Audio
Primus Martin of the Guinea Community
Transcript
In the late 1700s this landscape was a thriving neighborhood. And one of the most notable residents was Primus Martin, an African American whose name appears frequently in town records.
Christopher Lindner, Archaeologist in Residence at Bard College, and the Director of the Guinea Community Archaeology Project, shares what his field studies have revealed about Primus Martin…
SOUND BITE CHRIS LINDNER: We focused on the Martin site because we know that the Martins were the leaders of the community – they’re identified years later – 50 years later – in notebooks of oral histories that are at the FDR library as being respected, as having quite a farm, as being industrious, and that Primus was recognized as the leader of the African American community.
Primus Martin is known as a “Bard Negro” in the historic record. Meaning not that he was a slave, but that he worked for the Bard family, and that he was African American.
The only description we have of the dwellings comes from archeology, where in two instances we can see the foundation walls of the houses we’ve excavated to confirm. In one case, the Primus Martin site, the foundation is 9x11 feet on the inside of stone walls.
The thing about 9x11 feet that is so intriguing as a size, is that it matches very closely African American houses in the southeast and in west Africa in Guinea, in fact.
In terms of the artifacts we’ve found at the Primus Martin site in particular, almost everything is fragmented – small pieces.
We’ll continue to excavate around the house to determine if there was another room, or porches, we began to find this year concentrations of artifacts and what we call eco-facts – bones and teeth and shell. Every item is important to us – we never know what we can learn from a particular piece
NARRATOR: Susan Lindner, as the Education Consultant and Historian for the Guinea Community Project has also been carefully researching Primus Martin, from a historic perspective…
SOUND BITE SUSAN LINDNER: Very early on in my research I discovered a map that was (EDIT) the land where the Guinea Community had settled. This land showed that Primus Martin owned three acres. We knew that he was a free man from the 1790 census. Then we find out that he owns land. I stumbled upon a deed that shows that Primus Martin in 1825 sold half of his acreage to his daughter Eliza and her husband James Phoenix. He sold them the land for $3.00, with the stipulation that Primus and his wife, Elizabeth, could live there till he died.
We don’t know what Primus did for a living – the records just talk about him being the leader of the community, of being revered. But no one ever talks about what Primus actually did other than own this land, and have a farm.
NARRATOR: With each future discovery, Hyde Park is drawn deeper into its past.
Description
In the late 1700s this landscape was a thriving neighborhood. And one of the most notable residents was Primus Martin, an African American whose name appears frequently in town records.
Duration
3 minutes, 42 seconds
Credit
National Park Service
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