John's Account Books

Two volumes of John’s account books are known to survive.[1] These, along with other personal papers, provide exceptional insight into the man and his daily life. While the account books tend to focus on John’s exchanges with wealthy white farmers, they also reveal information about Black laborers and friends (see the section “Black Community”).

The practice of keeping an account book may have been something John learned while in bondage to the Hasbroucks, a mercantile family,[2] but observing Ezekiel Elting’s practical notations of his work and how he was paid was also a likely influence. Like Ezekiel and the Hasbroucks, John kept most of his accounting in the New York currency units of pounds, shillings, and pence, occasionally converting to dollars. The dollar was the principal currency in the U.S. at the time, yet New Paltz bookkeepers continued to use the old units of measure.[3]

Artistry

The account books offer more than just a record of John’s day-to-day labors and financial dealings, however. In the margins, at the bottom of pages, and on end papers, we find myriad inscriptions, expressions of the author’s tender and imaginative mind, and a persistent devotion to improving his penmanship. Countless times, often repeatedly on a single page, John signed his full name. Other times, John simply practiced writing elegant capital letters and numbers. On occasion he wrote others’ names for no apparent reason. A few times, he recorded quotations that obviously impressed him, such as “Humility is vanity” and “Many men of many minds.”[4]

Appreciated as a whole, all of John’s inscriptions summon for the reader the enormous pride he must have felt in the act of writing at a time when few African Americans possessed literacy. Furthermore, we sense that John reveled in touching his pen to paper, in the delicate beauty of pen and ink, the same way an artist might. Writing seems to have become a meditation for him, a way to make order, and perhaps a source of solace and escape from the mundaneness, if not the actual trials, of existence. It is not, then, without irony that one of the inscriptions in the account books discourages this kind of escape, admonishing “Command you may your mind fom [from] play every moment.”

The work John did for Maurice in the 1850s was not described, but much of the work John performed for Jacob J. in the 1830s was sawing, suggesting John may have contributed to the construction of one of the original barns at the Bonticou property. John also performed harvest work and chopped cord wood. Jacob J. compensated John in cash, but also various food items (including half a veal and one quarter of a pig), leather for shoes, and a “grass cise (scythe).” The scythe indicates John may have been working a plot of land for himself by this time. He had already acquired a hoe while working for Ezekiel Elting, another necessary tool for working the land.[6] In fact, by 1833 John seemed to have had some of his own livestock, as a few times he received bushels of hog corn and chicken feed as payment, and noted that his cow was in the pasture.

From an entry dated March 11, 1835, we learn that John was renting a house from Jacob J. Hasbrouck. A note in distinct handwriting was made, reading, “then I and Jacob J. Hasbrouck have settled our accounts and we are even the House rent to the first of January 1835.”[7] The handwriting in this case is almost certainly that of Jacob J. Hasbrouck, the appearance of which is so well documented by his entries as Town Clerk in the Register of Slaves, including the record of John’s own birth nearly three decades earlier. John repeated the phrasing about settling the rent in his own hand two pages later. The timing of these entries on the first day of January 1835 is interesting. Could they reflect that John had fulfilled all obligations to Jacob J., including his indenture that was to end legally in 1834?

Overall, John’s recordkeeping became more orderly while working for Jacob J., with dates and the number of days worked consistently noted on the left-hand page and the dates and how he was compensated on the right. Historians Joan Hollister and Sally Schultz believe this suggests that Jacob J., or someone else, coached John on the proper method for documenting these transactions.[8] Since Jacob J. took the time to scribe the original note about “settling,” it seems he had indeed taken interest in John’s recordkeeping, perhaps a carryover from when a younger John was learning to write and do arithmetic.

In 1836, John ceased work for Jacob J. and returned to work for Daniel DuBois. He continued working for Daniel through 1839, when the first account book ended. The work he performed for Daniel is not explained, but presumably it was general farm work. He was compensated in the usual way, with various food stuffs and other items. In August 1838, he was paid with a bedstead (perhaps to accommodate his aging mother or the growing family he had started by this time) and one pair of horse shoes (suggesting John’s livestock were also increasing in number).[9]

Second Volume

The second volume of John’s account books, held by the Haviland-Heidgerd Historical Collection at Elting Memorial Library, covers the period from around 1839 through 1863. Most of this time John was working for Daniel DuBois, but he also worked in later years for Daniel’s son John W. Dubois who took over some of his father’s farmland. John also worked as a farmhand for Henry I. DuBois (Daniel’s cousin several times removed) and Simon Rose (mentioned earlier). Again, the specific work John performed for these men was seldom detailed. Occasionally, John mentioned “making a traught [trough], chopping wood, splitting rails, or “cilling” hogs or beef. On one day alone in November 1857, John recorded that he had “butchered 8 hogs and 1 beef.” At times, John was compensated for boarding apparent laborers hired by Daniel DuBois. These men included White men like a farmer from Rosendale, Wessel Low, for ten days, and Henry Marble, a transplant from Connecticut who John put up for 66 days.[10] John also boarded Black men, as discussed in the next section.

As usual, John was compensated with a variety of items, including foods like mutton and veal, as well as mackerel, herring, clams, and eels. He was also paid in wool, leather and leather mittens, and three yards and one quarter of “beverteen” or beaverteen, a durable twill cotton fabric with short nap known for its warmth. In 1844, John was compensated with the mending of a pair of boots and a pair of shoes.[11] (John often received leather as payment, suggesting he sometimes mended his own shoes, but he definitely purchased shoes at times and had them mended for him).

In February of 1844, John had use of a horse from Daniel DuBois to go for an undisclosed reason to Hyde Park, on the east side of the Hudson River (John’s sister Jane and her family had moved to Poughkeepsie by this time, so perhaps it was related to visiting them). In 1845, John received as payment two heifers, “one and two year old,” and “a crop of wheat and rye on the ground,” which John may have been able to gather for his own use. In 1863 John received from John W. DuBois two pear trees and other items, as well as cash in return for his labor. John’s employer also paid the tax collector on his behalf that year. The town’s tax rolls confirm that John consistently paid annual property taxes for his six acres, which ranged from 73 cents to $1.64 between 1844 and 1853.[12]

On occasion, John worked for a few other White men and we learn a little bit more about the man and his family. In 1857 and 1858, he worked for Dr. David Wurts (the grand-nephew of Josiah and Jacob J. Hasbrouck, who married Jacob J.’s daughter Albina), perhaps working off, in part, medical care that John or one of his loved ones had received. Briefly in 1856, John labored for Charles B. Hasbrouck (a distant cousin of John’s enslavers) who had acquired the Elting store in the village, perhaps working off some purchases the family had made.[13]

In 1855 and 1862, John worked for Tobias Elting, Ezekiel Elting’s nephew and a boss (lead) carpenter. Tobias is credited for many of the houses and barns built in the Ohioville area during that time. In 1862, John was “scouring” (scoring and probably hewing timbers) on several occasions for Tobias, indicating he was involved with some of those building projects. The fact that John Hasbrouck worked for boss carpenter Tobias Elting increases the likelihood that a young Jacob Wynkoop (the Black builder and second son of Jane Deyo Wynkoop mentioned earlier) knew Tobias as well, and perhaps worked for and learned building skills from the older White man. In fact, the house that Jacob built for himself in the 1850s on Mulberry Street in New Paltz resembled Tobias’s own two-and-a-half story vernacular Greek Revival home he designed and built in Ohioville just a few years earlier.[14]

Notes

[1] Hasbrouck Account Book 1 and Hasbrouck Account Book 2 cited earlier.

[2] Hollister and Schultz, 8 and 12–13.

[3] Hasbrouck Account Book 1, image 51.

[4] The phrase is believed to be from a school copy book.

[5] Hasbrouck Account Book 1, images 9 and 14-32. Work and Wage Record, 1855-1856. HHHC, Elting Library. https://nyheritage.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p16694coll153/id/35656/rec/1

[6] Hasbrouck Account Book 1, image 17. Elting Account Book, image 175.

[7] Hasbrouck Account Book 1, image 28.

[8] Hollister and Schultz, 12.

[9] Hasbrouck Account Book 1, image 46.

[10] Hasbrouck Account Book 2, images 108 and 7. 1850 U.S. Census data for Rosendale, NY and New Paltz.

[11] Hasbrouck Account Book 2, images 15 and 31.

[12] Hasbrouck Account Book 2, image 33 and 139. Tax Assessment Rolls, 1844-1853. New Paltz Town Records, courtesy of HHS.

[13] Hasbrouck Account Book 2, images 144 and 5.

[14] Hasbrouck Account Book 2, images 6 and 142. William B. Rhoads, Ulster County, New York: The Architectural History & Guide (Black Dome Press, 2011), 166. See Rhoads’s photograph of the Jacob Wynkoop House, built 1852, here https://omeka.hrvh.org/exhibits/show/jacob-wynkoop/building-a-life.