Thanks for sharing this, Tom. These sorts of advertisements are the closest thing these people had to a biography. They always seem to raise more questions. Interesting that Andrew Saxton was Catholic. I wonder how common that was. It is also interesting that he had a skilled profession–that of cooper. The Van Cortlandts also had an enslaved person working as their miller (described above). It just goes to show how much of the family business relied on slavery. Enslaved people probably harvested the wheat, milled it into flour, and made the barrels to have it shipped.
It has been said that there was an African burial ground in Van Cortlandt Park. The condition of the remaining gravestones in Van Cortlandt is of great concern to me but I will write about that here. I want to keep the focus of this thread on the enslaved people in the area because there is still many more stories to tell.