EDITOR’S NOTE
This story is part of an ongoing journalistic initiative to rally the community and the country around a critical, but endangered, historical site: Sandy Ground, the nation’s oldest free Black settlement still inhabited by descendants of its pioneers.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — When they glance around Rossville today, cousins Lucille Herring and Jerome Moody see beyond the large homes, traffic lights and congestion. They see the Sandy Ground community that built them.
“When I look out my window, I see my grandfather’s house; I see that house as it was when I was a kid; now that’s a pleasant memory,” said Moody, 81, a descendant of historic Sandy Ground, the nation’s oldest free Black settlement still inhabited by descendants of its pioneers.
He recently moved back after a life that took him to Vietnam, where he served as an Air Force medic. He also lived in California, New Jersey, West Virginia and North Carolina during his nursing career before returning to his roots in 2025.
He and Herring followed different paths through life.
She is a nurse epidemiologist and infection control professional who spent much of her career in New York City. After studying at Jersey City State College, Central Michigan University and in Atlanta, Georgia, she worked in Manhattan and later at the former Bayley Seton Hospital in Clifton and St. Vincent’s Medical Center, now Richmond University Medical Center, in West Brighton.
But their journeys both led right back to a precious place their hearts hold dear, and they are next-door neighbors once again.
“I was like Opie Taylor on the Andy Griffith Show‚’’ muses Moody, recalling the small-town feel of life there in the 1950s and early ‘60s, before career and marriage drew him away.
‘I knew everybody’
”I knew everybody and everybody knew me,’’ he said, noting that the community wasn’t comprised entirely of Black Americans. “Race wasn’t an issue. I didn’t discriminate at all and wasn’t discriminated against. It didn’t prepare me for the real world. My whole world was Sandy Ground.”
Today, Moody sleeps in what was his parents’ bedroom. “It just brings back so many memories‚’’ he says.
Both Moody and Herring recognize Sandy Ground is a critical component of the nation’s history in serious need of preservation.
But the community is just as critical to their personal histories, they say.
Sandy Ground was a refuge for Herring, 79, who returned there as a young child from a Castleton Avenue apartment building in West Brighton, upon the death of her father.
Her mother, Hazel Elizabeth Pedro Herring, would soon be diagnosed with terminal cancer, adding a cloud of sadness to otherwise happy memories.
It had always been a “day in the country,’’ when she visited her cousins, but now it would become the place where she grew and learned the values that would carry her through life, she said.
“You work hard, you listen to your parents and you go to school‚’’ she recites with the firm tone of a strict parent. ”They didn’t say everyone had to go to college, but we had to go to school.”
At the center of it all is the Rossville AME Zion Church, standing as a beacon of freedom and Christian worship on Bloomingdale Road since 1897.
“We put our hearts, our souls and our money into the church‚’’ Herring says.
Settled in the 1820s, Sandy Ground is the third recorded community in New York where African-Americans owned land, according to the city Landmarks Preservation Commission.
Back then — and for more than a century afterward — the self-sufficient community was known for its fruitful farmland and rich oyster beds that lured oystermen from Snow Hill, Maryland.
‘Tight-knit community’
Moody recalls a warm, tight-knit community where many were family, but all were welcome. A German-owned general store and a Swedish-owned goat farm are embedded in his memory, he says.
Herring recalls an atmosphere “filled with love” during her childhood. Many of her friends were first, second and third cousins. She played games of hide and seek and neighbors gathered for fun barbecues and laughter, she said.
Generations before them, the church welcomed Black Americans fleeing slavery along the Underground Railroad, seeking a free life and praying for a better future.
In Moody’s childhood, everyone knew each other, which kept things friendly and safe, he said.
“If you did something wrong on one side of Sandy Ground it was waiting for you when you got home,’’ he said. ”You didn’t disrespect anyone in Sandy Ground.”
‘Sandy Ground was jumping’
The cousins also recall many of the barbecues held in the community.
They took place on the corner of Claypit and Bloomingdale roads, Moody recalls with a beaming smile. “That was the epicenter. Sandy Ground was jumping. That’s what I’d call it. It was very joyous.”
There was a wooden dance floor and music playing and a huge grill, he recalls. “People would come up from D.C. and places all around for them … all kinds of meat, chicken, spare ribs. People were eating, people were dancing. Back then they charged 75 cents for a sandwich … Oh my goodness, I had to save up for a year to get 75 cents.”
The public barbecues will forever stay with Moody, he says, admitting that, as a child, he missed a lot of the action when he was put to bed at sunset.
“I’d go to bed at night and I could smell the barbecue and hear the laughter‚’’ he said, shaking his head. It was a beautiful, safe community. People knew everybody and respected each other. Even though everybody wasn’t sociable, there was respect.”
Where once he knew every dusty dirt road in town, today he admits he needs to use his GPS system to navigate the roads clogged with traffic.
A sixth generation descendent
As a sixth-generation descendant of Sandy Ground, Herring said her current home was modernized by her mother, who removed a coal stove and added modern appliances for the day. She lovingly updated it again from 2023 through 2025, adding a multi-season garden in memory of the generations who came before her. Herring laughs, recalling a time when five women shared one bathroom.
Before she moved in with her grandparents, her family visited Sandy Ground often, Herring said, making the drive down Richmond Avenue “to the country” every weekend whenever they could. There, she had fun with grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins.
Lucille Herring attends Sunday service at Rossville AME Zion Church in Rossville on Sunday, March 8, 2026.Advance/SILive.com | Owen Reiter
“It was a whole day thing, going out to the country, but we loved our cousins; we loved the whole group,’’ Herring said.
Herring’s mother had been born in Sandy Ground, the oldest child of Susan Jane Bishop Pedro and William (Pop) Pedro, and the family lived with Pedro for years, she said.
Herring graduated from Tottenville High School and studied nursing at the Bayonne School of Nursing for three years, where she was the only Black student in the school, she said.
She reminisces in her front yard about Claypit Road when it was mostly wooded, save for a boarding house across the street. Much of the street was destroyed by the great fire of 1963, she recalls.
Over the years, she has created a variety of quilts to keep the memories of Sandy Ground alive.
”I love it out here,’’ she said. “I wake up in the morning and I open the back door and I say ‘Thank you, God.’ He’s given me this time to be here. He’s given me the money to upgrade the property. If we expand, Sandy Ground is still here. Sandy Ground is not dead.”
However, today, only a few of those original homes remain. Several, including the active church, two homes on Bloomingdale Road and two cemeteries, bear city, state and federal landmark status, but are in desperate need of repair.
Community members and preservation advocates can help the members of Rossville AME Zion Church who have initiated fundraising efforts to benefit repair of the landmarked structures in the community. To donate or volunteer, visit: rossvilleamezionny.org/giving.
MORE SANDY GROUND COVERAGE
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