On the governing board of the Dutch West India Company, Kiliaen Van Rensselaer, a diamond merchant, headed a faction that pushed for permanent settlement of the company’s property, despite the continued failure of programs to establish small farms on Manhattan to supply company traders and ships. Van Rensselaer was a major proponent and one of the original recipients of a “patroon-ship” in 1629, a land grant contingent on his importation and settlement of 50 colonists within four years. The patroon controlled all of the land within the grant, leasing it to tenants, and had the power to appoint officials and magistrates within the settlements as well as charge fees for milling and other services performed at the patroon’s facilities. After meeting company requirements, Van Rensselaer received eight years’ exemption from company duties, and his colonists obtained 10 years’ exemption from taxes.
By 1635 Rensselaerswyck was the only one of the six original patroonships still in existence. The location along the Hudson River proved ideal for supplying company traders and took advantage of the nearby company garrison at Fort Orange. Despite a large capital expenditure and the dispatch of skilled indentured servants, horses, millstones, and tools from Holland, Van Rensselaer had problems keeping people on his lands. Desperate, he even outfitted a private ship, the Rensselaerswyck, to transport colonists, but this proved too expensive to maintain. For their part, tenants were often dissatisfied with not owning land, and they frequently departed to obtain their own property elsewhere in America. When displeased with the company’s management of trade with them, local tribes frequently made reprisal raids on Rensselaerswyck, a problem exacerbated by the colonists’ illegal sale of alcohol to the Indians.
By diversifying his well-placed settlement’s economy away from total dependence on the fUR trade, van Rensselaer ensured its survival, although continued use of the lease system led to resentments on the part of the tenants, which, beginning in 1751, exploded into a series of antirent revolts that were put down violently in 1766. This situation was a major factor in the loyalty of many Rensselaerswyck tenants during the American Revolution, who often reacted in opposition to the politics of their landlords.
Further reading: Sung Bok Kim, Landlord and Tenant in Colonial New York: Manorial Society 1664-1775 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1978); Florence Van Rensselaer, The Van Rensselaers in Holland and America (New York, n. p., 1956).
—Margaret Sankey
World History
