I recently visited Troy and made my first visit to the NY State Library for an afternoon's browsing. My cousin and I thought we would concentrate on the Census records as the films are all available there for NY State. Lo and behold, my ancestor, Thomas MITER, in the 1800 census is listed with one slave in the household. My cousin thought he remembered seeing the record for his wife's family (Wm SPOTTEN), that showed they had 4 slaves. They farmed NE of Lansingburgh. This was not the type of information I liked to find. Was slavery common in upper NY State in the 1780-1800 period? Are there any books or studies concerning it that are available? Brad Miter