Chapter 1

“Brought Up in Our Father's Family”

Liss was born around the year 1763. She was enslaved by two brothers of the Townsend family. Many of the facts about what happened to Liss have been discovered in letters, record books, and other sources that have been preserved in museums and archives. Even though some parts of her story remain a mystery, the details that have been uncovered about Liss help us to understand the lives of other enslaved people from New York at the time of the country’s founding.