Map of Lower Manhattan, 1836-1850

This is a map of Lower Manhattan from about 1836 to 1850.

The Five Points,shaded in gray, was home to many black New Yorkers. But blacks also lived to the west, from Church to Greenwich Streets, as well as on streets such as Franklin, White, and Walker. Church Street was a place of entertainment, often referred to as black Broadway. Blacks also extended eastward, congregating on streets near the river such as Roosevelt, Pearl, Dover, Vandewater, Frankfort, and Water. Chatham Street was a busy commercial street filled with shops of all kinds.

John Norton

2010

right to reproduce granted by creator

"To Martina"

Rebecca Peterson was the daughter of the well-known New York school teacher, John Peterson, and became a teacher herself. This is one of three poems that she copied in the friendship album of her Philadelphia friend, Martina Dickerson, in 1840.

Rebecca F. Peterson

13859.Q.46

Martina Dickerson Album, p. 46

July 16,1840

Library Company of Philadelphia

Family Tree

Here's my best effort at recreating my family tree.

I start with my great-great-grandparents, Joseph and Elizabeth Marshall, who settled on Lower Manhattan's Centre Street in 1819. One daughter, Mary Joseph married Albro Lyons; their daughter, Maritcha, wrote a memoir from which I got much of my information about my family. Their other daughter, Rebecca, married Peter Guignon; they are my great-great-grandparents.

An unknown cousin recently found me through my blog and informed me that Peter's father was named Pierre Guignon although she does not know his mother's name; they emigrated from Haiti in 1803 at the time of the revolution. I will need to add Pierre's name to the family tree.

Peter and Rebecca Guignon had one daughter, Elizabeth, who married Philip White. Philip's father was Thomas White (he came from northern England), and his mother was also an Elizabeth (she came from Jamaica). Philip and Elizabeth White had three daughters, Ellie, Katherine, and Cornelia, who is my grandmother and married Jerome Bowers Peterson.

After Rebecca's early death, Peter Guignon married Cornelia Ray, whose family was extremely well-known. Her father, Peter Ray, was a prominent leader of New York's black community, and her brother Peter Williams Ray was a doctor and pharmacist.

John Norton

2010

right to reproduce granted by creator