Remembering Margaret Pine, the Last Slave in New York

Amongst the many tragedies of slavery throughout human history is that these human beings remain, for the most part, nameless and forgotten. Stripped of their humanity, identity, and dignity, they ceased to be thought of as individual souls and instead as used, abused, and discarded bodies. Along with their lives, their histories and stories remain a mystery to history. 

There are almost no records of these lives that most of humanity, for most of history, thought unworthy of chronicling. 

So that's why I was glad to learn about the life of Margaret Pine, the last slave in New York State. Unlike many of her forebearers and contemporaries, we have at least some small record of her life.

Margaret was born, as far as we know, in 1778 in Westchester. She was given to the family of Wynant Van Zandt, a weathly family in Manhattan. When Van Zandt moved his family from Manhattan to a farm in Little Neck in present day Queens, he freed her in 1813. Eventually she rejoined Van Zandt's family and died in 1857. 

She was buried in Greenwood Cemetary in Brooklyn. In what was considered a high compliment of the day, in antebellum America, her doctor said she had "black skin but a pure soul ... She lived like a sincere Christian."

Three years after Margaret's death, the Civil War would break out. But at least in NYC, this shameful chapter of our history was already over -- and, as its last victim, at least Margaret Pine's life is remembered to this day.