Join Staatsburgh State Historic Site’s Historic Interpreter Zachary Veith for a one-hour program “Slavery, Segregation & Staatsburgh: From Black Service to White Servants,” on Monday, July 10 at the Highland Public Library, 14 Elting Place, Highland.

Governor Morgan Lewis enslaved people of African descent at his estate, Staatsburgh. Yet, when his great-granddaughter, Ruth Livingston Mills, lived at Staatsburgh at the turn of the 20th century, the staff was exclusively White and of European descent. At the same time, a free Black community was able to grow and thrive in the surrounding hamlet of Staatsburg.

Veith will lead a conversation exploring the transition from a Black presence at Staatsburgh during the early 19th century to the apparent absence of Black people at the estate during the Gilded Age.

This one-hour program will include historic photographs and documents related to this history, notably a letter from Staatsburgh’s archives written by “Founding Father,” John Jay, discussing his 1790 purchase of an enslaved man named Peter Williams, from Morgan Lewis. The presentation will focus on recent research into the Black people living and working at the Staatsburgh estate and in the neighboring hamlet of Staatsburg, bringing in the larger context of racial oppression and Jim Crow, to present audiences with a new perspective on Staatsburgh.

The program, hosted by the Town of Lloyd Historical Preservation Society, begins at 7 p.m.