Film Information
The Sugar Connection: Holland, Barbados, England, Shelter Island shows the unknown story of Long Island’s involvement in 17th century global trade – a story missed in our history. Seven years of archaeology at Sylvester Manor, Shelter Island, directed by Dr. Stephen Mrozowski of U-Mass Boston, revealed the prehistory of the Native inhabitants who became labor on the Manor plantation. The Manor was a provisioning plantation for the family’s sugar plantations on Barbados. The enterprise was run from the 1640s by the father, Giles Sylvester, in Amsterdam, the Barbados plantations by Constant Sylvester, and from 1652 the Sylvester Manor by Nathaniel Sylvester.
The Sylvesters had been Separatists not welcome in England and had fled to tolerant Holland as entrepreneurial merchants; the Separatists were known as Puritans as they came to America. Nathaniel later became a Quaker. Over 500,000 artifacts and hundreds of documents illustrate the Native American story, as well as the Contact period between the two cultures, and the 17th century Manor life of the Sylvesters and their international trade.
The film illustrates the extensive analytic techniques used – dendrochronology, multiple soil geophysical methods, paleoethnobotany, faunal analysis, UV soil analysis, soil geomorphology, etc. – to derive the most information from the material culture. Over twenty Dutch, English, and American scholars contributed their expertise on the Manors, sugar production, slavery, underwater archaeology evidence, Dutch mercantilism, shipbuilding, trade, and banking, New Netherland politics, etc. Two fifty-minute segments. Available 2010.
The Manors of Long Island tells the story of the other Manors on Long island – the most in one spot in the New World. The history of and archaeology done at the Lloyd Manor, illustrated by the Henry and Joseph Lloyd houses, is shown, as well as their English roots. The Manor of St. George’s three structures at Strong’s Neck, Yaphank, and Mastic are examined, as well as founder Col. William Smith’s origins in England. Gardiner’s Island Manor is shown through time, with extensive new views and information on his wife and her roots in Woerden, Holland. The Fisher’s Island Manor of John Winthrop, Jr. is revealed through film and conversation with Connecticut State Historian Walter Woodward and Ferguson Museum director Pierce Rafferty. Sagtikos Manor in West Islip, developed by the first Dutch native-born Mayor of New York City, Stephanus Van Cortlandt, is shown with its Dutch architecture – which was the case for many of the original Manor structures. Eaton’s Neck and Plum Island were also Manors, but were not inhabited. All of the Manors were used for a major economic activity – animal husbandry and crops for provisioning seventeenth century globalization -- especially Caribbean sugar production and the growth of New York City.