Lecture: Understanding New York’s Enslaving Past Through Intertwined Families

A Hudson Valley Reckoning:

Discovering the Forgotten History of Slaveholding in My Dutch American Family

Date: Wednesday, July 16th, 2025

In-Person Event
$10/person | HRMM Members $5/person

Program Topic:

When Bruno was growing up in New York’s Hudson Valley, she had no idea that the state had once been a slave society. And when she discovered that her Dutch ancestors had been some of the fiercest advocates of holding onto slavery for as long as they could, she knew she had to learn more. Her connection and friendship with Eleanor Mire, who descends from people her family enslaved, further enriched the story, which she first described in a 2020 Washington Post Magazine article.  Her book, A Hudson Valley Reckoning: Discovering the Forgotten History of Slaveholding in My Dutch American Family, is a combination of memoir, history, and many unanswered and unanswerable questions. The lecture will describe her discoveries, with special attention to the Black boatmen like Thomas Vanderzee, and will raise some interesting questions: what is the responsibility of white descendants of enslavers? How should we define reparations? What do we need to know about American history? Why was slavery not taught in New York?

Presenter:

Debra Bruno is a longtime Washington journalist and teacher, with a career that has covered law, politics, the arts, music, dance, theater, books, culture, health, and international issues. She has worked at Moment Magazine, Legal Times, and Roll Call. From 2011 to 2014, she was a freelance writer in Beijing, covering subjects as diverse as expat divorce and post-nuptial agreements for the Wall Street Journal, about rowing in a dragon boat for the Washington Post, and about Chinese hutongs for Atlantic’s CityLab. After returning from China, she continued as a freelance writer. A historian friend told her that if she had ancestors in New York’s Hudson Valley, especially if they were Dutch, they were likely enslavers. She was right. She hadn’t known about New York’s 200 years of enslavement and was stunned to realize that her small hometown of Athens held so many hidden stories. That story first appeared as a 2020 article in the Washington Post Magazine, and now a book. A Hudson Valley Reckoning: Discovering the Forgotten History of Slaveholding in my Dutch American Family, published by Cornell’s Three Hills imprint on Oct. 15.

This program is being presented in-person at the Hudson River Maritime Museum's Wooden Boat School. The Wooden Boat School is located at 86 Rondout Landing, Kingston, NY 12401.

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