Philip French, Mayor 1702-1703: French (1666/7 – c.1707) was a merchant who engaged in piracy through Madagascar and invested in large real estate tracts in New York and New Jersey. He married Anna Philipse, daughter of perhaps the richest man in the colony, Frederick Philipse.[1] Through a partnership with Philipse, it is likely that French was involved in the slave trade in Madagascar, but there is no documentation of investments in slave ships.[2] On August 11, 1695, French, Robert Livingston, Captain William Kidd, and Captain Giles Shelley met in London to discuss replacing Governor Benjamin Fletcher with Lord Bellomont. Their discussion likely included Madagascar and Indian Ocean piracy.[3]

He is listed as an enslaver in the New York census from c.1703: seven enslaved people, including three adult males, two adult females, one minor male, and one minor female.[4]A transcript of colonial documents states that French owned an enslaved Indian in 1689:

The same Night an Indian Slave belonging to Philip French was dragged to the Fort and there Imprisoned. The next day Mr French falling in amongst some of Leyslers crew, resented the injury done unto him by the illegal detaining of his Slave so highly that some of the standers-by immediately went and informed against him so that in a short time after as the said French was walking in the publick streets of this City about his lawful affairs, John Burger Serjeant to this Usurper Leysler attended with six Musqueteers, lays violent hands on him and tells him, he was his Prisoner and to the Fort he must go. Mr French replyed, not unless you carry me, which accordingly they did, in the nature of a dead Corpse, though living, where he soon meets with the Entertainment of a close imprisonment.[5]

[1] “Frederick Philipse and the Madagascar Trade,” Jacob Judd, The New-York Historical Society Quarterly, Vol. 55, No. 4, October 1971, link

[2] Merchants and Empire, 63, 86, 207, 354 n.64, 373 n.28, 398.80

[3] “Robert Livingston’s Voyage to England, 1695,” Lawrence Leder, New York History, Vol. 36, No. 1, pp.30, https://www.jstor.org/stable/23154363

[4] Northeast Slavery Records Index, Dock Ward; French Family Assoc. history; Conway: Lists of Inhabitants of Colonial New York, p. 32

[5] Documents relative to the Colonial History of New York, Vol. III, p.678

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