A Neighborhood Named
After the Family
That Enslaved Them.

The 1860 United States Slave Schedule for the City of Savannah — enumerated August 6, 1860 — lists William H. Cuyler and Miss Jane M. Cuyler as slave owners on page 41. On the same page: Dr. Richard D. Arnold — the mayor of Savannah who surrendered the city to General Sherman in December 1864 — confirmed as a slave owner. And Mrs. Ellen N. Cosens — Dr. Arnold's daughter — confirmed as a slave owner.

After the Civil War freed people built a community on the Savannah westside. That community is now known as Cuyler-Brownville — named in part after the Cuyler family whose slaveholding is documented on the 1860 schedule. Cuyler-Brownville was the only Black neighborhood in Savannah not redlined by the Home Owners Loan Corporation in the 1930s — the only Black neighborhood the federal government considered stable enough to insure mortgages. The community that survived redlining was named after a slaveholding family.

That is not the complete picture. The Cuyler family also founded the Cuyler Street School — one of the earliest schools in Savannah that Black children were able to attend. That school gave generations of Black Savannahians access to education at a time when access to education was itself a form of power and resistance. That contribution is real and it matters.

Both things are true. The Cuyler family enslaved people and documented in the federal record as having done so. They also founded a school that educated Black children. A neighborhood carries their name. The people who live in that neighborhood deserve to know the full history — not a partial one. The 1860 slave schedule is a public record. The school is a public record. DEED presents both.