A manuscript archive of hundreds of documents relating to the family, business and political affairs of the heirs of Nathaniel Sylvester, one of the three original owners of Shelter Island. by SHELTER ISLAND - 1699-1915: Documents recording the way the Sylvester, Dering, Dinkel, Steuart, Rysam, Fosdick, Gardiner, Wentworth and Havens families lived and worked in Colonial America as proprietors on Shelter Island and as shipping and whaling entrepreneurs in Sag Harbor.

A manuscript archive of hundreds of documents relating to the family, business and political affairs of the heirs of Nathaniel Sylvester, one of the three original owners of Shelter Island, which documents the way the Sylvester, Dering, Dinkel, Steuart, Rysam, Fosdick, Gardiner, Wentworth and Havens families lived and worked in Colonial America as proprietors on Shelter Island and as shipping and whaling entrepreneurs in Sag Harbor. With 116 principal documents from 1700 – 1799, one may follow the intermarriages of the original Dutch families in New Amsterdam and subsequently in New York during colonial administration. Also, from their business interactions and marriages, one may learn much about such colonial institutions such as the enslavement of people of color, bought from the Faneuil family in Boston, for instance. From a suite of ten extraordinary letters written by Hannah Sylvester, between 1702 and 1720, written to her husband's neglectful executor, advocating for her own cause in terms any modern advocate would admire, one may read first-hand the abusive, discriminatory and sexist legal constraints enforced on women in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and, by extension in the Province of New York. The archive is not without interesting and, at times, amusing appearances of prominent colonial personalities such as Edward Hyde, self-identified in this archive in an extraordinary attestation, as "Edward Viscount Cornbury Capt[ain] Gentl[man?] and Governor in Chief of the Provinces of New York and New Jersey &c …". As America's reputed first cross-dressing politician and notorious royal relative of Queen Anne, the abbreviation "Gentl" begs the question, was he attired as a female at the time of his signing not once but twice on the same document? Of scientific and medical interest are the records of family inoculations in correspondence and genealogies and the establishment of a "Pock House" on Shelter Island, where smallpox patients were quarantined in the 1700s.

With a long-standing connection to Yale College and Law School in both the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it is not surprising to find a wedding certificate entirely in Ezra Stiles's own hand for the marriage of Thomas Dering and Mary Sylvester March 9, 1756 in Newport. In the nineteenth century, Cornelius Sleight II (1853-1881) kept a meticulous "Notes of a Course of Lectures on Elementary Law. Delivered by Professor Robinson to the Students of the Yale Law School." Cornelius's sister and mother were both also diarists, and their diaries survive among the 100 principal nineteenth-century documents in this manuscript archive. Among the signatures on the principal documents are:

Thomas Burroughs

Jonathan Clark

Adam Comstock

Joseph Conkling

Griselda Cotton

Jonathan Cotton

Nathaniel Cotton

Capt. Danvers

Jonas Dayton

Brinley S. Dering

Anna Charlotte Dering

Eliza. Dering

Frances M. Dering

Mary Frances Dering

Captain Henry Dering

Henry Dering

Henry Packer Dering

Henry S. Dering

Henry Thomas Dering

Nicol Henry Dering

N. Richard Dering

Capt. Richard N. Dering

Sylvester Dering

Thomas Dering

William Henry Dering

John Eastwicke

Hepzibah Edwards

Nicoll Fosdick

Thomas Fosdick

Eliza. P. Gardiner

Robert M - - -h. Gardiner

Mary Gooch

Abigail Grant

Mary Dering Gray

Robert F. Hand

Jonathan Nicoll Havens

Ludowick Havens

Mary C. Havens

Nicoll Havens

Sarah Hampstead

James H. Hicks

Thomas Hutchinson, Jr.

Edward Hyde, Earl of Cornbury

John Knowling

H. Lloyd

John Lloyd

James Monk

Lewis Morris Junior

Benjamin M. Mumford

Rensselaer Nicoll

William Nicoll

Andrew Oliver

Marcus B. Osborn

E. Prime

Thomas P. Ripley & His Wife, Elizabeth

Elizabeth Rutty,

Griz[ze]ll Sanford

William Sanford

Benjamin Sawyer

Stephen Seabury

Anna F[rances] Sleight

Cornelius Sleight

Cornelius Sleight II

Cornelius R. Sleight

Elizabeth Sleight

Hannah P. Sleight

Henry C. Sleight

Sarah Sleight

William R. Sleight [Jr.]

John Smith

Sally Smith

A.M. Steuart

Rev. Ezra Stiles

Charles Storer

Brinley Sylvester

Hannah Sylvester

Margaret Sylvester

Mary Sylvester

Nathaniel Sylvester II

Nath[anie]ll Sylvester III

Mary Thomas

Sarah Dering Thomas

Daniel Updike

Elizabeth Dering Wentworth

John Wentworth

Mark H. Wentworth

Sam[uel] Wentworth

Silas Wood

The line of ownership of these papers by the Dinkel-Sleight-Steuart family from their dates of creation in the eighteenth century to the present day is unbroken, some of the content of these documents demonstrates the diligence of the successive family members in recording their genealogies as well as retaining documents that record their verifiable positions in eighteenth and nineteenth century American society, namely the Sylvester, Dering, Dinkel, Sleight and Steuart families. Condition of individual items is noted in the full catalogue descriptions. Generally, the overall condition is remarkably good. A few documents, some of them recording the Dering-Sleight family's participation in defining moments in colonial American history, are deserving of conservation, but still legible.

A longer description as well as a catalogue of the significant documents are available upon application.