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Tin Horns and Calico

Henry Esmond Christman

In the early 19th century, in the Hudson Valley of New York State, hundreds of square miles of land were still the feudal domains of large landowners known as patroons. Such families as the Van Rensselaers, Livingstons, and Schuylers owned the farms and towns in which hundreds of thousands of ordinary people lived and worked. Even the capitol city of New York State, Albany, was encompassed in the private fiefdom of a patroon. On July 4, 1839, in the mountain town of Berne, New York, a mass meeting of tenant farmers issued a declaration of independence, promising: "We will take up the ball of the Revolution where our fathers stopped it and roll it to the final consummation of freedom and independence of the masses." The Anti-Rent War consumed the Catskill Mountain region through the 1840's, leading in the end to the downfall of the patroon system and the democratization of land ownership in New York State. - Summary by Maria Kasper