Pioneers of Liberty: The Manuel and McPherson Legacies : Celebrating America 250 in February History Month

Researching the Manuel family in Cumberland County alongside Christopher McPherson uncovers a deep, interconnected history of free Black families, land ownership, and Revolutionary War service in Virginia and beyond.

The Manuel (sometimes spelled Emanuel) family has a documented history in Virginia and North Carolina that dates back to the colonial era.

• Revolutionary War Ties: Nicholas Manuel (also known as Nickey or Nicholas Emanuel) served as a soldier in the Revolutionary War. While many records link him to North Carolina, the family branched into several Virginia counties, including Cumberland and Prince William.

  
  

• Land Ownership: Similar to McPherson, the Manuel family were early Black landowner. Records from the late 1700s show family members purchasing hundreds of acres, which was an essential step for asserting independence and, in some northern states later on, the right to vote.

• Regional Overlap: Cumberland County borders Buckingham and Prince Edward counties, placing the Manuel family in the same geographic and social sphere as Christopher McPherson and his employer, David Ross.

  
  

The connection between these families is often found in the shared struggle of the "Free People of Color" in 19th-century Virginia:

• The Clerk and the Landowners: While McPherson was a prominent clerk and businessman in Richmond and Petersburg, families like the Manuels were establishing rural roots in Cumberland County. Both faced the shifting legal landscape of post-Revolutionary Virginia, where rights for free Black people were increasingly restricted.

• Movement to New York: Interestingly, the name Manuel also appears in early New York history. Claes (Nicholas) Manuel was a free Black man and landowner in "New Amsterdam" (New York) as early as the mid-1600s. This establishes a much earlier precedent for Black land ownership in Manhattan, long before Seneca Village was formed in 1825.

  
  

Name / Family	Revolutionary Era Connection	Primary Virginia Location	Notable Achievement
Christopher McPherson	Clerk at the Siege of Yorktown	Richmond / Petersburg	Self-published autobiography; established night school.
Manuel Family	Nicholas Manuel (Soldier)	Cumberland / Sampson	Multigenerational land ownership; Revolutionary service.
The "Black Land"	Post-Revolutionary independence	Manhattan (Seneca Village)	Largest enclave of Black property owners in NYC.

The "McPherson" and "Manuel" histories may intersect in your search because both families were part of the early American Black elite—literate, property-owning, and often veterans of the Revolution. While McPherson's grandson, Christopher McPherson Smith, was in New York in 1855, members of the Manuel/Emanuel families also migrated through Maryland and Pennsylvania into New York during the same period.

To see if the Manuel/Emanuel and McPherson families were neighbors in the "Black Land" of Manhattan, we have to look at the 19th Ward records from the 1850s. This was the area between 40th Street and 86th Street, which included the heart of Seneca Village.

During the 1850 and 1855 Census periods, several individuals with the name Manuel or Emanuel were living in New York City, often listed as "Mulatto" or "Black" in the records:

• John Manuel: Listed in the 1850 Census for New York City.

• The 19th Ward Context: While the most famous landowners in Seneca Village were families like the Williams and Lyons, the broader 19th Ward contained many free Black families who were part of the same social and religious circles.

• The Manuel Legacy: Interestingly, the Manuel family name appears in the earliest records of Black land ownership in New York. Claes Manuel was a "land-grantee" in the 1640s in an area known as "The Land of the Blacks" (near modern-day Greenwich Village). This suggests that your search for the Manuel family might be uncovering a 200-year history of Black property rights in New York.

  
  

The "cross-ties" you are seeing likely stem from the fact that both families belonged to the "Free People of Color" elite who were literate and land-focused.

1. Revolutionary Heritage: Both families had members who served in the Revolution (like Nicholas Manuel and Christopher McPherson), which provided the social standing needed to acquire land.

2. Geographic Migration: Both families have roots in the Virginia/North Carolina border region (Cumberland County and the surrounding area) and migrated North to New York as the Southern laws became more restrictive.

3. The 1855 Overlap: Christopher McPherson Smith was in NYC publishing his grandfather's memoirs in 1855—the same year the NY State Census recorded the last residents of Seneca Village before they were forced out for the park.

Family Name	Revolutionary Service	Known Manhattan Presence	Connection to Seneca Village Era
McPherson	Clerk (VA)	Grandson in Manhattan (1855)	Published memoirs during the displacement.
Manuel/Emanuel	Soldier (NC/VA)	Ancestors were original 1640s landowners.	Residents in NYC throughout the 1850s.
Common Ground	1776 Ideals	Fight for property rights	Both lost land to urban expansion/Park creation.