Black History Month Highlight: The Sullivan Family

Class portrait, Public School 28, ca. 1904
by Historic Richmond Town Collections Manager Carli DeFillo

At Historic Richmond Town, we continue to make new discoveries about our community as we research the objects, photographs, and archives in our care. In honor of Black History Month, we highlight the story of the Sullivans, a Black family who lived in Richmond Town over 100 years ago.

Two of the Sullivan children appear in this class photo, taken at the old Public School 28 around 1904–James Sullivan stands second from the left in the back row, with his younger brother William Seymour, or “Willie,” nearby, fourth from the left in the same row. Until recently, all we knew of them was their names, tentatively matched up to a handwritten list on the back of the photo. Now, using information from census records and other sources, we’ve been able to piece together some parts of their family’s history.

In 1900 James and William lived on Richmond Road, not far from St. Andrew’s Church, with their parents and their brothers and sisters, John, Mary, Katie, Annie, and Geraldine. Their mother, Mary (Newell) Sullivan, was born on Staten Island, while their father, John Sullivan, had emigrated from England; the couple married around 1886, and John worked as a house painter. We are still working on tracing Mary and John’s story, but sadly, it appears they may have died sometime before 1910. What we do know is that their younger children, Katie, Annie, and Geraldine, were sent to St. Benedict's Home for Destitute Colored Children at Rye, New York. James and William, who would have been about 18 and 14 years old, were over the age limit for the home. We’re continuing to investigate James’s story, but he may have later worked as a laborer with a business on Front Street in Stapleton. William finished high school, and in 1920, he married Minnie Ingless, a Black woman from Georgia. By 1925, they had moved to Queens, and by 1940, they owned their own home there, and William was working as a waiter on a railroad.

Learning these facts gives us a glimpse into the lives of the Sullivans, beyond the brief moment captured in a school photo, and it helps us to build a clearer, more complete picture of life in the past and the Black community on Staten Island and in our museum’s own neighborhood in particular.