackmar, Park and the People, 45.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid., 45–49.

[10] Ibid., 50.

[11] Ibid. 50–53.

[12] Ibid., 60; Sara Cedar Miller, Before Central Park (New York: Columbia University Press, 2022), 193, Kindle; “A small branch” of the Methodist African Union met in the area slightly before 1846, but “with no distinct organization” of note. See: Jonathan Greenleaf, History of the Churches of All Denominations in the City of New York (New York: E. French, 1846), 328, HathiTrust, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc2.ark:/13960/t05x27q2p&view=1up&seq=5.

[13] Rosenzweig and Blackmar, Park and the People, 59.

[14] Ibid., 45; Besides the 135 acres of public land which accommodated a receiving reservoir, the rest belonged to 561 landowners.  Twenty percent of the property belonged to only three families.  The 34,000 lots ended up costing $5 million—more than three times the estimated $1.5 million cost for the entire park, including land and construction. See: Burrows and Wallace, Gotham, 792.

[15] “Report of Special Committee on Public Parks, January 2, 1852,” in First Annual Report on the Improvement of Central Park (New York: Chas. W. Baker, Printer, 1857), 104, Historical Vital Records of New York City, http://nyc.gov/html/records/pdf/govpub/4055annual_report_manhattan_central_park_1857.pdf.

[16] Ibid.

Brooklyn’s Plymouth Church, Henry Ward Beecher, and Abraham Lincoln

January 5, 2022 Tags: , , , , , ,
Best Brooklyn Walking Tour

One of the stops on the Best of Brooklyn/Brooklyn Revolution Walking Tour is Plymouth Church. The National Historic Landmark church, along with its founding minister, the charismatic Henry Ward Beecher, had a long history of abolitionist activism from its inception in 1847 through the Civil War.  The Reverend Beecher’s arresting sermons were attended by the likes of Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth.  Douglass was engrossed as the impassioned Beecher “poured forth one continuous strain of eloquence for more than an hour,” even subduing “the miserable attempts at interruption” from opponents of his anti-slavery speech.[1]  Eventually aligning with the Republican party, Plymouth countered the prevailing Democratic political and social attitudes in Brooklyn and neighboring New York City.  They used the church basement as a stop on the Underground Railroad to shelter escaped slaves along their journey and advocated for manumission through sermons and journal articles.  Moreover, Plymouth and Beecher were influential in Lincoln’s breakthrough “Right Makes Might” speech at the Cooper Institute in New York City in February 1860, facilitating his subsequent rise to the presidency.[2]

Beecher’s most remarkable achievement during the Civil War was his advocacy for the Union cause in the United Kingdom.  In October 1863, through a series of five speeches given throughout Great Britain—and of his own accord—Beecher helped thwart the potentially devastating effects of Britain’s economic and military support of the Confederacy.  His provocative speeches to the laboring classes were both a rebuke of the British in their attempts to secure Southern cotton and a humanitarian plea to the British people to support the Union cause and American freedom.  Both the British and American press praised him for contributing to the Union victory.  Furthermore, near the end of the war, President Abraham Lincoln acknowledged the contribution of Beecher’s adroit and unofficial diplomacy.  When planning the rededication of Fort Sumter in South Carolina on April 14, 1865, a grateful Lincoln personally demanded that Beecher give the speech for the raising of the American flag, “because if it had not been for Beecher, there would have been no flag to raise.”[3] 

[1] Frederick Douglass, “Anniversary of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society,” The North Star (Rochester, N.Y.), May 16, 1850, 2, Library of Congress, last accessed October 16, 2021, https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn84026365/1850-05-16/ed-1/?sp=2&r=0.39,0.026,0.447,0.186,0.

[2] Frank Decker, Brooklyn’s Plymouth Church in the Civil War: A Ministry of Freedom (Charleston: The History Press, 2013), 95-97.

[3] Emanuel Hertz, “Emanuel Hertz to William C. Beecher, December 10, 1926, Beecher Family Papers, Sterling Memorial Library, Yale University, New Haven.