Artist’s Rendering of Dorothy Angola
“Artist’s rendering of Dorothy Angola.” Slavery in New York Curriculum Guide (New York: New-York Historical Society, 2005).
Very few images of Black people were recorded in the colonial era. The drawing that accompanies this life story is an artist’s interpretation of Dorothy Angola based on some of the earliest available photographs of Black people from the mid-1800s. It is intended to help students understand that Dorothy Angola was a real person not fundamentally different from us.
Dorothy Angola was one of the first enslaved people brought to New Amsterdam by the Dutch West India Company (DWIC). She arrived in Manhattan sometime between 1626 and 1640. Very little is known about her life before that. Historians do not even know what name she called herself. She is referred to in Dutch records as Dorothy, Etoria, Victorie, and Reytory. Sometimes her last name is Angola. Sometimes it is Creole. She may have used an African name among family and friends. What we do know about Dorothy’s early life comes from the last name Angola, which identifies her as a woman from the southwestern coast of Africa. It is likely that she spoke Spanish and Portuguese in addition to her native African language.
Dorothy and other African women were brought to New Amsterdam to do gender-specific work. Enslaved men needed wives. Dutch women needed help keeping house. The survival of the colony depended on the work of women. They cooked, gardened, watched children, made clothes, cleaned the house, did the laundry, and took care of people who were injured or sick. Enslaved women like Dorothy were expected to do all this work and were also forced to labor alongside enslaved men building houses and roads for the colony.
Dorothy married Paulo Angola, one of the first enslaved men brought to New Amsterdam. His last name suggests that he was also from the southwest coast of Africa. Paulo and Dorothy helped to form the community of enslaved people in New Amsterdam. One way the enslaved community formed bonds was by choosing godparents for their children. Godparents created family networks to help replace those they had lost when they were kidnapped from their homelands. In 1643 Dorothy became the godmother of a baby boy named Anthony. Dorothy and Paulo adopted Anthony when his mother died a few months later.
In 1644, Paulo and ten other enslaved men petitioned the DWIC for their freedom. They had been enslaved by the Company for many years and explained that their enslavement made it hard for them to take care of their families. The DWIC director, Willem Kieft, granted them conditional freedom. They had to pay a yearly tax to the DWIC. If they could not pay the tax, they would be enslaved again. Dorothy and the other wives of these men were also granted their freedom, but none of their children were freed. Willem wanted to ensure that there were future generations of enslaved people to work for the Company.
The English had different laws about slavery than the Dutch did. All of Dorothy’s efforts to secure her and Anthony’s freedom were under threat.
Willem gave Paulo and the other men small farms so that they would not become a burden to the DWIC. These plots of land were located about a mile north of New Amsterdam in an area that became known as the “Land of the Blacks” because it was home to enslaved, free, and conditionally free Black people of New Amsterdam.
Paulo died less than ten years after petitioning for his freedom. Dorothy inherited his land, but because her freedom had been tied to Paulo’s she did not know if the Company would allow her to keep it. She quickly remarried. Her new husband, Emmanuel Pietersz, was a free Black man living in the colony. Emmanuel took over as the manager of her land.
After she married Emmanuel, Dorothy took steps to ensure the freedom of her adopted son Anthony. She and Emmanuel petitioned the DWIC for Anthony’s freedom in 1661. They argued that Anthony was free because Dorothy had raised him without any help or money from the Company. The DWIC agreed with Dorothy’s argument and confirmed Anthony’s status as free. Her actions in this case show that Dorothy had acquired political and legal expertise during her years in the colony.
England took control of New Amsterdam in 1664 and renamed it New York. The English had different laws about slavery than the Dutch. All of Dorothy’s efforts to secure her and Anthony’s freedom were under threat. Former Dutch Director General of New Netherland Peter Stuyvesant spoke up for them and in 1667 the English finally confirmed their freedom and land grants. But as the English expanded the practice of slavery in their colonies, Dorothy and her family lived under the constant threat of re-enslavement.
Dorothy’s hard labor and skillful navigation of the social and legal customs of her time enabled her to maintain her free status until her death in 1689. Her efforts also ensured that freedom passed to future generations of her family.
Vocabulary
- conditional freedom: In the Dutch colonies, freed Black people could be required to perform certain tasks or pay taxes to the Dutch West India Company in order to remain free.
- Dutch West India Company: The company that owned and ran New Netherland.
- New Amsterdam: The capital of the colony of New Netherland, where New York City is today.
- New Netherland: The Dutch colony in North America, which encompassed land between the Connecticut and Delaware Rivers, and up the Hudson River to present-day Albany, New York.
- petition: A written request submitted to a powerful person or the government.
Discussion Questions
- What kind of work did enslaved women do in New Amsterdam?
- What steps did Dorothy Angola take to secure the freedom of her son Anthony?
- What does Dorothy Angola’s story reveal about the political and legal expertise of Black women in New Amsterdam?
- How did the transfer of New Amsterdam from the Dutch to the English affect Dorothy Angola?
Suggested Activities
- APUSH Connection: 2.4 Transatlantic Trade
- Include this life story in a lesson about slavery in colonial America and have the students consider how the experiences of enslaved women like Dorothy Angola differed from enslaved men.
- Compare and contrast Dorothy’s path to freedom with Fighting for Freedom in New Netherland. Why were the two women’s experiences so different? What does this tell us about the Dutch laws governing slavery?
- Dorothy Angola’s name means she was from the African region of Angola, and probably endured the Middle Passage before she arrived in New Netherland. Read The Middle Passage to learn more.
- Combine this document with Life Story: Lisbeth Anthonijsen to create a lesson about the attitudes of the Dutch colonial authorities toward Black women in their colony.
- Compare Dorothy’s quest for freedom with that of any of the following. Why did these women try different approaches to gaining their freedom? What do their stories reveal about the lives of enslaved women in their respective colonies?
- For a larger lesson on abolition and manumission through petitions, combine this life story with the following:
Themes
POWER AND POLITICS
