This fictional story of a teenage slave girl is set during the British occupation of New York in the American Revolution. When their mistress dies, Isabel and her younger sister Ruth are sold to a Loyalist couple, and end up in New York City, not long before the invasion of British troops. Isabel’s urge to protect her sister causes her to consider the political implications of the actions of herself and those around her, something she might not have had cause to think about otherwise. While Isabel and most of the people she encounters are fictional, the events depicted in the book are historically accurate.
When British troops occupied New York City at the beginning of the American Revolution, it was completely disruptive for the entire city, no matter whether someone was a rebel or a Loyalist. Many of the rebels, or at least rebel sympathizers, fled the city. The British troops occupied many of the abandoned houses. Finding goods or services became a challenge, because what goods were available suddenly became more expensive. And many of the people fleeing the city were the tradespeople and servants. Those who were enslaved did not have that option. At least, it was not as simple for them; but then it wasn’t easy before the war, either.
I’m sure much has been written about this aspect of the War, but probably not from this perspective. We go with Isabel to the town pump for water, watch her do mind-numbingly physical chores. We learn what a wealthy Loyalist couple might serve for a fancy dinner, and even how Madam’s makeup is done for that event. We get a glimpse of the interplay between masters, hired servants, indentured servants, and slaves. Information about what was going on outside the city, i.e., how the war was going, was hard to come by, and not necessarily accurate. Life was very different in British occupied areas, but some sort of daily routine went on.
If this was your family, how would you research them? Enslaved persons are very difficult to identify in the records, because many times they were listed only by age and gender. Isabel & Ruth would have been mentioned by name in their first mistress’s will, but after they were sold, the paper trail disappears. One group is trying to do what they can to give names to enslaved persons. The Beyond Kin Project, https://beyondkin.org/, asks people to try to match census data with wills and other documents. On the other hand, if you need to research the Loyalists, you might find they fled to Canada, or even to England after the war. Interestingly, the DAR website has some resources for searching for ancestors in areas that were held by the British: https://www.dar.org/library/research-guides/researching-british-occupied-areas.