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.)