History of Westchester County, New York — Passage 91 (part 3)
[Frederic Shonnard & W.W. Spooner (1900)] Colonel Lewis Morris, as has been noticed in another place, possessed at his death sixty-six negroes, of an aggregate value of £844; and the house-hold slaves left by the first Frederick Philipse, in 1702, as shown by an inventory of his estate, numbered forty. According to a census of the year 1703, says a historian of New York City, there was " hardly a family that did not have from half a dozen to a dozen or more in their service." This custom of regarding negroes as absolute property was, moreover, viewed with entire and unquestioning approval in the mother country at that period. In a curious document drawn up by " the Committee of the Council of Foreigne Plantations," about 1683, " certaine prop-ositions for the hotter accommodating