ABSTRACT
A Journal of the Proceedings in the Detection of the Conspiracy Formed by Some White People, in Conjunction with Negro and Other Slaves was Daniel Horsmanden’s well-known compilation of incidents of 1741–1742 in the colony of New York. Slave testimony placed Doctor Harry's origin in “Guanas” (British Guiana), a colony with significant imports from the Gold Coast region, especially prior to the nineteenth century. He was a slave “doctor” from “Long Island” who frequented Hughson’s. Dr. Harry and the Fly Boys supposedly exhumed grave earth from the “common ground” in oath ceremonies in 1741. Francis Maerschalck identified the “Negros Buriel Ground” on his 1755 “Plan of the City of New York” map. It bordered cattle grazing lands later used for executions, public events and the locale of a public almshouse. Numerous Africans, including Akans, laid their descendants in the areas set aside for African burials in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
