Kenney, the Transformation of the Albany

Though Albany is the oldest city in the original IJnited time went on, some patrician families withdrew from States, and has been significant for many reasons commerceto live on their incomes from investments in throughout its 350 years, nearly all the histories written banking or the trading ventures of others, and devoted about it concentrate on the period before 1800. These their leisure to public service, scholarship, or the arts. works depend heavily on published primary sources- Dutch patricians, unlike successful English merchants, Joel Munsell’s collections of local materials, New York who frequently bought country estates and joined the colonial and Revolutionary archives edited by Edmund landed gentry, usually remained in the city for several B, O’Callaghan and others, and A. J. F. van Laer’s generations, and led their fellow citizens in intense translations of Dutch court minutes. The wealth of public loyalty to their local community. archives, diaries, and personal correspondence, newspapers,maps, pictures, and other materials from the The first settlers at Albany were fur traders and nineteenth and twentieth centuries which have been Walloon farmerssent by the Dutch West India Company accumulating in local repositories, have remained in 1624, while in 1629, wealthy merchant Kiliaen van largely unexplored. There have been a few biographies Rensselaerbegan to send farmersto his “patroonship” of of civic leaders, of men prominent in state politics and Rensselaerswijck.This frontier community acquired the of artists, some articles and unpublished theses on status of a formally organized town in 1652, when various ethnic groups, and recently, considerableinterest Governor Petrus Stuyvesantgranted “Beverwijck” civic in genealogy,material culture, and historic preservation. privileges, to curb the pretensionsof the Van Rensselaer Since 1986 marked the tricentennial of the city charter, family to quasi-feudal powers over the entire region. The it is time now to learn more about Albany in the last two most prosperoustraders were appointed magistrates,and hundred years,and to tell the full story of its long, unique after the English conquest, these leading citizens heritage. This paper will suggestone possible framework purchased from Governor Thomas Dongan, in 1686, a for the story by showing how the Dutch-descended city charter providing for an appointed lvIayor and an patrician social order of colonial Albany was trans- elected Common Council. The charter also granted formed by the growth of the city between the Revolution Albany a monopoly over the fur trade, which was and the Civil War. dominated by Dutch families such as the Schuylers, Cuylers, Bleeckers, and Wendels, who were rapidly First, it is necessary to define the term “patrician”, becoming wealthy and whose children were inter- which originated in ancient Rome, where it denoted the marrying. For many years, mayors and common council group of long-established families who governed the members came almost exclusively from fur-trading city. In the medieval Netherlands, the wealthy merchants families, whose combination of economic and political who controlled the commerce of each town, grouped power marked them as patricians in the Dutch tradition, together to purchase privileges of self-government, or within their English form of government. Though the “liberties”, from their feudal overlord. These patrician Albany monopoly, challenged by other communities, families dominated the city councils which, though they was overthrown by a 1726 court decision, and in the were not elected by the people, found that politics eighteenth century the Indians moved farther west, the promoting the prosperity of the entire community usually fur-trading patricians remained civic leaders until after resulted in larger profits for their businesses.Nor was the Revolution. membershipin this ruling class static, for craftsmenwho became wealthy could encourage their sons and As the upper Hudson Valley filled with farmers,a new daughters to marry into patrician families, and their group of merchantsand craftsmen, also descendedfrom grandchildren would be acceptedas born patricians. As seventeenth-century Dutch settlers, became wealthy 93 -94 SELECTED RENSSELAERSWIJCK SEMINAR PAPERS selling the farmers’ produce and supplying them with The Albany patricians remained Dutch at heart manufactured goods..Members of such families as the through most of the eighteenth century, using the Dutch Douws and Gansevoorts began to be elected to the language at home and in church services, though the common council in the 173Os,and silversmith Jacob C. younger generation became bilingual to deal with Ten Eyck’s appointment as mayor in 1748indicates their English-speaking officials-and customers. Though attainment of full patrician status.Though fur trading and they bitterly resentedBritish speculatorswho flocked in mercantile patricians differed over some civic issues, during the French and Indian War, anid sometimes their children soon intermarried, and they joined together harassedthem with “nuisance” taxes and legal actions, to win all possible profit from the British armies most Albany patricians scented profit in working with stationed in Albany during the French and Indian English civil and military authorities. But with the out- WarThere were also in Albany from the time of the break of the Revolution, most of the Dutch patricians conquesta number of English military and civil officials, rose above former differences and rivalries #amongthem- some of whom consolidated their position by marrying selves to unite solidly behind the Patriot cause and into Dutch families, particularly the landed Van expelling as Loyalists many of t$e intrusive British new- Rensselaers.Others, often Scats,cameas merchants, like comers. A conspicuous exception was Mayor Abraham Robert Livingston and later James Stevenson, who C. Cuyler, of an old fur-trading family, who led the city’s married respectively a Schuyler daughter and a Cuyler Loyalists until he was arrested and exiled, but other granddaughter,and whose children participated in civic branchesof the Cuyler clan becamededicated and active affairs as born patricians. Someof these,like Livingston, Patriots. The patrician statusof General Philip Schuyler, followed their wives into the dominant Dutch Reformed though resentedby egalitarian New England militiamen, congregation,but others, like Stevenson,became leaders helped him greatly in securing supplies frolm the people in St. Peter’s Anglican church, established by the of the upper Hudson Valley to sustain the army which governor in 1715,despite vigorous protestsfrom thecity eventually defeated Burgoyne. Long-standing English government. residents who chose to become Patriots were accepted on equal terms, like John Barclay, grandson of the fist The built environment of colonial Albany began with Anglican rector, who in 1778 became Albany’s first Fort Orange,on which construction startedin 1624at the Mayor under the new state government. mouth of the Ruttenkill (present Hudson Avenue) on a site now covered by approachesto the Dunn Memorial After theRevolution, in Albany as elsewhiere,the men Bridge. The center of Beverwijck was its blockhouse who had worked together to win the war continued to church, constructedin 1656 at the presentintersection of work together to repair the damage,create a new nation, State Street and Broadway, and soon surrounded by and exploit the advantages of independerrce. General Dutch-style houses,one of which remaineda StateStreet Philip Schuyler served in several stateoffices and finally landmark until the 1880s.In 1676, during King Philip’s as U.S. senator, and worked with his son-in-law War, Governor Edmund Andros ordered a new fort built Alexander Hamilton to secure ratification of the Con- on the hill, at the present intersection of Stateand Eagle stitution and organize the Federalist party in the upper Streets, near which soldiers and small craftsmen soon Hudson region. General Abraham Ten Broeck held the built houses.A palisade from the fort to the river, along office of mayor for ten years, while Leonard Gansevoort the creeks which flowed down the present Hudson and served several terms in the state Senateand his brother Columbia Street ravines, was maintained cooperatively General Peter Gansevoort became U.S. military agent, by the burghers during the late 17-century French and forwarding supplies to forts in the Northwest Territory. Indian wars. Within it clustered Dutch houses, side by Public service became a route to patrician status for side with their steppedor straight gables to the street,but several lawyers of plebeian origin, like Abraham and each with an ample garden behind, and a post in front Robert Yates and John Lansing, Jr., who won election to where the family cow was tetheredat night, after grazing Revolutionary committees, held various states offices, in the common pasture south of the site of Fort Orange. and becameleading Anti-Federalists. Close associatesof Patricians and plebeians thus lived side by side in a town Governor George Clinton, both Lansing anld Abraham like those of the medieval Netherlands, where, though Yates,were appointed mayor in the 1780sand. 179Os, and patricians enjoyed more luxuries like fine silverware and despite their political differences with other civic family portraits, all produced locally, their way of life leaders, they and their families were thenceforth was not essentially different. acceptedas patricians. The roster

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