Herbally Yours

Ellen Kamhi talks with Claire Bellerjeau, who currently serves as historian and director of education at Raynham Hall Museum in Oyster Bay, New York, and has been researching the Townsend family and their slaves for over sixteen years, including curating a yearlong exhibit on the Townsend “Slave Bible”. During a research visit to the New York Historical Society, she discovered what may be one of the earliest poems ever written by Jupiter Hammon, America’s first published African American writer. She has spoken internationally and published several articles in scholarly journals about life and artifacts of colonial New York, when natural remedies and kitchen herb gardens were the order of the day.