Cruel Murder: A Story of Fear, Death, Childhood, and Enslavement in Early Nineteenth-Century Ulster County, New York Wendy E. Harris
On July 8, 1803, in Kingston, Ulster County, New York, Deyon, an enslaved teenaged girl,
was escorted to her place of execution by a group of local clergymen.1 “An immense con
course of people” was said to have gathered to watch her hang from the gallows. The crime
for which she had been convicted was especially horrific—the murder one month earlier
of six-year-old Harrietta Bruyn, daughter of Deyon’s enslavers, Abraham Bruyn and Sarah
Jansen of the town of Shawangunk.
Please read about the Deyon article featured in NY History Journal: