Success Secrets Exposed - Espionage and Enslavement in the Revolution

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Welcome to Success Secrets Exposed with Sally A. Curtis, where we share stories of challenge, success, and inspiration, along with practical tips and strategies to move you forward to your success. And now here is your host, Sally A. Curtis.

Good evening, good morning, and good day to you all, and welcome to another episode of Success Secrets Exposed. Thank you so much for joining us. For those that are actually new to the show, I'm a content repurposing whiz for speakers, authors, coaches, and consultants, and it's my role to help them amplify their voice Their message and their impact. And today I'm very, very excited to share a very, very special guest with an incredible story that we're going to share with you. And my guest today is Claire Bellegio, and she is the co-author of Espionage and Enslavement in the Revolution. It's the true story of Robert Townsend and Elizabeth. Now Claire is the founder of a nonprofit organization called Remember List. Which has the mission to educate the community about the extraordinary life and times of an enslaved Black woman from New York named Elizabeth, or Liz. She's formerly served as a historian and director of education at Liz's birthplace, Rhineland Hall Museum in Oyster Bay, New York. She has been researching the Towson family and those they enslaved for over 17 years and has developed educational projects on the subject of slavery in New York and the American Revolution on Long Island. And we connected and I was totally fascinated about the intrigue and the untold stories and the silent voices. So I'm super excited to please— now if you can help me welcome Claire to the show.

Hi, it's so great to be with you. Thank you.

Thank you so much for joining us, Clare. As I said, I'm super excited to be able to share some of these untold stories that you have spent 17 years uncovering and are discovering, discovering more and more pieces each, each month by the sound of things.

Yep, it's amazing. It's been quite a journey.

Yeah, I can imagine. So how did you actually get started? Obviously you've been a historian for a while, but how did you start to piece together these pieces of these lives and how they intertwined?

Well, Liz really made me a historian, to tell you the truth. When I discovered her story, I was working at the museum part-time, but I really have never had a proper history degree, as it were. And maybe that's a good thing, because I think to have discovered her life story, you had to be a little obsessed. If I would have been a proper historian that did that as a profession, I probably wouldn't have given 17 years to a singular topic. You know, it all started when this museum, which is actually where she was originally enslaved— it's a house museum— when they purchased an item at auction that seemed on its face to be rather ordinary. It was a Bible. And so this was through a famous New York City auction house, Swann Galleries. They ended up having to spend $10,000 on this little Bible, not for the verses inside, which were, you know, what you would expect, but because of the endpapers. Handwritten on the endpapers were the names of enslaved people who the owner of the original house had owned as property. And up until the time of that purchase of this Bible, the site really didn't acknowledge that any slavery happened there. In fact, we didn't interpret any slavery in New York or in the North. We were just living in this oblivious state of ignorance. And so that was way back in 2004, and at that time I really made a decision that, that I needed to know more. So I convinced the museum that even though I wasn't a a real historian, that they would let me do research and mount an exhibit around this Bible. And Liss actually wasn't in the Bible. Oh, wow. She— her life was revealed in other documents that I found as I reached out to different local institutions that I knew had documents of that family's collection. So these letters about Liss and Part of her story, and a very amazing, crazy part of her story, just came in over the fax machine. And that was back in the days of faxes. I'm sure, Sally, you remember those dark days where you would get this piece of paper and you'd be like, I can't read this, I don't know what this is, but it just came to me. Yes, that was a very bad photocopy that was then faxed. And as I sat there trying to read these incredible words in this very old handwriting, her life just revealed itself to me. And I was genuinely shocked that no one had ever been excited about what these documents said, because it wasn't like they were hidden in someone's attic. They were in an archival collection that many historians had visited.

Oh, wow. Okay.

So why? Why didn't people care about her?

Exactly. Yeah.

Yeah.

And with— I'm just, I'm just gonna, I suppose, highlight it there from a network perspective. You've obviously got this doc, this Bible, and seen different things in it. And there were some, obviously, some significant names or some significant relevance to it that enabled you to know that other people within your network had some of the connecting pieces. And that's obviously where it sort of all started.

family, they were very political, the Townsend family, very political and very, um, educated and wealthy. And their, their later generations were proud of them, and so their papers were very well kept. But at one point, maybe in the 1920s or '30s, the large bunch of the papers got split up. And they got scattered among— in thirds, pretty much, among 3 large institutions that were not near each other. You know, they were distant to each other. And then a few others got scattered even further. And then there were things that the family themselves kept, like this Bible that no one even knew they had.

Yeah.

Gives me hope that there's still other things out there that might—

Yeah.

Yeah,

and I think, well, I'd love to explore that side of things a bit further as we close out, you know, and get people to help potentially with some of those, finding some of those pieces as well.

Right.

So tell us a little bit about what you discovered about Elizabeth and then lead into the, I suppose, the spy and the espionage story. But I'm really curious to know about Elizabeth's story and around a lot of the misconceptions of things that we didn't actually know and that you've been able to piece together from an historical perspective. historical point of view that becomes so important now?

You know, it really begins with just acknowledging the extent of slavery in the North in America. It has really been fed to us in school over and over again that slavery happened in the South and that the North was the good guys and the South were the bad guys. And that it was something that took place basically during the Civil War in America. But of course, that's not true. So slavery began in New York before it even was New York, when it was New Amsterdam, when the Dutch first came and founded New Amsterdam on business. So— Wow. The Dutch West India Company came here to make money. And one of the ways that they made money was through the practice of slavery. You know, if you want to, if you want to make money, you enslave people and make them do all the hard work. Yeah. And so the foundations of this amazing city that I now live in were really built on the hard labor of enslaved people. So a lot of people tend to think of enslaved Black Americans as people who came from somewhere else. You know, they were other. They weren't Americans. And yet, for the most part, they were born here, generation upon generation upon generation. There were an initial group that came over, and then they kept coming over from Africa or from the Caribbean. But then there were just generations of people like Liz who were born here.

Yeah.

And may have had a very poor connection to their roots in Africa because of the way enslaved people were treated. You know, a child, when they reached the age of 8, 9, 10, 11, might be sold away from their parents, and they had no last name. None of these individuals, for the most part, had a last name. Their parents would not even know where they had been sold to.

True.

And because they were not allowed to become educated, for the most part, they really had no way to ever know where their child had gone.

And

so families were stripped of their roots in many ways, and they lived in fear. I mean, a lot of people understand the harshness of slavery in the South, but they try to minimize it in the North.

Yeah.

And one of the most shocking things I discovered was a law, a 1730 law in New York that I've never seen in anyone else's research, but it's just sitting right there in the law. In 1530, they mandated that every town and village must have a paid town-appointed slave whipper for Negroes specifically. So a Negro whipper that is a town-appointed position, that means that every town in New York had a whipping post specifically for enslaved Black people.

And somebody that was paid specifically to take on that task.

And the law even mandates how much they would be paid per whipping, which would be in our, in our modern money about $25.

Yeah.

And in, in the records of the town where she was enslaved, Oyster Bay, where, where Robert Townsend, Washington's spy, you know, where he was born and raised, right in the town record books there's all the names of all the people who did that. So it wasn't hidden.

So it wasn't even hidden, it's actually very easy to find, but just, um, yeah. Wow.

For some reason the culture is to hide. And the culture is to ignore, you know, and this idea is like, people will be uncomfortable, people will have their, their modern-day feelings hurt. But of course, that's absurd. It's absurd that you would disappear what accounted for about 16% of the population.

That's so huge. I remember reading that and I was so surprised it was so high.

Yeah, I was able to get those statistics through U.S. Census, which started in 1790, so that was our first real accounting of how many people were there, and following it for the next 3 censuses, that 16% really stayed steady.

Steady, yeah.

A larger percentage became free because the law finally changed in 1827, but the proportion, the 16% proportion, did not change. And so you could extrapolate that backwards 30 years prior.

Yeah, yeah, just extraordinary. So when you've just talked about the enslaved folks only ever having a first name, that to me then, I'm just going, so how did you find Liz? How did you, how were you able to piece all those pieces together when, you know, it's relatively hard to try and find people, I would imagine, when you've got a first name and a last name, let alone only having a first name? So how was that? Yeah. Yeah,

I still don't know what her— if she ever claimed a last name, what it was. None. Because I know now— I don't— I didn't know when I published the book last year, but I know now that she did get her legal freedom, her legal manumission it was called, in 1803 along with her sister Hannah. But, um, luckily, lucky for me, she had an unusual name. She had this nickname, L-I-S-S, Liss. Now, sometimes she was referred to by her given name, Elizabeth, her more proper name, and it wasn't easy to even firmly prove that Elizabeth and Liz were the same person. And I didn't actually find the evidence. I, I believed it was true through circumstantial references, but I actually found written proof in 2015. So 10 years into my research, I found When Robert paid his father.

Yeah.

For what Liss was worth in 1782.

Yeah.

On his side of the ledger, he didn't give her name. I think he was trying to hide her identity. But then on his father's side of the ledger book, which is out in the Hamptons, that ledger book, I saw that he received the £70 from his son's private account, and he writes in for Liss. Yeah. So that was like, ah, a lot.

Got it.

Let me just tell your, your listeners the basics of her story.

Yes, please.

She was born into slavery, and this was one of the terrible things about chattel slavery. If a woman had a— if a woman was enslaved and she gave birth, at birth her child was owned by her enslaver for life. And so it— there was no way out. You know, for people who just had children, there was no way for their children to ever be safe. And so Liz was born around 1763, and she would have been doing all kinds of household work, a household slave for this family. Then the Revolutionary War began. Her enslaver, Samuel Townsend, was a staunch patriot. He wanted to break away from England, and he came very close to losing his own life, was arrested and had to sign an oath to the king. to get out of that arrest. And so quickly into the war in 1776, the house where she was enslaved in Oyster Bay became British headquarters in that town, and a succession of British commanders started living in the house whenever they would be visiting the town with their soldiers.

Hmm.

And lucky for her, one of these commanders was an early abolitionist. He was a man named Colonel John Graves Simcoe, and he commanded about 350 soldiers a regiment called the Queen's Rangers. She got to know him for quite a long time when he first came because he stayed for the whole winter. It's like a 6-month-long stay. She would have had daily contact with him, and I'm sure that he spoke to her about his feelings that slavery was immoral. Mm-hmm. He closely had the British commander Sir Henry Clinton's ear, and Sir Henry Clinton would later after the events that I'll describe in a second, would pronounce that any enslaved person that would escape and come over to the British side could have their freedom at the end of the war. And so Simcoe got to know her. He also introduced her to his good friend, the British spymaster Major John André, who came to visit Simcoe and stay at that house. Fantastic. He was there for several weeks and Liss would have had a real relationship with him of sorts. And so when Simcoe and his men left in the spring of '79, she actually escaped. She escaped with this British regiment, and we don't know exactly how that happened, but we do know that she didn't stay with them. She actually was then re-enslaved in Manhattan. Manhattan at that time had become British headquarters. They had captured Manhattan and they, they held it for the entire war. And it was perfect for them as a headquarters because it was such a prize to capture New York City. Right. And it had the harbor and it was just such a place where they could all plan the war, the British. And so the Townshends' son Robert was there as part of his family's business running a shop in a place called Hanover Square that you can still visit. And he had some contact with Liss. We see in his ledger books that he bought her a few things during the time when he was a spy. So their son Robert was Washington's lead spy in New York City. And so Liss had some contact with him. She may even have been part of his spy network. There's a mysterious female figure known as 355 Which was their spy code for the word lady. Circumstantial evidence.

Oh, it was a spy code for the word lady?

Yes. So they had the spies, Washington spies, had a very long list of words, like 700 words, that they converted into numbers. That way they could put the numbers in the letters, and without the key, you wouldn't know what the word

was.

They also had invisible ink. So they had this chemical solution that would disappear on clean white paper, and the words could then be written in between the lines of another letter.

Yeah.

Or slipped in somehow. And then Washington on his side had another chemical that could make it all reappear.

Yeah, yeah.

So she may have even been that 355 person. Then at the end of the war, she had become pregnant. She was about 3 months pregnant. And she came to Robert and asked him to buy her back. She didn't want to evacuate with her British enslaver, the master that had her in Manhattan. Jesus. And so he did, although he had begun to have anti-slavery beliefs. He took her in. She had a baby, a son named Harry. And when the baby was about 6 months old, he resold both Liz and her son with her tacit consent to a widow that they both knew. And he thought that that was great, everything was taken care of. But then that widow got remarried, and her new husband was a very bad guy. He, he did something to Liz that caused the whole marriage to collapse. Then he had control of Liz and her child, Harry. Yeah. He kept baby Harry in Manhattan, and he sold Liz south to Charleston. And the man who enslaved her down there was a really violent person who is actually known to history. He had been the instigator of the famous Boston Massacre of 1770, which is just incredible coincidence. So 2 years went by when she was enslaved in Charleston by this terrible man. Eventually Robert found out. He confronted the man that had sold her Took Harry, who's now a 4-year-old toddler, just physically stole him out of that household, brought him back to Oyster Bay to his parents' house. And then he started writing a succession of letters to merchants down in Charleston who he knew were anti-slavery like himself to try to get her back up to New York. And, um, yeah, they eventually did. They smuggled her back up.

And, um, I No, I can't remember whether I read this. What was the timeline with him starting? So Harry was 4 and getting them back together, how long did that take, take him to achieve that?

You know, when he took Harry out of that household, he had her back within 6 months. I believe that that was, that was January when he took that child back, and she was back by May or so.

Yeah. Wow. And what do you— what Was there a, uh, other— was there a relationship there between, um, the two of them that, that they'd really built that real, that real familiar sort of relationship, which was why he was so adamant he wanted to bring her back? What's the story?

Evidence points in that direction. It really does, because it really could go both ways.

Yeah,

he could have just had an incredible closeness to her Because they grew up together. He was about 10 when she was born, so he would have watched her take her first steps. He would have watched her grow up even though she was enslaved. He had a lot of contact with her.

Very connected.

But they also may have had this spy connection. They both might have risked their lives together, so who knows what crazy goings-on might have happened if that were true. He took her in in a way that was highly unusual He had a white housekeeper. He had already sort of avowed to not own a slave, and now he not only owned her but her child as well.

Well, yeah.

So I can understand why he, he wanted to give her a new path. Maybe she wanted one too. He thought he had a, a deal made with this widow who he sold her to that she would never leave the area or resell Liz without checking with him first, but then she just Yeah,

yeah. So yeah, it could have, could have all gone even more terribly wrong, but because there was some form of guilt—

It went so badly though. I mean, you know, in real life we make our choices, right? We, we think we're doing the right thing. We think we're, we're living up to our belief system, but in real life things go sideways.

Yeah.

And I know that Robert suffered from a huge amount of guilt And he felt so dedicated to getting her back. He did not give up. The first group of people who he went to to get Liz back said no. And they said no because they were against slavery, believe it or not. They said, no, we cannot buy her. We would never buy a slave. It's like, yeah, but you're saving her.

Saving. Yes. Yes. So we've got that juggle of values.

And then ironically, this anti-slavery group he had joined, the New York Manumission Society, They had failed to end slavery by law in New York, which was their goal, but they had done a chipping away with some little laws, and one of them was to prohibit the sale of a slave from out of state. So while she was down in Charleston, they did pass a law, a law that prohibited her coming back.

Back in. Yeah.

So they smuggled her back in.

So how did they get her back in and across the border?

Not only did the Townsends own sailing vessels. They were shipping merchants, so they had large sailing vessels themselves. But the man who helped down in Charleston also owned a sloop, a sailing vessel that, that went up and down the eastern seaboard. And so it would have been pretty easy for him to either put Lys on his ship or on Robert's ship and then have that ship sail up the American coast and not make it to New York Harbor, but to come into Oyster Bay Harbor, which was much more private.

Yeah, yeah. And

we don't have proof of that exact voyage, but I infer that that must have been their method.

Yeah, yeah. So it was— but there would have been elements that would have pointed to that, and back from the logic that you've actually just shared.

Yeah, I mean, they wouldn't have brought her over land when they had these ships. It was much more private just to take her down and send her up by boat. And you see in the letters, the spy Robert Really caring about her, he says, would you buy her— take some of the money that, um, that I've got in my account with you, because they were merchants, and buy her some clothes because it's much colder up here this time of year than it is in the Carolinas, and I want her to be comfortable on the way back. Yeah, so he really cared.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, brilliant. Um, so tell us a little bit more, um, about, um, I suppose the story, because the Part of what you've— what you're bringing to life is the untold stories through the eyes of an enslaved woman during that period. What are some of the other elements that, you know, that we think we know the story or the version of that we actually don't know the story or the real version of?

You know, a lot of people ask, well, why weren't people just freed? Why didn't they just free a slave? You know, first of all, an enslaved person was one of your largest assets. They were very valuable. But prior to 1785 in New York, if you wanted to free a slave, you had to pay your town £200, which was about 4 times what the person cost.

Cost.

3 to 4 times what they cost. So you're going to lose the value of this person And you're going to pay the town 3 times over or 4 times over what you paid for them. It was a really harsh fee that basically deterred people from freeing slaves.

Mm-hmm.

And it was legal in every one of the 13 colonies. That's another thing people don't realize. So the New York papers were full of runaway slave ads, but if you were enslaved, where were you going to go? Many people did try to run away. But if you did escape, where were you going to go? Canada had legal slavery. All 13 colonies had legal slavery. So Sally, you've escaped. Where are you going to go? What do you think? A lot of people escaped. Where do you think they went?

I've got no clue.

Well, logically, where would you go?

Underground. I'd hide.

Well, you'd hide where though? Are you going to just hide in someone's basement forever for your entire life?

Yeah, I'm— yeah, I don't know because I'm sitting here myself.

People were prohibited against helping escaped slaves. They were prohibited by law.

Yeah.

Some of them went into the wilds, like they left civilization. There's a lot of wild country still in America. We just had the 13 colonies, so some of them would just live in the wild, which was very difficult, especially if you had never lived that way before. Yeah. And then others would live with native tribes. Tribes. Native Americans would take them in and give them full rights. And allow them to live as free people.

Yeah, because when you would— before you told me that, I was thinking if they've gone into the countryside, and I can only imagine that they've got— they've grown up in a household, they've got no resources, they may not have the education, the self-education around looking after themselves in that sort of an environment. So to me, that sounded like, you know, sure death sort of thing, or, you know, very—

You might not have a coat. Right,

yeah, or shoes or anything.

A lot of runaway slave ads described the enslaved person very carefully by their clothes because they only had one set of clothing that they had escaped in.

Wow,

isn't that crazy?

Tell me more about, um, about the, um, the Native Americans taking them in because I think that in itself is an untold story.

We have a lot of Native American tribes on Long Island that And one of them, the Shinnecock tribe, is way out on the end of Long Island, and they have a lot of African American features in their, their personhood. And that is because they would, they would be so generous and so good to take in people who were running for their lives and allow them to be full members of their, their tribe.

So wonderful.

So when you see a Native American that has African American features, that's, that, that's a reasonable, you know, reason why.

Yeah, that's beautiful.

They were also enslaved too. Native Americans were often enslaved, and so you will see runaway slave ads about them too. They had more of a network around them of resources, so they were more successful in escaping.

Yeah, but, and that was at the right time.

Yeah,

that was in a sec. Oh, okay, because I would have expected that— again, this is my naive naiveness and very much an Australian perspective, I would have expected that to be later down the historic scenario, not at the similar time.

Actually, there was more— there was enslaving of Native peoples all the way back in the 1600s.

Okay, yeah. Yeah, wow. See, there's so many untold stories, isn't there? There's so many interesting stories.

And there's a lot of confusion about their identity too. Like a lot of people would just describe a person visually as being Negro, and then you'll see another document about the same person where they're saying they have Indian features, meaning Native American Indian. So it's like people were just sort of guessing, you know, and describing people. But Liz was always described of as Black, a Black woman, or Negro. The other word that is used, which is so jarring to the modern ear, is wench. Wench is a word in that era that meant attractive young enslaved Black woman. Wench.

Oh wow, did not know that.

Yeah, here's another thing that people don't think about. Let's say a woman had children. If she became free, and, and after 1785 you no longer had to pay that fee, but you did have to bring an enslaved person before a board called the Overseers of the Poor. And you had to prove their age. You had to prove that you owned them. You had to prove they had a way of sustaining themselves by making a living. That was a very high bar to make enough money to be self-sufficient. And they couldn't be in any way ill or have any kind of a disability, or they would be disqualified. But the age is really tricky.

I was just going to ask you that. How can you first—

You had to be over 21 and you had to be under 50. That was the age range. Then in 1799, the age range got jacked up to 25 for women and 28 for men. So imagine if you're a mother, if you were able to meet all those requirements and your enslaver would free you, you could become free, but all of your children would remain enslaved. Sure. They would remain enslaved until they reached the age where they were eligible for freedom.

So that in itself could be a very strong deterrent for mothers not to—

Very strong. Or if they did become free, to not leave the area.

Yeah.

And to not try to look for opportunities for themselves, because how could— when their, their bond with their children was so tenuous, and fathers too. All of the records of enslaved people go through the mother generally. Because it was the mother's enslaver who owned her children, but they all had fathers, of course, and so the fathers are almost even more invisible. We have one record in her household of a husband and wife, a couple, Jane and Gabriel, and their story is really unique because we know that they were given to the oldest son as a wedding present.

Wow.

That's one of the things written in the Bible.

Yeah,

and so Gabriel became free in the 1790s, and he was allowed to bring his wife and children into Manhattan to live in a cellar room where he worked in an iron shop. But he was free, but his wife was still enslaved, Jane, and all their children were still enslaved. So that's an interesting family dynamic. Dad's free, mom and all the kids are not free.

They're not. Yeah, wow, that's incredible. That in itself is incredible. So tell us a little bit more. Um, I know you also wish you shared with us that you've, um, continually finding new little bits of the, uh, pieces of the puzzle.

Yeah.

Um, and that you've, um, also, um, been in contact and, um, Vanessa—

Vanessa Williams. Yeah.

Sorry, Vanessa Williams did the foreword in your book. So tell us a little bit about, um, how the audience can actually help you continue to piece pieces together and how this is helping Numerous people piece their own pieces together.

Yeah, as I said, Robert Townsend was a spy for General George Washington, and during COVID one of the spy letters that was sent to him resurfaced. It had actually been in an archive sitting down there since the 1950s, and they didn't realize they had it. So, you know, it's COVID, everybody's sort of stuck inside, and they were looking through their archives. They're like, whoa, Culper spy letter! And it turns out that that's the only one that was written to Robert Townsend that survives. He destroyed all the other letters. This one actually never made it to him, so that's why he didn't destroy it.

Why is that?

One that they had a secret meeting, he never showed up, and the letter went back. So that one still survives. Then I also was able to— so I didn't discover that, but I was able to help decode it and figure out what it meant. Yeah, but earlier this year I found her legal freedom papers. With her sister. She was legally freed in 1803. She had a, a casual freedom that she was allowed to, to live as a free person as of 1790, but this 1803 was her paperwork. I found out her mother's name. Now we talked about names a little bit. Her mother, who didn't have a last name, had a really unusual first name, Tender. P-E-N-D-E-R.

Pender.

So if I find anything on Long Island about an enslaved woman named Pender, chances are it's her mother. That's good.

Yeah, so that's a good clue for the audience. If it— there's a very, very good clue for helping piece the puzzles together.

And I also found out that she joined a church in Oyster Bay, the Baptist Church, which was where Roberts father, her enslaver, also went. And that as a free person, she attended church there and was attending that church when she died. So I don't know the year she died, but they, uh, the last record of her in that church was 1806. And then you can see that at a later time, they wrote next to her the word dead. And when I read that, it really broke my heart. Of course, I knew she wasn't living. She had to die at some point.

Yeah.

Then I began to think about it, and it was really wonderful to think that she kept her connection to this town where her son probably lived as an adult and where other people she knew lived and where Robert lived. Robert Townsend also lived in that town, and that she had a community of faith that she was able to stay connected to, and that they, they cared enough to keep this record of her that when she died, they wrote that next to her name. So She didn't move far away, so that, that makes me think I might still find more things about her.

More pieces. And with, with all of that, so I suppose the network of all of the different, um, households and then all of the different community enslaved people and, um, them, the freedom coming and the history, how are you finding that that's helping people now in this, in this time to, uh, to get— I'm going to use the word closure, that's not quite the right word, but—

Well, I mean, we have a very, very big problem in America right now. Racism is raging through our culture and it is hurting us. It's tearing us apart, literally tearing our country in 2. White supremacy caused a huge massacre this week, which is heartbreaking. But we can never cure the horrible disease of racism if we cannot own up to the history of Black Americans. If we cannot acknowledge the painful history of slavery in our own country, how are we ever going to cure the ills of racism? And, you know, so many people I meet literally are shocked and said, I did not know. I didn't know that this happened in New York. I didn't know what happened in my town.

Yeah.

And we've got to fix that. And so what I'm doing besides writing Espionage and Enslavement in the Revolution Is my co-author Tiffany Yekke-Brooks and I are now writing a student version of the book. Yes. We had to write this book first to be the foundational story because it's a complicated, fascinating story. We had to get it written down properly first. And now we're writing another version called Remember Liz that will have much shorter chapters, much easier vocabulary, but it will take all the New York Standards of Education and wed them into the story. Because we don't have to choose between 1619 and 1776. We can have all of our history together the way it actually happened. It's not— Black history isn't something you do in February. It's not like women's history in March. Oh, we're going to remember that half the population is women now. No, no, no, no. We're going to wed all these stories together all the time, you know?

Yeah, brilliant. And I'm just reading a little quote that you've said, which is that you're looking to tell the story and get the idea and just people's heads that people like Elizabeth can be founding fathers and mothers.

Yes, I want to, I want to eradicate the term founding fathers. We're just going to say founding figures now. Founding figures. Yes. And yes, why can't she be a founding figure? We need a representative of an enslaved Black woman. We need the voice of a person who lived in our community who had a particular point of view. Yes. And so what is the bar for being a founding figure? Do you have to have invented something? Do you have to have been wealthy? Do you have to have had power? Because that bar is too high. It excludes the stories of 16% of the founding population who were living through times that we can hardly imagine. But we have to start imagining them, right? We have to start populating our imagination with lists and people like her. And when we can truly put her in there with those other founding figures, we will have really accomplished something as a country.

And I think from when I was reading through the notes, this is one of the first, if not the first, full story— full story, as full as it can be— an account of somebody in history that has got a significant story has got significant elements to share.

Of that period, yes, of that period. Yeah, so you can, you can know the whole life story of someone like Harriet Tubman, but as you go back in time in history, you have these just points in time. Crispus Attucks, who was killed in the Boston Massacre, a man of color, that's just a moment in his life, but you don't have anything else. We know of a poet Phillis Wheatley, who was the first woman, a Black woman published in America. But we don't know too much about her full life or, you know, it's not a life that gives you that window into the ups and downs of things. Yeah. And actually, Lissa's life is attached through amazing circumstance to all kinds of existing founding fathers like Benjamin Franklin, of course George Washington, John Adams, Benedict Arnold, John André. And all of these— Jupiter Hammond, all these figures cross her path. And so it's just an amazing coincidence, really, that she should be so well connected to history in her story. But it's gonna, it's gonna anchor her, and it's gonna help people remember her. You know, a person who lived far away in the country and had no exposure to any of these famous figures, they deserve to be remembered too. But just from a strictly educational point of view, it's just easier when you can connect all these different red threads and these dots to things that people already know about.

Yeah, makes it more robust, doesn't it?

Yeah, much more robust. Yeah, I'm sure it will be a movie or maybe a Netflix series. I'm thinking 3 seasons at least.

Yes,

or maybe it'll be a Broadway musical, and Vanessa Williams is shopping it. She has the option on the book right now. So we'll see what she can do. She wrote our foreword because she's personally connected to the story. Her ancestors lived in Oyster Bay as well and can trace their roots back to the era of slavery. So she is— she has ancestors who may have walked along Main Street right alongside Liz.

Yeah, as Liz as well.

She wasn't directly related to her, but there are African American members of the community that that are named Townsend. In fact, there's one man who I just adore named Tony Townsend. He's gonna join my foundation as one of our first board members, which I'm so happy about. And Tony Townsend is part of the descendant community. He can trace his roots back to the era of slavery, and his ancestors chose the name Townsend when they became free.

Oh, and that's, that's, that in itself significant, isn't it? That gives you a bit of insight within there as well.

It's more meaningful to me than anything that we could have a living person who cares about her, who's willing to be part of her journey, and who can really be connected all the way back to the founding of that place.

Yeah, yeah, that's brilliant. And we've just got going across the bottom of the ticker the website, which is espionageandenslavement.com, and that's where you can find out more obviously about the book. There's also lots of fantastic videos on there which will redescribe part of the story that we've shared with you today. And one of the things that I absolutely loved on there is there's a beautiful historic timeline. So if you're like me, who you like a good timeline to see where it's all mapped out, there's that on there as well. And lots of articles and interviews also. And

Smithsonian Magazine published an article that my co-author and I published this week.

So explain, share with us a little bit about this article because this is a current article that you can now actually Google yourself by looking at Smithsonian, your name, and news, and that was how we found it. But we'll link on the ticker at the moment for those that are listening. So tell us a little bit more about—

This actually is telling a little bit deeper story about Elizabeth that isn't in my book. I found an account of the Benedict Arnold treason plot that actually involved 2 enslaved Black women who tried to stop the plot, but they literally were not believed. So these are 2

Black

women who should— who we all should have known about in school, but instead the person that found this account took away— Who? the part about them being enslaved Black women, and he told the story that it was Robert's little sister Sally who had overheard a conversation when it was these 2 Black women. Now, one of them might even be Liz. Yeah. I found out more about how this meeting took place out in East Hampton, and one of the people at the meeting was John André, who had come by boat from Manhattan. The other person was Colonel Simcoe, who had helped Liz escape. And then the commander of the British forces in America, Sir Henry Clinton. So it's plausible that Liss is that woman who came out to the meeting with André from Manhattan. Read the article. It's confusing to explain in just a few sentences, but it's—

You did a great job.

It's interesting that it might be Liss, and even if it isn't Liss, it's interesting that a story about heroic, brave enslaved Black women that were willing to risk their life to do something important for America, that their story got forgotten and it got rewritten to be about a white woman who could not possibly have done it.

Yeah.

And, uh, how's that happen?

Yeah, absolutely. I remember you talking about, um, that there was a story of Liz, uh, but it was described— it was describing Liz, but it was actually told as it being a cow. Right. scenario where we've twisted the truth to tell a different—

Unbelievably, right? How could you do that? Well, this was done in the 1930s, '40s, '50s, and then it just got repeated all the way up until the '80s and even the '90s. And, and so when Lys escaped, Robert, the son who became Washington's spy, wrote a letter to his father. And he says, you know, the Queen's Rangers, Simcoe's regiment, have left Manhattan. And if I see any of the officers, I'll ask about her. But I think that she's gone. You're never going to get her back again. Don't even try. And somehow people read that, and because they weren't interpreting any slavery happening at this site, there was nobody in the back of their mind named Elizabeth or Liz. They're like, must have been about a cow. But if you think about it, in her own lifetime, when people would have their estates, their wills, They would list enslaved people and then they would list their livestock right after that. You know, it's, it's horrible to think about, but a single enslaved person in an estate could be split up between heirs so that 4 different people would own a piece of an enslaved person through inheritance. Isn't that crazy?

But how would that— that boggles my mind because my first thing, well, how does that work? How can 4 people Own, own firstly, and I would have then imagined, you know, the workload and— oh God, that just—

I don't know, but Samuel, Robert's father, his own father in his will had an enslaved man that he split 4 ways through his 4 sons. Now here's the tricky part. That man who was split 4 ways would only go down to the 4 sons when the mother passed away. The father had died young. The mother didn't die for 30 more years, and so this man who is promised to be split 4 ways through his sons had 30 years to have his own children and grandchildren. I found out after I wrote my book that LIS was not owned only by Samuel, Robert's father, but also by an uncle, Dr. James Townsend. They both owned Hannah And her sister Hannah— Elizabeth and Hannah. They were co-owned by these 2 brothers, and they don't describe how they did it.

Hmm.

But it caused such a barrier to becoming free because even though Robert had signed off after his father died, he had signed off that she was going to live as a free person, there was the uncle and his whole family. This guy had 7 kids who still had a right to pieces of this. So that man died. When he died, 4 of his children died with him. They all caught a terrible virus and died. That left only 3. I found a document where one daughter gave up her certain right or proportion of Liz and Hannah, and then the last 2 were the ones that signed her freedom certificate in 1803.

Which enabled her to be a truly free woman.

Truly free. Yeah,

yeah, yeah. What an amazing, um, an account. What an amazing 17-year adventure that's still continuing.

Still continuing.

Yeah, absolutely. Um, with the book that you've written, the new book that you're writing, uh, aimed at, uh, school children, um, as well as the education that's continued to go on. We talk about, um, often legacies that people are leaving that are going to contribute an impact and create changes, um, and that's something that I'm super have been super excited to be able to share with the audience, which is exactly what I feel that you're doing. So yeah.

That legacy, that's so important to me. I needed to make sure that, that people would have a place to go where her story would be told accurately and a place that would be continually promoting her story publicly. Um, and so that's important. I mean, I want to live a very long time, but I don't want her to disappear when I do. I want her to live on.

Yeah, so in closing notes, because we, um, we knew we'd get to the end very, very quickly because it was such so much to share. If there is any way or anything that you come across, or any little puzzle piece that you come, come across or know of, or etc., do reach out to Claire, uh, continue the puzzle pieces and the story getting bigger and bigger and more solid so we can continue this legacy of Elizabeth. And all of those around her that we can start to tell the true stories.

Yes, and buy the book. It's on Amazon, Barnes& Noble, or you can get a signed copy on my website on the shop tab. You can contact me on the contact tab too and ask me a question or just find out more.

Brilliant. And we'll have all of the relevant links out in our social media and, you know, on YouTube, etc., so people can certainly connect with you afterwards. It's been an absolute pleasure, Claire. Thank you so much for sharing so much with us today.

So great to meet you. Thanks so much.

Likewise. Thank you. Take care. That's another show of Success Secrets Exposed, and we will look forward to seeing you next week on another episode. Have an awesome day. Take care.

Bye. That's it for this week's episode. Thank you so much for joining us, and I trust that you got some inspirational tips to move you forward. You can find this episode along with many more on your favorite streaming platform such as iHeartRadio, Spotify, iTunes, and more. See you next Thursday at 7 PM Eastern time for more Success Secrets Exposed with Sally A. Curtis.