a Harvard professor and chemist and who made a fortune with his invention of baking soda, married into the family. His first wife, Mary L'Hommedieu Gardiner, had the windmill moved to its current location north of Manwaring road. She was responsible for creating the gardens at the manor. After her early death, Horsford married her younger sister, Phoebe Dayton Gardiner. Their mother, Mary Catherine L'Hommedieu Gardiner, had repurchased the manor for the family in 1827 at a public auction. One of the largest plantations in the north it was home to many slaves from the Caribbean along with Native Americans and indentured persons. Its burial ground was recipient of a Guggenheim grant in 2004 to study the history of Long Island. An 11th generation descendant, Eben Otsby, and his nephew, Bennet Konesni, turned it into a non-profit educational farm. A contemporary archaeological dig, from 1999 to 2005, called the Sylvester Manor Project, a project overseen by the University of Massachusetts Boston, seeks to shed light on the Sylvester estate as it existed in the 17th and 18th centuries. References External links The Manor: Three Centuries at a Slave Plantation on Long Island [Farrar, Straus and Giroux]. History of Shelter Island Sylvester Manor Project 1610 births 1680 deaths People of the Province of New York People from Suffolk County, New York 2004 awards