That Henry Hudson first discovered, at least first reported, the “Open Sea” north of 66° north is conceded, and that has been confirmed by several Arctic explorers since—prominent among them Dr. Kane. That Sebastian Cabot discovered Hudson straits in about 1517 is admitted.
Jodocus Hondius, a warm friend of Hudson, tried to dissuade him from entering Hudson bay in hopes to find a passage to the Pacific, for he told him that a relative of his had explored the bay, and that there was no communication with the Pacific ocean.
Read, Jr., says our sense of the loss of Hudson’s own journal in conclusion with his discovery of Delaware bay is indeed irreparable. Our sense of the loss is increased by the remembrance that the Hudson river, Hudson strait and Hudson bay had been visited long before Hudson explored them. George Weymouth had visited the mouth of Hudson straits.
Gerard Mercator’s celebrated map of the world, made at Duisburg, Germany, in 1569, shows the French fort on the east side of the Grande (or Hudson) river. He outlined the Hudson to the height of its navigation with the Mohawk as far as the French had explored it.
Winsor, 1520, vol. 4, p. 434. The Pompey Stone and Spaniards in New York State, found in Oneida county with its Spanish inscriptions and date of 1520, and the names of places given in their corruption by the Dutch in a grant conveying part of Albany county. We can no longer hesitate to believe that the heathen reported by Danskon and other writers mentioned before had some foundation, and that the Spaniards knew and had explored the country on the Hudson long before the Dutch came, but had thought, as Peter Martys expresses it, after the failure of Estibon Comez and the Leconcrado d’Aillen “To the South, to the South for the great and exceeding riches of the Equator. They that seek gold must not go to the cold North.” The Spaniards never considered New Netherlands of any value itself.
The Pompey Stone was located near where the Cardiff Giant was found and I do not build on it.
That Giovanni de Verazzano, in the French ship “La Dauphin,” with a crew of fifty men, commissioned by Francis I, King of France, to make discoveries of new lands entered the lower and upper bays of what now is New York, and the mouth of the North, or now called the Hudson river, is conceded. He tried to ascend the river, thinking it the water route to the South sea or the Pacific ocean on the way to Cathay and the East Indies. A violent gale sprang up and compelled him to go to sea, and his discoveries along the coast of North America, from Florida to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, resulted in the French claiming that territory as La Nouvelle France (New France), an extent of more than 1,100 miles.
The valuable furs and peltries of New France induced French merchants, ship owners and capitalists to send many vessels with merchandise to trade with the Indians. Some of these vessels sailed up the river (North or Hudson) to the height of its navigation, where the Mohawk enters into it. For protection and for a trading-house, the French built a fortified trading-house or castle in 1540, lying in the little bay on the west side of the river, called by the French the “Grande river,” near the site of Albany. Before the castle was completed the island was inundated by a great freshet. The earliest Europeans, coming to what is now New York, did not come intending to settle, but to gain in dealing in furs and peltry, and in that pursuit they became well acquainted with the topography of the country. On many of the maps of New France the Grande river is plainly represented from Sandy Hook to its navigable limits, about 175 miles.
Sincerely believing that the honors awarded Henry Hudson, the famous navigator, are not on the true basis, and that at the tercentenary they are likely to be perpetuated against historical facts, I have cited evidence and will add but two more from his own countrymen, viz.: John Knox Laughton, Professor of History in Kings College, London, since 1885, and C. M. Asher, LL. D., “Henry Hudson, the Navigator. The original documents in which his career is recorded printed in London, 1860, for the highly distinguished historical body, the Hakluyt Society.”
Professor Laughton, in the Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 28, pp. 148 and 149, says: “Hudson’s personality is shady in the extreme, and his achievements have been the subject of much exaggeration and misrepresentation. The River, the Strait, the Bay and the vast tract of land which bears his name have kept his memory alive; but in point of fact not one of these was discovered by Hudson. All that can be seriously claimed for him is that he pushed his explorations further than his predecessors and left them a more distinct but still imperfect record. It has been conclusively shown by Dr. Asher that the River, Strait and the Bay were all marked in maps many years before the time of Hudson.
“In April, 1614, Hudson’s widow applied to the East India Company for some employment for another son, she being left very poor. The company considered that the boy had a just claim on them, as his father had perished in the service of the commonwealth; they accordingly placed him for nautical instruction in the Samaritan and gave five pounds toward his outfit.” Henry Hudson, born about 1560.
Dr. Asher, in his publication, says: “Hudson river, Hudson strait and Hudson bay remind every educated man of the illustrious navigator by whom they were explored.” But though the name of Henry Hudson possesses the preservative against oblivion, little more has been done in its behalf, and few persons have any accurate notion of the real extent of its merits. By considering Hudson as the discoverer of the three mighty waters that bear his name, we indeed both overrate and underrate his deserts. For it is certain that these localities had repeatedly been visited, and even drawn on maps and charts long before he set out on his voyages.
Special attention is called to Justin Winsor’s “America,” and to Henry Cruse Murphy’s “Hudson in Holland.” The naming of the territorial empire of Prince Rupert’s land upon which Hudson, perhaps, never set his foot, seems more than strange.
The retrospect has been long, and though only by glances, far from complete, doubtless it has been tedious, but to differ from public opinion it seemed necessary to give strong reasons.
Does it not, then, seem that the contract made by the Amsterdam directors and Henry Hudson was rather a blind, and for political reasons, than genuine?
Some historians say that Henry Hudson, when in the employ of the Dutch East India Company, set sail from Amsterdam March 25, 1609, and others April 4, 1609—there is no discrepancy, for the former is what is called Old Style, and the latter New Style, of reckoning time. Some authorities state Hudson had two vessels, namely, the “Good Hope” and the “Half Moon.” The contract between the Amsterdam directors of the Dutch East India Company and Henry Hudson names the “Half Moon” and no other. Moreover, the Hon. Henry C. Murphy, when United States Minister to Holland, ascertained from the archives that the Amsterdam directors of the Dutch East India Company did have, in 1608, a vessel named “Good Hope,” which sailed April 15, 1608, for the East Indies, and was captured by the Spaniards.
The crew of the “Half Moon,” under Henry Hudson as master, consisted of about twenty, part Dutch and part English, many of them had served under him while he was in the employ of the Muscovy Company—his son being one of that number. The “Half Moon” was a yacht of about eighty tons burden. Hudson followed the route he had taken when in the employ of the Muscovy Company until he met with the same obstacles as in his previous expedition, namely, impenetrable ice, fogs and adverse winds which drove him backward. Then he submitted the choice to his crew to decide whether they should sail to the coast of America, latitude 40° north (New Jersey coast) or in search of Davis strait latitude, about 62° north. Many of his crew had been sailors in southern warmer waters and chose the lower latitude, while then, it is said, Hudson preferred the other, but must submit to the wishes of the crew. On the 14th of May Hudson sailed the “Half Moon” westward, and a fortnight later reached the Faroe islands, replenished his water casks, and set sail again, making slow progress for a month against fierce gales, but on the 2d of July was at the grand banks of Newfoundland, with foremast gone and the sails badly torn. There they found a large fleet of Frenchmen fishing, but had no intercourse with them. Becalmed, the “Half Moon” men caught cod. Having made the needed repairs they set sail again, and on the 12th of July Hudson was gladdened by the sight of America’s shores. The “Half Moon” entered and anchored in a safe and large harbor (probably Penobscot bay) on the coast of Maine. Here an unfortunate and wanton attack was made by the crew upon the natives, and Hudson at once set sail, and did not approach land again until August 3d, when he sent five men ashore who returned loaded with rose trees and grapes. He supposed that the place was “Cape Cod,” which Gonold had so named in 1602. Then for two weeks the “Half Moon” sailed south and came to the mouth of King James river in Virginia. Then Hudson coasted northerly and Friday, August 28th, entered the great Delaware bay. After exploring, he became satisfied that there was no passage-way there to China, and emerging from the bay went north, and September 3, 1609, entered and anchored under the shelter of what is called Sandy Hook. On the 12th of September Henry Hudson entered the Hudson river.
Drifting with the tide, he anchored over night (the 13th) just above Yonkers; on the 14th passed Tappan and Haverstraw bays, entered the Highlands and anchored for the night near West Point. On the morning of the 15th he entered Newburgh bay and reached Catskill on the 16th, Athens on the 17th and Castleton and Albany on the 18th, and then sent out an exploring boat as far as Waterford.
Some historians say that Hudson anchored at Hudson and sent a boat containing his mate and four men further up the river to explore and report whether it seemed to be a water-way to the South sea (Pacific ocean) on the way to India. Becoming convinced that it did not, on the 23d of September he leisurely sailed down the river to its mouth. Hudson and his crew were greatly pleased with the grandeur and beauty of the river, the like of which they had never seen, passing through a fruitful, attractive country, which in their descriptions, they painted in glowing colors, justly deserved. It was the season of the year when nature, in that latitude, dons her variegated and most beautiful colors. Hudson had, along the river in many places where he stopped, many interesting and pleasant interviews with the Indians, gaining much information, and exchanging his trinkets for their valuable furs. The Indians, as a rule, were hospitable, entertaining the strangers with game and fruits, etc. There were a few regrettable incidents on Hudson’s voyage up the river between the Indians and the crew, and it seems probable the latter were most blameworthy.
October 4, 1609, Henry Hudson and his crew in the “Half Moon” set sail from Sandy Hook for Europe. On the homeward voyage some of the crew wanted to winter in Newfoundland and then in the spring search for a northwestern passage through Davis strait. Many were sick, but none of them were willing to go back to Holland as Hudson wished and was under obligations to do. Bear in mind that the master of a vessel then was not the autocrat that he now is. The crew had to be consulted and their decision controlled. A compromise was finally made that they should sail to Ireland. However, they reached Dartmouth, England, November 7, 1609, from which place Hudson made his report to the Dutch East India Company directors, and proposed to them to go out again for a search in the northwest, and that besides the pay, 1,500 florins should be laid out for an additional supply of provisions. Hudson also wanted six or seven of his men exchanged and his crew to number twenty.
It was a long time before the Dutch East India Company directors learned of the arrival of the “Half Moon” and heard from Hudson. Then they ordered the ship and crew to return as soon as possible. But when they were going to do so, Hudson and other Englishmen were commanded by the government not to leave England, but to serve their own country. These things took place in January, 1610. After a detention of eight months in England the “Half Moon” reached Amsterdam in the summer of 1610.
April 17, 1610, Henry Hudson, in the vessel “Discovery,” with many of his crew of former voyages, sailed from England in the service of three Englishmen, Sir Thomas Smythe, Sir Dudley Digges, and John Wolstenholme, in quest of an all-water route to India through the Davis strait. After entering the bay named Hudson, in his honor, he spent much time in trying to find an outlet from it to the Pacific ocean on the way to China, but unsuccessfully.
His crew became quarrelsome, and some of them mutinous. Among the worst were two he had favored most—one his mate, Juet, and another, a Mr. Green, a worthless, degenerate fellow. Juet was tried for insubordination—for attempting to incite to mutiny—found guilty and deposed. The winter of 1610-1611 was a hard one—their provisions were short, owing to a treatment of a native by some of the crew—they could obtain no game from the Indians, nor could they catch fish. It was said, perhaps falsely, that Hudson became very tyrannical, and said something that his enemies thought he meant to prolong his scanty supplies by getting rid of several of the crew. June, 1611, a few days after leaving one of the most southern harbors of James bay (a southern portion of Hudson bay) where they had wintered, a mutiny broke out among the crew. Hudson was seized and bound, and he, his son and seven others, principally sick and infirm, were put in a small boat and set adrift upon the waves, destined soon to perish.
Thus ended, in tragedy, the career of a remarkable man, whose appearance upon the theater had not extended a half dozen years.
To commemorate the tercentenary of Hendrick Hudson’s discovery of the Hudson river would be on a false basis—at war with historical facts. Hudson’s name was Henry (as has been clearly established) and not Hendrick, as doubtless the Dutch wanted him to become a Hollander on his entering the service of the Dutch East India Company.
There is no evidence that Henry Hudson was ever in Holland except late in the year 1608 and early in the year 1609. It is certain that he did not see Holland after his expedition on behalf of the Dutch East India Company, and that born in England, he remained an Englishman, for that government forbid him, as an Englishman, to leave and enter any other service.
It seems most remarkable that in Hudson’s honor, as a discoverer, should have been named a strait (Hudson strait discovered by Sebastian Cabot in 1517), Hudson bay, the Hudson Bay Company territory, which originally included all the land which was drained into Hudson bay—territory ample for an empire—which Hudson did not discover and probably never put his foot on its soil, and the Hudson river, which has been clearly shown he did not discover. Unless the word discoverer has a different meaning from what the public understand by it and lexicographers primarily ascribe to it, Hudson, in none of these cases, was a discoverer. He was an explorer, and as such was a benefactor, and deserved credit. We would “render unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar’s.”
Henry Hudson was a bold, skillful navigator, a careful explorer, and had the ability and spirit to have made important discoveries had the time and circumstances favored. It often happens that the discoverer, the inventor, merits less honor than the party coming after, who makes that discovery or invention serviceable—useful, as it had not been before. Robert Fulton was not the discoverer of the application of steam as a motive power in navigation, but he built the “Clermont”—propelled it by steam from New York to Albany, took the wind out of sails, revolutionized navigation, and received the honors. Samuel Finley Breese Morse was not the discoverer, the inventor of the electrical telegraph, but he made it serviceable—of practical utility—almost ignoring distance in the transmission of news, and he won the honors.
Henry Hudson did not discover a new and shorter water route to India, nor did he discover the Hudson river. He, however, did explore the Hudson river, and his glowing accounts of it, and the country through which it flows, attracted immigration, settlements, and was an important element in the founding of the new nation in the western world. The name, it is to be hoped, the true name of Hudson, Henry, and not Hendrick, will be cherished, for whom living, so little was done. His widow, in extreme poverty, applied to the British government for another of her sons, and he was received and sent to the Government Naval School, and an allowance was made for his outfit. Henry Hudson appears to have had a large family.
The river which Hudson sailed up and down in 1609 has borne many names, given by different peoples at different times. The red men bestow names descriptive or characteristic—while there are no known laws or rules which the white men observe in naming. At the advent of the Europeans to North America many tribes of Indians inhabited the territory from Florida to the St. Lawrence, and back to the Mississippi river, and prominent among them were the Lenapes, to which the Mohicans belonged. These Indians called the river Mah-i-can-i-tuk, meaning “the flowing waters.” The Iroquois called it Co-hat-a-tea, or “river that flows from the mountains.” It was called the Mauritius, in honor of Prince Maurice of Nassau. Rio de Montagne was a name given to it. The French usually called it “Le Grande.” The Spanish called it “The River of the Mountains.” It was often called the “North river” in contradistinction to the “South river”—the Delaware.
That Henry Hudson was greatly pleased in exploring this river is not surprising. “There is no river in the western world comparable with it in picturesqueness and beauty, nor has it a superior, if an equal, in these respects, in Europe. In some stretches of the Clyde and the Rhine are features resembling the Hudson, and the Elbe has in sections, such delicately penciled effects, but no European river is so lordly in its bearing, none flows in such state to the sea.” It has been said that no other river in the world presents so great a variety of views as the Hudson.
“Throughout its whole length, from the wilderness to the sea, from the Adirondacks to Staten Island, a distance of 325 miles, there is a combination of the finest pictures, illustrating some of the best scenery of the old world,” which some quaint writer (to me unknown) describes as follows: “The tourist with only a slight stretch of the fancy may find Loch Katrine nestled among the mountains of our own Highlands; in the Catskills may be seen from Sunset Mountain of Arran; and in the Palisades, the Giant’s Causeway of Ireland.” He divides the Hudson river into five stretches, reaches or divisions, representing five distinct characteristics, namely: Grandeur, Repose, Sublimity, The Picturesque, and Beauty.
- 1. The Palisades, an unbroken wall of rock for fifteen miles—Grandeur.
- 2. The Tappanzee, surrounded by the sloping hills of Nyack, Tarrytown and Sleepy Hollow—Repose.
- 3. The Highlands, where the Hudson for twenty miles plays “hide and seek” with hills “rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun”—Sublimity.
- 4. The Hillsides, for miles above and below Poughkeepsie—The Picturesque.
- 5. The Catskills, on the west, throned in queenly dignity—Beauty.
George William Curtis, the great traveler, the close observer, the perfect gentleman, pronounced the Hudson grander than the Rhine, and Thackeray, in his “Virginians,” has given the Hudson the verdict of beauty.
To New Yorkers it is a river dear, for there is scarcely a single settlement along its banks, from its origin to the sea, which has not some interesting tradition, some notable historic event, to relate.
The beauty and glory of such a river were not, unaided, sufficient to induce the pioneer to leave his home in civilization and go into a wilderness thousands of miles away. Such a river as the Hudson could not have its origin in a low, marshy country, and its flow seaward, in any but a healthy region, but the inducement to seek that country must be more than the mere sentiment of beauty. There must seem to be a prospect of bettering one’s condition, so far as physical comforts, or civil and religious rights are concerned. Hudson, after his exploration of the Hudson river, on his return to Europe, took back there many very valuable furs which he obtained from the Indians in exchange for trinkets of little cost and of still less real value. This fur and peltry trade was eagerly sought by the Europeans, especially the French, English and Dutch, and the latter were greatly favored for a time, for the Indians from the far north and northwest came to or near Albany to market their goods and buy their supplies. In the years 1610, 1611, 1612, 1613 and 1614 enterprising Amsterdam merchants sent out vessels to and up the Hudson river to obtain furs and peltry and made large profits. In 1614 the territory extending from Cape Cod to the Delaware river, places which Hudson in his third voyage had touched, was claimed by the Netherlands and called New Netherlands, and in that year the Holland government granted a special charter to a company of Amsterdam merchants and others of the United New Netherlands Company giving them the monopoly until January 1, 1618, of all travel and trade in the New Netherlands, during which time they were at liberty to make four voyages. For a period of five years, from 1618 to 1623, there seems to have been a free trade in the New Netherlands—presumably the fur trade proving less profitable.
June 3, 1621, the government of Holland, called the “Lords States General,” incorporated the Dutch West India Company, clothing it with almost kingly powers, to carry on trade and planting settlements from Cape Horn to Newfoundland for a term of twenty-four years.
Its special object was the jurisdiction and exclusive control in New Netherlands. Its government was to be composed of nineteen directors from the five different cities of Holland. The Amsterdam Chamber was to have control of New Netherlands. The company was not fully organized until the spring of 1623. The English never recognized the Dutch claim for the territory called New Netherlands, and as early as 1613 demanded the surrender of the “Dutch trading house” on Manhattan Island, and ten years later the English Ambassador at The Hague protested against the encroachment of the Dutch fur traders—the English claiming the territory under the discoveries of the Cabots in 1497 and 1498. In April, 1623, thirty families, mostly Walloons, or French Protestants, came over and landed at New Amsterdam (New York) and eight of the families came up to Albany and there built Fort Orange near Steamboat Square, about two miles above Fort Nassau, built several years before.
Prior to the coming of the company of the Walloons to the New Netherlands the famous Pilgrim colony had received a patent granted by the Virginia Company giving them the right to settle “about the Hudson river,” and when the “Mayflower” left Southampton, England, that was her destination, but mistaking the route and contrary winds drove her to the Massachusetts coast and there that colony was settled in 1620 at Plymouth Rock. Had the Pilgrims settled in the New Netherlands in 1620 the result doubtless would have been different, but it is doubtful if it would have been better or even so good. It is well to bear in mind that the early settlements in New England were made by persons seeking to avoid persecution on account of their religious creeds, at variance with Roman Catholicism and the established Episcopal Church, and that they might found and establish a home where they could enjoy religious and civil rights. “The Pilgrims” settled at Plymouth in 1620 and “the Puritans” in Salem in 1629. Miles Standish was a prominent figure and character among the Pilgrims, though himself not a Pilgrim. Bradford, Brewster, Winslow, and Carver were the trusted leaders among the Pilgrims. Among the Puritans John Endicott and John Winthrop were easily the chiefs. The “Puritans” were members of the established (Episcopal) church. They sought to have that church purified. They wanted the clergy to give up wearing the surplice, making the sign of the cross in baptism and using the ring in the marriage service—Roman Catholic observances. The Separatists (afterward known in America as the Pilgrims) were a branch of the Puritans—ultra Puritans who utterly repudiated Roman Catholic ceremonials and everything in imitation of or like and therefore separated from the established (Episcopal) church.
The Dutch did not come to the New Netherlands on religious considerations, for Holland tolerated religious freedom, but they came for gain—immediate gain from the fur and peltry trade. They did not early come to settle and for nearly twenty years after Hudson’s exploration and glowing account of it very, very few indeed who came over to engage in, or employed in the fur trade, became settlers. It is said that Sarah Rapelje, a daughter of one of the Walloon settlers, born June 7, 1625, was the first white child born in the New Netherlands. The first reference to the population at Fort Orange (Albany) published seems to have been in a work published in Amsterdam in 1628, which says: “There are no families at Fort Orange. They keep twenty-five or twenty-six traders there.”
The report made by the Nineteen in 1629 to the Lords States General said: “All who are inclined to do any sort of work here procure enough to eat without any trouble and therefore are not willing to go far from home on an uncertainty.” It was apparent that if the Dutch West India Company was to prove a success in the New Netherlands a different course must be pursued, for Virginia and New England were being settled and their territory, in many respects better, was not.
The Dutch West India Company, modeled after the Dutch East India Company, having powerful fleets, sailing along the coasts of South America and the West Indies, preying on the Spanish commerce, capturing their vessels and cargoes and amassing wealth thereby, sought to induce men of wealth, daring, and ambition to relieve them of the undertaking of settling and developing the New Netherlands, which, instead of a source of revenue, had become a burden. They hit upon what was called the Patroon scheme—based upon the Feudal System—a system of land tenure and service prevalent in Europe during the Middle Ages—a system inevitably tending to exalt the Patroon into a lordly baron and to degrade his subject into a serf.
One who sought the distinction of the title of a Patroon (or Patron) of New Netherlands was entitled to hold as a perpetual inheritance, handing it down in the line of the oldest son, an estate having sixteen miles frontage on one side of a navigable river or eight miles on each side, extending as far into the country as the occupiers would permit. The Patroon must obtain Indian title, which usually cost but a trifle. He was empowered to hold civil and criminal courts on his estate and his decisions were practically final. He appointed the officers and magistrates in all the cities and towns in his territory. In order to be invested with this honor, these privileges and powers, he bound himself to take or send over at least fifty emigrants over fifteen years of age to settle on his patent within the next four years.
The emigrants taken or sent by the Patroons to New Netherlands were bound for a specified number of years as apprentices to serve their masters, agreeing not to hunt or fish without the master’s permission, agreeing to grind their grain in his mill and pay his price for grinding. They were pledged not to weave any cloth for themselves or others, but to buy it from the company under the penalty of banishment. They were bound to pay rent in everything they produced. The Patroon and his emigrants were to support a schoolmaster, a minister and a comforter for the sick.
Such in brief was the Patroon system.
The most desirable locations for selections in the New Netherlands were along the Hudson and Delaware rivers, known, of course, by the directors of the Dutch West India Company; prominent among them was Kiliaen Van Rensselaer, a wealthy dealer in diamonds and pearls in Amsterdam.
Van Rensselaer, doubtless, informed of the great advantages of Albany, as the great rendezvous of the Indians to market their furs and near the confluence of the two most important rivers of New York, instructed his agents to obtain title from the Indians and he succeeded in procuring a princely estate along the Hudson river above and below Albany, a distance of twenty-four miles and extending east and west forty-eight miles—a territory ample for a kingdom—greater than the area of North Holland and very little less than that of South Holland.
Other directors of the Dutch West India Company promptly made what they thought the most desirable locations along the Hudson river. Manhattan Island (New York) being reserved by the company, and along the Delaware—immense tracts, though none so extensive as Van Rensselaer’s, and became Patroons. Such grants and under such circumstances soon excited jealousy and sharp criticism in Holland and the Patroons felt compelled to make concessions and yield some of their privileges.
Kiliaen Van Rensselaer was a man of energy and executive ability, and strove to increase the growth, importance, and prosperity of Rensselaerwyck in accordance with the Patroon system. It has been said that he visited his estate in the New Netherlands in 1637, but no proof has been found and the report is discredited. A distant landlord frequently is in ignorance, and sometimes designedly kept so, of the actual state of affairs in his estate, which would be remedied if he were present. The Patroon was represented in New Netherlands, when absent, by agents, partners, or directors. Kiliaen admitted into a limited partnership in his estate three prominent members of the Amsterdam Chamber of the Dutch West India Company, namely, Samuel Godyn, Johannes de Laet, and Samuel Blommaert, in order the sooner and more effectively to present to the public the attractions of Rensselaerwyck, and, presumably, also to abate the ill feeling against him in the Netherlands for his having taken advantage of his position to secure such an immense estate. Van Rensselaer dominated that partnership and again became sole proprietor. Kiliaen died in 1646 and his son, Johannes, then a minor, under the right of primogeniture, became Patroon and continued to be until 1658, when he died. His interests in Rensselaerwyck were cared for at first by Van Slechtenhorst, or until 1652, and then by the Patroon’s half brother, Jan Baptiste.
In 1658 Jeremias, the second son of Kiliaen, became director and subsequently proprietor of Rensselaerwyck and was the first of the Patroons to reside in, or even visit, the estate in New Netherlands.
There were eight of the Van Rensselaers called Patroons, namely and in the order of primogeniture except in the case of Jeremias:
First.—Kiliaen, from 1629 to 1646.
Second.—Johannes, from 1646 to 1658.
Third.—Jeremias, from 1658 to 1674.
Fourth.—Kiliaen 2d, from 1674 to 1720.
Fifth.—Stephen, from 1720 to 1747.
Sixth.—Stephen 2d, from 1747 to 1769.
Seventh.—Stephen 3d, from 1769 to 1839.
Eighth.—Stephen 4th, from 1839 to 1868.
Under the Constitution and laws of the United States in 1787 the Rensselaerwyck could no longer be entailed and it was divided by Stephen 3d (the seventh Patroon) between his sons Stephen 4th (called Patroon merely by courtesy) and William Patterson—the former getting the mansion, title, and the estate in Albany, and the latter the estate east of the Hudson.
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_.