It Happened Here --The Battles on Snowshoes

William Johnson had a problem.  He had successfully parried a French thrust down into New York, at the Battle of Lake George using colonial militiamen and his beloved Mohawk Indians but it had taken every ounce of his personal charm and charisma with the Indians to enlist them to support his effort.  

Some thirty three Mohawks had been killed--a significant number for a tribe that numbered only a few thousand. One of their most revered chiefs, Theyanoguin (called Hendrick by the English) had been slain, and, most significantly the Mohawks had end up fighting against their fellow Mohawks from the French mission towns of Caughnawaga.  After the battle they let it be known they wanted no more of this war between white men and they made a hasty departure back to their own villages. Johnson's forces were left virtually blind without scouts in the wilderness north of Albany.

Eight months earlier, Robert Rogers, a young man raised in what was then the wilderness of western New Hampshire, also had a problem, but of a much different sort.  On January 31, 1755 Rogers was under arrest, charged with counterfeiting.  He, and several of his friends had fallen in with Owen Sullivan, a professional criminal and counterfeiter. Rogers had bought three yoke of oxen for Sullivan but by the time he returned Sullivan had left and Rogers was probably stuck with selling the oxen at a loss. Meanwhile Rogers' friends had discovered Sullivan had left behind some counterfeiting plates and  they were soon printing up phony New Hampshire pound and shilling notes. Rogers was charged with buying a wagon, a wig, and a pair of pumps with phony money. Faced with the real possibility of having his ears cropped and his cheeks branded for the crime of passing counterfeit money, Robert Rogers did what some young men who have found themselves "in a fix" have been doing since the dawn of organized warfare. But not content with simply enlisting, the charismatic Rodgers recruited some fifty of his fellow frontier New Hampshire-men, earning himself a captaincy in the process.

 Eight months later he and his regiment from New Hampshire  were stationed at Fort Lyman (about to be rechristened Ft. Edward) when the Battle of Lake George occurred.  After the battle, Johnson called for some experienced woodsmen to volunteer to spy on the French preparations at Fort Frederic. Rogers volunteered and was soon making his way north with two men from his company and two batteau-men, on the first of what would be many scouts.  Rogers returned with the first solid information of the enemy's strength, the state of their fortifications, and the first word on their activity around the Ticonderoga peninsula. Climbing a nearby hill he made a detailed map of the fort at Crown Point.

In a short time he would be leading small parties regularly out from Fort Edward or the new fort, William Henry at the head of Lake George to spy on the French and to raid their supply lines from Montreal. Audacious and clever, Rogers and his men became adept at slipping through the forest undetected and attacking outbuildings, burning batteaux and killing cattle within sight of the french forts. Once he even lured a sentry away from his post, taking the man prisoner to provide detailed information to his captors on the strength of the fort's garrison and hard to obtain details like the health of the French forces  and the state of their morale.

As Rogers schooled himself in the arts of guerrilla warfare he also began making notes on how to train ever larger numbers of scouts. Rogers' fame grew as his exploits were eagerly picked up by the colonial press, desperate for good news from the battlefield.  In March 1756  his successes earned him an interview with Massachusetts governor, William Shirley, temporarily head of the British forces in North America, since General Braddock's defeat and death the previous summer.  Shirley came away from the meeting with the impression that Rogers was not just some brash risk taker but an intelligent leader, and Rogers was given the task of forming a new sixty man independent company of rangers, paid for by the Crown and serving at the pleasure of the commander of British Forces in North America. With officers paid the equivalent of British Army officers, and privates paid almost twice that of provincial soldiers, (who themselves were better paid the regular army privates), Rogers was able to quickly fill the ranks of his new company with a recruiting trip into the New Hampshire frontier. He returned to Fort Edward via Fort No. 4 on the Connecticut river and crossed over to Crown Point where he staged a raid that killed twenty eight of the enemy's cattle. Rogers was making sure some of his new recruits would be earning their generous new pay.  His new Independent Company would be garrisoned on a fortified island in the Hudson River across from Fort Edward.

That summer the Rangers undertook an extremely dangerous mission to take a small fleet of whale boats up Woods Creek and slip by both the new Fort Carillon and Crown Point to attack a French brig sailing on the waters of Lake Champlain supplying both forts. Finding the lake swarming with enemy boats of all sizes they were obliged to attack a small galley before its crew discovered them, then hide their boats and disperse on foot back to Fort Edward.

As the winter of 1756-1757 approached Robert Rogers insured his men were prepared for it by making sure his men were properly clothed for winter operations, their muskets protected from winter rains and snows and each man had fashioned from ash splits and rawhide a pair of Ojibway style snowshoes. On January 21st he set out from Fort William Henry with a raiding party some 85 officers and enlisted men. (Eleven he would send back when he found them faltering from sickness or injuries.) North of Carillon a detachment of his raiding party had ambushed a sledge returning from the Fort, but other sledge drivers following along had seen the attack and beat a hasty retreat back to Ticonderoga.  (See my post of 11/12/13 "The Captivity Narratives") By chance, some 250 Canadians, French Regulars and western Indians had just arrived at the fort with Charles Langlade, an experienced frontier fighter and master of "le petite guerre." Along the western forests of the Trout Brook they staged their ambush. Rogers force, though severely mauled in the initial fusillade was able to fight back, and avoid encirclement, and with their ammunition nearly exhausted melt back into the forest and make their escape as darkness fell. Rogers, his forehead creased by a bullet and his wrist shot through by another ball made his escape with some fifty of his companions.

Rogers Statue. Rogers Island, Ft. Edward

At the end of January Rogers traveled to Albany to have his wounded hand treated and there he  met with Captain James Abercromby, son of Major-General Abercromby. The Captain encouraged him to codify his thoughts on ranging and wilderness warfare.  By summer these "Standing Orders"  were part of the regular ongoing training of Rangers, as Rogers was assigned the training of not only his own men but men from other units, including a new Light Infantry unit created by Brigadier General Howe.

In the late fall Rogers began planning his most ambitious raid to date, one that if successful would lead to the capture of Fort Frederic itself. Rogers' plan was to capture an entire sledge convoy heading for Fort Frederic, dress his men as the convoy's crew and gain entrance to the fort.  Once inside they would throw open the gates to other rangers and light infantry and take the fort by storm. But Rogers' spectacular career had inspired envy and his unorthodox methods discomfort. There were many in the British officer corp that wished him failure.  One such individual, unfortunately, was Colonel Haviland, Rogers' British superior at Ft. Edward.  Haviland disliked the Ranger's unsoldierly appearance. He was appalled at their slovenly camp and a mutiny in the summer of 1757 at Roger's Island set Haviland and Rogers at odds with Rogers defending the mutineers and eventually going over Haviland's head to secure their release. Once that was resolved the British colonel fumed at the Ranger's incessant hunting trips and contests of shooting at marks, which the Colonel viewed as a  waste of ammunition,  instead of useful training. Before the camp Haviland carelessly revealed Rogers' plan to attack Ft. Frederick in early March 1758 with 400 men, and then right before the raid he reduced Rogers' raiding force to a mere 183. 

Rogers was forced to set aside his plan for a more limited objective of ambushing one of the large patrols that regularly set out from Carillon. Concealing themselves in the woods back from the banks of the Trout Brook, Rogers' men waited until a group of nearly 100 French led Indians were in front of them. Though the distance was long, their first volley brought down about a dozen Indians and the rest fled with Rogers' lead divisions in hot pursuit. Unfortunately, their trail had been spotted by a small group of Indians earlier in the day and the hunters were in fact the hunted, for the Indians were but the lead contingent in front of perhaps 200 more Indians and French regulars. Their volley ripped through Rogers' pursuing men. The Ranger's advanced guard was surrounded and surrendered, but the remaining Rangers were able to pull back and avoid envelopment . Holding on until a moonlit night could partially cover their escape, the surviving Rangers dispersed into the woods between Bald and Cooks Mountains.  Rogers, himself, attracted more than his share of attention by clambering with his snowshoes up to the summit of Bald Mountain, allowing more of his comrades to escape. There he faced a sheer 700 foot drop off to the frozen lake below. Some say he flung himself off the sheer precipice, but more likely he sought out a crevice down from summit where ledges, outcropping and vegetation could slow his descent.  In any event, he emerged from the base of the cliff onto the ice below unscathed and from there organized the retreat back to the head of the lake.

Bald Mountain became known as Rogers Rock

Marker of the Week -- Still Other Remnants of the Horse-powered Society

NY 32, Feura Bush

They could fix a plow or make a pair of door hinges, but the mainstay of the local blacksmith shop was the forging of horsehoes and the shoeing of horses and just about every named community much bigger than a rural crossroads had one by the mid 19th century. Like the ubiquitous corner service stations of the 1940's, 50's and 60's with their one or two gas pumps and one or two service bays, blacksmith shops were locally owned and served the transportation needs of the community.

NY443 Clarksville

It Happened Here -- The "Tanlords" of the Catskills*

As the days proceed through November along the upper Schoharie valley and the Kaaterskill in the northern Catskills, the surrounding mountains have turned a soft brown. The broadleaf hardwood forests have shed their fall mantle of red and brown and golden leaves and wait the first winter snows. But two hundred and fifty years ago this scene would have looked much different. Up and down these mountains, from mountain top to creek valley, wide swaths of green Hemlock trees--primeval giants, often three and four foot, and more in diameter would have crowded the land. What happened to these giants was the coming of the leather industry in the first half of the nineteenth century.

Rte 23A, Hunter

Edward's Tannery was the first large Hemlock based Tannery in the Catskills

 Leather had been tanned from prehistoric times.  Europeans brought their knowledge of tanning using the tannic acid produced from oak bark with them to the New World.  The first tanners set up shop in New Amsterdam but were driven out of town by the burghers who objected to the foul smelling enterprise.  They reestablished themselves down stream from the Collect Pond, the original source of New Amsterdam's water in an area known as "the Swamp". Eventually, the businessmen of "the Swamp" came to dominate the leather trade, from the importation of hides from Latin America to the wholesale distribution of leather.  In the 18th and 19th centuries leather was much more widely used than it is today.  Besides boots and shoes, the horse-powered transportation system depended heavily on leather with leather saddles, harnesses and horse collars. Even many carriages swung on a suspension system of leather straps. People might wear leather pants and leather stockings; leather coats and leather hats.  They used leather buckets and even bound their books in leather.

 Hemlock an American species was first used for tanning in Massachusetts. Similar to Norway spruce, used for tanning in Europe, it was said to produce a stronger tanning liquor but gave the leather a distinct reddish color.  Early tanneries were established in Hudson and bark from the Catskills and Helderbergs was first hauled by wagons and flatboats there. But raw hides and the finished leathers were much less bulky than the hemlock bark used to produce them and William Edwards, a man from a long line of craft tanners decided it made more sense to bring the hides to the source of bark, rather than the other way around. In 1822 Edwards built his tannery and went into large scale production, employing the latest technology to cut labor and costs. The tan vats were covered to protect them from the weather. The Schohariekill not only provided clean water

for washing the hides but power to grind the hemlock bark, and pump the tanning liquors from one vat to another, or when it was spent, discharge it back into the Schoharie. The turning water wheels also powered machines to work the leather, rolling and beating it to give it its finish. Soon other tanneries began to dot the hollows, along the streams between the mountains. In the town of Schohariekill, three years later, Zadock Pratt would build an even larger tannery  At 550 feet by 43 feet with 330 vats it was the largest tanning operation in the world. It featured 6 heaters to warm the tanning liquor, 12 leaches to drain the vats, 2 water powered bark mills to grind the hemlock bark and 3 water powered hide mills to flex and soften the thick, dried and often salted imported hides. Pratt would proclaim his accomplishment in the carved cliff side above the town that came to bear his name, Prattsville, "One Million sides of Sole Leather Tanned with Hemlock Bark in Twenty Years by Zadock Pratt”. (In a future post we will revisit the remarkable Colonel Pratt.) 

  

Tanning was hard on the environment. Large tanneries stank for miles around; the acid effluent from their vats killed fish and degraded streams for miles downstream; and most significantly, tanneries required large quantities of hemlock trees.  The bark mills at Pratt's tannery ran day and night. The mills could grind over a cord of bark an hour. (A cord is a pile of bark/wood 4' x 4' x 8' !) Warmed water was filtered through the chips to make a tannic acid liquor in which hides were steeped for months at a time. Over time, whole forests were chopped down, stripped of their bark and the wood and brush usually left to rot on the hillsides or catch fire. 

The Tannery Brook that runs across the western section of
Woodstock, past quaint little shops and T-shirt outlets would
have provided a much different ambiance in its day. It would have been clogged with chunks of putrid flesh and hair and regularly contaminated with the acidic effluent of the mills.

Smaller tanneries were once common; Co.Rte 38, Greenville

By the early 1840's tanners were having to go ever greater distances for their tanbark. Zadock Pratt ran sledges or bark wagons as far as 50 miles from bark harvest sites to his tannery.  In 1845 he closed his Prattsville tannery and moved his tanning operations to Sampsonville in Ulster county. By 1855 there were only nine small tanneries in Greene county, down from some 56 in 1840. By the time of the Civil War tanning boom (millions of boots were required for marching armies) the tanning industry had largely left New York State and was centered in the Alleghenies and even farther west.



Marker of the Week --Other Remnants of the Horse-powered Society

At the Inn of Jacob Crounse, Altamont

 

Wagons and carriages tended to have large wheels, because large wheels afforded a mechanical advantage, enabling horses to pull them through ruts, over corduroy roads and across boggy ground. But large wheels gave them height, making entrance and exit from carriages difficult, especially for women in voluminous skirts, children, and the elderly. Often around markers in front of historical homes, stone carriage steps can be seen. One can only guess, for every stone step that survived, how many were carted away when roads were widened—and beyond that, how many wooden ones have disappeared from age and decay.

Another Carriage step, made from flagstones in front of a residence in Dormansville

It Happened Here --The Captivity Narratives (Part 1)

While doing some reading for an upcoming blog on Roger's Rangers I was reminded of one of the early forms of colonial literature, the "Captivity Narrative." During the first "battle on snowshoes"  sixteen year old Thomas Brown was captured and would later write about his experience.

From the earliest days of colonial exploration and settlement accounts of settlers capture and captivity by Native Americans were part of the American experience that survivors of that experience felt compelled to record for their contemporaries and for posterity. Thus, Captain John Smith would describe his capture by Opechancanough, brother of the powerful chief Powhatan and his rescue by Pocahontas in 1607. In one of the most famous captivity narratives Mary Rowlandson would describe her eleven week captivity in the hands of the Nipmuc and Narragansett Indians during the the King Phillip's War in 1676.  Rowlandson's  The Sovereignty and Goodness of God:  Being a Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson became perhaps America's first best seller. Going through four printings in 1682, it was later studied extensively by scholars seeking to understand how Puritans viewed their Indian neighbors in the 17th century.

In Indian warfare, among the Eastern Woodland peoples. taking prisoners was probably always  as an important an objective as was capturing plunder and taking scalps. Prisoners might be used or sold as slaves, ritually tortured to appease spirits or to satisfy the need for revenge, or given for adoption to family members who had lost loved ones through disease or warfare. Contacts with Europeans only exacerbated these needs.  First contacts with Europeans had introduced diseases that decimated Native American communities. The loss of wives, children, and young men who would have become the future hunters/warriors in the tribe were keenly felt. The desire for European weapons and trade goods inspired a fierce competition for previously little valued beaver pelts.  Fueled by the desire to dominate the beaver trade, the Iroquois engaged in internecine warfare with most of their Native American neighbors throughout most of the 17th century.  The losses incurred by these "beaver wars" led to further raids, so called "mourning wars" motivated by the twin desires for revenge and replacement of lost family members. The outbreak of war between France and England, and their respective colonies added new incentives. Both English and French colonial authorities offered bounties for scalps and ransoms for live prisoners, with, of course, higher bounties paid for live prisoners. Particularly in labor-starved New France prisoners of war could be put to use in agricultural tasks. Britain would continue the practice on the frontier in the American War for Independence.

Writing in 1760, Thomas Brown produced a small pamphlet that detailed how he was taken prisoner while participating in a raid deep in enemy territory between the French forts of Carillon and St. Frederick at Crown Point. The raid led by Robert Rogers attacked a supply sled heading north from Carillon. As a detachment of Rangers attacked the sled, more sleds came into view and seeing the danger quickly turned tail for Carillon and made their escape. From the prisoners Roberts captured he learned that a force of nearly two hundred and fifty French and Indians had just arrived at Carillon and that being just arrived, would be fully equipped and available to intercept him.  One of Rogers precepts for scouting was never take the same route back from a scouting foray as you do on the way out, but he probably felt his best option, with the deep snow was to make his way back along the trail already broken through the snow to outrun any pursuers. Unfortunately, either through good luck or information brought by a foraging hunter,  the French found the Rangers' trail and were able to set an ambush. Only the cocking of some two hundred muskets gave away their position, too late to respond as a wave of fire tore through the Ranger ranks. Thomas Brown was shot through the side but was able to dispatch the prisoner he was guarding. Brown fired several shots before a musket ball smashed his gun stock. Dodging an attacking Indian, he broke his snowshoes, then kicking out of them lost his moccasins. Fighting through the afternoon,  he suffered additional musket ball wounds to his knee and shoulder.  Covered with blood, and probably slipping in and out of consciousness he was left for dead in the darkness when the order came for the Rangers to retreat back into the forest, as night fell.

During that night Thomas came upon his Captain and a British volunteer, both severely injured but alive. To prevent them from freezing to death Brown kindled a small fire. Later he watched in horror as he observed an Indian creeping toward them. Brown managed to crawl out beyond the light of the fire as the Indian attacked Captain Speakman stripping him of his clothes and scalping the still living officer.  Confronted with the horror of Speakman's scalping, Baker, the British volunteer attempted to cut his own throat but the Indian knocked his knife away and with a whoop grabbed the wounded soldier and bolted away into the darkness. Speakman, still conscious, begged Brown to end his life. Brown refused.  After Speakman died Brown began to hobble his way southward until about 11AM the next day when he was tracked down by a party of four Indians. Much to Brown's surprise, they staunched his wounds with leaves and took him to the French encampment,  near the battle site.  There he was reunited with private Baker and five other Rangers. The prisoners were ordered to march to Carillon but Baker was at the end of his endurance and refused to go on. As an Indian stepped forward, grabbing the British soldier's hair to scalp him, Brown swung the soldier's arms over his back, demonstrating he would carry him the one and a half miles to Ft. Carillon.

At Carillon Brown and the other captives were  well treated. The French Commandant fed them, bandaged their wounds and even gave them a bottle of claret. By the end of March, Brown was recovered enough to travel. His new master, one of the Indians who had captured him, hitched him to a heavy sledge and compelled him to pull it up the frozen lake to Crown Point. Near the Fort, as he reached the point of exhaustion, Brown invited three Indian women to climb on board the sled and told them he wished he could pull them as well. This act of bravado, along with his previous acts of courage, stamina and endurance led his captors to begin to consider the teenager as a candidate for adaption, instead of a slave and a war trophy.  Relieved of his heaviest burdens he was stripped of his clothes and given a blanket.  His hair was cut in the fashion of his captor's tribe, his face painted and his hand was tattooed. All of this he accepted.  When another captive resisted such treatment he was burned at the stake and Brown was compelled to participate in the Indians rituals and dancing around the fire.   Taken to an Indian village, a few miles from Montreal, Brown endured a version of the gauntlet ritual. Stripped naked he was forced to run to a wigwam as the villagers chased him, pelting him with sticks and stones.

That summer Brown was taken by his captor to his home in the Missisippi country and given to a women who was to be his adopted mother. Throughout the winter of 1757-1758 he hunted and dressed pelts for her. In the spring a French trader arrived. The trader needed help transporting the pelts he had bought back to Montreal. Brown convinced her to let him go with the voyageur. Back in Montreal Brown was traded to a Canadian farmer to work on his farm for food and clothing. Over the summer he became acquainted with another prisoner, a boy working on an adjacent farm. They conspired to escape together, and Brown, who was allowed the use of a gun for shooting pigeons, shot extra, drying them and hiding them in the woods. In September Brown and the boy made their escape. After a week, however, their food gave out and they survived for another fifteen days on roots worms and frogs, before the boy died. Brown considered cannibalism and even removed some of the flesh from the boy's body before burying it, but he could not bring himself to eat his friend's flesh. Brown was on the verge of succumbing, himself,  when a partridge landed nearby which he was able to shoot, cook and eat, along with two other pigeons.  His gunshots led a group of Canadian foragers to signal back to him and he was able find them before collapsing.  In their company he made a feeble attempt to present himself as a Dutchman in the service of the French army but they took him to Crown Point where he was quickly recognized. Under guard, the boy Ranger was returned to his Canadian master in Montreal. For the next several weeks he skirted extreme abuse from his outraged master by seeking the friendship and protection of a French officer quartered in the his master's home. In November 1758 Thomas Brown was included in a prisoner exchange and returned to Boston.

A Plain Narrative of the Uncommon Sufferings, and Remarkable Deliverance of Thomas Brown was published two years later in Boston.  Selling for "8 Coppers", it was very popular and had a second printing that same year.

Marker of the Week -- A remnant of the horse-powered society.

 

In one of his posts last week,  Hoxsie!  blogger Carl Johnson featured an 1863 advertisement for an Albany dealer of hay and feed. It is easy to forget the accommodations that were necessary to provide for a horse-powered society. Occasionally the NYSHM's remind us of some of those accommodations.

  The Reformed Church in Unionville on Rte 443 in Albany County is pretty typical of most country churches built in the first half of the 19th century.  What sets it apart from most churches of its day is the survival of a very large 1840 horse shed. While it seems reasonable that many churches should have had these, with services running for four or five hours or more,  in both summer heat and through winter storms,  there is little evidence at most churches that this type of building ever existed.

It Happened Here -- The Lingering Death of the Leaseholds

(The Anti-Rent Wars -- Conclusion)

February 1, 1847 saw release of all fourteen prisoners convicted in the Anti-Rent trials.  Huge celebrations occurred in Clarksville, Reidsville and Andes as the men returned to their Hilltown homes and farms in Delaware County. That year the Van Rensselaer brothers with Mary Livingston, widow of Henry Walter Livingston appealed directly to the legislature to repeal the taxes on their leasehold properties.  They were unsuccessful.

 

 A desperate Stephen Van Rensselaer IV offered to sell his properties to his tenants for $1.00 per acre but the West Manor farmers refused.  In Schoharie County the Blenheim Hill farmers negotiated with Landlord John A. King who accepted $25,000 for his 15,000 acres of leaseholds. That year also saw the departure of many hilltown anti-rent farmers for the upper Midwest. Some of them in the vicinity of Ripon Wisconsin became active in the creation of the Republican Party. Other politician/activists who supported and encouraged the Anti-renters moved on into national politics helping to create the Free Soil Party which opposed the extension of slavery in the territories and supported making available frontier land, instead, to homesteaders. 

In 1848 Governor John Young feeling he would be abandoned by the conservative wing of his Whig party decided to throw his lot in with the liberals and the Anti-renters and instructed the attorney general to begin proceedings to recover manor lands for the state, unless the landlords could prove their titles to the land. The landlords responded by attempting to grab what rents they could and once again try to mobilize public support by provoking the farmers to violence.  Another wave of court summonses, shots fired at sheriffs and tar and featherings followed. Court cases declared the quarter-sale provisions of leases were unconstitutional and a lower court declared the Van Rensselaer titles were invalid.  Though the Court of Appeals would reverse the lower court's decision Stephen Van Rensselaer had had enough and sold out his lease-holdings  to land speculator Walter Church for $210,000.

Walter Church was a hard and ruthless businessman. Whatever the final fate of the leaseholds, Church was determined to wring a profit out of his investment. Church began  his tenure as landlord of the West Manor by widely distributing handbills that threatened all tenants who failed to settle up their overdue rents with court actions, for which they would have to pay court costs and interest of 6% on all unpaid rents. At the same time he began to spend lavishly entertaining and hobnobbing with state politicians and judges. Church began to win judgements against his tenants. In the next decades he would bring and win thousands of suits. But, for the most part, the tenants refused to pay! A court case in 1858 reconsidered the constitutionality of quarter sales and challenged the right of landlords of lifetime leases to continue to charge rents. William Van Rensselaer's nerve faltered and he sold out his East Manor holdings to Church in a package that transferred some of his properties for as little as 25¢ on the dollar.  Church's graft had apparently paid off. He seems to have known in advance the court would uphold the previous decision declaring quarter sales unconstitutional, but would not touch the landlord's right to collect rents on properties "sold" with quarter sale provisions.

 Church decided to take more direct action against tenants, believing that any violence that occurred would only tend to discredit the tenants.  In 1860, at the head of an Albany County posse  he evicted Peter Ball and his family, throwing them out in the snow. A large crowd watched, but did not try to stop him, instead waiting until the posse had left to restore Ball and his family back into their home.

During the war years Church continued his tactics, concentrating on younger tenants, many who were enlisted in the Army and whose farms were most vulnerable with their major producer away at war.
In 1865 Church arranged for his friend Henry Fitch to be elected Sheriff of Albany County and obtained a Colonelcy for himself in the National Guard.  Marching his troops into the Helderbergs (without orders from the Governor) he re-evicted Peter Ball and on three separate forays coerced rents from scores of tenants. This time he had gone too far.  The public and the press reacted with disgust, recognizing his actions for what they were--a naked exercise of power for one man's personal gain, not an action to insure the public peace. The outrageous Colonel Church calmly submitted his bill to the Albany County Board of Supervisors--$6000 for expenses and $115 for the personal services of Colonel Church; but this was the last time Church attempted such an extensive action at public expense.

On the East Manor, Walter Church had a windfall when he was able to foreclose on a farm worth $25,000 owned by Martinus Lansing by tacking on fees and other expenses to an $800 rent bill until Lansing was unable to pay and was evicted by Rensselaer County deputy sheriff Willard Griggs.  A similar action was attempted in 1869 at the nearby Whitbeck farm. Again, Church found reasons to keep raising the ante, and secured a court order for Whitbeck's eviction. Church arranged for a posse to accompany Sheriff Griggs.  Whitbeck met Griggs with the demanded money but Griggs stated he could not take it and had to evict the farmer. Griggs refused to budge. A sheriff's deputy pulled a gun and the shooting began.  A dozen armed farmers emerged from the barn shooting. Four deputies were wounded and Sheriff Griggs lay on the ground dying from five gunshots. When Walter Church arrived the gun battle was all over. Church tried to shift responsibility for the shooting from himself but when the trial was moved to Saratoga County, beyond the range of his political influence, the Whitbecks,  father and sons, were all acquitted.

Despite all his suits and all his expenditures, legal and extra-legal, to get  his tenants to pay rents they no longer saw as justified, in the long run, Walter Church was unable to profit from his land speculations, dying, discredited, in near bankruptcy in 1890.  Gradually, overtime, farmers negotiated to buy their farms with new generations of landowners; other farmers abandoned their farms and moved West, and the properties were sold outright, or leased in short term leases. Although a few farmers were still paying on perpetual leases into the twentieth century by the third quarter of the nineteenth century leaseholds and the system of great manors were a thing of the past.

Co. Rte 43, Alps, Rensselaer County

Dr Smith Broughton returned to live in Alps, Rensselaer county, practicing medicine until 1880 and dying in 1888.  Ironically, this first leader of the New York Anti-Rent movement was buried only a short distance from one of the last to fall in the Anti-Rent Wars.  Nineteen years earlier, Willard Griggs had been buried in this same cemetery with a tombstone inscribed "Erected by a friend*,  to the memory of Willard Griggs who was shot in fearless discharge of his duty as Deputy Sheriff executing process...."

 *probably Walter Church.
                                                                   






        Dr. Broughton's family plot lies in the left
        foreground; the Griggs obelisk is in the center.










(In this series of posts I have made extensive use of Henry Christman's Tin Horn's and Calico, originally published in 1945.  Though there have been several excellent analyses of this movement since then, Christman's book dramatically describes the events of the struggle better than most.)