So many didn't know about the #TearDropMemorial I posted on the other day. Well, #AreYouFamiliarWith the history behind #CentralPark? I wasn't. Read up: 👉 Blacks first came to the area in 1825, when John Whitehead, a deliveryman, began selling off parcels of his farm. Andrew Williams first bought three lots for $125. By 1832, about 25 more lots were sold to African Americans. Epiphany Davis, a laborer and trustee of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, bought 12 lots for $578 the same day. The church itself then bought 6 lots. Between 1825 and 1832, real estate records show, the Whiteheads sold at least 24 land parcels to black families. Seneca Village became a gathering place after one main historical event: slavery's coming to an end in New York State on July 4, 1827.[citation needed] In the early 19th century, Seneca village attracted many other ethnic groups for different reasons. Seneca Village grew in the 1830s when people from a community called York Hill were forced to move after a government-enforced eviction; the York Hill land was used to build a basin for the Croton Distributing Reservoir.[citation needed] Later, during the potato famine in Ireland, many Irish residents came to live in Seneca Village[citation needed], swelling the village by 30 percent during this time. Both African Americans and Irish immigrants were marginalized and faced discrimination throughout the city. Remarkably, despite their social and racial conflicts elsewhere, the African Americans and Irish in Seneca Village chose to live in close proximity to each other. Institutional buildings The village had three churches, a school, and several cemeteries. The First African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church of Yorkville laid its cornerstone in #SenecaVillage in 1853. A box put into the cornerstone contained a Bible, a hymn book, the church's rules, a letter with the names of its five trustees, and copies of the Tribune and The Sun newspapers. Its sister church, known as Mother AME Zion, is in Harlem on 137th Street.[citation needed] There was a school located in a church where 17-year-old Catherine Thompson taught the village's children. 👇Cont'd in comments👇