Reflection and Revival: Sandy Ground, One of New York’s Oldest Free Black Settlements

If you take a ride on the Staten Island Ferry and catch the S74 bus to Rossville, you will arrive at a place called Sandy Ground, one of New York’s oldest free Black settlements. Once a small, rural community, it is now surrounded by the cul-de-sacs and strip malls characterizing much of Staten Island’s suburban landscape. 

At its height, Sandy Ground was home to 180 Black families. Today, less than ten descendants of these families live in the area. Nonetheless, the Rossville A. M. E. Zion Church—always the heart and soul of the community—and its cemetery and a few homes from the nineteenth century still remain, and descendants of Sandy Ground are continuing to advocate for the sites’ historical preservation. These efforts are exemplified by the 2017 Sandy Ground Oral History Project, in which residents chronicle their shared memories of life in this once vibrant Black settlement.

Sandy Ground was founded in 1828, a year after the abolition of slavery in New York in 1827. In the 1830s, free Black oystermen from eastern Maryland began to settle in the area, working along Staten Island’s shores, building homes, and raising families. Local residents established the Rossville A. M. E. Zion Church in 1850. Founded in New York City in the early nineteenth century, the A. M. E. Zion Church came to be known as the “Freedom Church” for its leadership in the antislavery movement. The Rossville church is believed to have served as a stop on the Underground Railroad during the Civil War.

Throughout the twentieth century, residents of Sandy Ground faced repeated threats to their livelihood and settlement. In 1916, the NYC Health Department banned oystering along the city’s shores following decades of prolonged pollution. A devastating fire destroyed many families’ homes in 1963. A year later in 1964, the opening of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge connecting Staten Island to Brooklyn began nearly six decades of destructive suburban construction. Developers bulldozed the natural landscape and packed in matchbox houses where the dense woods and the homes of Sandy Ground once stood. Although these events spurred an ongoing exodus of Black residents from Sandy Ground, they also prompted urgent grassroots efforts to preserve what remained of this unique and important site in local Black history.

In the Sandy Ground Oral History Project interviews, residents reflect on the area’s past, its rural nature and close-knit community and the centrality of the Rossville A. M. E. Zion Church to everyday life. They also discuss the ongoing work to revive the site and share its history. These efforts began in the 1970s with the creation of the Sandy Ground Historical Society. This organization sought Sandy Ground’s inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places and its preservation amidst the threat of relentless development.

Although part of New York City, Sandy Ground had always been a rural haven in the city’s least populous borough. “Before it was just country and now it’s all built up,” explains Irene Cooper, who was born in Sandy Ground in 1929. Those who knew Sandy Ground before the onset of suburban development describe the area as abundant with woods, dirt roads, deer, and wild turkeys. 

Lucille Herring, one of the founders of the Sandy Ground Historical Society, reflects on the long and bumpy drives out to Sandy Ground to visit her grandparents in the 1950s. In contrast to the bustling storefronts in her family’s neighborhood of West Brighton in Staten Island, Sandy Ground had just one shop. “No dry cleaner, no meat man. It was really country … Just a whole other way of living. Just kind and calm people,” says Herring.

Herring and others reflect on the kindness and closeness of the people. “We didn’t even lock our doors at night,” says Charlotte Griggs. Many remember Sandy Ground as a safe place where neighbors looked out for each other. For children, this also meant that news of your mischief would always make it back to your parents. “If they [the neighbors] saw you doing something, you were in for it,” recalls Joyce Moody with laughter. 

Families and neighbors came together most often for church, a center of faith and justice. Many families that moved away from Sandy Ground over the years returned on weekends for church services and continue to do so today. Residents describe the Rossville A. M. E. Zion Church as the center of the community and the legacy of Sandy Ground. “If you didn’t do anything else, you had to go to church,” says Charlotte Griggs. “Sundays were for church and Sunday school,” says Julie Moody Lewis, the current Board President of the Sandy Ground Historical Society. 

Residents fondly describe Sunday school activities and summer trips, holiday plays and caroling, picnics and barbecues, receiving first communion and getting married—pivotal life events all viewed and understood through the lens of faith. The church building itself holds special meaning as well. Moody Lewis describes its felt presence:

“The thing I miss about the church was the smell. There was like a sweet smell that was in the church all the time. And there was a feeling when you hear the organ playing. And there used to be this picture, this huge picture of Christ when you walked in the church … For me that picture brought a lot of warmth and spirituality into the church.”

Though many lament the various changes to Sandy Ground over the years—the loss of its rural character and the movement of residents out of the area, the Rossville A. M. E. Zion Church continues to serve the community. Down the road from the church, a preserved home now serves as the Sandy Ground Historical Society Museum. This institution hosts local school groups, organizes annual festivals, and curates exhibits highlighting the history of Sandy Ground. 

“It’s important that you have institutions that are committed to preserving history, and promoting history, teaching it,” says Julie Moody Lewis. “The history that [the Sandy Ground Historical Society] promotes is important … because this is American history.”