Congratulations to Graduating MA Student Claire Ross!

Photo of Claire Ross with ceramics from Sylvester Manor

Another member of NEAAAL has successfully defended their master’s thesis work. Join us in congratulating Claire Ross on her excellent defense and thesis on the dairying labor of black women at Sylvester Manor!

Watercolor painting of the dairy in the North Lawn of Sylvester Manor

Claire defended her thesis, “Gendered Labor and Dairying at a Northern Plantation”, on May 14. As mentioned, her thesis looks at the dairying labor at Sylvester Manor. Dairying in the nineteenth century was primarily done by and associated with women. This work included producing dairy products such as butter and cheese. Although a part of everyday life for a majority of women in the North, past studies of dairying primarily focus on dairying done by white, middle-class women. Claire’s thesis builds on this body of work to look at the free Black women at Sylvester Manor, a former northern plantation on Eastern Long Island, and their labor around dairying. Claire uses documentary and archaeological evidence to better understand how dairying was an avenue for Black women to support themselves and their families in a post-emancipation era, in which they were marginalized by race and gender, while navigating social and economic reforms of the time. Through her work, she aims to disrupt the narratives that erase the presence of Black women in rural northern landscapes and obscure their skilled labor of dairying as competent, independent farm women.

Check out our website in the next few weeks for access to Claire’s thesis.

Congratulations Claire!