Stephentown Historical Society Presentation On The Anti-Rent War

Michael P. Barrett will present a talk on the Anti-Rent War of 1839 to 1869 at the Stephentown Historical Society meeting on Monday, September 14.  The meeting is at 7:30 pm at the Heritage Center on Garfield Road (County Route 26) in Stephentown. It is free and open to the public. The building is handicapped accessible. For directions, telephone 518-733-5675.
For more than a half-century following the American Revolution, over ten per cent of New York’s population lived on leasehold property which they could not purchase from members of the landed aristocracy.  These owners jealously guarded their rights to perpetual ownership, which traced from Royal land grants, and would allow only rental leases, often on onerous terms, to their farming tenants.
The Anti-Rent movement gained momentum upon the death of leading landlord Stephen Van Rensselaer, III, (the patroon for whom Stephentown was named)  in 1839.  The initial lack of financial and political power led the resisters to adopt the Boston Tea Party tactic of “Indian” disguise in order to stymie law enforcement and eviction.
Politicians and liberal thinkers adopted the cause, and it became one of the most important legal and social issues of the turbulent pre-Civil War period.  Thirty years of armed resistance, terror, imprisonment and strife swept across upstate New York.
On a national level, the War indirectly led to the founding of the Republican Party and to the passage of the federal Homestead Act, which opened the West to settlement.  Ironically, in New York, neither the landlords nor the tenants could ever claim a true victory, as both sides were forced to eat bitter fruit in the eventual resolutions of the disputes.
Barrett earned a B.S. in Criminal Science at Russell Sage College while working as a police officer for the City of Troy.  He went on to earn a Juris Doctor degree from the Western New England School of Law, in Springfield, MA.  He is presently Deputy Director of the Hudson Mohawk Industrial Gateway in Troy as well as Director of the Furniture Program for Troy Area United Ministries.  He has lectured at, or led historical tours for, over seventy different organizations.