I DO ANYTHING JUST PUT IT IN YOUR OWN WORDS 1. Why were enslaved people under Dutch rule able to access some legal rights, such as owning property, getting married, or petitioning for freedom?

2. What may have been the benefits/ challenges associated with owning land as an emancipated slave?

TEXT: The largest number of New Amsterdam’s enslaved people, including Maria Van Angola, came from the Kingdom of Angola, a major trading ally of Portugal and Holland; they were probably trafficked through the port of Luanda.
We have no portraits or images of the enslaved and free Africans in New Amsterdam, but Dutch and Flemish artists depicted African people from similar backgrounds in the Netherlands in the 1500s and 1600s.
Maria Van Angola’s name suggests that she was born in the kingdom of Angola and came to New Amsterdam on the first shipload of enslaved people in 1626. She originally appears in the historical record in 1640, when she witnessed a baptism in the Dutch Reformed Church. Two years later she had a son named Dominicus baptized there.
The Dutch had no clear laws defining or regulating slavery in the early 1600s. It was unclear what rights enslaved people might have or how they might become free. In this ambiguous situation, Maria Van Angola and others used several strategies to secure rights and freedom for themselves and their families, including legal action, church membership, and control of land.

The Dutch system gave marriages between enslaved people official status. In November 1642, Maria and Anthony Fernando Portuguese, the father of her child, formally married in the Dutch Reformed Church. Anthony had already survived a dangerous brush with the law. Over the next seven years they had five more children and embarked on a long struggle for freedom and security for their family.
Some enslaved people achieved legal standing in Dutch courts; they could own property, work for wages, and sue when they were not paid. In fact, legal records show that Maria’s husband had once sued for damages that a merchant’s dog had done to his pig. Access to the legal system became an important tool for African people in obtaining and defending their freedom.

Some African-Dutch people had already encountered Christianity in Africa, and many joined the Dutch Reformed church in New Amsterdam in hopes of gaining freedom for themselves or their children. Maria Van Angola was an active church member for at least 41 years and acted as a witness for many baptisms.

In 1643, as the colony was at war with the Mohawk nation, the Company emancipated 11 people. Each received a small plot of land (about 5–10 acres) north of the wall on today’s Wall Street, where they could act as a buffer against Native incursions. These Africans were “half-free,” meaning that they were still expected to pay fees to the Company and their children would not be legally free.

Owning land meant more than a farm—it was a key to status as a “freeholder” with political rights. Listed among the original owners of small farms was a woman called “Marycke” who may have been Maria Van Angola. Over the next 19 years, 22 more emancipated people received small land grants as well, including Maria’s husband, Anthony Portuguese, in 1645.
Maria Van Angola took advantage of the openness of the Dutch system. But near the end of Dutch rule, that openness was shutting down. The church began discouraging baptisms of Africans and land grants to Africans became more rare. The English takeover in 1664 shut the system down further, ending land grants, discouraging emancipation, and barring Africans from testifying in court. After the English took over New Amsterdam and named it New York, most of the African landowners sold their small plots or lost them in seizures. The English also clamped down in their control of the enslaved population; unlike Anthony Portuguese who was pardoned in 1641, the suspected leaders of slave revolts in 1712 and 1741 were burned at the stake.

Maria managed to hold on, however. She retained her freedom through the changeover to English rule, and in 1681 she married a second time, this time to Bastiaen Mattheuszen, an African leader. They were listed in the church record as “both living on the great [Hudson] river.”

The record shows that Maria’s adopted daughter, Susanna, held on to the family land until at least 1717. Susanna’s brother, Jochim, became an apprentice, learned to read and write, and joined the Dutch church in Hackensack, NJ. These hints suggest that the next generations continued to benefit from the freedoms that Maria and Anthony had fought for.