Monmouth County - Eatontown - Slavery and the Quaker Abolition Movement in Monmouth County

Sunday, July 14 – Monmouth County

    Author Rick Geffken will present his program on Slavery and the Quaker Abolition Movement in Monmouth County to the Monmouth County Genealogical Society and interested visitors on July 14th @2pm. Program takes place at Eatontown Community Center, 68 Broad Street, Eatontown, NJ.

   This presentation is an overview of the history and legacy of New Jersey’s two-hundred-year embrace of human bondage. New Jersey, sadly, was the last northern state to outlaw slavery (1866). Images and stories of the enslaved, slave owners, and the local Quaker Abolition movement are examined and illuminated by the influential early activities at the Shrewsbury Meeting, the Manasquan Meeting, and other Quaker Meetings in West Jersey.

   At the famed Four Corners in the Borough of Shrewsbury - where today’s Route 35 intersects Sycamore Avenue – the occupants of the four extant colonial-era buildings were each involved with enslaving Africans and their descendants. Christ Church was built in 1769 by the Rev. Samuel Cooke who owned four slaves; the Wardell House and the Allen House were occupied by notably harsh slave masters during the mid-18th century. Even the Society of Friends Meeting House (the building previous to the current structure built in 1816) was a place of worship for many Quaker slave holders.

The discussion will feature the events surrounding the notorious “Col. Tye,” a marauding former slave of Shrewsbury’s John Corlies who ravished the Monmouth County countryside when he was a British military leader during the Revolutionary War

    Charles and Hannah Reeves were enslaved in Middletown at birth, granted freedom in 1850, had eleven children, and became part of an African-American community in Lincroft. Together with many of their relatives, the Reeves are buried in the recently renovated Cedar Hill Cemetery. Reeves descendants are prominent Monmouth County citizens to this day. One of whom, Mrs. Amanda Mae Edwards, is a third cousin to the African-American author and intellectual Ta Nehisi Coates.
Location: 68 Broad St, Eatontown, NJ 07724, USA

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