History, Natural History & the Arts
Between 1839 and 1845 tenant farmers in New York State revolted against paying rents to the patroon system — a system of land ownership implemented by the Dutch in New Netherland that prohibited farmers from owning their land outright.
Disguising themselves in calico gowns and leather masks to demand change. Their struggle, known as the Anti-Rent War, helped shape the future of American democracy and land ownership. [Read more…] about The Anti-Rent War: A Second American Revolution
Few of us think back to the troubled times when the farmers of Rensselaer, Columbia and Albany counties were involved in sometimes violent demonstrations against rents collected by the Manor of Rensselaerswijck and the feudal conditions imposed by the land leases of the semi-feudal patroon.
It can be said to have started in the 1790s when Stephen Van Rensselaer III encouraged the development of his land holdings stretching from the Helderbergs in Western Albany County east to the Rensselaer Plateau in Eastern Rensselaer County, which dated back to the original Dutch grants in 1629 made to Kiliaen van Rensselaer (1586-1643). [Read more…] about Rensselaer County Rises for the Anti-Rent War
“Who was the Vice President under John Quincy Adams? — Daniel D. Tompkins. And I’ll bet your Mr. Sawyer doesn’t know that!”
It’s a line from that classic Christmas movie, “Miracle On Thirty Fourth Street.” In that scene the protagonist, Kris Kringle, tries to demonstrate that not only isn’t he delusional, but is so in touch with reality he can recall trivial facts most people couldn’t possibly remember. [Read more…] about Daniel D. Tompkins: New York’s War of 1812 Governor
In 1652, New Netherland Dutch Director General Peter Stuyvesant granted land to the Dutch Church in Albany to construct a house to shelter the poor. In 1683, English Governor Thomas Dongan convened the first representative Assembly in the Colony of New York.
One of the first laws passed by the Colonial Assembly was a law regarding the treatment of orphans. [Read more…] about Albany’s Distressed Children & The Albany Orphan Asylum: Some History
Stephen Van Rensselaer III (1764-1839), was orphaned at the age of ten. His father had died when he was five and his mother remarried Reverend Eilardus Westerlo, minister of the Dutch Reformed Church in Albany. She died five years later and Stephen was raised by Abraham Ten Broeck (later Brigadier General) and his wife (Stephen’s aunt) Elizabeth Van Rensselaer.
Stephen attended the John Water’s School in Albany, grammar school in Elizabeth Town, New Jersey and Classical School in Kingston. He then attended college at Princeton, but withdrew to Harvard because of the dangers in Northern New Jersey during the Revolutionary War. In 1776, Stephen’s grandfather Philip Livingston (who had married Ten Broeck’s sister Christina) had signed the Declaration of Independence. [Read more…] about Stephen Van Rensselaer III: The Last Patroon
Thurlow Weed was born on November 15, 1797, the son of Joel and Mary (Elis) Weed, in Cairo, Greene County, NY where his grandfather settled after the Revolutionary War. His father was a farmer who was apparently hard working but never prosperous, occasionally spending time in jail for debt.
In 1799, the family moved to Catskill where young Weed received a small amount of schooling. His first job was pumping a blacksmith’s bellows while the blacksmith formed heated iron. He made six cents per day. At nine, he got a job as a cabin boy on a Hudson River sloop. [Read more…] about Thurlow Weed, Stephen Van Rensselaer III and the Disputed Election of 1824
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