Robert Lurting, Mayor 1726-1735: Lurting (c.1653 -1735) was a merchant who invested in the slave trade and exported logwood from the Hudson region and other goods to London. He also owned large tracts of land.[1] He died while in office.

• Lurting invested in four ships that transported enslaved people from the Caribbean to New York between 1718 to 1722. Two of the vessels, Sarah and Pinetree, also carried enslaved persons from New York to Madeira.
• In the c.1703 census of New York, Robert Lurting is listed as owning two enslaved people in his household in New York City: one adult female and one minor male.
• In 1721, Lurting bought Kate for twenty-seven pounds. The sale is mentioned in a court case over a later enslaver of Kate, Thomas Roberts, knowingly selling her while sick and is to blame for her death from a secret “infectious malady or sickness called the French pox.”[2]

A ship named the Salley was lost at sea and the enslaved on it either escaped or died. Trinity Church applied to have the settlement funds from the loss of the enslaved persons be applied to the building fund of Trinity Church in December 1697. Lurting was a Church Warden.[3]

Investments in Ships that Transported Enslaved

Ship	Dates of Voyage or in NY Port	Ports of Call	Enslaved Purchased	Cargo	Co-Investors
Sarah	7/26 & 9/1/1718	Jamaica and to Madeira	8 total, 2 to Madeira	European goods; outward: provisions, lumber, beeswax	Thomas Lynch, Rip Van Dam, and John Bassett
Pinetree	8/13/1718	Barbados	1	Ballast	Lancaster Lymes and Michael Kerney
Pinetree	11/28/1718	To Madeira	7	Provisions, beeswax, staves, European goods	Lancaster Lymes and Michael Kerney
George	5/9/1721	Jamaica	2	Sugar, two bags cotton wool, pewter, copper, snuff	None
Seaflower	10/4/1722	Antigua	1	Rum, sugar, molasses, cotton wool, snuff	Thomas Lurting (likely his son), Rip Van Dam, and William Donbar

[1] Merchants & Empire, 1998, p.143

[2] Douma, Michael. “Prices of Enslaved Persons in New York and New Jersey.” Journal of Slavery and Data Preservation 4, no. 5 (2023): 67-75; taken from Select Cases of the Mayor’s Court of New York City, 1674-1784. Vol. 2. page 369

[3] Northeast Slavery Records Index, citing Ecclesiastical Records of State of NY, Volume II, p. 1217 and Conway, Rosanne: Lists of Inhabitants of Colonial New York, p. 33

Ship investments: 107347, Donnan p.467, CO 5/1222_04, 172, 179; #107352, p.468; CO 5/1222_04, 173; #107352, CO 5/1222_04, 183; #107414, p.472, CO 5/1222_06, 255; #107457, p.474, CO 5/1223_01, 17

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