Fraunces Tavern Museum Reopens and Expands Popular Birch Trials Exhibit
October 22, 2024
The oldest surviving building in Manhattan will soon be home to a permanent exhibit highlighting an important moment in Black history. “The Birch Trials at Fraunces Tavern,” which opened in its first iteration at the Fraunces Tavern Museum (54 Pearl St.) in June 2023, has been significantly expanded and will now be a permanent part of the museum.
The exhibition shines a light on the emancipation of Black Loyalists at the end of the Revolutionary War and the creation of the Book of Negros, which served as a record documenting the Black Loyalists who left with the British after the war. The decisions about who would be allowed to evacuate with the British were made by a joint American-British commission, who heard and debated individual cases weekly at Fraunces Tavern from April to November 1783. The exhibit also has information about Black Patriots who fought for the U.S. during the Revolutionary War.
The updated exhibition includes new information about two women, Dinah Archey and Judith Jackson, whose fates were undecided by the Commission at their hearings; but who ultimately were recorded in the Book of Negroes as having evacuated New York City on departing ships. The exhibit has also been relocated to a larger gallery in order to offer a better guest experience, particularly for large groups.
Museum and art committee co-chairman and chief curator of the exhibition, Craig Hamilton Weaver, shared in a press release that, “this exhibition is the most comprehensive ever organized on this tremendously significant event in the history of Black emancipation in the United States and is made all the more compelling because it can be viewed within the very walls of the building within which the events occurred.”
“The Birch Trials at Fraunces Tavern” begins its new chapter on October 23. Tickets for the museum are $5 to $10 and can be purchased upon arrival to the museum.
