by George Mollineaux US294

GEORGEM161@comcast.net

The Mullinex Family of Branford, Connecticut and Throg’s Neck, New York between 1638 and 1790

Extracted from IMFA's MxWorld Newsletter Vol. XXII, No. 4, May 2008, ISSN 14530-4132

The following article is part of a story about five generations of a Mx family that settled in Connecticut, accused of witchcraft and told to leave by the Puritan settlers that followed them. They moved to the frontier (the Northern edge of New York City) and as subsistence farmers took a stand against slavery in 1717. 

You can trace the lives of this family using available on-line information from 1638 to 1790. Their feelings about slavery are outlined in the following speech given to the Freeport Historical Society (Long Island, New York) in February 1967.  Mr. F. J. MacMaster, Flushing, New York Historian was the presenter. It is my understanding that the Long Island Division of the Queens Borough Public Library in Jamaica, New York has information on Mr. MacMaster’s work.

This speech was found by my Aunt and Uncle, Virginia Mollineaux Simonson and Franklin Simonson during their genealogical research in the 1960’s.

Horsman Mullinex is one of the principles described in this presentation.  Horseman had a son Moses who during the 1720’s and 30’s had nine children including Mary, Joseph, James, Elizabeth, Anna, Hannah, Phebe, Abigail, and Thomas. Little information exists about these children. Does anyone have information on these children and their descendants? I am particularly interested in Joseph and James. 

Flushing and the Anti-Slavery Movement by F. J. MacMaster

    The history of a democracy ought to be, in part at least, a history of the common man.  If every significant movement in the history of American states, cities and villages was begun and carried to its conclusion by men of ability and genius above the ordinary, then the kind of speeches that we hear from politicians on the eve of every election are not really as meaningful as we might like to think they are.  Yet our history textbooks are still being written in the tradition of great men, and school children often complain that history is no more than a catalogue of names and dates – a listing of the important or no longer very important leaders and the great events that they brought to pass on a certain date.  Even in the history of a locality, of our own county or our hometown, we often tend to remember such landmark dates as the first incorporation of the community or the visit of George Washington on his tour of Long Island in 1790 or a brief speaking engagement by some more recent national leader.  Beyond those few highlights, local history seems to be no more than the record of farms and families, of land transfers and deeds in the must files of a county courthouse; no more than a chronicle of general stores opened, a post-office established, a real-estate subdivision created and occasional ballot-box battles over a district school or a village board.
 

    We all know, of course, that the decisions made on Election Day in a school basement or a firehouse are more important in the long run than the noisy ballyhoo of a National Convention or the mimeographed handouts at a press conference.  But, the great men of the past seem to dwarf the little men, and we think of the Revolution in terms of  Washington, of Lincoln saving the Union and of Teddy Roosevelt single-handedly battling the Spaniards and the Trusts.  There is no reason to belittle the heroes of the past or debunk their achievements, as was once the fashion.  But there have been movements in our history whose beginnings were so obscure and whose leaders were such ordinary men that they reflect the spirit of a democracy, without in any way tarnishing the reputation of men of greater genius who seem to have been natural leaders of men.

    There are many such movements and more than one of them had its origins in Long Island.  The handful of settlers from Flushing and Jamaica who defied Governor Stuyvesant in 1657 with a ringing declaration of religious liberty were not important men in their time – most of them were poor and many of them could not read or write – but their ideas were more important in the history of American freedom than anything witten by their contemporaries, whether powerful royal governors or learned theologians.  John Peter Zenger was an ordinary printer with a newspaper to get to press and Andrew Hamilton was a good Scotch lawyer from Philadelphia, but between them they hammered out a concept of freedom of the press that would be remembered long after the frontpage news.

    The story of the fight against slavery in America is much the same kind of story.  It has many beginnings and anti-slavery protests may be as old as the first day that slaves were sold in the public market at Jamestown in Virginia, but the first real anti-slavery movement in America began in the old Quaker Meeting House on Northern Boulevard in Flushing.

    The Quakers came to Flushing from all parts of Long Island and New York City for their Quarterly Meetings and from an even wider area for the Annual Meeting.   Visiting Quaker preachers from as far away as England or the Barbadoes tried to arrange their journeys so as to attend at least the Annual Meetings and it was usually at the Quarterly or Annual Meeting that matters of some importance would be taken  up.

    In February 1717, almost exactly 250 years ago, the Quarterly Meeting was to be held as usual in Flushing.  Across the East River there was a Quaker farmer who had a serious problem to discuss.  His name was Horsman Mullinex and he lived on a small farm on Throg’s Neck.  He was probably then nearly sixty years old.  He had been born on the farm on Throg’s Neck and as far as we know had never lived anywhere else.  He married according to the Quaker ceremony in 1692 and he had two grown sons.  His father had moved down from New Haven colony when this part of the world was still under Dutch rule and still largely a wilderness.  As far as one could judge, there was little to distinguish Horsman Mullinex from any of his neighbors, a small farmer who had grown up on the frontier.  In the 1698 census, like most of his neighbors, Horsman Mullinex is recorded as the owner of two slaves.

    The Flushing census for that year listed 530 free inhabitants and 113 slaves, which made a rough average of one slave to every family and this was close to the truth.  Long Islanders did not have great gangs of plantation hands, but nearly every family had either a man to help with the work in the fields or a woman to help with the cooking.  Slavery was so  universal that one can only conclude that no one had any more moral scruple about owning a Negro than a modern family might have about owing a car or a television.

    Somewhere around 1700 Horsman Mullinex and his family must have felt uneasy about slavery, for they freed their slaves in that year and in 1701 his father Thomas Mullinex freed his slaves and in 1709 his brother, who was also Thomas, freed his slaves.  Of course, other people set their slaves free too.  Not many of them, but there were some.

   In 1712 two or three free Negroes were arrested on information by another Negro that they had hatched a plot to have a general uprising, murder all the slaveowners and burn the city of New York.  About all that was really proven was that the conspirator had met on the open fields where City Hall is now located and discussed something or other at odd times of the day.  It was enough to make them suspicious and, with the information from their friend, enough to convict them.  The New York Assembly panicked and at its next session passed a series of laws that curtailed the movements of both slaves and free Negroes and that made it practically impossible to set a slave free.  Even Governor Hunter thought this law was much too severe and remonstrated against it to  England.

    If slaves could not be freed, then there was  no hope of slavery dying out of itself, for each new generation would be as incapable of freedom as the present generation.  What was worse, a whole series of similar laws began to be passed in the other colonies.  For men who might have disliked slavery or thought it wrong, and perhaps spoken to a friend or neighbor against it, it became clear that this kind of inarticulate protest would not be enough.  John Hepburn was one man who decided to take action.  He was a tailor in Perth Amboy who had come from Fife in Scotland as an indentured servant.  He put together a little booklet which he called The Amercian Defense of the Golden Rule and sent it to London to be printed at his own expense.  Hepburn argued in it that it was unlawful to make slaves of men and buy and sell them like cattle.  He is particularly bitter about the silence of the Churches on slavery, and points out that, however much they disagree on other points, the Presbyterians, the Church of England, the Baptists and the Quakers all agree in condoning slavery and the slave trade.  This little book was printed in 1716 and it may well be that Horsman Mullinex read it.

    At any rate, when he attended the Quarterly Meeting Mullinex put the moral issue squarely before the assembled Quakers:  Was it lawful to hold slaves or not?  The Meeting discussed this issue seriously and at length, and finally referred it to the Yearly Meeting.

    Mullinex made one important convert, at least.  In 1718 William Burling of Flushing handed in a pamphlet that  he had written against slavery.  Burling was a more important man in the community than Mullinex.  He owned a grist-mill and fulling mill on Flushing Creek and another mill on the Bronx River at West Farms.  He also headed the committee that built the enlargement on the old Flushing Meeting House in 1718-1719.  Only one of his anti-slavery writings is known to have survived and in it he tells us that he was troubled about slavery since he was about twelve years old or about 1690.  Burling was born in England and had been brought to Flushing as a young boy, so this was probably his first contact with human beings owned by other human beings.  According to an early anti-slavery writer, Burling was rather prolific in his writings against slavery, “some wee printed and others circulated in manuscript.”

    The Quaker records for the early 18th century are not complete, but for at least three years Flushing Meeting regularly issued protests against the morality of slavery.

    Changes did not come overnight, but the leaven was working.  Other Quakers took up the question and discussed it.  Some of them wrote seriously on the subject and some were so eccentric in their testimony against slavery that they were read out of the Quaker Meeting. Quakers went on buying and selling slaves, just as their neighbors did, but the protests begun in Flushing Meeting were never silenced.

    In the middle years of the 18th century John Woolman became the great Quaker preacher against slavery.  He spoke several times in the Flushing Meeting House in the 1750’s and went on one preaching tour with Matthew Franklin of Flushing as his companion.  Franklyn had been a young man when Mullinex and Burling began speaking out against slavery. He was a farmer in Flushing with a farm running along Pigeon Meadow Road and, like Woolman, left home sometimes to preach against slavery. 

(The building on the left is the Flushing Meeting House, located in the area the Dutch called Vlissengen. This "Old Meeting House"  built in 1694, is the oldest house of worship in New York.That on the
right is the Purchase Meeting House which is almost as venerable having been built in 1727.)

extracted 13 March 2008 by Marie Mx Spearman

HISTORY OF QUEENS COUNTY

with illustrations, Portraits & Sketches of Prominent Families and Individuals.

New York: W.W. Munsell & Co.; 1882.

pp. 74-143

found at:  http://www.bklyn-genealogy-info.com/Queens/history/flushing.html

“In 1716 a proposition was made by Horsman Mullenex concerning buying negroes for slaves, and at the next yearly meeting, was tenderly spoken to, and postponed for further consideration, and in 1718, 1719 and 1720 was still before the meeting and developing considerable opposition. Several Friends declared they were fully satisfied in their conscience that said practice was not right in the sight of God. In 1718 William Burling, of this meeting, published an "Address to the Elders of the Church" on slavery. This is perhaps the oldest anti- slavery publication in the country in 1765, 5th of 9th month, Samuel Underhill, of New York, is dealt with for importing negroes from Africa. He condemns the practice and hopes to conduct himself more agreeable to Friends’ principles in such matters. In 1775, 6th of 9th mo., "a committee is to visit such Friends as hold negro slaves, to inquire into the circumstances, and manner of education of the slaves and give such advice as the nature of the case requires. 1776, 2nd of 5th mo., the committee on negroes report that many Friends have them, but seem disposed to free them. Some have manumitted them, and instruct their children in necessary learning. Some justify their bondage. 2nd of 10 mo. the "committee are desired to labor with Friends who keep these poor people in bondage, in the ability that truth may afford, for their release; and if they continue insensible, then Friends can have no unity, with them so far as to employ them or accept of their services in "the church or receive their collections. No Friend shall hire any negro held in bondage, neither take any negro or other slave that is not set free when of age, nor to do any act acknowledging the right of slavery." In 1778, 1st of 7th mo., the monthly meeting conclude to testify against all Friends that do not free their negroes. In 1781 they decide that something is due manumitted negroes who have spent the prime of their life in their masters’ service.” 

(It was at a Monthly Meeting much like this one, that Horseman Mullenex first proposed an end to slave holding among the Quakers.)

Copied to the Wiki by Wayne Straight US332, 28 February 2009

Last updated on the Wiki by Wayne Straight US332, 13 February 2009

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