For the past several months, Scientific Inquirer’s Ghosts of Newtown project has been reconstructing the lives of a largely forgotten free Black community that lived in Newtown—today’s Elmhurst, Queens—during the early nineteenth century. Through census records, manumission documents, historical maps, and archival research, a picture is slowly emerging of families who lived, worked, and built lives in this rural village decades before the Civil War.

Yet today, almost no public marker acknowledges their presence.

While other historic Black communities in New York—such as Weeksville in Brooklyn and Seneca Village in Manhattan—are widely recognized, Newtown’s story remains largely absent from the city’s public landscape.

Scientific Inquirer has launched a Change.org petition calling for the creation of a monument or historical marker in Elmhurst to honor this lost community and restore a missing chapter of Queens history.

If you believe this history deserves recognition, we invite you to read more and sign the petition.

Every signature helps bring the story of Newtown’s forgotten residents closer to public recognition.