FIRST -- Municipal Water System in NYC - New York, NY
Posted by: 
bluesnote
N 40° 42.870 W 074° 00.250
18T E 584111 N 4507541
One of a few plaques at the African Burial Ground National Monument.
Waymark Code: WMYPTJ
Location: New York, United States
Date Posted: 07/08/2018
Views: 1
The sign says, "Africans were brought to the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam from different regions with diverse cultures, religions, and languages. In 1664 the British captured New Amsterdam and renamed it New York. Before the American Revolution, New York had more enslaved Africans-its most valuable commodity- than any other colony in the North. There were also free Africans, some descended from those freed by the Dutch West India Company. Men cleared farmland, filled swamps, and built structures and roads like Broadway and The Wall (today's Wall Street). Women sewed, cooked, harvested, and cared for owner's children as well as their own. From an early age, children carried water and firewood. The work was hard and death rates for Africans were disproportionately high.
African American workers position hollowed-out pin log pipes in a trench along Broad Street. The city's 25-mile pipeline formed the city's first municipal water system in the early 1800s. Laborers tore up the cobblestone streets, dug trenches, laid and joined the pipe sections, and filled in the trenches. Pay was one dollar a day; enslaved workers' waged went to their owners."
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