Flatlands

As a kid this was the haunted house of the neighborhood I grew up in, replete with an older woman, the last surviving direct descendent of Hendricks Lott. Its overgrown yard, old cars, and the disrepair of the house gave it a aura of mystery. To lose your Pennsy Pinkie in the yard and then have to go over the fence to retrieve it was a neighborhood right of passage. The house was also unusual because it spanned the width of a city block. It was the only house in the neighborhood to have such a large plot of land. Beginning in 1989, the house and grounds became an archeological site, and recent discoveries have shown that it housed slaves until the early 1800's, and later beginning in the 1840's was a stop on the Underground Railroad. Hendricks freed his slaves around 1800, over twenty years before slavery was abolished in New York. The dig was featured in Archeology magazines May/June 2001 issue.