Featured Exhibit
Henry Lloyd I (1685–1763), 1767. John Mare (1739–ca. 1803) after John Wollaston (active ca. 1742–1775); oil on canvas. Gift of Elsie Wilson Thompson and Orme Wilson III in memory of Alice Borland Wilson, 2020.5.1.
Henry Lloyd I (1685–1763)
Henry Lloyd I was the first member of the Lloyd family to inhabit the land he called the Manor Queens Village, known to the Matinecock as Caumsett and referred to today as Lloyd Neck. Henry was a Boston and Newport merchant who moved to Long Island in 1711. He operated his estate as a plantation, enslaving Obium, Jack, Nero, and Bridget and using their labor to help build his house and cultivate the land. The same year he arrived on Long Island, Henry noted in his ledger the birth of Obium's son, Jupiter, whom he considered his rightful property. He also recorded the births and deaths of at least eighteen other children born into slavery: Samuel, Eliakim, Kit, Jack, Benjamin, Obeum, Anna, Sarah, Patricia, Elkanah, Priscilla, Cloe, Lydia, Isaac, Juda, Hezekiah, Rachel, and Sailor. While enslaved in the home of Henry Lloyd, Jupiter learned to read and write, adopted the surname Hammon, and wrote his first published work, “An Evening Thought,” on Christmas Day in 1760.
