Peter and Sarah Van Horne were a married couple who were enslaved by Susan (Livingston) [Kean] Niemcewicz at Liberty Hall. We do not know when they were brought to Liberty Hall, when they met, or when they married. Legal records often erased the individuality of enslaved people, presenting them only as property and making it difficult to get a sense of who they truly were. But there are some hints in historical records that we can use to learn more about this family.
When were they born?
According to Peter Van Horne’s gravestone, he was born in 1793, meaning that he was 29 years old when his son Robert was born in 1821 and 36 when he was manumitted in 1829. Sarah Van Horne was likely born in 1794, making her 28 at Robert’s birth and 27 at her manumission. Due to a law passed in 1798, enslaved people could only be manumitted between the ages of 21 and 40, meaning that if Peter and Sarah were a few years older, they would not have ever gained their freedom, at least not legally.
We know more about Robert because he was born after New Jersey’s 1804 gradual emancipation law. Gradual abolition meant that people like Robert who were born to enslaved mothers after July 4, 1804 would eventually be free, but those born even a month beforehand were legally enslaved for life. It also meant that Robert’s birth was registered with the county, while his parents have no birth certificate.
Where did their last name come from?
Peter and Sarah were unusual because they had a recorded last name. The name “Van Horne” probably came from the white family that claimed ownership over either Peter or both Peter and Sarah before they were sold to Susan Niemcewicz.
We know that Peter and Sarah van Horne were married because of their manumission document, but because marriages between enslaved people were not legally recognized, we have no idea when they were married. We can also only guess where they met, what their courtship looked like, or how they eventually decided to celebrate their wedding.
Perhaps they made a commitment to one another at Liberty Hall or they might have been brought to Liberty Hall when they were already husband and wife. In any case, this is where they started their family when their son Robert was born here in late 1821.
Peter and Sarah Van Horne were manumitted, or freed, by Susan Niemcewicz in 1829 but manumission did not always mean that formerly enslaved people could choose where to live and work. In this document, Peter and Sarah agreed to work for Susan Niemcewicz for the rest of her life as a condition of their freedom. Because of this, their daily lives probably changed very little after manumission.
Peter and Sarah probably did the same work before and after their enslavement. They would have worked for Niemcewicz and her family in the house, on the farm, or both. They wouldn’t even have been paid right away. Niemcewicz only promised to pay them after her death. The Van Hornes would receive $100 for each year worked after April 1829. Because Niemcewicz died only four years later, Peter and Sarah received a total of around $400 for a lifetime of work.
At the time of the 1830 census, there were no more people enslaved at Liberty Hall, but Susan Niemcewicz continued to employ free Black workers, including the Van Horne family.
The Black people who lived and worked at Liberty Hall at this time included:
Robert, around 7 or 8 years old at the time of his parents’ manumission, would also have continued to labor at Liberty Hall. The boundaries between freedom and enslavement were not strictly defined in New Jersey during the nineteenth century, both for people like Robert who were born free but still were required to labor for their mothers’ enslavers until adulthood, and for people like his parents who had been freed but still had to work for the people who had claimed ownership over them.
At some point after Susan Niemcewicz’s death in 1833, the Van Hornes moved to nearby Elizabethtown. It was here that the 1840 census recorded a Peter Van Horne living with a woman and boy, who almost certainly were Sarah and Robert. We do not know why John Kean (who inherited Liberty Hall from his grandmother) allowed Robert to leave with his parents since he was only eighteen, but Robert likely lived as a free man from this point on.
Peter Van Horne died of consumption soon after the 1840 census, and was buried in the graveyard of Siloam-Hope First Presbyterian Church alongside other Black church members. In 2022, the 313+ Ancestors Speak Project unveiled a monument to the free and enslaved Black people buried in this cemetery, including Peter and Sarah Van Horne, as well as some of their descendants.
Robert had a difficult life in Elizabethtown. After his father’s death, he lived with (and likely helped to support) his mother while also raising his own family. He eventually found work as a day laborer and married for the first time in his early twenties. He and his wife, known only as Mrs. Robert Van Horne, had three children together between 1844 and 1847, all of whom died very young and were buried alongside their grandfather, Peter. Not long after the death of their last child, Robert’s wife also died of unknown causes.
By 1852, Robert had married once again, this time to a woman named Sarah Johnson, who had come to New Jersey from Maryland. They had several children together, Mary Etta, Sarah, Frances, and Josephine, but only the younger two, Frances and Josephine, would survive to adulthood.
Robert’s mother, Sarah Van Horne did not live to meet her grandchildren from his second marriage. She died of dropsy on February 10, 1852 at the age of 57, nearly twelve years after the death of her husband. Robert was widowed for a second time in 1863 and by the time he died in 1871, at approximately age 48, his surviving teenage daughters were already working as domestic servants in white households.