8 City Worked: Occupation Colonial Stefan Biellins callonsssAlbany Social Project New York State Muse his essay addressesthe theme of how a city worked. mary, the Colonial Albany Project seeks to illuminate In this case, appreciating the play on words in the title and focus the life story of early Albany through the prism holds an important key toward understanding the of the lives of each early Albany person. developmentof an urban characterand urban identity for the city of Albany, New York during its colonial period No aspect of the lives of these people is more from 1686 to 1776. significant than their contributions to the pre-industrial community’s economy. That is, how they supported To date,most studiesof colonial cities and particularly themselves and their dependants-how they worked. the scholarship focused on early Albany either have This essaywill focus on the working people of colonial described community events, traced the evolution of Albany and will draw on the work profile data collected local institutions, or have offered the careersof the most so far by the Colonial Albany Social History Project to outstanding personages as the best ways of under- suggestan outline occupational framework for pre-urban standing the founding, growth, and developmentof what, workers in pre-industrial America. in the case of Albany, was a trading station, a military outpost, a commercial and communications center, and These laborers, artisans, craftspeople, transporters, then a seat of government and service on the west bank human services vendors, merchants and traders, and of the Hudson River, 150 miles north of Manhattan.’ professional people gave this colonial city its character, its identity, and its life. An appreciation of how the ‘This essay applies a functional framework and working people of colonial Albany earned a living is employs a humanistic approach toward the under- basic to understandingissues that led to the chartering of standing of life in an early American community. The the colonial city in 1686; how Albany grew over the next city of Albany was a home for as many as 10,000 hundred years; how its political economy functioned in different people during the century before the War for practice; and how its people related to their neighbors, a Independence.Each of these Albany residents played a large dependanthinterland, transient populations, and to part in the community’s socio-economic drama. other parts of the outside world.2 Appreciating the individual and collective contributions of each of the people of colonial Albany representsa Before submitting this outline, an appreciation of two comprehensively revealing approach to community basic concepts is essential. These definitions help history. To know intimately the lives of each of these provide a framework for understanding why the city of people of colonial Albany and to understand how Albany flourished and how the lives of its people differed individual life histories worked as parts of a larger story from those living in the Albany hinterland. First, this of family and community over a period of approximately essaydefines an “Albany person” as a resident of the city 114 years is the ambition of the Colonial Albany Social of Albany, the one mile by sixteen mile strip of land History Project, a model community history program running northwest away from the Hudson as specified in sponsoredby theNew York StateMuseum. The Colonial the city charter granted by Governor Thomas Dongan in Albany Social History Project has undertaken a broadly 1686. The center of this municipality was the land conceived program of historical research and has enclosedby the Albany stockade,a log fence which was developed several data base information centers on the enlarged several times during the seventeenth and people of colonial Albany and their world. The central eighteenth centuries. Most, but not all, Albany residents element of this data base is a detailed life course bio- lived inside the six gates.The distinction of city residents graphy for each of the people who lived in the city of from those living in the countryside is critical to Albany before 1800. These biographies are the essential appreciating the development of the regional economy building blocks of all project-related programs. In sum- on two levels. 119 120 SELECTED RENSSELAERSWIJCK SEMINAR PAPERS Fig. 26. Early Albany Street Sceneby Leonard F. Tantillo. By the date of the charter, these “city” people had city’s mayor and aldermen), was responsible for protect- formed an image of themselvesas members of an Albany ing the Albany fur trading monopoly. Somleenterprising community. Their special status confirmed in the individuals sought to maintain dual residenciesand thus Dongan Charter was tangibly important to them with qualify as traders.But the Albany city fathers (the mayor respectto their land titles in an areaotherwise surrounded and aldermen) were successful in almos%completely by Van RensselaerManor, their exclusive right to trade eliminating that practice by the end of the first decadeof for furs, and the other privileges connected to city the eighteenth century.3 residency. Albany people were distinguished from other regional residents by their occupations, which The Albany city charter also established.Albany as the unlike the others, did not revolve around farming. county market town and designatedregular market days when farmers could bring their produce ~toAlbany to Albany residents made, sold, and repaired things and barter for goods and services offered by those Albany also provided a range of personal services. Only residentsenjoying the “freedom of the city.” Only those qualified Albany city residents, called “burghers” or entitled by freemanship or licenced by the Albany “freemen,” were authorized to trade with the Indians. corporation (the mayor and councilmen) were permitted All others, and there were many, were liable to be to sell their waresat the Albany market. At the sametime, condemnedas illegal traders. In practice, this restriction internal carting and portering, and ferry accessto Albany seriously impeded non-resident, would-be traders, were controlled by appointment and license by the city whether they were from New York, New England, or corporation. Finally, the mayor was emlpowered as more immediately from Rensselaerswijck,Kinderhook, “clerk of the market” to set commercial standardsinclud- Catskill, or Schenectady,from openly purchasing Indian ing weights and measures, and, through the Mayor’s trade goods and from selling competitively the furs they Court, to arbitrate business disputes. This legislation might illegally receive from the Iroquois and Eastern meant that access to the market and the movement of Indians. This reservation also placed theseoutsiders at goods and supplies acrossthe Hudson and within the city risk of being arrestedby the Albany County sheriff who was reserved to those preferred by the Albany city with the Albany Commissioners of Indian Affairs (the fathers. WOW A CITY WORKED 124 Not surprisingly, both the fur trading monopoly and excepting infants and invalids. Wives took over manage- the rights and regulations of the Albany market were ment of theseenterprises during the absenceor death of violated and infringed on by non-residents. However, the head of the household, adding additional respon- unauthorized tradersand merchants(anyone who had not sibility to childbearing which lasted for up to two qualified for the “Freedom of Albany”) often were decades. Most widows of childbearing age remarried prosecuted and fined. Those who persisted were while those who had reachedmiddle age often managed compelled to carry on in some degreeof secrecy.Thus, the family trade or business themselves and did not they were at a seriousdisadvantage when competing with remarry. the legally established Albany traders and merchants, These Albany Handelaers, the Dutch word for Children generally outnumbered the adults in the merchants, who were prominently represented on the community as the typical Albany household included Albany Corporation and in the local courts, successfully four or more sonsand daughters.Childhood endedearly employed legal sanctions to curtail competition.4 as boys and girls had been introduced to crafts, trade, business,and above all, to labor, by the time they reached Second, by establishing the city of Albany as the their teens. Few children left their parents’ hearth until exclusive commercial center for the county that origi- they married during their early twenties. Thus, the family nally extended from Saugertiesto the St. Lawrence and work unit would retain its basic labor supply over all but from New England to the Indian country, commercial the first years of an Albany householder’s career. opportunities for the inhabitants of the rest of the region Virtually every Albany youth aged ten to twenty could were confined to agriculture and to extractive expect to passfive to fifteen years of work, training, and enterprises.These farmers were permitted to grow and seasoningin a family businessenterprise. In this city of harvest agricultural products and to cut, cure, and other- households characterized by a family-based economic wise prepareproduce and forest and mineral products for unit, wives, sons and daughters, a large number of or- sale on the Albany market in accordancewith the terms phans, and some adolescent apprentices formed the of their individual land titles. backboneof the community’s labor supply. Freedom to “mine” the