In 1845, a feudal land system that had survived the American Revolution met its match in the Catskills’ hills above Andes, in Delaware County, NY — and the clash left a county undersheriff dead and hundreds of farmers under arrest.
The Anti-Rent War was a massive, organized uprising that had been building since the late 1830s and swept across Upstate New York.
Victoria Kupchinetsky and Misha Gutkin are Russian-born journalists who stumbled upon the story at an Andes community day parade — and couldn’t let it go.
The result is Calico Rebellion, a documentary that centers the voices of local descendants, historians, and storytellers to bring this “final chapter of the American Revolution” back to life.
An episode of the Kaatscast: The Catskills Podcast, considers the patroon system and its perpetual leases that kept tenant farmers from ever owning the land they cleared; the “Calico Indians,” disguised farmers who donned homemade masks and calico dresses to resist rent collectors; the dinner horns repurposed as an alarm network; and the fatal confrontation on Dingle Hill that set off a chain of trials, pardons, and ultimately, legislative reform.
Kupchinetsky and Gutkin also reflect on what it meant — as immigrants from the Soviet Union — to dig into this forgotten corner of American democracy, and what the Anti-Rent War says about the ongoing work of keeping a democratic system alive.
You can listen to the podcast here. Visit calicorebellion.com for
Read more about the Anti-Rent War.
Photo of man in Anti-Rent War costume provided by the filmmakers.
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