It Happened Here -- The "Battle" of Clarksville 

Corner of NYS 443 and Cass Hill Rd

 

From the flats at the edge of the tiny hamlet of Clarksville Sheriff Michael Artcher gazed up the hill toward Reidsville. With him was a little army of 500 hundred citizens of Albany, a “posse” of men from all walks of life, he had summoned to assist him in serving papers to the farmers of the Hilltowns, delinquent on their rents to their land lord, Stephen Van Rensselaer III, the last Patroon. 

Delaware Ave, Delmar

Most were mechanics and workingmen from Albany, but they also included bank presidents, John Van Buren, son of the President, himself a prominent lawyer, and William Marcy, former Governor. (The 53 year old Marcy had marched with the “army” the first six miles until he reached the Adams' Tavern, where a friend gave him a ride in his carriage, the rest of the way.) With these numbers, Artcher hoped he could overawe the farmers and serve his warrants without bloodshed, avoiding another humiliating confrontation like he had suffered two months before when a gang of farmers had barred his way and sent him packing down the mountain.
 

For the origins of this conflict one would need to go back over two hundred years to the Dutch settlement of the area that would become New York. Henry Hudson established the claim for the Dutch from the Hudson Valley down to the Delaware. The Dutch government granted the rights to commercially exploit this territory for whatever riches it might contain to one of their large trading companies, the Dutch West India Company, and soon the Company was profiting from a lucrative trade in beaver pelts with the Native Americans. But to maintain their claims to the area they needed permanent settlements of their countrymen living there. Finding such people in a country like the Netherlands was not easy where peace and prosperity made its citizens reluctant to leave. To accomplish this task of people-ing their colony, the company turned to private entrepreneurs who would be given huge tracts of land if they would buy them from the Native Americans who inhabited them, and settle them with at least fifty farmers and tradesmen. From these settlers the Patroons could collect rents and fees and govern them as they saw fit. While most of these first patroonships failed and reverted back to the Company, one established by Kilean Van Rensselaer, in what became Albany, Rensselaer and northern Columba counties succeeded. When the English took over the Colony in 1644, they modified the judicial system to conform to English law, but left the economic aspects of the patroon system largely untouched, and in fact extended the manorial system to reward political supporters of the Duke of York and his government in the Colony. The manors of Livingston, Van Cortland, Hardenburg and others joined the Van Rensselaer's to place virtually all farmlands in the Hudson valley and surrounding hills in the hands of a few wealthy families who through inter-marriage became an economic oligarchy. Most of these families sided with the revolutionary cause during the American revolution, snapping up vacated Tory lands to become even stronger than before the revolution. Although Democratic forces pushed through a law outlawing feudalism in 1782,  Stephen Van Rensselaer III, the current patroon neatly side-stepped the new law by issuing new “durable leases” to his tenants. Devised by his new brother-in-law, Alexander Hamilton, the financial wizard of the Revolutionary generation, the leases were termed “incomplete sales” in which the “owners” (ie. tenants) gave a down payment of ¼ of the value of the land and forever after paid annual “quitrents” of a specified number of bushels of wheat, “fat fowl” and days labor with their teams of horses or oxen and wagons. The land could only be used for agriculture by the tenants, and all water, timber and mineral rights remained with the Patroon. As “owners” the farmers were responsible for any taxes levied on the land and on any improvements (houses, barns,etc) they made to it. As “owners” their property, any improvements, and their tenant obligations to the Patroon automatically passed to their heirs. It was a lousy deal for the farmers. But it was one which Stephen Van Rensselaer III was able to successfully market to a generation of post-revolutionary war farmers desperate for land, especially when he offered them seven years rent free to clear their land, build their homes and barns and begin farming. Under these terms the hinterlands of Albany and Rensselaer counties, which had been mostly uninhabited, quickly filled with farms. Similar arrangements had similar results in heretofore undeveloped areas of Delaware and Columbia counties, on the Hardenburg (Catskill) Patent and on two smaller Schoharie patents.

For many years Van Rensselaer collected his rents, becoming rich, and managing discontent among his tenants by not pressing them for their rent and allowing rents to go unpaid during years of poor harvests, or times of personal hardship. His laxity in rent collection, and some significant acts of philanthropy, resulted in Stephen III becoming known as “the Good Patroon”. But in January of 1839 the “Good Patroon” died and it turned out he never forgave or forgot. The records of unpaid rents had all been carefully recorded and passed on to his two heirs, Stephen IV and William Patterson Van Rensselaer as part of his assets to be collected by them. In addition, he owed $400,000 in debts which would come out of his estate, unless these rents could be collected in short order. Stephen IV's first official act as heir to his father's West Manor estate was to order Daniel Barnard, one the executors of the will to collect his delinquent rents in Albany County.

At the Intersection of NYS 85 and NYS 143/443, Westerlo

 

Among the inhabitants of the Albany County hilltowns resentments grew especially strong. How could the Van Rensselaers allow the overdue rents to accumulate to such high levels if they were going to demand payment all at once, and especially in the spring, after a long winter when the farmers' resources were stretched to their thinnest, as they struggled to put in a new crop?   Stephen Van Rensselear had worked (and connived) to gain the respect and deference of his tenants, that he felt was an essential attribute of men of the landed gentry, but his sons, especially Stephen IV considered the deference of his tenants their birthright. When they asked to meet with him and assembled at his manor in North Albany, the new proprietor of the West Manor refused to even acknowledge them, much less meet with them, instructing his underlings to communicate to the tenants that they should write down their grievances, which he subsequently rejected. News of such treatment spread like wildfire among the Hilltowns, galvanizing not only those who could not pay the overdue rents, but those who could and those not behind in their payments.

From his posse of 500, Sheriff Artcher selected an advance guard of 100 horsemen to accompany him up to confront the farmers. Perhaps he did not want to involve the rag-tag group of mechanics and shopkeepers that that had answered his summonses and straggled along on foot, unwilling to take seriously the Van Rensselaers' dire characterizations of a county-side up in revolt, or perhaps he did not trust these people if real trouble should break out. Whatever his motives Artcher began his advance up the hill, to the blasts of farmer's tin dinner horns from various locations on the hill announcing his approach. A short way up he encountered a party of mounted farmers of about equal in size to his party.  Without speaking, the group parted, allowing his men to pass.  Farther up the road a larger group of horsemen armed with clubs,  pitch forks and various other improvised weapons blocked his way. As the sheriff consulted with his deputies and other  leaders of his party, about forcing their way through, this second group opened a path for the sheriff's men.  The sheriff's men continued to the top of Cass Hill where they were stopped in their tracks by a mass of perhaps 1800 armed and mounted farmers.  The sheriff and a few of his men tried to force their way through and were handily rebuffed by the farmers.  A second attempt was beaten back more forcefully.  Artcher ordered a retreat. The column of Sheriff's men turned and made a hasty exit off the mountain to the accompaniment of farmer's  curses and howls of derision, and the bleat of tin dinner horns.

 Back in Clarksville, the beaten and humiliated members of the Sheriff's posse sought to salve their occasional bruises and hurt feelings with ample libations at the Clark's Hotel while Governor Marcy was forced to spend the night, where the only serious injury, his ripped pair of trousers, was mended!

Rte 443, Clarksville

Thus ended the first skirmish of the "Anti-Rent Wars", which would span decades. In future posts we will return to this chapter of New York history.



Marker of the Week

 Preston Hollow may have had only
a Justice of the Peace in the early 1800's, but I betchya didn't want to pull any nonsense in his court!












E-Mail Me: If you have comments about this blog or any other thing having to do with NYSHM's I would be delighted to hear from you. I would be especially interested if you know of any new or interesting markers or can report on any efforts to restore old markers. My email is tba998@gmail.com I look forward to hearing and sharing your thoughts on this blog.  

It Happened Here -- Yankee Doodle came to Grenen Bos

  

The substantial brick house on the shore of the Hudson River, across from Albany in the little Dutch town of Grenen Bos (Greenbush) was packed with “guests,” the officers of his majesty's regiments 

preparing for an expedition against the French forts in northern New York during what was the last of the colonial wars with the French¹ .  Nearby were hundreds of tents of the King's soldiers and a motley assortment of tents and improvised bark shelters of New England militiamen, growing in number every day as colonial militia companies straggled in from Connecticut and other parts of New England.

The house was the home of the Van Rensselaer family and stood on the foundation of an earlier house built in 1642. The current house was built about 1704 with defensive features designed to thwart Indian attacks. Stone loopholes were incorporated into the brickwork that allowed muskets to be fired from it. The entrances had heavy reinforced wooden doors and the downstairs windows had heavy wooden shutters, that could be drawn shut.  The house, named Crailo, (Crow's Wood) after the Van Rensselaer estate in Holland, became known as Fort Crailo.

Fort Crailo, today serves as a museum of Colonial Dutch life, instead of simply, a furnished historic house. The role
of Crailo in the creation of Yankee Doodle is somewhat down-played today because, in fact, the story is based on a family legend, with virtually no historical documentation to corroborate it.

Among the billeted “guests” was likely the regimental surgeon Richard Shuckburgh. Shuckburgh, originally from a Warwickshire English gentry family had bought his commission and come to America around 1737. Though officially the surgeon to the four independent companies in New York, he appears to have spent much of his time speculating in land, drinking, carousing and building friendships in the Albany area and the Mohawk valley. He counted William Johnson among his friends and sometime-business associates, and he often attended negotiations between Johnson and the Iroquois. In 1744 while a dinner guest of the Van Rensselaer's, he met Dr. Alexander Hamilton, a Scots physicians traveling in the northern colonies. Hamilton wrote of him, “by his conversation he seems to have as little of the quack of him as any half-hewn doctors ever I had met with”, unlike most of the “empirics” of Albany—a recommendation—of sorts! But if “doctoring” was his vocation, partying, seems to have been his passion. Reflecting on a failed venture, he wrote “I endeavour to forget that and every Disappointment, being as merry as I can make myself and those about me, and I am apt to say...that I have made more people laugh in my Lifetime in the World of America than will cry at my departure out of it.”²

The Well-reconstructed to enhance the legend

t

So, when an idle afternoon found Shuckburgh with nothing better to do, sitting on the edge of the well, out in back of Fort Crailo, he decided to compose a few lines of verse to amuse his fellow officers and the Van Rensselaers that evening after dinner.³ He probably didn't have long to think about a fitting subject for his few lines of doggrel. Though in the coming years the Dutch inhabitants of Crailo and the officers of His majesties' regiments would find fewer and fewer things they could agree upon, an obvious subject now was the pretensions, clumsy amateurism and anticipated cowardliness of the citizen-soldiers flooding in from the small towns of New England. The professional English soldiers found it easy to find fault with the efforts of these New Englanders and the burghers of Greenbush, who had a long simmering dislike of the English colonists who seemed forever trying to encroach on Dutch held lands, were more than ready to join in the fun.

“Yankee Doodle” most likely derived from the Dutch “Janke” or little Johnnie, referring to the common nickname for New Englanders, “Brother Jonathan” and Doodle was a common synonym for a fool. Mispronounced “Janker” it could also mean a “howling cur “or complainer. Jan doedel was also slang for a glass of gin or a town drunk.  (Throughout the 19^th century and into the 20^th musicologists and folklorist developed numerous other theories for the origins of Yankee Doodle and its music but these are the most likely.) The tune seems to have come from a children's rhyme “Lucy Locket” that had been around for centuries. It had gained more recent popularity when it was featured in the immensely popular Beggar's Opera that satirized British society and government corruption, first staged in 1728.   While performed by professional and amateur companies in both Great Britain and America, New Englanders were less likely to know it, theater being forbidden in Puritan New England.

Shuckburgh had delighted his dinner companions with his song. Now he compounded the hilarity, by convincing New England fifers that it's melody was the newest military aire and teaching it to them.

Soon New England Companies were clomping about, in formation, on the grounds of Van Rensellaer's estate to the tune of Yankee Doodle, re-living for anyone who had heard its words the satire.

                                                                    

One of several signs, all with the same message located at various distances from Ft. Crailo

 

A decade later relations between Great Britain and its colonies had deteriorated and Yankee Doodle continued as a vehicle for making fun of, and, now, heaping insult on the New England militias who now seemed a potent threat to British rule and order. The occupation of Boston by thousands of British redcoats led to scores of new verses being created by dozens of wags in the British army, and among the Loyalist population.

On April 19, 1775 units of the British army marched out of Boston to snap up stores of gunpowder held by the miltias in Concord and hopefully capture rebel leaders Adams and Hancock rumored to be in Lexington. Once out of Boston their musicians struck up the “Yankee Song” and the troops joined in with some of the many verses that had been created. At Concord Bridge the unimaginable happened.  The British vanguard was thrown back precipitating a long bloody retreat back to Boston as they were ambushed form all sides by groups of militiamen. Adding to their misery they heard strains of “Yankee Doodle” coming from the rebel fifers who were turning the song against them. They would hear it again months later from rebel lines when they marched up Breed's Hill into the onslaught of rebel fire at the battle of Bunker Hill, and again two years later when they stacked arms to surrender at the battle of Saratoga. By the end of the war this doggrel-parody of New England militiamen had become something of an unofficial national anthem for the new United States.

Marker of the Week

 The road to Saratoga was paved with good intentions!

(Rte 443, Dormansville/Westerlo)

1There is some dispute whether the events to unfold here occurred in encampments in 1755 or 1758, before the Johnson-Lyman expedition that resulted in the Battle of Lake George victory, or the later Abercromby expedition against 
Ft. Carillon (Ticonderoga) that was a major English/American defeat.

2Quoted from Stuart Murray. America's Song, The Story of ' Yankee Doodle' p, 78, 60-61.

3Recollections of this incident were kept alive and handed down through generations of the Van Rensselaer and Schuyler families.

It Happened Here -- New York's Wooden Roads

Yes, I said wooden, not wooded.

In retrospect, the idea of roads made of wood does not seem like a good idea.  Wood, of course, rots quickly when it is in contact with the earth. For centuries, corduroy roads had been constructed. Logs cut and laid down side by side were used to run roads across swampy areas and through muddy stretches, preventing wagons from becoming mired in the mud.  But they quickly rotted out,  and besides, the ride over them was extremely bumpy and miserable.

In the 1840's stories began to circulate  about a new type of road that had originated in Russia and was being successfully employed in Canada.  The Town of Salina, near Syracuse sent civil engineer George Geddes to Toronto to study them. Geddes returned full of enthusiasm for the new plank roads, extolling their virtues in Scientific American, April 27, 1850 and publishing his own pamphlet promoting them.   Geddes learned that the Canadians were building roads of two to four inch planks laid crossways over wooden "sills", "sleepers". or "stringers",  sometimes laid over logs set corduroy fashion over wet areas¹.

The roads were constructed with drainage ditches along both sides to carry rain water away from them. By keeping the roads from becoming waterlogged, it was predicted plank roads would last 8 to 12 years.  Geddes built the first plank road in America,  the Salina—Central Square Plank Road, north of Syracuse in 1846.

In the first decade of the 19th century New York had experienced an explosion of turnpike road building.  Investors pooled their capital to pay for construction of private roads that charged tolls for their use. But over the next several decades turnpike companies struggled to meet expenses, and rarely turned a profit. Local governments forced them to keep their tolls low and exempted much local traffic from having to pay tolls. Maintenance became a major expense. Mostly dirt roads, the turnpikes became deeply rutted, and in the spring became nearly impassible seas of mud.²

During the second decade, regional turnpikes began to feel the pressure of competition from New York's growing canal system, and in the decades that followed, from the railroads as well. While the great turnpikes struggled and failed and were abandoned into the public domain in the first half of the 19th century, the demand for local feeder roads grew. Farms and towns needed roads to connect them to the State's railroads and canal system, and the regional  and statewide markets that were developing. Into this environment burst the new plank road technology with its promise of smooth reliable transportation at a cost to developers of about $1,500 per mile. By the early 1850's, timber-rich New York was home to some 335 plank road companies, laying some  3,500 miles of plank road,  more than any other state³.  They became especially popular in rural areas where for the first time a growing dairy industry could rush butter, cheese, and even fresh milk to nearby cities.

Main Street, Altamont

 





                    Rte 146 and Rte 9, Clifton Park
                         

County Rte. 110, Broadalbin

But then, just as suddenly as they came into existence, the popularity of plank roads plummeted. Instead of lasting eight to twelve years, as promoted, they began to rot away in a mere four to five years! (The warmer climate of the United States, over Canada or Russia may have hastened their demise.)  Soon the courts were filled with cases of plank road customers seeking compensation for damages to their wagons and horses caused by falls through rotted out planks.  By 1853-54, no new plank roads were being built and repairs to existing plank roads were made with earthen fill and gravel. By 1865 most plank roads had been resurfaced with stone or fill, or they had been abandoned. In the second half of the 19th century, reporting on his trip over a plank road in Michigan,  Mark Twain quipped,  " "It would have been good if some unconscionable scoundrel had not now and then dropped a plank across it."⁴

 

Across New York vestiges of long gone plank
roads can be seen in local streets named "Plank
Road" This one, near the intersection of Rte 9W and Rte 32, was near the end of the South Bethlehem Plank Road, incorporated in 1851.






















 

                        Plank Road, Clarksville
















1The availability of timber and the advent of saw mills made plank roads feasible.  New York was the largest lumber producer in the United States in the first half of the 19^th Century and innovations in saw mill technology, development of circular saws and gang saws (multiple saws that cut a log into several planks at once) made the cheap production of large numbers of planks possible.

2Around 1820 a superior road which resisted ruts and potholes had been developed by a Scots engineer John Macadam. Macadam roads were built on a base of large crushed rock, covered by smaller crushed rock followed by a top layer of small crushed stones and stone dust. The jagged edged stone locked together when packed down forming a stable base. The roads were built with a “crown”--raised in the center, to allow water to run off, and not pool and cause potholes. But at an estimated cost of $3500 a mile they were prohibitively expensive. It was not until the twentieth century that asphalt was used as a binder for Macadam roads.
 

3 See "Turnpikes and Toll Roads in Nineteenth Century America" eh.net/encyclopedia/article/Klein, Majewski,Turnpikes.

4 Quoted in “The Plank Road Craze” /www.michigan.gov/.../0,4570,7-153-54463_18670_18793-5286...


 Marker of the Week --  Repurposed Ver. 4.0    (This is the last one, for now--I promise.)

 Saugerties, New York
From a church, to a school... and a blacksmith shop!
(and now it is home to a church, again.)

 ‎

It Happened Here -- The Man who Measured 

                     (and Saved !) the Mountains--Continued

The height of the mountains and ridges was another physical feature Verplank Colvin sought for his survey maps.  Surprisingly good estimates could be made comparing barometric readings at a known altitude with those at a nearby mountaintop or other feature if taken at the same time. Colvin's crews became accustomed to lugging meter-long mercury filled glass barometers up and down trail-less peaks. But a more accurate measure was also available. "Levelling" was a method in which the surveyor aimed his transit, set level, at zero degrees at a measuring rod held some distance away, below him. The distance from the aiming point to the ground was counted off. The rod was moved to the transit's location, then the transit set further up the mountainside where a  second measure was taken, and so forth until the mountaintop was reached. In this fashion Colvin determined the exact height of Mount Marcy from the known elevation of Lake Champlain, a distance of 40 miles, requiring 800 sets of measuring rod data!

For twenty eight years  the meticulous Colvin worked to map the Adirondacks.   When  generous legislatures  funded his project he would field multiple survey teams and his payroll would include upwards of 100 men. In the leanest times he would continue his work with as few as half a dozen men, paying expenses out of his own pocket.  Finally in 1900, Governor Teddy Roosevelt sought closure for the project. The two strong willed men clashed and Roosevelt turned the mapping of the Adirondacks over to the State Engineer, abolishing the office of Superintendent of Adirondack Survey. Though his life's work would be finished by others it would be his reports and his early work that would have the greatest influence.

Building on the notion of George Perkins Marsh that the unrestricted deforestation of lands around the Mediterranean had resulted in those lands becoming deserts,  Colvin applied that idea to the Adirondacks and the extensive clear cutting he witnessed there. His first survey report expanded on the idea that the vegetation of the Adirondack forests acted like a gigantic sponge, absorbing great quantities of water and releasing it steadily, feeding the streams and rivers and canals of New York State. Clear cutting of the Adirondacks destroyed this natural reservoir and would, he said, lead periods of flooding and increasing periods of prolonged drought. Colvin stressed the economic impact this would have on State commerce as increasing money would have to be spent on dredging rivers to keep shipping channels open, and eventually the state's canals would become inoperable do to lack of water. These arguments got the legislators attention where other appeals for conservation would not have. He was joined in his campaign by the editors of the New York Times and several early sportsman' s magazines. 

 His reports brought the issue to the legislature year after year until in 1885 when the legislature created the Adirondack and Catskill Preserves. Before the creation of the Preserves the State had acquired land through the failure of owners to pay back taxes.  Land acquired this way would be auctioned off at public auctions. Timber companies would buy the land for next to nothing, clear cut it or take all the useable timber, then abandon it, to be taken over by the State, again. The new law protected state own lands in eleven Adirondack and three Catskill counties from being sold or leased.

Seven years later another statute strengthened the original law, creating the Adirondack Park. Six counties considered most critical to the protection of "forested lands necessary to the preservation of the headwaters of the chief rivers of state" were singled out. All future state acquisitions would become part of this park.  Colvin was asked to delineate this area. Taking his most complete survey map he drew a line in blue pencil around the area, creating the boundary of the Adirondack Park, known as "the Blue Line" to this day.

A final protection was given the Adirondack and Catskill Parks when they became protected in a new state constitution. As provisions in the state constitution the law could only be changed if two consecutive state legislatures voted to hold a constitutional convention, and if the convention then decided to enact changes that then would have to be ratified by the people.  In 1894 a constitutional convention was held to remedy other issues in state government, but popular concerns about several years of drought forced legislators to enact greater protections for the Adirondack and Catskill Park. State lands in the Parks were declared to be kept "forever wild",  never to be "leased, sold or exchanged" and the timber on them never to be "sold, removed or destroyed."

e

 One of the early Forest Preserve Markers that marked roads entering state lands. 

This one is part of the N.Y.S. Museum's Adirondack Exhibit in Albany.

Marker of the  Week:  "Repurposed" -- Ver. 3.0 

Warren Street, Hudson

I wonder if patrons of the Warren Inn feel any greater desire to eat Raisinets, Jujubes, or buttered popcorn in bed.

(If you can't make history, you can always write history.  If you can't write history you can always write  parody, at least if you have a few hundred bucks to spare and know the address of Catskill Castings or the other  one or two casting companies that make NYSHM type signs. )

                                         

E-Mail Me: If you have comments about Verplanck Colvin, "Repurposed" Buildings, this blog or any other thing having to do with NYSHM's I would be delighted to hear from you. I would be especially interested if you know of any new or interesting markers or can report on any efforts to restore old markers. My email is

tba998@gmail.com