New York Almanack

News and Views from the Empire State

Anti-Rent War

Which NYS Battle Was Most Significant For The State?

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Herkimer at the Battle of OriskanyOver at the New York History Blog Facebook Page we recently asked the following question:

Which battle in New York State’s history had the most significant impact on the state?

The answers were surprisingly varied and included answers from the 1643-45 Kieft’s War (the war between New Netherland settlers and the Native inhabitants of Hudson River Valley also known as the Wappinger War) to the Anti-Rent War of 1839–1845.

We’ve reviewed the suggestions, and came up with a short list of five battles* which stand out as the most important to us (with short descriptions from Wikipedia) – what do you think? [Read more…] about Which NYS Battle Was Most Significant For The State?

Freemen Awake! Anti-Rent Movement Songs and Poems

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Freemen Awake Rally Songs Poems from NY Anti-Rent MovementSUNY Oneonta English Professor Roger W. Hecht’s new book, Freemen Awake! Rally Songs & Poems from New Yorks’s Anti-Rent Movement (Delaware Co. Hist. Assoc., 2018) is an edited collection of nearly three dozen songs and poems written by anti-renters and their supporters.

The Anti-Rent War (1839 to 1852) was a movement of tenants against the state’s most powerful landholding families, including the Van Rennselaers, to end the lease-holding system. [Read more…] about Freemen Awake! Anti-Rent Movement Songs and Poems

Columbia County: A Lecture On Copake History

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Pelholm barn with Ezra PellsLocal historian and author Howard Blue will present talk on the history of Copake, Columbia County, at the Roe Jan Historical Society in Copake Falls on Sunday, May 18 at 2:00 pm. Blue’s program is based in part on interviews of local residents from whose family albums he was allowed to copy old photos.

The presentation will focus primarily on the town’s and county’s first settlers, the Mohican Indians, and the 90-year-long, sometimes violent conflict between the Livingston family which at one time owned almost all of Copake and the family’s tenant farmers. Blue will also discuss Martin Van Buren’s role in Copake’s anti-rent movement, Copake in the Revolutionary war years, the existence of slavery in Copake, and Copake’s Civil War era bond issue that helped buy out from the draft some of Copake’s young men. [Read more…] about Columbia County: A Lecture On Copake History