Historian delves into Black-owned farms

While conducting research on colonial homes in Hastings, historian and resident Keith Doherty made a surprising discovery about property north of Tompkins Avenue.

“I accidentally stumbled on a record of a small farm that was owned by a Black man named Prince Griffin. Griffin had had the farm since 1816,” Doherty said. “I don’t think most people understand that Black men and Black families were able to own property at so early a date, because slavery itself was not abolished fully [in New York] until 1827.”

A Hastings native, Doherty is a former art history professor at Boston and Harvard universities who works at the Philipse Manor Hall State Historic Site in Yonkers and volunteers with the Hastings Historical Society. For the past two years, he has researched Black-owned farms in Hastings and the Bronx.