Stonington (Connecticut) Families in Berne and Knox

Stonington Families to Berne, NY

Submitted By: Hal Miller

By Harold H. Miller

About 1787 fliers were distributed in Stonington, and elsewhere in New England, advertising "free" land in Western Albany County, New York for veterans of the Revolutionary War. Many Stonington families accepted the offer and moved to Berne and Knox in the Helderberg hills, some to their later regret.

Albany County extends about 25 miles west from the Hudson River, and is bisected from north to south by the Helderberg escarpment, an abrupt rise of land that in many places is a sheer cliff making access to the hill country difficult. The earliest European settlements were in the fertile valley lands along the easily accessible Hudson River; the land above the escarpment remained wilderness. It was this hill land that was being offered "free." The land belonged to Stephen Van Rensselaer III and had been in his family for going on to two centuries. In 1621 the Netherlands government granted the Dutch West India Company a 24-year trading monopoly in its American colonies. The Company conceived of the Patroon system as a way to attract settlers without increasing its expenses. A Patroon, or Dutch Lord, was granted a large tract of land; in return he agreed to sponsor settlers and colonize the land at his own expense.In 1629 Kiliaen Van Rensselaer, a prominent Amsterdam merchant and principal shareholder in the Dutch West India Company, was granted the colony of Rensselaerwyck, incorporating what is now the city of Albany, plus most of what is now Albany, Rensselaer and Greene Counties. Fort Orange, now Albany, became the center of the Dutch fur trade.The Dutch farmers brought over by the Van Rensselaers to clear and work the rich Hudson Valley farmland were not permitted to own it. Rather they were granted long-term leases, assuring the Patroon a healthy yearly income. The leases could be sold, along with the buildings, but the underlying land and mineral rights belonged to the Patroon. When the English wrested control of the Dutch American colonies in 1664, they did not disturb the Patroon system.

For almost two hundred years the land above the Hudson Valley in the Helderbergs - for the most part hilly and rocky - remained wilderness except for a few scattered farms. Those early settlers in the Helderbergs were refugees from the Palatinate region of what is now Germany and had entered surreptitiously from the west. Thus they avoided detection and having to pay rent for almost fifty years!

In 1785 Stephen Van Rensselaer III inherited the Manor. He commissioned a survey of the land above the Helderberg escarpment dividing it into a grid of 120 and 160 square acre lots. In order to populate the unsettled lands of the Manor, handbills were distributed throughout New England announcing that he would give veterans of the Revolution homesteads without cost. Only after the farms became productive would he ask for any compensation. A group of Stonington families sent some members to look over the land in Albany County. Between about 1787 and 1790 the following families from Stonington and elsewhere in New London County moved to western Albany County:

• Henry JONES born 1730 and wife Eunice MINER
• Jesse JOSLIN born 1755, son of Joseph JOSLIN and Mary ADAMS
• Sons of Nathaniel GALLUP and Hannah GORE: Samuel, Silas, Levi and Ezra.
• Children of Daniel DENISON and Esther WHEELER: Robert and Hannah
• Children of Elijah CHESEBRO and Hannah JAMISON: Christopher, Elijah and Mary
• William BROWN born 1758, son of William BROWN and Lydia
• Amos WHIPPLE
• Jared STEVENS born 1739, son of Simon STEVENS and Mercy COATES, with wife Lucy STEWART

Later arrivals:

• Samuel HEMPSTEAD born say 1791 and wife Marinda BENNETT

After looking over the available tracts of vacant land, many of these families settled near one another in Berne and Knox.

After seven years of clearing the land and building their homes they were required to sign a lease that typically required an annual payment of "…nineteen bushels of good merchantable Winter Wheat, four fat fowls, … and perform one days service with carriage and horse." Taken from the Indenture made July 2, 1799 between Stephen Van Rensselaer and Nathaniel Gallup and Samuel Gallup.

"Cash would be accepted in lieu of wheat but very few in the township of Berne [which at that time included Knox] had hard money. It took every hour of daylight, working from sun up to sun down for a man to provide shelter and food for his family. Even after he labored for years his land and buildings were not entirely his own. Included in his deed was the onerous quarter sale provision by which the landlord was to receive one quarter of the selling price. Nor could death relieve the situation. The burden of the Van Rensselaer leaseholds passed from father to son. These conditions were perfectly legal for the deeds were drawn up by none other than Alexander Hamilton, brother-in-law of Stephen III." (Our Heritage, published in 1977 by the Berne Bicentennial Commission)

Stephen III, known as the "Good Patroon" let the debt of his tenants build up. But upon his death in 1839 his son Stephen IV ordered the collection of all outstanding rents. One of the leaders of the ensuing Anti-Rent War was John Gallup, whose ancestors were from Stonington. Following years of rioting and protests by the farmers, in 1846 a New York State Constitutional Convention provided that no new feudal leases could be issued, that farm land could not be leased for more than twelve years, and quarter-sale restrictions were prohibited. But it also upheld the legality of previous leases so that all back rent was still due and payable.

Protests continued until after 1860. Attempted evictions by the Sheriff and his posse were met by angry mobs of armed farmers. Many families just gave up and moved on west, including many of the families who had moved to Albany County from Stonington.

The descendants of the Stonington families that moved to the Berne and Knox area can be found in the Berne Families Genealogy posted on the Berne Historical Project site at www.Bernehistory.org.