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
In 1839 the Whigs won the New York Senate from the Democrats, who campaigned against the “reckless building program of the Whigs,” with relation to expanding the Erie Canal.