Publisher's Synopsis
An excerpt from the first chapter: Early Settlements and Settlers.
The Colony of New York was unlike any of the other colonies and states in the manner of its early settlement and the character of its land holdings.
When the Dutch West Indies Company began the settlement of the vast territory, which eventually shrank to the Colony of New York, it conveyed great tracts of land to patroons, who had to furnish a certain number of settlers to make good their title. Within the limits of their grants these patroons had great and autocratic powers.
When the English took over the colony all these grants were confirmed and eventually erected into manors. For years the English continued to grant great tracts of land as manors. In this way Long Island, Westchester County, and the Hudson Valley to a point above Troy were settled.
The difference between ordinary grants of land, such as were made later in the Colony of New York and in other colonies, and manorial grants was legally a technical but in reality a very real one. The Lord of the Manor had autocratic power over his tenants within the Manor; he held courts, civil and criminal; he could punish his tenants as he had "The high justice, the middle justice and the low." In fact, generally speaking, he stood between his tenantry and the colonial or home government. Since the I3th century, there have been no manors erected in England. There were no others in this country except a few small ones in Maryland and one doubtful one in New England, and perhaps one or two in the south
The grantees or lords of these manors built their manor houses and lived in royal style on their domains, surrounded by their tenantry. In this way there grew up in the Colony of New York a great landed aristocracy which had no equal anywhere else in this country. Some of the manors were enormous. Tangier Smith's Manor of St. George was originally fifty miles wide on the ocean and sound and of that width across Long Island.
The Van Rensselaer Manor at Albany was twenty-four miles on either side of the Hudson and forty-eight miles east and west. The Patroon had a fort on Baeren Island at the beginning of his lands and made every boat which went up or down the Hudson salute his flag.
There was an attempt to create a manor in the lower Mohawk Valley, but its immense size caused such an outcry that it was abandoned, and no more were created. I think that, all told, there were twelve manors in the State, and one great patroonship never erected into a manor. Later lands were granted in great tracts but without manorial rights in the patentees. The land grants followed the important streams first and then filled in the less valuable land lying away from the navigable waters.
Among these patents were those about Cooperstown. The great Croghan or Cooper Patent (1769) contained one hundred thousand acres and nine thousand additional for roads. It ran from about the point where the Oaks Creek joins the Susquehanna up along the west bank of the river to Otsego Lake; along the entire west shore of the lake to where the little stream which runs in front of Swanswick empties into the lake; then a long arm ran off toward Springfield Center and back and the line ran west crossing Schuyler's Lake, and thence west beyond Wharton's Creek and down to a line running west from the village of Mt. Vision and south of Gilbert Lake; then back to above the Village of Hartwick and off east to the place of beginning.
Judge Cooper had about forty-five or fifty thousand acres of it in all; but immediately parted with about fifteen hundred.
