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.)

It Happened Here -- From Alps, to Berne, to Andes

the Anti-Rent Wars Continue

The year 1845 began with the inauguration of a new governor.  The democrats had dumped William C. Bouck, a farmer from Schoharie county who had shown sympathy for the anti-renters,  in favor of Silas Wright who edged out his Whig opponent in the fall elections. Wright who had made overtures to the anti-renters, nevertheless came to believe the Calico Indians needed to be brought to heel.

Lutheran Church,  NYS443, Berne

That same month, an Anti-rent Convention was held in Berne.  In the dead of winter, 150 delegates from 11 counties crowded in the Lutheran Church in Berne to rally and write an anti-rent platform for political action.  They demanded that the special rights landlords had to draw up eviction papers without any government oversight be revoked. They asserted their right to challenge the landlords' title to their land and they demanded landlord's rents and other exemptions be taxed. In an effort to lend respectability to their movement, they passed a resolution calling for individual anti-rent associations to suspend the activities and tactics of their "Indian" organizations. That spring,
accompanied by 25,000 signatures, they presented their petition to the legislature.

NYS 443 & Co. Rte 1, Westerlo

Ignoring the resolutions of the Anti-rent Convention,  on January 28th Silas Wright asked for, and got from the legislature a law making it a crime for persons to appear in public armed and in disguise, or to fail to assist a law officer in discharging his duty.  Though technically misdemeanors, these laws carried with them jail penalties.

In the spring and summer of 1845 landlords and sheriff departments, working for them, encouraged by the new laws,  began a new round of attempts to serve papers and apprehend "Indians", especially in Ulster, Schoharie and Delaware Counties. In Delaware county, Under-sheriff Osman N. Steele made it his personal crusade to break the power of the Anti-Renters and bring the "Indians" to justice.

On Dingle Hill Rd, south of Andes

In August,  Sheriff Green More, Under-sheriffs  Steele and Edgerton and Peter Wright, the Landlord's Agent came to collect back rent from Moses Earle, a farmer from outskirts of Andes, in Delaware County. When Earle refused to pay, the Sheriff's men  began to round up several of Earle's cattle, to satisfy the rent due.  Cut off by a large group of "Indians", Deputy Edgerton declared he would shoot dead the first man who tried to stop him. As is often the case, what happened next is not clear.  A quick exchange of shots occurred and Steele, who was one of those firing, went down, mortally wounded.

                                An outdoor exhibit of Characters in the Anti-War drama that played out in Andes, NY

Under-sheriiff Osman Steele and  Landlord's Agent

 Indians, Moses Earl & his Adopted daughter

Calico Indians

According to legend, when Earl began to waver in his resolve not to pay the rent, Parthenia, his daughter snatched his money pouch from him and stuffed it in her blouse.






Following Steele's death a firestorm of reaction swept through Delaware county. Within twenty days nearly 150 anti-rent farmers were jailed in special windowless log structures thrown up  in the county seat, Delhi, for the emergency. Governor Wright declared the county in a state of rebellion and ordered 300 troops into the county. Mainstream city newspapers screamed for revenge. (Throughout the whole of the Anti-rent conflicts mainstream newspapers ranged from unsympathetic to viciously hostile to the farmers cause, often misrepresenting the facts and even fabricating outright lies. The farmers countered with half a dozen of their own agrarian and anti-rent papers, of various political persuasions.)

Steele's death galvanized Governor Wright's desire to prosecute Smith Broughton, to both remove him as a leader of the Anti-rent forces, and to make an example of him.  By September 1st Broughton was back in custody, facing a second trial.  Wright appointed John W. Edmonds, a close personal friend and political ally of the Governor.  For weeks potential jurors were examined until a group free of any sympathy for the anti-rent cause was found. In his charge to the jury, Edmonds instructed them  to stand firm and bring the guilty to justice. The jury complied and found Broughton guilty. In a sentencing panel of county judges and Hudson city officials Edmonds steadfastly pressed for the maximum sentence until one of the judges agreed with him, giving him a plurality of votes. Broughton would receive life imprisonment for the theft of a handful of court papers!

In Delhi, the Delaware county seat, trials proceeded against the first two of the 150 accused.  As in Hudson the Delhi jury was carefully screened to prevent anyone with anti-rent sympathies from being seated. And to further guard against anyone among the jury from being uninformed,  Judge Parker lectured the jury on the evils that the anti-rent movement had visited upon society. Finally, after the prosecution's testimony linking the selected defendants to the scene and establishing them as "Indians," Judge Parker came with a remarkable charge to the Jury. Any defendant found to have been armed and disguised was guilty of violating Wright's Anti-disguise law and subject to a year in state prison. Any crime punishable by state imprisonment was defined as a felony. Any death that resulted resulted during the commission of a felony was murder!  The jury was appalled, but given the judge's instructions could do little but convict and petition Judge Parker for leniency.  Parker chose to ignore their petition but declared that the ends of justice had been served. The two were sentenced to hang.  Facing likely death sentences, thirteen others plea bargained for manslaughter, receiving sentences of "life" to two years; fifty one paid fines or received suspended sentences and the rest avoided prosecution  by promising to cease all anti-rent activities.

Though the trials had been a tactical victory for Silas Wright and the "Up-Rent" forces,  their outrageous proceedings and draconian sentences turned many thoughtful people into supporters of the anti-rent movement. At the polls, in November, the Anti-Renters made their strongest showing ever.
Two weeks before their execution, at the end of November, Wright yielded to pressure and commuted sentences of the two condemned "Indians" to life imprisonment. In January, Wright did an unabashed about face, announcing it was time to examine the leasehold system in New York, and appointed a commission. At the same time a coalition of forces was pushing for a convention to revise the state's Constitution. From it came amendments prohibiting feudal style leases; restricting agricultural leases to 12 years; and outlawing "quarter sales" and fines that made it difficult or unprofitable for farmers to sell their properties. In addition many judges and top officials (including Attorney Generals) would now be elected, rather than appointed.  It would now be harder for a Governor to place his men within a court proceeding to insure things went "his way. "

By the election of 1846 Whigs and Democrats were closely matched in strength. Holding the balance of power were the anti-rent voters. Silas Wright came begging to Mary Broughton with an offer of pardon for her husband if Smith, and her father, anti-rent leader Amasa Bailey would support him. He also went to Clinton Prison to make the same offer to the Delhi defendants held there. John Young, the Whig candidate for Governor appealed directly to members of the 2nd Anti-Rent Convention, meeting in Albany. The overwhelming number of Anti-Renters threw their support to John Young and the Whigs.  Young swept into power. The new governor attempted to equivocate on his promise, but a quickly assembled petition with 11,000 signatures forcefully reminded him of his commitment. Broughton and the Delhi defendants were pardoned and released.

In the next few weeks we will conclude this series with a final post on the Anti-Rent wars.

Marker of the Week -- Honorable ?    Well, it was a rough and tumble political era.
                                                      (There is nothing like a little history to give us some
                                                       perspective on our own lives and times.)    
                                                    

US 4, across from Maple Street, Hudson Falls

It Happened Here -- The Physicians Who Practiced "Sedition"

And the Rising of the Calico Indians

  

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

Back in the end of May, this year. NYSHMs--It Happened Here told the story of the "Battle" of Clarksville,  an early confrontation between large New York landlords and rural lease-holding farmers in what became a decades long struggle known as the "Anti-Rent Wars".

Rte. 22, Claverack

From the earliest colonial times the Dutch attempted to populate their colony by granting huge tracts of land to Patroons who would enlist groups of settlers to take leases, work the land and put down roots securing the Dutch claim to the colony. When the Duke of York, brother of King Charles II, of Great Britain swept into power, driving the Dutch government out, he and his agents--a succession of early English colonial governors, found it convenient to continue the system the Dutch had utilized, granting large leasehold to political supporters and favorites, giving them the right to issue "three lifetime" or perpetual leases to farmer tenants and granting them power to govern their Manors and adjudicate disputes. The Van Rensselaers not only survived the change of power but continued to prosper, acquiring in addition to their Albany County holdings, the "Lower Manor" comprising most of what became Rensselaer County and land down to Livingston manor in what became Columbia County.

The Vedder Farm, a life lease in Gallatineville

After the American Revolution, Stephen Van Rensselaer III developed a scheme for populating the least fertile areas of his manor by offering leases to revolutionary war veterans rent free for seven years, to give them a chance to develop their farms. Other manors and smaller leaseholds also benefited from the post-war demand for farmlands as leases were taken out on undeveloped, less desirable plots of land in the hilly hinterlands from the Taconic Hills, the Berkshires,  to the Helderbergs, the foothills of the Catskills, the Blenheim "backbone" and Delaware County.

Stephen Van Renssellaer III was able to manage the 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, but a crisis occurred when Van Rensselaer died and his heirs chose to press the tenants for their back rent. Out of this crisis grew an increasing awareness on the part of tenants of the inherent unfairness of this system which required them to pay and pay the value of their farms many times over, gave them nothing for the improvements they had made to their farms, and effectively prevented them from selling their property.  What once had seemed entirely proper in the English Colonies-- a landed aristocracy organizing and controlling a class of tenant farmers, now seemed gallingly undemocratic in a new republican society of Jacksonian democracy.

Crounse's marker in Altamont makes no mention of his anti-rent activities

Key to the growth of this perception was the influence of country doctors.  Traveling from farm to farm, country doctors ministered to the sick and injured,  and were routinely on hand when such personal crises on family farms brought about economic crises as well.  Spreading news and opinions from other farms they were instrumental in the creation of farmer's Anti-Rent organizations. Frederick Crounse was one such doctor, whose patients and their families would often be treated to a spontaneous lecture on democratic principles and reminded of their civic obligation to unite against the oppression of the Patroon.

In the East (Lower) Manor, another doctor,  Smith Broughton organized meetings in local towns, and spoke at corn huskings, barn raisings--wherever farmers gathered, to organize them into a boycott on paying rent. As the boycott became increasingly effective, the landlords countered by attempting to use local sheriffs to repossess  farms and confiscate farm animals and personal property to satisfy unpaid rents.

Co. Rte 157A, East Berne

In May 1844 anti-rent leaders from several counties, including Broughton met at a private home in East Berne to decide what to do. They agreed to a plan to set up independent units of disguised and armed farmers to disrupt repossessment sales and prevent the confiscation of animals and property. Set up as independent cells, no individual would know more than a few other individuals.  In a nod to the Sons of Liberty who had disguised themselves as Indians and dumped the tea into Boston harbor at the beginning of the American Revolution, the Anti-Renters called them "Indians", and identified each other with "Indian" names.  Inexpensive calico cloth was sown into loose gowns by farmer's wives, pledged to secrecy and fanciful masks of sheepskin, decorated with horns, war paint and animal hair mustaches and beards were made by the farmers. The "Indians" armed themselves with a variety of muskets, pistols, clubs and sharpened farm tools. As in the first confrontation, in Clarksville, back in 1839, the tin dinner horns would be used to communicate, and spread the alarm day or night at a moment's notice. Within a few weeks a tenant

NYS Rte 212, Lake Hill

militia of perhaps 10,000 farmers was armed, "uniformed," trained and ready. On the East Manor, one of its leaders and a spokesman who went by the name of "Big Thunder" was Dr. Smith Broughton.

By that summer sheriffs or their deputies in both the East and West Manors and Delaware County were turned back or had the foreclosure writs they were attempting to serve taken from them and burned and some were treated to a coat of warm pine tar and feathers.

The successes of the "Indians" engendered a concerted effort by "law and order" and  pro-landlord opposition forces to identify the ring leaders and stop them.  In December, Dr. Broughton was scheduled to speak at Smoky Hollow in Columbia County. Before the speech he talked with a prominent politician and realized later he may have intimated that he and "Big Thunder" were one and the same.  When he walked to the platform to speak he was greeted with a raucous ovation, with mounted "Indians" in the back of the crowd galloping back and forth, discharging their muskets into the air. Suddenly a young man standing in front of him collapsed, mortally wounded. A coroner's inquest would declare it was an unfortunate accident, the result of the reckless behavior of the Indians. Broughton agreed at the time, but in later years came to believe it was a failed assassination attempt. After the speech he was arrested, and not told until later he was being held for theft of foreclosure writs, taken from a Sheriff at Copake and burned by "Big Thunder".  Broughton and a fellow anti-renter were imprisoned  and chained in the Hudson City Jail under brutal conditions, as an unsympathetic judge first ignored then denied all efforts of the Anti-Renters to get Broughton released on bail. In March the trial was held, but the jury could not agree on an acquittal. One juror, who worked as a miller for the Livingstons declared he would never agree. With a hung jury Broughton was returned to jail.

All the while the anti-rent associations were working legal channels to secure Boughton's release, the anti-rent farmers of Columbia County were working to make the incarceration of Broughton as expensive as possible for the people of Hudson.  Refusing to sell their produce in the city of Hudson, the farmers also refused to buy or allow the distribution of Hudson newspapers unsympathetic to the anti-rent cause. Indians demonstrated on the outskirts of Hudson and throughout Columbia County causing panic and calls for troops to be stationed in Hudson.  Governor Silas Wright sent troops from Albany but the costs of housing and feeding them were borne by the city. 

Co. Rte 43, Alps

Broughton's modest home has seen some hard use

Finally, a desperate plot was hatched to free the doctor.  The bars of his cell were sawed through and horses for an escape attempt were stationed at seven mile intervals out of the state.  But at the last moment Broughton refused to go. Believing escape would be an admission of guilt, Broughton later wrote"I had acted within my  natural and constitutional rights, trying to save my fellow citizens.... I was determined to leave legally or not at all."

Through the spring and into the summer Doctor Broughton remained in jail. On the 4th of July huge anti-rent rallies were held in Albany, Rensselaer, Schoharie, Columbia and Delaware Counties. There and in other Independence Day celebrations across the state speakers railed against the treatment of Smith Broughton, and heaped the blame for it and the continuing disturbances associated with it, on the shoulders of Governor Wright. With elections just four months away Wright realized he needed to do something to diffuse the anger directed at him.  Recalling the present judicial commissioner, he appointed a new commissioner with new instructions--Fix Bail!

Broughton was free for now but his troubles were far from over. Ahead of him he faced another trial, a conviction and imprisonment. More severe tests awaited the calico Indians. The death of an undersheriff in Delaware County would result in some two hundred and fifty Indians imprisoned and charged as accessories to capital murder. And the leasehold system itself would endure a lingering death as the original manor-holding families piecemeal sold out to their tenants or tried to cut their losses by selling out to land speculators who would, in turn, try their hand at extracting rents. But all of this is for another post. The significance of what happened over the summer of 1845 was nothing less than a sea change of public opinion.

The Marker Of The Week -- Will return Next Week.

(Apologies to my regular readers who were looking for a Post on Monday. I guess I enjoyed vacation a little too much, and had trouble buckling down to get out a post the first day I returned! --Tom)