USA > New York > A short history of New York State > Part 17
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The Amsterdam bankers also experimented for a few years with the "hothouse" method, pouring over $100,000 into their tract near Cazenovia and an even greater amount into their holdings north of Utica. Compa- rable expenditures on their 3,300,000 acres west of the Genesee would obviously have plunged them into bankruptcy. Accordingly, the Dutch company appointed an experienced American woodsman, Joseph Ellicott, to run their surveys and to supervise land sales. Ellicott believed that the settlers preferred a policy of low prices and liberal credit with few im- provements to the hothouse system, which, naturally, made for higher
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A SHORT HISTORY OF NEW YORK STATE
land prices. He frequently accepted only 5 to 10 per cent of the purchase price in cash, the remainder payable within six to ten years. On the whole, the terms were reasonable, and Ellicott and other agents were responsive to the settlers' needs.
Unrest did flare up during the 1820's when the Holland Land Company demanded payments which had been allowed to lapse after the panic of 1819. Farmers complained that their accumulated debts often exceeded the resale value of their farms. The Holland Land Company made numer- ous concessions, scaling down the debt of some delinquents and accepting payment in cattle and wheat. Discontent continued, since many debtors were unable or unwilling to meet the new terms. In 1833, when the legis- lature passed a law taxing the company for debts still owing to it upon land sales, the agents redoubled their efforts to collect arrears. In protest, the farmers called a convention in Buffalo, but their attempts to challenge the title of the company proved fruitless. In 1835 a mob of enraged farmers sacked the office of the company agent in Mayville, and debtors throughout the Holland Purchase refused to pay any more money. The revolt induced the Dutch bankers to sell out their holdings, which had brought them approximately 5 per cent per year for the period of owner- ship. This action was actually bad news for the debtors, since the pur- chasers, hard-headed Americans, insisted upon prompt payment of debts. The Farmers' Loan and Trust Company of New York bought out the Holland Land Company's interests in Erie, Orleans, Niagara, and Genesee counties for a sum of over $2,282,382.63.
Northern New York was virtually unbroken wilderness in 1783 except for a few settlements fringing Lake Champlain. In fact, most of the region lying between Lake Champlain on the east, Lake Ontario on the west, the St. Lawrence River on the north, and the southern slopes of the Adiron- dacks remained wilderness until late in the nineteenth century. The rugged topography, the stony soils, the shortness of the growing season, and the lack of roads discouraged settlers, who preferred central and western New York. A few thousand settlers, largely from Vermont, drifted into the St. Lawrence and Black river valleys between 1783 and 1825.
Land jobbers were the first to take an interest in this region, which the state auctioned off at rock-bottom prices. Their leader was the adven- turesome Irish fur trader, Alexander Macomb. In 1787 Macomb, acting for himself and several associates, bought most of the Ten Towns along the St. Lawrence. Four years later he got control of practically all of the unpatented portions of northern New York for eight cents an acre- 4,000,000 acres in all. But Macomb, like Morris, found it easier to acquire tracts than to sell them. His first move was to divide his holdings into
HEYDAY OF THE LAND SPECULATOR
157
six great tracts. Those numbered Tracts Four, Five, and Six fell under the supervision of William Constable, who took over complete control after Macomb became insolvent.
Constable was as important in the development of the Black River and St. Lawrence River country as James Wadsworth in the Genesee and Williamson in the Phelps and Gorham Purchase. He sold about 600,000 acres in Tract Four to the Antwerp Company and another 210,000 acres to Peter Chassanis of Paris. The latter enticed several émigrés fleeing the tumbrels of the Jacobins to establish homes in the New York frontier.
St.Lawrence R.
STOWNS
Plattsburgh
OLD MILITARY TRACT
GREAT TRACT NO.1
GREAT TRACT NO.4
GREAT TRACT. NO.3
GREAT TRACT NO.2
PREVIOUSLY PATENTED BY SMALL HOLDERS
TOTTEN &
GREAT TRACT NO. 5
JOHN BROWN'S TRACT
CROSSFIELDS PURCHASE
GREAT TRACT NO.6
CONSTABLE'S FIVE TOWNS
SCRIBA'S PATENT
STEUBEN TOWNSHIP
Oneida L.
Fort Stanwix
Utica
ONEIDA RESERVATION
Map 8. Northern New York land pattern, 1790-1815.
Constable sold smaller tracts to William Inman and John Brown of the famous Providence family. Brown divided his tract into townships labeled Frugality, Industry, and Temperance; but such nomenclature, however comforting to Yankee consciences, could not compensate for the cold and thin soils of these mountainous acres.
The northern part of the Macomb Purchase-Great Tracts One, Two, and Three-had a similar history. A notable figure in developing this region was Samuel Ogden, who laid out the town named for him. Equally famous was David Parish, scion of an English and German family that controlled an important business house with branches in
Ogdensburg
ST.LAWRENCE? TEN
COMBS PURCHASE
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A SHORT HISTORY OF NEW YORK STATE
various cities of northern Europe. Parish, who made his fortune in the Spanish-American trade, fell victim in 1807 to the blandishments of Gouverneur Morris, who was trying to sell his tracts along the St. Lawrence River. Parish bought 200,000 acres in 1808 and kept adding to his holdings. In 1811 he moved to Ogdensburg to administer his estate. Following the example of Williamson, Parish poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into turnpikes, iron forges, and wharves at Ogdensburg. All in all, the north country proved a disappointment to most land speculators, who could not successfully compete with the holders of the richer lands of western New York and, subsequently, of the Great Lake states.
In "old" New York, the section south and east of Rome which was developed before the Revolution, the pattern of land ownership under- went some important changes after 1775. The confiscation of Loyalist estates struck a sharp blow at the landed aristocracy. Speculators fat- tened on the spoils taken from the De Lanceys, Philipses, and the heirs of Sir William Johnson. These speculators, however, usually sold the land in small parcels to actual settlers. As a result Westchester and Dutchess counties, once the stronghold of manorial owners, registered a rapid increase in freeholders in the years following the Revolution. Furthermore, the legislature pulled out some of the legal props sup- porting the aristocratic land system. It forbade entail and primogeni- ture, thus ensuring the eventual partition of the manors held by Patriots. The legislature abolished all feudal obligations and feudal tenures.
The "Patriot" aristocracy, led by the Van Rensselaer, Livingston, and Schuyler families, developed most of their holdings in the Hudson Valley on a leasehold basis. Leasehold tenure and the landed aristocracy were two colonial legacies that lasted well into the nineteenth century. The leasehold system was transplanted, as well, to the Mohawk and upper Delaware valleys, and as far west as the Genesee Valley. James Duane tried to develop on a lease basis some 30,000 acres southwest of Schenectady, and Philip Schuyler leased lands in Saratoga County and near the site of Utica. In 1812 George Clarke, descendant of a colo- nial governor, owned land worth over $1,000,000 in Oneida, Otsego, Montgomery, and Dutchess counties. Baron Steuben owned 16,000 acres in Oneida County, half of which he attempted to lease to tenant farmers.
The tenancy system, however, was the exception. The freehold farmer outnumbered the tenant farmer by more than five to one. Even in Albany County, where there were almost 1,400 farmers leasing their farms from Stephen Van Rensselaer, tenants were nevertheless in a minority. The great majority of landowners followed the practice of William Cooper, who urged the sale and not the lease of land. His
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HEYDAY OF THE LAND SPECULATOR
advice was sound, since few Yankees, who made up the bulk of the settlers, would lease farms when they could secure the title to farms of their own.
The term "lease" as it was used at this period may require some explanation, since it was quite different from the word as used in reference to the modern legal instrument. Referring to the Van Rens- selaer lease, Samuel Tilden wrote: "It is, in a word, a warrantee deed. . . . The reservations, condition and convenants are in the nature of a grant by the buyer to the seller, of an annuity secured on the land, or mortgage for the purchase money."
The leases were by no means uniform. The "durable" lease, the most commonly used, was in perpetuity. Farmers on Van Rensselaer Manor had to pay the patroon a perpetual rent of between ten to fourteen bushels of winter wheat per one hundred acres, four fat fowl, and a day's work with a team of horses or oxen. Philip Schuyler and George Clarke usually leased their farms for three lives; upon the death of the third person named as lessee the farm reverted to the landlord. In addition, most leases provided that the lessee had to pay to the land- lord one-third, one-fourth, or one-tenth of the sale price when he dis- posed of his interest. Moreover, the landlord sometimes reserved all rights to mines and mill sites and retained timber and water rights.
How heavy a financial burden did the tenant farmer bear? Many advantages were on his side. He often entered upon his farm without making any down payment and without paying rent for four to seven years. Thereafter he paid an annual rent either in kind or in money, varying according to the location, fertility, and date of leasing. Few leases, however, called for less than ten or more than twenty bushels of wheat per one hundred acres. The average estimated rental for farms in the four western towns of Albany County for the thirty-year period prior to 1846 was about thirty-two dollars a year.
The landed gentry, on the other hand, had many vexatious problems of their own. Good tenants were hard to get and difficult to keep. The average American regarded tenancy as somewhat degrading and often moved away or failed to pay the rent on time. Sometimes the landlord had to offer extensions or accept payment in goods or services. Tenants generally failed to maintain the fertility of the soil. Their houses and barns were "exceedingly dilapidated," and their fields were covered with brush.
In spite of the failure of the great antirent uprising of 1766, the tenant farmers in the Hudson Valley kept alive a hope for the end of landlord control. Did not the "Green Mountain Boys" make good their defiance of New York landlords as well as of the British redcoats? Anti- rent feeling rose to the surface in Columbia County throughout the
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decade of the 1790's. Again in 1811-1812 tenant farmers petitioned the legislature to investigate the title of the Livingston family and be- deviled the sheriffs who tried to enforce rent payment.
The death of Stephen Van Rensselaer, the "last of the patroons," on January 26, 1839, symbolized the passing of an era. The spectacle of a landed gentleman living in semifeudal splendor among his three thousand tenants was anachronism to a generation which had become acclimated to Jacksonian democracy. Van Rensselaer's leniency toward his tenants created a serious problem for his heirs, who were instructed by his will to apply the back rents (approximately $400,000) toward the payment of the patroon's debts. As soon as the rent notices went out, the farmers organized committees and held public meetings in protest. Stephen Van Rensselaer, who had inherited the west manor (Albany County), refused to meet with a committee of antirenters and turned down their written request for a reduction of rents. His brusque refusal infuriated the farmers. On July 4, 1839, a mass meeting at Berne called for a declaration of independence from landlord rule but raised the amount the tenants were willing to pay.
The answer to this proposal was soon forthcoming. The executors of the estate secured writs of ejectment in suits against tenants in arrears. Crowds of angry tenants manhandled Sheriff Michael Archer and his assistants and turned back a posse of five hundred men. Sheriff Archer called upon Governor William Seward for military assistance. Seward's proclamation calling on the people not to resist the enforcement of the law and the presence of several hundred militiamen overawed the tenants. The tenants, however, persisted in their refusal to pay rent. Of course the sheriff could and did evict a few, but he could not dis- possess an entire township.
By 1844 the antirent movement had grown from a localized struggle against the Van Rensselaer family to a full-fledged revolt against lease- hold tenure throughout eastern New York. Virtual guerilla warfare broke out. Riders disguised as Indians and wearing calico gowns ranged through the countryside, terrorizing the agents of the landlords. In late 1844 Governor William Bouck sent three companies of militia to Hudson, where antirenters threatened to storm the jail and release their leader, Big Thunder (Dr. Smith A. Boughton in private life). The following year Governor Silas Wright was forced to proclaim Delaware County in a state of insurrection after an armed rider had killed an undersheriff at an eviction sale.
The antirenters organized town, county, and state committees, pub- lished their own newspapers, held conventions, and elected their own spokesmen to the legislature. The success of candidates endorsed by antirenters in 1845 caused politicians in both parties to show a "won-
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HEYDAY OF THE LAND SPECULATOR
derful anxiety" to "give the Anti-renters all they ask." The legislature abolished the right of the landlord to seize the goods of a defaulting tenant and taxed the income which landlords derived from their rent. Shortly thereafter, the constitutional convention of 1846 prohibited any future lease of agricultural land which claimed rent or service for a period longer than twelve years. Yet neither the convention nor the state legislature was willing to disturb existing leases.
The antirenters played politics with remarkable success in the years between 1846 and 1851. They elected friendly sheriffs and local officials who virtually paralyzed the efforts of the landlords to collect rents. They cleverly threw their weight to the candidates of either major party who would support their cause. The bitter rivalries between and within the Whig and Democratic parties enabled the antirenters to exert more influence than their numbers warranted. As a result they had a small but determined bloc of antirent champions in the Assem- bly and the Senate who kept landlords uneasy by threatening to pass laws challenging land titles. The antirent endorsement of John Young, Whig candidate for governor in 1846, proved decisive. Governor Young promptly pardoned several antirent prisoners and called for an investi- gation of titles by the attorney general. The courts eventually ruled the statute of limitations prevented any questioning of the original titles. Declaring that the holders of perpetual leases were in reality freeholders, the Court of Appeals outlawed the "quarter sales," i.e., the requirement in many leases that a tenant who disposed of his farm should pay one-fourth of the money to the landlord.
Assailed by a concerted conspiracy not to pay rent and harassed by taxes and investigations of the attorney general, the landed proprietors gradually sold out their interests. In August 1845 seventeen large land- holders announced that they were willing to sell. Later that year Stephen Van Rensselaer, IV, agreed to sell his rights in the Helderberg townships. His brother, William, who had inherited the east manor in Rensselaer County, also sold out his rights in over five hundred farms in 1848. Finally, in the 1850's, two speculators purchased the remaining leases from the Van Rensselaers.
The antirent movement was more than a selfish campaign to escape rent payment. It was a ringing protest by democratic farmers against the aristocratic clique which had dominated New York for so many decades. By dramatizing the evils of land monopoly, the antirenters also helped to arouse the nation to the importance of granting free homesteads to actual settlers on the public domain.
Undoubtedly speculators in urban real estate were making more money in this period than developers of backcountry lands. The rapid
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A SHORT HISTORY OF NEW YORK STATE
growth of cities created fortunes for those lucky or shrewd enough to own property in the pathway of growing population. Gerrit Smith, for example, made a fortune out of his holdings in Oswego, while John Jacob Astor amassed his fabulous wealth largely through purchases of Manhattan real estate.
Property values on Manhattan Island soared upward even in the period prior to 1825. The city held title to 11,000 acres of the total of 14,000 in 1789. Mayor De Witt Clinton appointed a committee to draw up a street plan for the city, and the committee recommended a grid- iron pattern in its famous report of 1811. This proposal had the merit of providing for the maximum number of small lots, but encouraged the subsequent erection of high buildings.
Meanwhile the city was practically giving away much of the com- mon land, which was regarded as almost worthless. Astor, however, calculated that growth would drive up land values. Between 1800 and 1819 he invested in Manhattan real estate an average of $35,000 each year from the profits derived from his ships in the China trade. Al- though he did not neglect to purchase water-front property, Astor invested chiefly in the inaccessible lands lying just outside the built-up portion of New York. A great coup was his acquisition of the farm of Medeef Eden, which ran from Forty-second to Forty-sixth streets and from Broadway to the Hudson. He also bought two-thirds of the coun- try place of Governor George Clinton. When Astor died in 1848, his holdings were worth an estimated $20,000,000 and destined for a fur- ther astronomical rise in value.
Other large landholders in New York City were the Wendel, Goelet, and Rhinelander families. Trinity Church, which had acquired the original West India Company farm in 1705, remained a large owner of Manhattan real estate. Another valuable holding deriving from this period is the tract held by the Sailors' Snug Harbor, which Captain Robert Randall had established in 1806.
The most significant development in the land history of New York between 1790 and 1825 was the rapid division and distribution of large speculative holdings into the hands of small individual proprietors. By mid-century there remained only the remnants of the semifeudal estates and portions of the great tracts engrossed by the speculators of the 1790's. The owners of the New York countryside had become a demo- cratic society of freeholding farmers.
Chapter 14 ++
Farm and Forest
The rural management in most parts of this province is miser- able; seduced by the fertility of the soil on first settling, the farmer thinks only of exhausting it as soon as possible, without attending to their own interest in a future day. -American Husbandry, 1775
"THE American axe! It has made more real and lasting conquests than the sword of any warlike people that ever lived," stated Major Little- page, a frontier landholder created by James Fenimore Cooper. This assertion was certainly apt for the period from 1783 to 1825, when settlers pushed the agricultural frontier to the western and northern boundaries of New York.
Contemporary writers have left us sympathetic and penetrating accounts of farming in New York. Crèvecoeur in his delightful Letters from an American Farmer described the practices of farmers along the lower Hudson and analyzed the forces creating the "American character." In western New York, Orsamus Turner collected the stories of early settlers who recounted the pleasures and described the hard- ships of the heroic age of farming.
The amount of improved farmland rose from about 1,000,000 acres in 1784 to 5,500,000 acres in 1821. These rough and impersonal figures cannot begin to describe the backbreaking task of hewing farms from the wilderness, an accomplishment which "wore out at least one gener- ation." Of course, the New York frontiersmen faced the same problems met by all pioneers, whether in Maine, the Ohio Valley, or the Gulf plains. Nevertheless, their struggle with the forest deserves retelling if only to remind urbanized New Yorkers of a fascinating chapter in the development of the Empire State.
The pioneer looking for a farm carefully considered such elements as climate, soil, location, drainage, transportation, and future land values. Later generations have wondered why he often preferred uplands to
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A SHORT HISTORY OF NEW YORK STATE
lowlands. There were several reasons. Lowlands were avoided because of the dreaded malaria, or "swamp fever." Hill lands were easier to clear than the valleys filled with underbrush, fallen trees, and deep roots. Hill lands also tended to require little draining. Furthermore, the rich vegetable mold created by centuries of rotting leaves and timber made all lands equally fertile until the topsoil on the hillsides washed away.
The broadsides and advertisements of land agents and the reports from relatives and friends about the fertile lands in New York caused many eastern farmers to migrate westward. Quite often the farmer set out on foot or on horseback to see for himself whether the claims were true. After inspecting vacant tracts and noting the distance from road and town, the supply of water, and the nearness of neighbors, he signed a contract or lease if the price was reasonable. In order to pre- pare the way for his family he often made a small clearing, sowed some winter wheat or rye, and erected a small hut.
Upon his return home, the settler sold his farm, bulky tools, and heavy furniture, since moving his family and belongings was a formi- dable task. His wagon or sleigh could carry only the essential items of clothing, bedding, and cooking equipment. The men in the family followed along behind the cart or sleigh driving any livestock they might own.
Clearing cost the farmer a great deal of time and energy. Two methods were commonly used-chopping and girdling. The latter method required only the removal of a ring of bark around the trunk to prevent the sap from flowing to the branches. After the leaves withered, the sun dried the land, which could be quickly planted to corn or wheat. Girdling, however, left the clearing full of obstructive trees whose decaying limbs fell off and sometimes injured the farmer, his crop, or his animals. Consequently, the average settler preferred to chop down the trees. With his oxen and his neighbors' helping hands the settler dragged the felled trees into huge piles for burning. After the piles were burned, he collected the ashes for use either as fertilizer or for the manufacture of potash.
A skilled woodsman, it is estimated, could clear an acre in seven to ten days. The average pioneer could hardly hope to clear and sow ten acres the first year even if he did little else. But he also had to erect a small house, fences, and perhaps a barn, as well as hunt and fish for himself and his family. In addition, he had to aid his neighbors in cutting through roads and performing sundry other duties, all of which interfered with the task of clearing. However, unless he had a market for his produce, there was little point in clearing more land than was necessary
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FARM AND FOREST
to raise foodstuffs for his own use. As a result, few settlers cleared more than three or four acres a year, which meant that it took a lifetime to bring a farm of any size under cultivation. In fact, every farm generation until 1880 added to the acreage of improved land in New York State.
The job of fencing cost many days of labor every year. Usually fences of wooden rails or of rough boards were constructed, although occasion- ally stone fences were erected, especially in those regions where rocks and stone interfered with plowing.
The pioneer's cabin, built from logs selected during the clearing proc- ess, was a temporary structure until the farmer could afford to erect a house made from boards, nails, and glass. A historian of Steuben County describes such an early cabin:
The house was about 20 by 60 feet, constructed of round logs chinked with pieces of split logs, and plastered on the outside with clay. The floors were made of split logs with the flat side up; the doors, of thin pieces of the same. The windows were holes, unprotected by glass or sash; the fire place was made of stone and the chimney of sticks and clay. On one side of the fire place was a ladder leading to the chamber. ... Behind the door was a large spinning wheel and a reel, and overhead on wooden hooks fastened to the beams were a number of things, among which were a nice rifle, powder horn, bullet pouch, tomahawk, and hunting knife,-the complete equipment of the hunter and the frontiersman.
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