Part 5
During the Patroonship of the Van Rensselaers--a period of about 150 years--many important events occurred, changing the relations of nations, the forms of government, and affecting Patroon interests. The Patroons were reputable men of affairs and some of them of superior abilities and generally discharged their duties creditably. To trace their acts through their rule would now be not only tedious but useless. There arose a controversy between the Dutch West India Company and the Patroon concerning the territory surrounding Fort Orange (in Albany) built by the company, which was finally decided in favor of the Patroon, as the territory surrounding the fort and the fort itself was within his patent. The fur trade early was very important and as the English, claiming the territory under the right of prior discovery, sought this trade, their vessels sailed up the Hudson and set up trading posts. The Patroon attempted to prevent traders from coming to his colony to deal with the colonists and Indians and with that object in view ordered one Nicolaas Coorn to fortify Beeren Island (about eleven miles below Albany), a commanding position, and there demand of each skipper of a vessel passing, except those of the Dutch West India Company, a toll of five guilders ($2) as a tax and also to lower his colors in honor of the Patroon. Govert Loockermans, sailing the vessel "Good Hope" up the river in 1644, was ordered, as he was passing the fort, to lower her colors, which he refused to do and Coorn gave him three cannon shots. In pursuing this course the Patroon virtually said, I own not only the territory on both sides of the river but the river itself for that distance. The Patroon was compelled to back down and pay damages.
The Netherlands, an ancient kingdom, formerly included Belgium (now a separate kingdom, Brussels, its capital) and ten provinces besides North and South Holland, its largest and most important ones, with Amsterdam and The Hague as the capitals. Frequently the name of Holland is used when Netherlands should have been.
The Lords States General (in many respects like our Congress, composed of the Senate and House of Representatives) was the legislative body of the Netherlands, and in June, 1621, granted a charter to the Dutch West India Company, giving it the exclusive privileges, for a period of twenty-four years, as follows: To traffic on the coast and in the interior of Africa from the Tropic of Cancer to the Cape of Good Hope; in America and the West Indies with the power to make engagements, contracts, and alliances with the rulers and people designated in the charter; to build forts, to appoint and discharge officers, to advance the settlement of unoccupied territory, to enlarge the channels of commerce, and to multiply the sources of revenue.
The company was required to report, from time to time, its doings, and in the appointment of civil and military officers and instructions given to them the Lords States General were to be consulted and the commissions must bear their seal. If troops were needed the Lords States General would furnish them but the company must pay all the expenses. The charter intrusted the government of the company to five chambers of managers consisting of nineteen members, eight from the Amsterdam Chamber, four from the Zealand, two from the Maas, two from North Holland, two from the Frieland, and the government one.
This company, under its charter, introduced the Patroon system granting certain rights and privileges (very liberal ones and in some respects extraordinary) and reserving the traffic in furs and peltry and in manufactured goods and in the carrying trade, except along the Atlantic coast, in which the Patroons might engage, paying a fixed tribute.
The colonists might, with the permission of the Patroon and of the director of the Dutch West India Company, take up what unoccupied land they could work, paying an annual rent to the Patroon. That rent was based upon the value of land primarily and was to be paid in so many bushels of wheat, rye, etc., so many pounds of butter, so many eggs and so many chickens, etc. Everything the colonists had to sell must first be offered to the Patroon. The Dutch West India Company was to furnish the Patroons troops if needed as against the colonies, the expense to be met by the landlords. The colonists couldn't leave the Patroon's service during the term fixed. The value of the land before cultivation and buildings ranged usually from ten cents to two dollars per acre. The tenant improved the land, built house and barn to live comfortably, and what was called "the Quarter Sale" seemed the most unreasonable, intolerable. To illustrate: Suppose the tenant occupied a farm originally valued at $2 an acre for 200 acres, say $400. He had improved it by cultivation, buildings, etc., until it became worth and he sold it for $4,000. Then the Patroon demanded $1,000. Four sales would give the Patroon the whole. The rent, of course, was paid annually, or should have been, and if there were arrears the Patroon claimed that that must come out of the remaining $3,000.
The Netherlands primarily based their claim for the territory called New Netherlands on Henry Hudson's discovery (so called) of five degrees of north latitude, viz.: from 40° to 45° or from Delaware bay and river to Cape Cod, where he touched or explored in 1609. Great Britain claimed under the Cabots' discoveries, in 1497 and 1498, the whole stretch of the North Atlantic coast from Florida to Newfoundland. The French claimed a portion of northern Florida, which subsequently became a part (the sea coast) of Georgia, and the Spanish the rest of Florida. Virginia, under the English, late in the sixteenth and early in the seventeenth centuries, extended from Cape Fear up to what later became the southern boundary of Pennsylvania, and New England extended from Virginia to Nova Scotia. From 1609 until 1664 the Dutch held the New Netherlands and then were compelled to surrender the territory to the English under the grant of Charles II to James, his brother, the Duke of York and Albany, who, in 1685, became King of England under the title of James III. Great Britain never recognized the Dutch claim--always protested against it--but being engaged in wars almost constantly did not use force to obtain possession before. "It had become important to dislodge the Dutch to prevent the smuggling of Virginia tobacco into England at a loss to that government of some $50,000 in customs, and also to have an unbroken line of English colonies from Florida to Nova Scotia." The Dutch did not rely solely on Hudson's voyage on the Hudson, but none of their claims had validity and the colony of New Netherlands passed under British rule and the Patroon took the oath of allegiance to the English King, and English laws instead of Dutch henceforth prevailed in the colony.
As soon as the Patroons began to plant colonies in New Netherlands the directors of the Amsterdam Chamber of the Dutch West India Company became jealous and opposed the Patroon system. In 1634 they bought off the two Patroons, Samuel Godyn and Samuel Blommaert (partners of Kiliaen Van Rensselaer), who had secured a tract on the shore of the Delaware bay making a territory of sixty-four miles in circumference, and also Michael Pauw, who had obtained Staten Island, Jersey City, and Harsimus, with the lands adjacent. An effort was made to buy off Patroon Van Rensselaer, but he refused to sell.
While the New England colonies were rapidly increasing in population and prosperity, the New Netherlands was not. In 1647 the population of the New Netherlands was only about 1,000 or 2,000 less than in 1643. A new policy was ordered by the Lords States General so liberal that settlers could buy as few acres as they wished to and enjoy civil and religious freedom as did the English colonies north and south of them. Under the Patroon régime the Dutch colonists had less freedom, the enjoyment of fewer rights, and greater hardships to endure than in Holland. They were, as they saw things, imposed upon and serving masters who regarded them as slaves.
The gulf between the classes and the masses seemed to widen and deepen--on one side, lords and masters, and on the other side, subjects and serfs. The Patroon family of the Van Rensselaers by marriage and intermarriage were related to the Van Cortlands, Schuylers, Livingstons, and other wealthy families, not only in New Netherlands but also in Virginia, and although they had not castles, as the barons along the Rhine, they had spacious mansions on their country estates where they spent their summers and in the winters went to Manhattan Island and in their places there gave royal entertainments to the élite. They had a retinue of black servants (slaves) in livery to attend them. The transplanting of the feudal system, even though somewhat modified, to the western world, where the very spirit of freedom, liberty, and equality prevailed, was doomed to failure and disaster. The principal cause was in the system itself, though the Van Rensselaer Patroons' course hastened its abrogation, terminating in blood. The most of the Van Rensselaer Patroons were liberal, lenient, and indulgent, permitting the rents to remain unpaid until they amounted to a sum equal to, or in some cases exceeding, the value of the leased land. It needed not the wisdom of a prophet to predict trouble from this course. When primogeniture was abolished the eldest son was no longer the inheritor of the estate, but all the children shared in it. Stephen (3d) Van Rensselaer, the seventh Patroon, born in 1764 and died in 1839, was in fact the last of the Van Rensselaer Patroons. He was graduated in Harvard in 1782, a doctor of laws, the recipient of many and distinguished civil and military honors, and a devoted patriot, called "the good old Patroon," as soon as the law of primogeniture was abolished sought to dispose of the most of the Rensselaerwyck estate (which had been somewhat lessened by grants and sales) under a peculiar form of deed or conveyance to actual tillers of the soil. This title deed was called by some "a lease in fee" and by others "a sale in fee," reserving to himself in the conveyances and to his heirs and assigns all mines and minerals and all streams of water for mill purposes; and then certain old-time feudal returns, denominated rents payable annually at the manor house in Watervliet, such as a specified number of bushels of good clean wheat, four fat fowls, one day's service with carriages and horses, and finally the one-quarter part of the purchase price on every sale of land. The aim and intent was to perpetuate, if possible, and as far as possible, the interest of the Van Rensselaers in the estate. The estate remaining was divided by the two eldest sons, Stephen 4th getting that on the west side and William Patterson Van Rensselaer that on the east side of the Hudson river, and each all the reservations of rents in their respective territories. "In 1839, when the said Stephen and William Patterson began to push their claim against the landholders and demand immediate payment of back rents, etc., the landholders, called 'anti-renters,' held a convention and appointed a committee to wait on Stephen Van Rensselaer and ascertain if an amicable settlement of the manor claims for rents in arrears could not be made and to learn on what terms a clear and absolute title to the land could be had. The committee, men of character, went to the manor office in 1839 to see and converse with Mr. Van Rensselaer, but the latter refused to recognize or even see the committee. He did, some time subsequently, send a letter to the chairman of that committee declining to sell on any terms. Great excitement was created in Albany county. The rent collectors were roughly treated and they were told that no rents would be paid. Sheriffs were called upon to discharge their duties and they were resisted and driven back by men masked and dressed in Indian costumes. The sheriff called to aid him the 'posse comitatus,' or power of the county, and marched 600 strong into the anti-rent district, where they were turned back by 1,500 anti-renters. The sheriff reported the state of affairs to Governor William H. Seward, who immediately ordered out eight companies of militia under the command of Major Bloodgood. They met no resistance.
"The Patroon interest hoped the military ordered out by the Governor of the State would bring the anti-renters to their senses and induce them to pay up. The landholders or anti-renters hoped that their display of strength and resistance would induce the Van Rensselaers to offer terms of compromise which they could accept. Neither hope was realized. Then some lawyer who had dug into old English law books said the Patroon patent was invalid and the matter must go to the court for settlement. It became a political question at once. The anti-renters elected representatives in the Legislature from eleven counties and the new Governor favored them. The decisions of the courts seemed to alternate in favor of the Van Rensselaers and then in favor of the anti-renters. In 1852 the counsel of the Van Rensselaers advised them to sell their claims, for they believed they could not be sustained and that advice was accepted. Some of the landholders or anti-renters accepted the terms offered.
"Then appeared Walter S. Church, who bought the rest of the claims on speculation. He spared no labor, no expense in any direction which he thought might aid him. He magnificently entertained legislators, lawyers, and judges. He was indefatigable, exacting, demanding the utmost farthing. Ejectment suits were brought and several lives were sacrificed. The final decision was against the Van Rensselaers, and thus ended a long and bitter controversy growing out of the Patroon system."
Who can estimate and properly accredit to the different nations of Europe their just due in the immigrants they sent to this country in its founding and subsequently in building up the United States as the greatest free republic on earth and the hope of the liberty-loving world? The Dutch must be among the early named with excellent traits of character, and the Patroons deserve credit for first colonizing them here.
We do not want to try to conjecture what the results would have been if Hudson's exploration of the North river had been in the interest of France or if the Pilgrims had settled in 1620 in the New Netherlands instead of New England.
Nearly 300 years have passed away since Henry Hudson, in the yacht "Half Moon," sailed over the waters of the river bearing his name and whose beauties he so greatly admired. That majestic, noble river continues to flow on from the mountains to the sea with a great unabated pure stream in its primeval beauty and loveliness. This statement must, however, be qualified, for man's greed, cupidity, has caused him in some localities to contaminate its waters and to mar and to an extent destroy its matchless palisades. Now that the governments have taken matters in hand it is to be hoped that these abuses will be summarily ended.
Art and architecture have embellished its banks by lovely gardens, parterres and magnificent residences and stately buildings. Attractive villages, great and prosperous cities crown the Hudson from the north and terminating in that unique, wonderful, greatest, truly cosmopolitan city of the world, New York. Nothing else did so much to produce these results as Fulton's application of steam to navigation and the opening up of a through water transportation route from the Atlantic to the Great lakes. Then the application of steam as the motive power for railroads. When the Hudson river is ice-bound the Hudson River Railroad along its east bank and the West Shore Railroad along its west bank transport passengers and freight as they do the year around. The Dutch possession of the New Netherlands was short and when the English supplanted them the Dutch names of places, very generally, were changed to English ones. Manhattan island, called by the Dutch "New Amsterdam" during their rule, except from July, 1673, to October, 1674, when the Dutch recaptured and held the "New Netherlands" and called it "New Orange," was changed to New York in honor of the Duke of York and Albany, and has borne that name ever since--a city of many millions of inhabitants and billions of wealth, the site of which was bought by and for the Dutch of the Indians in 1626 for the sum of about twenty-four dollars paid for in trinkets. Among many other good things placed to the credit of the Dutch in New Netherlands is the fact that the Dutch West India Company established a good school in New Amsterdam in 1633 which still flourishes under the name of the "School of the Collegiate Reformed Church," which is the oldest institution of learning in the United States, "The Boston Latin School," established in 1635, being the second, and Harvard College, established in 1636, the third.
The names of the site of Albany which, during Dutch rule, were Rensselaerwyck and Beverwyck (the latter including Fort Orange, built and maintained by the Dutch West India Company, and the land surrounding it, and the former the territory outside of the fort and belonging to the Patroon) were substituted by the name of Albany in honor of the Duke of York and Albany, a name it has borne ever since.
In 1783 the English colonies in North America were recognized as free and independent and formed the United States of America--the colonies organizing State governments--but 100 years before this the colony of New York demanded heaven-born rights and participation in making the laws governing them as the colonists of Virginia and Massachusetts had, and in the General Assembly of the colony of New York, held in Fort James in the city of New York October, 1683, put on record what they called the "Charter of Liberties and Privileges."
The ten original counties of the colony of New York were Albany, Ulster, Dutchess, Orange, Westchester, Richmond, Kings, Queens, Suffolk, and New York, formed under Lieutenant-Governor Thomas Dongan's administration, and sent representatives to the General Assembly. The boundaries of several of these counties have not been materially changed, Albany county embraced the whole territory lying north of Ulster and west of the Hudson river, taking in nearly the whole State. From its territory fifty of the counties of the State have been erected and it has appropriately been called "the mother of the counties of New York."
Albanians love their old Dutch city and will cordially join in commemorating Henry Hudson's advent to it nearly 300 years ago. Much has been said in this article about the Patroon system and the anti-renters, hoping to have these matters better understood by a statement of facts. Concerning affairs relating to Albany and vicinity, I have frequently referred to, quoted and used "Mr. Wiese's History of the City of Albany," 1884, and the "Bi-centennial History of Albany and Schenectady Counties from 1609 to 1886, published by W. W. Munsell & Co., 1886."
The article on "Anti-Rentism" was written by the Hon. Andrew J. Colvin.
FRANK CHAMBERLAIN.
All rights reserved.
Albany, _September, 1907_.
Transcriber's Notes
--Retained publication information from the printed edition: this eBook is public-domain in the country of publication.
--Silently corrected a few palpable typos.
--In the text versions only, text in italics is delimited by _underscores_.
End of Project Gutenberg's Hudson Tercentenary, by Frank Chamberlain