The Edge of the Frontier on the Eve of the Revolution
The Last Days of Colonial Albany

a chapter from
The Other Revolutionaries
by
Stefan Bielinski


During the summer of 1770, local lawyer and sometime surveyor named Robert Yates made a map to help the Albany common council resolve a dispute over the city's northern and southern boundaries. Although it encompassed virtually the same terrain as most previous city maps, Yates's "Plan of the City of Albany" represented a striking departure from those made by British army engineers during the seventy years past. The Robert Yates map documented changes in the community since the end of the Great War for Empire and also serves as a canvas for illustrating Albany's evolution during the critical decades that followed.

Like earlier representations, the Yates map featured a street grid set against the hillside on the West Bank of the Hudson. A shaded core area covered nine blocks along the river and reached about six blocks up the hill to the west. Outstanding features included the city hall, market house, churches, as well as other new features. But missing from this version was the log stockade that had encircled the central city for more than a hundred years and was the most prominent feature of all previous cartography. The disappearance of that prescriptive palisade was significant for it depicted an emerging city for the first time without its military makeup. The Yates map unveiled a budding urban center and clarified the fact that Albany's streets had been laid out for access to the river. On a typical day, more than two dozen sloops moored at the docks or riding at anchor and many more lesser craft tied-up or beached along the shoreline underscored the fact that the Hudson River was Albany's lifeline and that its economic vitality was closely connected to commerce and trade. In 1766, the City Corporation had underwritten the construction of three large, earth-filled docks and the beginnings of a seawall. Those improvements were the first municipal commitments to reclaiming the muddy riverbank that had severely inhibited commerce in days past.

The fort, first built by the English in the 1670s and garrisoned by European-born soldiers for many decades after, was drawn by Yates but in an outlined form that made it appear much less ominous than in earlier cartography where its presence dominated the community. Erected two-thirds of the way up the hill and in the middle of a main street, the now obsolete stone structure stood as an impediment to the development of the western parts of the city. In 1770, the fort had no garrison, needed work, and was being vandalized for its stones, lumber, and furnishings. The large hospital and barracks, built on the bluff north of the fort, still had some utility and were the last remnants of the substantial alterations made by the British army just a decade before. But they too had fallen into severe disrepair.1

Many of the changes in the urban landscape chronicled by Robert Yates had been made during the past decade. The disappearance of the stockade, improvement of the river front, and a number of new buildings recently raised on its main streets gave Albany a more substantial, settled appearance with three-story blocked, brick structures beginning to dwarf the smaller, gabled townhouses that had characterized the cityscape in years past.

Three major thoroughfares defined Albany's central core. Market and Pearl Streets ran parallel to the river. They were crossed by State Street, a wide highway through the center of the community that led from the water uphill to the fort and beyond. State Street located the residences of most of Albany's wealthiest people - old-line families - the Schuylers, Cuylers, Ten Broecks, Wendells, De Peysters, and Douws. Despite the new building, State Street's elite character was not much altered when newcomers named Stevenson, Barry, Caldwell, Henry, and Mc Clallen supplanted the sons of New Netherland in larger houses that were better suited for combined commercial and residential activities. The most successful of the traditional merchants had managed to maintain hegemony by learning how to manipulate the British colonial system for their own benefit. Their rewards began with Albany's unique status under its royal municipal charter and included government contracts, political preferment, and consistent access to the uniquely American resource - wilderness land. From Albany's earliest days, the State Street merchants had set business priorities, the city's political agenda, and were the focal points of functional economic networks that included dozens of dependent clients.

With a width of more than 150 feet, State Street almost invited the use of its median for public activities. By 1770, the magazines, stables, guardhouse, and the tents of a number of New York traders put there during the last war had been removed. With the dismantling of the fort, only two landmarks remained to slow the traveler heading up State Street and out the "King's Highway" to the west. A Dutch Reformed Church had stood in the middle of Albany's main intersection at State, Court, and Market Streets for more than a hundred years. It symbolized the centrality of the community's New Netherland experience. But St. Peter's Anglican Church located three blocks uphill was the parish of choice for a growing number of residents from both traditional and newly arrived families. The city's fire engine was stored in the rear of St. Peter's - marking the highest elevation of substantial settlement. Two other churches, one Lutheran and the other Presbyterian, occupied less prominent sites off the main street but provided spiritual and social alternatives for some of Albany's more ethnic minorities.

Anchored by what was becoming a landmark elm tree planted in front of the family house at the State Street corner by a young Philip Livingston, Pearl Street was strictly residential. Located above the high water mark of springtime flooding, for a hundred years its three, gable-lined blocks were the exclusive homes of the Beekmans, Bleeckers, Cuylers, Lansings, Vanderheydens, Van Rensselaers, and Visschers - large and prominent Albany families whose livelihoods still were tied to the community's most traditional economic activities. By the 1770s, this part of Pearl Street had begun to represent Albany's old wealth with a number of widows and "gentlemen" giving it a comparatively sedate and passive character. Beyond those austere edifices and over the Foxes Creek bridge, newer, more modest structures were clustered around northern Pearl and its cross streets as tradesmen and truckers sought access to Albany's business mainlines. As Pearl Street cut through the northern city line, it became much less ordered with smaller makeshift homes, more sheds and storehouses, and much busier and more congested with wagons and drays that were barred from the core city.

Market Street, a water-level boulevard running north from the Dutch church for five blocks and then continuing along as the river road through the Manor of Rensselaerswyck, was undergoing serious redevelopment. An enclosed, English-style market house recently had been erected in the street near Maiden Lane. It helped regulate a thriving trade for country produce and products that had become a vital part of the community economy and which made the official, twice-weekly market days quite inadequate. A number of new, taller, multi-use, brick buildings gave the area near the Dutch church a commercial character although many of these urban mansions were also residential. New buildings lined the blocks facing the market house as new and old businessmen strove to be in the center of the commercial action. Beyond the old stockade, north of today's Steuben Street, townhouses gave way to warehouses, barns, pens, pits, sheds, and lumber and brickyards which stored much of the assembled produce and other commodities that were tangible evidence of the prosperity of the mainline merchants.

Court Street ran south from the Dutch church, past the city hall, and through the site of Fort Orange to the pastures. At its northern end, this tightly packed section of small buildings was dominated by the large, thirty-year-old city hall/courthouse/jail set on the corner of Hudson Street two short blocks from State. In 1754, the Albany Congress convened in its main chamber and the Albany Corporation or common council met there each week to pass ordinances, consider petitions, and conduct other city business. Court had been Albany's first mainstreet" as the first permanent homes of the fur traders spread north from Fort Orange during the 1650s. A hundred years later, the Bogerts, Lansings, Ryckmans, and other traditional New Netherland families still held many of those original houselots. On the eve of the Revolution, Dr. Henry Van Dyck - a fourth generation traditional physician; gunsmith and fire engine tender Robert Lansing; skipper, surveyor, and alderman Henry I. Bogert; hatter John W. Wendell; and former mayor Volkert P. Douw in his corner store were prominent Court Street personages.

As it ran through the lowest part of the Hudson River flood plain, Court Street development lagged behind the other core avenues with those who could instead choosing higher, dryer locations for their homes and businesses. By the 1770s, a number of newcomers had rented business space in old Court Street buildings. With a fourth stone dock serving as a landing place for cargoes and passengers where this street met the water near the crater of old Fort Orange, the city hall in the middle with a large dock behind it, and the Dutch Church at the north end, Court Street represented the center of Albany's official life with shippers and truckers, the city corporation, clerk, sheriff, county courts, and Holland-born Domine Eilardus Westerlo all nearby to provide essential services. Despite the congestion and the seasonal flooding which turned this unpaved street into a quagmire, the most often-identified locations given by advertisers in the Albany Gazette when it began publication in November of 1771 referenced City Hall, the Dutch Church, and Court Street.2

State, Pearl, Market, and Court, these were colonial Albany's main streets. They also were the home bases of most of the community's mainline families. All of the city's thirty-two colonial mayors and most of the aldermen and assistants who since 1686 constituted the City Corporation made those addresses their principal headquarters. These mainliners were Albany's traditional leaders - most of who were known by the generic term "merchant." They represented a range of economic backgrounds but mostly were descendants of New Netherland-era settlers and included those who came later hoping to build on the community's initial successes in exporting furs and then farm and forest commodities. And almost all of the rank-and-file members of the community were tied to this commercial leadership group in ways that only began with kinship bonds.3 The Yates map of 1770 also differed from its predecessors as it represented the first measurement of the city's northern and southern boundaries - parallel lines running northwest from the river and extending into the pine barrens for sixteen miles as specified in the city charter of 1686. With the end of the Great War for Empire, the city land outside the previously fenced-in core was undergoing its initial development. North of where Foxes Creek cut a deep ravine as it flowed downhill through today's Sheridan hollow before bottoming out and emptying into the Hudson, tanning pits, shops, and small homes dotted the sloping north bank landscape as self-serving shoemakers, saddlers, and harness makers used the stream to prepare the animal hides needed to meet a growing regional demand for leather products. The corporation recently had sold those lots to a number of investors whom either leased or sold to new homeowners. Many of the actual residents were leatherworkers who built modest homes near Pearl Street on newly opened cross streets then called Fox (Sheridan), Hare (Orange), and Patroon (Clinton Avenue) - the northern boundary of the city. This elevated section generally was known as the Woutenbergh and later "Arbor Hill." The cordwainers and cobblers were the most numerous of Albany's tradesmen and included members of virtually every mainline family. They shared the Foxes Creek flats with traditional coopers and smiths and also with a number of new householders who had settled in the community in recent years. The pre-war newcomers included the Abels, Hogstrassers, Roffs, and Rubys - émigrés from the German states; the Ulster Irish Mc Gourcks; Scotsman James Angus; and the Jacksons and Specks - first members of a free black enclave, all of whom sought to make their way as rough tradesmen, grocers, boatmen, and truckers or in the city's other service industries. The flood-susceptible flats from Pearl Street to the river were less well settled although the modest homes and yards of Wouter Quackenbush, Jan Winne, and the sons of Widow Dunbar were conspicuous Northside landmarks.4

Between State Street and the high ground above the Foxes Creek gorge, the British had erected a hospital and barracks buildings during the last war. Ceded to the city in 1765, these large structures were leased to local merchants for storage, to residential tenants, and to the Lutheran evangelist, John C. Hartwick, for revival meetings. The barracks was in decline but the more substantial hospital building would be an enduring landmark for many years. By the 1770s, the hillside area north of State and above Pearl Street was beginning to emerge as a neighborhood of artisans and shopkeepers living in modest homes on upper Rom Street (Maiden Lane), Pine, Barrack (Chapel), and Lodge Streets - the latter named for the new headquarters recently built by Albany's more high-minded Masons behind St. Peter's rectory. These residents of the Second Ward hill were a mix of old and new Albany people. They included lesser members of the Bleecker, Glen, Pruyn, Roseboom, Van Schaick, and Witbeck families, Albany-born placemen Henry Beasley and John Ostrander, and newcomers William Gilliland, Luke Cassidy, Mc Gourck family members, Alexander Forsight, high constable William Regal, Jacob Hinderer, and Edward Archer.5

With the building of the piers at the foot of Hudson Avenue, Maiden Lane, and Orange Street and the dismantling of the stockade, by the 1770s, houses, shops, and storehouses began to appear along the waterfront between Market/Court Street and Water or Dock Street. Here were the new homes of those who made their living from the carrying trade - shipwrights, sailmakers, ropers, coopers, smiths, and the mariners themselves. Stewart Dean, William Pemberton, Abraham Bloodgood, Henry I. Bogert, the Van Allen brothers, Cornelis Van Santvoort, and other Albany skippers could watch their boats from new riverside homes. The sloop's small crew depended on boys, slaves, and transients as few Albany men found much advantage in a long-term sailing career. William Johnson's large brick house on the corner of State and Market Streets was occupied by William Gamble or another of Sir William's Albany retainers - giving the most influential man in the region a healthy base of operations in what most others found to be a closed community. With the building of the docks, main street Albany businessmen became more interested in access to waterside lots for wharfage and storage as the riverfront emerged as a busy, nautical neighborhood although one still very susceptible to the Hudson's spring overflow.6

The cow path running South from State and Pearl Streets was a well-worn lane to the city pastures. Evolving into a permanent avenue, lots along it recently had been subdivided, sold, and now were being settled. This road continued South along the base of the western slope, crossed the Beaverkill, ran past Philip Schuyler's grand mansion, out to Philip Van Rensselaer's new home at old Cherry Hill, and then continued on into rural Rensselaerswyck. South from State, that thoroughfare was defined by shops and coachhouses of the Staatses and Stevensons, the Lutheran and Presbyterian churches, the mid-sized homes of secondary import merchants Gerrit Van Zandt, Jr., John Fryer, and John Munro, aspiring providers including attorney Peter W. Yates, alderman John Price, and some established craftsmen. The partition in 1766 of Hendrick Hallenbeck's estate among eight adult children opened the land between the old stockade and the Beaverkill for development. By the 1770s, a dozen Hallenbeck households had emerged along the street near the main homestead and family cemetery with additional new residences and workshops spreading southeast across bright green pastures all the way to the tip of Castle Island, the southern boundary of the city.7

The sprawling semi-rural development of the south pastures stood in contrast to the close ambiance of Beaver, Green, and Hudson Streets - a crowded older neighborhood of small homes, workshops, stores, and crude inns all referred to in the newspaper as Cheapside. Set behind State and Court Streets and bounded by the hill and the Hallenbeck property, that small, five-block section was first settled when former garrison soldiers named Barret, Brooks, Cooper, Fryer, Hilton, Hogan, Kidney, Radcliff, Waters, Williams, and Yates first set up housekeeping inside the southern wall of the stockade more than fifty years earlier. The old Dutch Reformed cemetery between Hudson and Beaver Streets was full and seemed misplaced - surrounded by the modest homes of those who settled in Albany after the fall of New Netherland. Richard Cartwright's "King's Arms" at Green and Beaver Streets was a well-known meeting place, masonic hall, and general focal point for the city's growing British-ancestry population - which included third-generation city residents, French and Indian War veterans, and more recent English and Scottish emigrés as well. By 1770, most Cheapside tradesmen and shopkeepers were just about surviving in an economy that made them more and more dependent on the patronage of the main street merchants.8

West of the southern extension of Pearl Street, and from the Hallenbeck land to State Street, the hillside rose more sharply but was cut by the Ruttenkill and the Beaverkill as they eroded deeply into the hillside - leaving the intervening acreage intermittently muddy and rock-hard and, until recently, mostly undeveloped. Except for the Hallenbeck tract, a traditional brickyard, and the crater of a lime kiln, most of the land beyond the Lutheran Church and burial ground was considered part of the Wendell family's pastures. The Wendell land extended south from the rear of the main Wendell homes on upper State Street, through the Ruttenkill ravine, and all the way to Philip Schuyler's property and included the mill pond the Wendells made by damming the Beaverkill a generation earlier. The rest of the elevated terrain above the street was city land and well-known as "Gallows Hill." Toward the crest of the hill, Philip Wendell was building a new home. By the 1760s, the city fathers and the Wendells too were leasing some of those uplands to newcomers and/or coming-of-age native sons who built small homes on the hillside above the central "downtown" area. In the flats of the Ruttenkill ravine, local farmers congregated to offer produce and products on their own at what was becoming the city's unofficial public market.9

The westward extension of State Street, the legendary "King's Highway," was little more than a wagon trail yet it provided the only overland route for the eighteen miles between Albany and Schenectady. In 1769, Bastian Visscher received a ten-year contract to fix and maintain the road from the city to Christie's inn at "Sandy Hill," a couple miles west of the river. One "Widow Mc Michael's" inn at the Verburg seven miles from the Hudson and Isaac Truax's "Halfway House" tavern several miles beyond provided welcome stops for travelers and also a focal point for local farmers - who were tenants of the Van Rensselaers. Until recently, the long, narrow corridor of city land that ran through pine and brush west almost to Schenectady had been sparsely settled except for squatters and the summer huts and gardens of some so-called Albany servants. But with the closing of the fort, untying of the stockade, and the improvement of the road, the easternmost part of the sandy strip of high ground between the Ruttenkill and Foxes Creek ravines was opened for development. The most desirable sites nearest the King's Highway were quickly grabbed up by Albany's leading investors and by privileged newcomers including Captain John Christie, James Furnival - who also opened an inn above the city, John Monier - the royal postmaster, lawyer Peter Silvester, veteran George Wray, and Dr. Wilhelmus Mancius - son of an Ulster County minister. Eventually some plots found their way into the hands of ordinary people and former tenants like Samuel Bromley, John Foster, John Mc Donald, John Mc Kinsey, David Rottery, and the Hewsons (Hughsons) who built modest homes along the high road for a mile away from the river. By the 1770s, the four small churchyard cemeteries in the core city were full prompting the corporation to designate the former "free school plot" above today's Eagle Street as a municipal burial grounds. On that high ground, old Bernardus Bradt and his successor Daniel Van Antwerpen found digging graves much easier than in the heavy clay of the Cheapside Reformed cemetery plot. At the same time, slaves were interred in a "Negro Burial Grounds" located on the northern edge of Albany's central plateau downhill from the site of the one-time Indian huts.10

Beyond the core radiating from the State/Pearl/Market Street axis, development thinned as city became countryside. The forest timber had long since been cut and consumed but the hilly terrain was overgrown with a thick tangle of vegetation. A transitional zone ringed the city for a mile from the Dutch church, and supported more than a thousand people whose livelihoods were an everyday part of the Albany economy. This hinterland was dotted with farms, some of which also were the homes of city-based tradesmen and artisans. Most of these people were the nominal tenants of the Van Rensselaer family although fewer and fewer of them were exclusively farmers. An increased settlement density in the periphery since the end of the war and the dismantling of the stockade had blurred the city/country distinctions that had been more pronounced in earlier days. Although these outlands still served primarily as an agricultural support area for the city, a number of the new inhabitants of what became Bethlehem and Watervliet were tradesmen and entrepreneurs who needed more space for their processing and storage operations.

Most prominent in the ring of settlement outside the core city were the recently erected country seats of some of Albany's most important families. South of the city, more spacious, Georgian-style homes sat on choice elevated spots that commanded strips of farmland fronting on the Hudson. These were built by Rensselaer Nicoll on the large farm he inherited at Cedar Hill and by British pensioner Hitchen Holland and his successor young Philip Van Rensselaer at Cherry Hill - north of the Normanskill. A mile above the river, Colonel John Bradstreet erected "Whitehall" and engaged English tenants on Van Rensselaer land which ran down to the river and included Castle Island. On a recently acquired strip just inside the southern city line, Bradstreet helped Philip Schuyler build an elegant mansion above the Albany pastures that appeared to preside over the rough development taking place between it and the new ferry house. On Albany's western plain travelers stopped at Christie's "Sandbergh" (Sandy Hill). Across the Hudson, the Douw family built "Wolvenhook" while the Cuyler and Van Rensselaer country seats were located at Greenbush. A number of somewhat less prominent Albany families retreated to homes farther up the east bank hill. Along the river North of Albany, in 1765 Stephen Van Rensselaer erected a new manor house beyond where Patroon's Creek crossed the Saratoga road. By the 1770s, a large number of new people had settled in this area. All were beholding to the Van Rensselaer landlords but most of them were also tied to the city economy and society. By the outbreak of the war, these sub-urbanites living in the area between Foxes and Patroon Creeks were an emerging new area known as Watervliet. Most of this development was along the river road with the landmark townhouse, still, and tanyard of Hendrick Quackenbush the focal point for several Quackenbush, Lansing, and Tillman enclaves located between the city and the Van Rensselaer manor house. Beyond the Patroon's and along the river at "The Flatts" were the country homes of the long-lived Madame Schuyler and other family members. The business of these New Netherland-ancestry grandees and Albany's other country "gentlemen" was complex and involved growing numbers of tenant farmers and neighboring clients. These landholding businessmen chose more commanding sites away from the congestion of the Albany commercial district from which to direct their multi-faceted enterprises.11

The recent improvement and building along the Albany waterfront testified to the primacy of the river in the development of Albany and its hinterland. The sloop, a single-masted workhorse, was the mainstay of an Albany business fleet of more than fifty vessels that gave Albany businessmen the upper hand in collecting farm and forest produce and shipping them to New York and beyond. A few years earlier, Philip Schuyler launched his schooner to bring down more lumber and grain harvested on his Saratoga plantation. However, larger ships only occasionally came up to Albany, as recently implemented British trade restrictions required overseas cargoes to be landed in New York. Smaller watercraft - the barge, bateau, shallop, and scow - some with sails others with oars, were even more common and brought exportable commodities to Albany from lesser landings up and down the Hudson.

The direct link across the river to Greenbush was the exclusive prerogative of the city ferries established at three designated landings. Like the four docks, the ferries were "sold" at auction each year by the Corporation. In 1770, Thomas Lotteridge, Widow Catherine Hansen, and Matthew Arsen were awarded three-year leases that were renewed several times more. Only those licensed ferrymen were authorized to charge specified fees for cross-river transport. Except between January and March when the Hudson froze hard, the sloops and other rivercraft, ferries, and the dozens of diverse floatables that local people used to avoid ferry charges gave the waterfront area a dynamic if congested character.12

Located at the head of commercial navigation on the Hudson, Albany was the loading point for export farm and forest products and also the destination for most incoming cargoes. A well-developed water delivery network up and down the river was essential to the city's prosperity and all of the mainline families could call on kinship-based networks for access to Hudson River ships and boats. At the same time, a web of roadways reaching into the interior enhanced Albany's centrality in the regional economy. The basic overland routes leading to and from the city had been long established. These crude roads followed the river north and south; went west through the Pine Barrens to Schenectady and into the Mohawk Valley. Across the river, they led from the Greenbush ferry landings east toward New England. By the 1770s, these main routes were heavily traveled by sleighs, wagons, and even a few coaches and had been improved some by the settlers living along them. Less formal roadways branched off of the main roads and connected Albany with Canastigione (Nyskayuna) and Halfmoon on the Mohawk; with the farms beneath the Hellebergh (Heldebergh) escarpment; with the German-speaking farmers across the mountains in the Schoharie valley; and with growing agricultural pockets at Bethlehem, Coeymans, and in the valleys of southern Albany County drained by the creeks flowing from the Catskill Mountains. Across the Hudson, the main routes to the "New City" of Lansingburgh, Schaghticoke, Hoosick, New England, and Kinderhook were met by rough roads from the inland farms of the east manor - all of which brought country people to Albany who were eager to barter their produce and livestock for a expanding selection of products and to conduct other business.13

By the 1770s, Albany had evolved far beyond its original incarnation as a frontier outpost. The colonial city was one of the ten largest in North America and had become the political, social, and economic focal point of the largest county in New York colony - thriving as the inland access and transfer point for the movement of human and natural resources between the ocean and the interior. To the eye, this community looked much different than in the heyday of the fur trade a hundred years before. No longer constricted by a stockade and the needs of the fort, Albany's urbanized area had more than doubled in acreage since its chartering, the number of city buildings had increased more than threefold, new streets had been opened, and many of the original houses had been replaced by larger and more modern structures. At the same time, the city's hinterland was emerging - growing in population much faster than the city. By the 1770s, the agricultural areas beyond Bethlehem, Watervliet, and Greenbush also were being drawn toward the Albany magnet.


notes

The first paragraphs of this chapter from The Other Revolutionaries appear as a theme essay on an upper level of this website. It also has been excerpted and shared for a number of purposes (by myself and others) since it first appeared during the 1990s. This offering represents the most evolved version of this introductory "tour" of the city. It also is the sole manuscript of record.

        A note on the notes: The end notes that follow were generated during the initial development of this (and subsequent) nmanuscript chapter more than a decade ago - and before we realized the potential of the web-based exposition that has consumed most of my energy since then. After some adjustment, the notes are included now for additional exploration.

1 Robert Yates, "Plan of the City of Albany about the Year 1770," Gerrit Yates Lansing Collection, NYSL. A slightly different lithographic copy is printed in DH 3:1150, and is the version most often referenced. For Robert Yates 1738-1801, see (4434). The other maps were made by royal engineers Wolfgang Roemer in 1698, by Thomas Sowers in 1756, by an unnamed army mapmaker in 1757, and by William Brasher (Brassier) in 1765. These constitute the so-called "Crown Collection" of maps in the British Public Records Office and were published as A Set of Plans and Forts in America Reduced from Actual Survey 1765, edited by Jean Mary Ann Rocque (London, nd.). The map made by Reverend John Miller in 1695 has its own integrity but is perhaps more artistic than cartographic. It too is dominated by military and defensive features. See Miller's New York Considered and Improved, 1695, edited by Victor Hugo Paltsits (Cleveland, 1903), esp. 37-38, 48b, 51-52, 123. Also artful but still useful is an ink-and-watercolor print published in London in 1763 and probably copied from a drawing perhaps made by William Burgiss between 1716 and 1731. This water-level panorama can be seen in the collection of the Albany Institute of History and Art. Copies of all historic maps and reproductions are held in the "Graphics Archive" at the CASHP.

Virtually all descriptive accounts of the community during this period comment on Albany's waterborne character. For example, Patrick Mc'Robert's A Tour Through Part of the North Provinces of America . . . 1774-1775 (Edinburgh, 1776), 7-9, noted fifty sloops belonging to Albany. A comprehensive inventory of descriptive accounts is held at the CAP offices. See Sources on the People of Colonial Albany: Visitors to Albany, 1609-1820 (Albany, 1993).

2This community geography is based on the minutes of the Albany Common Council (CR), information gleaned from deeds and other real estate transactions, legal proceedings, probate documents including wills and inventories, survey records including censuses and assessment rolls, a close reading of extant copies of the Albany Gazette (1771-72) and after 1784, and the traditional narrative literature on early Albany which is catalogued in Sources on the People of Colonial Albany: Narrative Sources, compiled by Tricia Barbagallo (Albany, 1992). Cartographic materials have been extremely informative - detailing development as well as terrain features, in particular the "City Engineer's Office" collection now held at the Albany County Hall of Records (ACHOR). See The People of Colonial Albany: A Community History Project, compiled and edited by Stefan Bielinski (Albany, 1994 edition), hereafter cited as Guide, "Cartographic Resources." Robert Lansing (3656), who had cared for the city fire engine since the 1740s, was a fixture in Albany's emerging repair industry. Still active into his 70s, his son Henry R. (3392) had become the city's most prominent traditional "tinkerer." Henry I. Bogert (6097) also served as city surveyor. Boston-born John W. Wendell (2954) married Mary Trotter (4913) in 1771 and joined her father and brothers in the dry goods business. Volkert P. Douw (2234) lived almost directly across the river at "Wolvenhook." Elardus Westerlo (6867) married Catherine Livingston (5034) - widow of the Van Rensselaer patroon, and served as pastor from 1760 until his death late in 1790. For the Gazette, see Denis P. Brennan, "Open to All Parties: Alexander and James Robertson, Albany Printers, 1771-1777," The Hudson Valley Regional Review (March 1993), 25-39.

3Albany's "city fathers" are discussed in Stefan Bielinski, Government by the People: The Story of the Dongan Charter and the Birth of Participatory Democracy in the City of Albany (Albany, 1986), 48-50; Bielinski, "How a City Worked: Occupations in Colonial Albany," A Beautiful and Fruitful Place: Selected Rensselaerswijck Seminar Papers, ed. by Nancy Anne Mc Clure Zeller (Albany, 1991), 122-24; Bielinski, "The New Netherland Dutch: Settling In and Spreading Out in Colonial Albany," The American Family: Historical Perspectives, ed. by Jean E. Hunter and Paul T. Mason (Pittsburgh, 1991), 1-15, which provides specifics on the early Albany mainline; and by David A. Armour's, The Merchants of Albany, 1686-1760 (Detroit, 1986), which first inspired me to study early Albany from the "inside-out" when I read it as a doctoral dissertation (Northwestern University, 1965) almost thirty years ago. Until the 1760s, Albany maintained many of the ways of its founders with the descendants of the original settlers still holding most prime resources and opportunities a hundred years after the cresting of the fur trade. The activities of these community leaders are chronicled in great detail in the records of Albany's political, economic, and social institutions. Their lives also represent the "textbook" examples of the community reconstitution-through-biography approach employed by the CAP. The lives of their kin and clients have been articulated following the same research strategy - albeit with somewhat greater difficulty.

4The Yates map was drawn to correct an error in the survey of the city's north and south boundary lines. The survey problem is further articulated in a map of "Lands Granted to the Corporation of Albany," May 10, 1764, "Land Papers," 17:134, NYSA FM 196. The initial development of the North side of Albany is chronicled in CR for 1762-63. Leatherworkers are profiled in Bielinski, "A Middling Sort: Artisans and Tradesmen in Colonial Albany," New York History 73:3 (1992), 261-90. Andrew Abel (7068), a shoemaker from Hanover, married Joanna Marshall (7067), the daughter of a one-time garrison soldier. Paul Hogstrasser (8494) opened a brickyard and employed other German newcomers. John Roff (1026) - a merchant and slooper. Conrad Ruby (1056) lived across Foxes Creek near the end of Pearl Street. John J. Abbott (6354) cared for the city clock and owned at least two separate lots in the area. The home of Edward Mc Gourck (4848) - and his brothers were perched on the ridge south of Foxes Creek (along today's Steuben Street). James Angus (7146). Jack Jackson (1680) and Dinah Jackson (1074), and several Speck (Spek) households - all of African origin, emerged in Albany and its environs during the 1760s. Wouter (Walter) Quackenbush (2325) - a cooper, kept boarders and also worked his father's leasehold in the West Manor; trader Jan Winne (2983) captained a militia company from the last war thru the end of the colonial era. Grandsons of a garrison soldier, Levinus (2262) and William (2275) Dunbar and their mother Cornelia Spoor Dunbar (6526) were among the first inhabitants of Van Tromp Street which ran between Pearl and Market streets north of Foxes Creek.

5The "Brazier Map - 1765," and the CR for 1765-66 chronicle the negotiations regarding the transferal and removal of military buildings - which were erected in several parts of the city. Johann Christoph Hartwick (8360) advertised weekly English language lectures in the Albany Gazette March 1772. For Hartwick's petition to the city corporation, see CR, 11/20/1771. Son of an English schoolmaster, shoemaker Henry Beasley (7286) was collector of taxes, member of the watch, and keeper of the masonic lodge. His sister married English innkeeper Richard Cartwright. John Ostrander (1478) served as constable, bell-ringer, marshall, and later as town sergeant. Gilliland 1734-95 (8188), was a former British soldier who parlayed bounty lands and an advantageous marriage into an extensive lumbering estate in the Champlain Valley. His Albany house provided a winter retreat and staging point for his enterprises. For the whole story, see John H. G. Pell, "The Saga of Will Gilliland," New York History (1932) 13:4, 390-403, and Stuart D. Ludlum, William Gilliland, 1743-1793: Pioneer Settler of Willsboro on Lake Champlain (Elizabethtown, NY, 1968). German-born Hinderer (8467) had relocated from Livingston Manor. Alexander Forsight (5904) from Scotland. Regal (1502), a baker, married Christina Roff (1501). Luke Cassidy (7570) was the founder of an Albany Irish Catholic family. Archer (6533) was the son of a Scots-Irish frontiersmen killed by Indians.

6Stewart Dean (5135); William Pemberton (420); Henry I. Bogert (6097); Abraham Bloodgood (7351) - who sailed the Olive Branch to the West Indies in 1770; Barent (5605) and John (5623) Van Allen were transporters for their brother-in-law Abraham Lyle (1169) and Sir William Johnson. Van Santvoort (6721) had a landmark home on the East side of Market Street. Dean's next door neighbor, sailmaker Abraham Eights (7800), also had a shop on the Albany dock in New York. Although Willliam Johnson (1027) never actually lived in Albany, he owned several buildings in the city and his business and official duties made him an active participant in city affairs. His Albany clients and confidants included his masonic brothers (many of whom were former soldiers), city merchants, and those who sought preferment from the British. His untimely death in July 1774 unquestionably affected the progress of any "revolutionary movement" in the upriver region. William Gamble (8227), a disaffected former soldier, also ran a sloop on the Hudson. Johnson's lots ran along State Street to the river and included another frame home and outbuildings.

7Gerrit Van Zandt, Jr.'s (263) Spanish Catholic grandfather built the first Van Zandt home in this area before 1700. By the 1770s, Gerrit had enlarged those holdings and also owned riverside lots for his storehouse and stables. Skipper John Fryer's (8034) father was a former garrison soldier who was one of several weavers to set up their looms along the street a generation earlier. Widower John Munro (1526) married Cornelia Brouwer (467) of Schenectady, was a founder of the Albany Presbyterian Church, and also kept a farm beyond Hoosic. By the 1770s, Peter W. Yates (4430) was preparing to build an elegant home on the slope just north of the Beaverkill gorge. By the end of the war, the new "Yates Mansion" was an Albany landmark noted by several travellers. English-ancestry John Price (6447) was spokesman for his inlaws - the Ryckmans. William Charles (7590) - a Scot, had his butcher shop and pens where the Beaverkill crossed the road. For Hendrick Hallenbeck (5274), see "The Halenbeek Burial Ground" and his will printed in MC 2:410-15. The initial partition and development of Hallenbeck's holdings is chronicled on the assessment roll for March 1779, "Lansing Papers," NYSL, A-FM 153. This street separating the new market place and the Lutheran church would be named for George Washington in 1783 and renamed South Pearl Street in 1814. Subsequent development of this area (including State Street service buildings and the Charles tannery) is depicted in a diagram map of South Pearl Street printed in MC 3:458.

8 The soldier settlement of this area is documented in the city assessment roll for 1709 which lists most of those named as residents, "Livingston-Redmond Manuscripts," Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, microfilm reel 10; and in the real estate transactions chronicled in the multi-volume Index to the Public Records of the County of Albany, State of New York, 1600-1894: Grantees Index (Albany, 1894-1911). Military backgrounds are revealed in the rosters and muster rolls printed in the Annual Report of the State Historian of the State of New York (Albany, 1897-98), volumes I and II. Trades orientations are chronicled in Bielinski, "A Middling Sort," 280-84. During the 1770s, each of these soldier families had at least one house in this area. "Cheapside" recalled an old London neighborhood of similar composition. Londoner Cartwright (6508) was one of several former soldiers to open a tavern.

9Lots at the foot of "Gallows Hill" were first sold to former soldiers after the peace of 1713. These transactions are documented in CR and in the multi-volume Grantees Index. The hills are depicted clearly on the "Brasier Map" of 1765. The brickyard site had been used since the last century and passed through the Radcliff family to brothers Abraham (3583) and Isaac (3595) Hooghkerk - who married daughters of their long-time neighbors, the Fryers, the Hiltons, and the Van Zandts. Isaac Fryer (8037) who married Elizabeth Hilton (2540) in 1760 took over the brickyard during the 1780s. The Wendell family holdings are shown on several city maps including those made by Simeon De Witt in 1790 and 1794 which define their pastures and locate "Wendell's Mills" in the hollow of today's Lincoln Park. Brothers Philip (2702) and Abraham E. Wendell (2739) had inherited the extensive tract in 1750.

10The development of the King's Highway is depicted on the city map made for Isaac Hooghkerk in 1787 and on the Simeon De Witt map of 1790 and subsequent engraving published in 1794, and is chronicled on the assessment rolls for 1779 and in the CR. John Christie (7613); James Furnival (8149); Monier (1636); Silvester (1064); Wray (6945); Wilhelmus Mancius's (6628) marriage to Anna Ten Eyck (4838) provided him with access to city land and business opportunities; Bastian T. Visscher (4063) had both a city and countryside residence. For the Vereburg, see Lois Feister, "Analysis of the Ceramics Found at the Vereburg Tavern Site," Man in the Northeast no. 10 (1975). See also, Don Rittner, ed., Pine Bush: Albany's Last Frontier (Albany, 1976). Isaac J. Truax (1678); Samuel Bromley (5963); John Foster (8102); John Mc Donald (1681) lived there with his almost grown son; John Mc Kinsey (464); David Rattrey/Rottery (1180). For slave farms, see Anne Grant, Memoirs of an American Lady, ed. by James Grant Wilson (New York, 1901), 78-79. For Albany's cemeteries, see also Stefan Bielinski, "Burying the Dead in Early Albany," program script with illustrations and notes (lecture materials, 1993), on file at CAP office. Bernardus Bradt (4335) and his successor Daniel Van Antwerpen (6636) performed burial services for the church until 1792. The "Negro Burial Grounds" are shown on the De Witt map of 1790 and remained there for many decades - although a negro cemetery was allocated in the Washington Park municipal plot created in 1806. During the seventeenth century, the city corporation built and maintained seasonal structures to accommodate Native American fur traders. When the frontier moved west to Oswego in the 1720s, the Indian huts were abandoned and native peoples became less frequent visitors to Albany. The huts are shown on the Roemer map of 1698 and are noted in the CR and in the city's business with the provincial government. They were located above the fort and city in the vicinity of today's Academy Park.
    Widow Mc Michael's Inn: Perhaps (probably) Sara Marselis who married Daniel Mc Michael in June 1748. 5 children by end of 1758. Assessment roll for Albany either 1766 or 67 "the Widow Mc Michell halfway house 3" near Christie. UNY, p. 16. Probably more Schenectady.

11Christopher J. Yates (4459), a second ward blacksmith and stable owner, lived on a Van Rensselaer leasehold south of Albany. Rensselaer Nicoll and his son Francis (1682) - who married back into the Van Rensselaer family in 1762 and was the largest slaveholder in Albany County in 1790. Hitchen Holland (8491) died in 1762 and his daughter Jane (8496) and her anglophile husband postmaster Henry Van Schaack (4036) lived there until they relocated to his native Kinderhook in 1771; Philip Van Rensselaer (5105) built the present "Cherry Hill" after the Revolution; Bradstreet (7410); Philip Schuyler (1750); John Christie's (7613) "Sandbergh" or "Sandy Hill" also served as an inn. These country seats are shown on "A Map of the Manor Renselaerwick," made by John R. Bleecker, dated 1767, and printed in DH 3:917. Stephen Van Rensselaer's (5114) untimely death in 1769 left a family leadership void until his son Stephen (5115) came of age in 1784. Abraham Ten Broeck (6) - the dead patroon's brother-in-law, acted as manor trustee and followed their plan for encouraging settlement particularly on the land north of the city where he built "Ten Broeck Mansion" after the fire of 1797 destroyed his Market Street townhouse. See the "Rensselaerswyck Papers" and Abraham Ten Broeck's accounts and papers at NYSL. For Schuyler's home, Schuyler Mansion: A Historic Structure Report (Albany, 1979), also includes substantial information on the development of Albany's hinterland. See also Bethlehem Revisited: A Bicentennial Story, 1793-1993, edited by Floyd I. Brewer (Bethlehem, 1993) and Roderic H. Blackburn, Cherry Hill: The History and Collections of a Van Rensselaer Family (Albany, 1976), for the initial settlement of the farmland south of Albany.

All those living north of the Patroon Street (Clinton Avenue) boundary were on Van Rensselaer land until 1812 when much of "North Albany" was annexed by the city. However, throughout this time, conflicting surveys led to confusion causing residents of the area north of Foxes Creek to be identified as city people in one source and residents of "the manor" or "colony" in another. Hendrick Quackenbush (2111), a merchant and processor, lived just beyond the city line. The lives of many of those living in Watervliet were important to the Albany story and will be regarded as Albany people once removed. By 1790, Watervliet's population of 7,418 was more than twice as large as Albany city's 3,498. However, that total included all those living on Van Rensselaer land west from the Hudson as far as the Heldeberghs. A "Map of the Flats Above Albany," undated but about 1800, shows five Schuyler homes in the area, NYSL.

12Because of the central role played by shipping in the city's economy, the CAP has developed an open-ended archive of visual and documentary resources on the Hudson River sloop and other boats and a descriptive inventory of watercraft, their builders, owners, skippers, crews, and cargoes.

The ferries crossed the Hudson from the new ferry house below Philip Schuyler's mansion near the outlet of the Beaverkill, from Maiden Lane, and from the North dock. Locations and routes are shown on the previously mentioned city maps dated 1770 and 1790. Ferry "sales" are chronicled in CR. From the beginning, the Maiden Lane ferry was the principal cross-river access. The others are recalled today in the names of North and South Ferry Streets. Thomas Lotteridge (414) married Maria Bradt (4268), the daughter of the former ferryman and lived with the Bradts at the South ferry house. Catharine Ten Broeck Hansen (14) with her son Dirck (4970). Probable newcomer Matthew Arsen (8351) had charge of the North ferry.

13There is no definitive work on Hudson River transportation. Despite its anecdotal character, my favorite is Paul Wilstach, Hudson River Landings (New York, 1933). For overland routes, see "A Map of the eastern Part of the Province of New York . . .," by Thomas Kitchen (London, 1756); "Manor Renselaerwick," by John R, Bleecker, dated 1767; and "A Chorographical Map of the Province of New York . . .," by Claude Joseph Sauthier (London, 1779). Each of these documents helps articulate the Albany-centered network of roads, trails, and trading routes. Serious road building, however, began with the chartering of road companies by New York State during the 1780s. See also Lansingburgh, New York: 1771-1971, edited by Jane S. Lord (Lansingburgh, 1971).




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first online 7/22/14; updated 2/17/15