Person:Michael Hallenbeck (1)

Hallenbeck's Hubbub 1753 by Henry Noble MacCracken

Why is the personal stand of a single Hudson River farmer possessed of historical significance? The answer lies in the words of loyal Cadwallader Colden, Lieutenant-Governor of New York, historian and scholar: "The Eyes of the other Colonies were on New York, and were at a stand still till the most daring insults upon the Government there encouraged them." Another accurate observer, and, like Colden, most hostile to the current turn of affairs, was the merchant and provincial councillor John Watts, leader of the Court party. "For my part", he wrote at the time, "I really believe some new constitution will be found in time, between the Mother country and the colonys. Nothing similar to the present State appears in History." These are Loyalists speaking in criticism of their home government. We make a great mistake if we think that Whig and Tory in New York were wholly opposed in principle. On the contrary, they were united in most affairs that concerned the welfare of the colonies. Only when it came to the Crown's ultimate prerogative did they part company. It was John Watts the Tory, not his opponent Robert R. Livingston the Whig, who predicted independence and its cause. Speaking of England's refusal to permit the use of paper money in New York, when the province was under financial strain from the wars, Watts observed: "to throw the Burthen off their own shoulders upon those of their absent, unrepresented, and of course unheard fellow-subjects, must not unless the Nature if Man is changed such a Government end in oppression? Then, what follows?" The crisis was approaching and clear-headed men were aware of the signs. That is why a small cloud over a distant hill might presage the deluge. And when, to change the metaphor, the valley of Ruliff Jansen's Kill "drank the deepest of the baneful cup of infatuation", as they said, the wise man inned his money.

Michael Hallenbeck, of Dutch Albany stock, dwelt at Taghkanic in Albany County, now Columbia. He was kin to Jan Casper Hallenbeck, whose name adorns the Casper Kill in Dutchess. Catryna Hallenbeck, wife of Pieter Lassen the brewer, lived by the kill, and through her line the heritage is widespread in Dutchess in the clans Lawsons, Lassens, and Lossings. Michael, in fact, had two sons, Jan or John, and Casper Hallenbeck, who appears in this story, as does another Hallenbeck, William by name. Historians, I find, like to get at what they call the "basic" element in the composition of any historical event. To some the Hallenbeck Hubbub is "basically" a proletarian uprising of an agrarian nature, an "anti-rent war." To others, myself included, it is "basically" and incident in the dashings of New England waves against the Dutch dykes along the rim of the Hudson valley. But certainly to His Majesty's Government at the time it was an intolerable insult, because it set at naught the instructions of the colonial office. Here were colonies, in such legal matters as titles to property, practically at war with each other as if they were independent states and not the meanest subjects of the Crown! On the part of New York the rebellion was more flagrant, because His Majesty's troops were actually ordered into action in defense of one of the landlords, Robert Livingston.

But as Dean Swift remarked of another matter, "if man makes me keep my distance the comfort is that he keeps his at the same time." The determination of Mr. Pitt's government to keep two brawling provinces from going to war was. Michael Hallenbeck's crops not only saved the Hudson from Massachusetts, but kept Britain in ignorance of the larger issue, until the smoldering resentment found time to gather and burst into more open flame. They were too far from the scene to realize that the same troops that suppressed Hallenbeck and his friends were stirring the hill folks of the Berkshires into anger. It is no accident that Joseph Hawley, commissioner in 1758 on Massachusetts boundary commission, was the first man in his colony to proclaim for open war with England. "I am of that man's opinion," said Patrick Henry when John Adams read Hawley's letter to him in 1774. In open defiance of the instructions from London, Hawley pulled up the surveyors' stakes and declined to go further, thus throwing the whole question over till after the Revolution.

Michael Hallenbeck had been a tenant farmer on Livingston lands for thirty years and more, when he started his rebellion. His farm in the valley of the Taghkanic Kill lay a few miles north of the parallel valley of Ruliff Jansen, on the road that led through Ancram to the Salisbury mines and Ore Hill. There were deposits of ore scattered through the Livingston patent, as the neighborhoods still bear witness on today's maps of Columbia County: Ancram Lead Mines, Weed Mines, Copake Iron Works, Spaulding Furnace, and New Forge. These and the prospects of rich ore on Mt. Riga in the Dutchess Back Chimney, were no doubt the exciting spurs in the activity of the Berkshire landgrabbers who interested Hallenbeck in the flattering prospect of leading his fellow tenants in exchanging Livingston leases for Massachusetts titles backed by Indian deeds from Stockbridge. The pretext, of course, was the high rent.

The conflict of claims reached as far back as 1705, when the Westenhook (Dutch for Housatonic) Patent was granted by Lord Cornbury. It extended vaguely into the towns of Sheffield just north of the Connecticut line, and Stockbridge, north of Sheffield. Some Dutch farmers had settled upon it, but the Indians gave deeds to the land along the river in 1724, and reserved a part for themselves. Apparently the Yorkers then obtained Massachusetts deeds, for both in Sheffield and Salisbury to the south, old farmhouses still bear the Dutch stamp. In 1734 the Stockbridge mission school was started by John Sergeant, and continued in 1751 by Jonathan Edwards. The latter Saint struggled manfully to keep his relatives of this Williams and Dwight families from the double graft of sales to the Indians and of purchases of land from the Indians through deeds for land included in Governor Hunter's patent to Livingston. Massachusetts on its part laid claim to a line five miles from the Hudson River, while at the same time stating, truthfully enough, that her colonists had once a hundred years earlier surveyed the river on both sides and picked sites for settlement "with grants of land and privileges of trade" upon the Hudson's shores. The Yorkers stood out for twenty-five miles after giving up the claim to the west banks of the Connecticut then they came down to twenty-five miles east of Hudson. But both sides knew well that the twenty-mile limit on the Connecticut boundary would be the ultimate point of compromise.

Why then all the delay, all the letters and instructions, meetings and arguments? In the vain hope of somehow taking advantage on one side or the other, of some crisis of helplessness, when one's own side, ready to spring and establish possession, might take over the mine fields, and the growing iron industry. The boundary commissioners for New York were connected with Dutchess; William Nicoll of the De Lanceys, William Smith, Jr., of the Oblong, and Robert R. Livingston. On the Massachusetts side, besides Joseph Hawley, were the land dealers Elisha Williams of Pittsfield, Oliver Partridge of Salisbury, David Ingersoll and John Ashley of Sheffield, and Major Joseph Dwight of Stockbridge. Through Ingersoll they dealt with the settlers, through Williams and Dwight with the Indians, and through Partridge with the Governor and the General Court of Massachusetts. They constituted a most formidable organization, predecessor of the predatory gangs of grafters that have more than once laid hands on oil domes, forest preserves, and railroad lands.

Our stage is not set with this long preamble of a tale. Tempted by the prospects of ore lands as yet unpossessed, Michael Hallenbeck, with other tenants of the Manor, applied for Ingersoll's Indian deeds and leases, and refused to pay Livingston further. He had been, as some said, sixty years a tenant without complaint. But thirty or sixty, he succumbed all too soon to the Yankees' sales talk, as many a man has done since. With him went Josiah Loomis, an ore-digger, whose knowledge of the region was important. A number of others joined them. Robert Livingston defended his manor. He acted now with promptness, taking up Loomis' one-year lease, and turning out the Hallenbecks in 1753 after the usual notice.

The Bay State crowd at once forbade this. The connivance of the Massachusetts plotters appeared at once in Partridge's letter to Livingston forbidding him to oust his "Massachusetts" tenants at Taghkanic. Livingston promptly referred the letter to the New York Council, whose committee report reached Lt. Governor Phips of Massachusetts. The upshot was that Massachusetts authorized their own commissioners to grant titles to Livingston tenants, or to others if they refused. New York then appointed its first commission to negotiate. Some New York tenants were seized; and a proclamation was issued, calling for the arrest of the aggressors. It soon appeared that many Livingston tenants had been deceived by the landjobbers who had told them that their new lands lay outside of the Livingston Patent. Ingersoll quickly covered up this discovery, which might have led the tenants to reconsider their position in so directly challenging Livingston ownership. Ingersoll's surveyors appeared, and soon persuaded the doubters that New York lay in New England. New deeds multiplied, and Massachusetts officially surveyed several townships on York land. In July, 1752, Livingston burned one tenant's house and reaped Loomis' wheat. This brought reprisal from Hallenbeck. Two Livingston tenants were driven out, and Yankee tenants replaced them.

Next year, Livingston evicted Jan Hallenbeck at Taghkanic, and arrested his father, Michael Hallenbeck, involved in the events of 1752. Hallenbeck was taken to Poughkeepsie jail, where he became for a time the center of controversy. The Colony of Massachusetts in its most official hectoring tones demanded his immediate release and complained of his sufferings. Governor George Clinton in his reply admitted that Hallenbeck had not been long in escaping. As for the evil treatment while in the Poughkeepsie jail, Admiral Clinton said rather naively that he could not believe such inhospitality had occurred. No doubt Hallenbeck's Lawson connections had arranged things in jail very comfortably for him, including his escape.

Meanwhile in the field of conflict both side were getting bolder. Massachusetts sales were being carried into Rensselaer Manor, where the argument of illegal Indian purchase did not obtain. Robert Noble of Claverack now joined with Hallenbeck, who had returned. With their band they caught two deputies and deposited them in turn in Springfield jail. Honors were even now, and one can see a grim smile on Michael's face has he bade his prisoner rest easy!

The Albany sheriff, Yates, next arrested a Yankee and was himself caught and added to the Springfield jail-boarders. Michael Hallenbeck was soon officially appointed to protect Yankee rights, and Noble made a captain of the militia. Open warfare resulted. New York's De Lancey took up the fight as Lt. Governor, realizing that all this was linked up with the Philips Patent and its troubles. He conferred more authority upon Sheriff Yates, who with a larger force put Noble to flight, and captured Loomis. William Rees, Yankee tenant by attornment, was killed. Massachusetts offered a reward of L100 for the arrest of his "murderer." A month later, in May, 1755, John Van Gelder, son of an Indian and a white woman, joined Noble in a raid of revenge at Ancram, where the whole force of skilled workmen were carried off from Livingston's furnace and kept as hostages. On this occasion they came up the Dutchess Chimney and assaulted Ancram from the south. Jacob Spoor's house suffered there. Ancram had been in Old Dutchess until 1717, as it lay south of Ruliff Jansen's Kill.

Both sides now armed for real conflict. The Governors were impressed with the dangers involved. Public affairs further north demanded attention. The French war had not gone well. As a result, and to ensure cooperation in the war against Canada, both side forgot their quarrel for a few months. Prisoners were finally exchanged, and De Lancey asked the Lords of Trade to intervene. Once more the Berkshire gang tipped over the apple-cart. Noble kept on selling Indian deeds, Van Gelder wounded a Dutchman and was later caught. Troops were ordered from the English army to protect Livingston, whose life had been threatened. The next Governor of New York, Sir Charles Hardy, renewed the appeal to England, and in 1757 the Lords of Trade at last set up the twenty-mile limit as the boundary between the two provinces.

Again the frontiersmen took matters over. Van Gelder, released as an Indian by Sir William Johnson's request, killed two Yorkers. Livingston obtained a secret order, and rounded up all the offenders, keeping them in prison for a year. But the sales kept on. Reference by a Livingston man to "the Rioters Club" indicated, if such were needed, the organized nature of the conspiracy. But York had the whip hand, and a double purchase including York grants was sought by man Yankee tenants lest they should be driven out. From 1758 to 1766 Hallenbeck and Noble kept fairly quiet. These were the crucial years of the French war when conscription was high and discouraged a domestic Kilkenny.

In New York, according to John Watts, one man in five was taken in the draft. Dutchess alone sent half a dozen companies. The Indians whose deeds were sold had all joined the army. But when the Indians returned in 1762, things started all over again. Walter Livingston, Robert's son, led forty armed tenants and drove off a threatening mob that had been collected. The odds would indicate only a half-hearted attempt, and some collusion with similar mobs raised by Munroe and Gunsaulus in southern Dutchess is suggested. At Poughkeepsie in 1766 it was rumored that a house had been seized and fortified by the mob, imitating Noble's style of invasion. Poughkeepsie experienced her second visitation of regular troops. The Twenty-eight Regiment then in pursuit of Prendergast was followed by the Forty-sixth. Another company, the Nineteenth Infantry, shipped to Claverack and from there marched rapidly inland, capturing Noble and dispensing his followers, and sacking Egremont and Barrington.

It was Lt. Governor Colden who authorized this action, though he commented sourly on the fact that public opinions sanctioned this attack on rioting country mobs, while in the same province city mobs roamed the streets unpunished, with soldiers closely confined to barracks, lest outbreaks occur. Unfortunately, Colden had incurred universal condemnation in the town for appealing against the contention of John Morris Scott, hero of the mobs, that jury's verdict was final as to the facts and no appeal lay to a higher court. Once more the executive was crippled by its invasion of the judicial function.

Shelburne's warm heart was moved by compassion for the Massachusetts victims. A dispatch favorable to them was printed in an English newspaper. The London Chronicle of August 25, 1766, detailed the British soldiers' excesses in terror that suggest that the dispatch was at least semi-official with the Massachusetts government.

"By an express from Pittsfield last Wednesday we have further accounts of the distresses of the inhabitants at the western parts of the province who are at their wits' end, being afraid to work in the fields in the day, and of having their hoses burnt or robbed in the night: - a number of armed men, who call themselves the King's troops, but conduct themselves like a number of banditti or collection of robbers, not content with their daily ravages in Nobletown (Hillsdale), have extended themselves into Egremont in the province, broke into and robbed the house of one Bunts, in the night of the 13th instant, bound the old man, etc., then went to another house and took off another man and carried him with them: the night following they were again in Egremont. It is said those armed men will give out they will clear all the inhabitants off from the river (Housatonic); they are in fears of a visit from them at Great Barrington, as they wrote to them that they should come. Major Williams and Captain Dwight went to Nobletown to solicit the officers of the party for liberty that Sheffield and Barrington people might come and reap the grain that was not destroyed, and afterwards Col. Ashley went upon the same errand, and were refused.

It is said that the basis of L----n's and R-N-'s invenomed treatment of these people is, conscious of the weakness of their title to these lands, and that they never obtained the Indian title in a just and equitable manner, and that Jacob, Solomon, and John, who were the proper owners of the land, are gone home with Mr. Griggs, nephew of General Conway; they imagine they shall not hold any of these lands unless they so distress the present occupiers, who have bought the Indian title, to come in and take leases under them. This is the stimulus that actuates them at the present day." The "stimulus" of this propaganda was, of course, to take the onus from the Indian plea against themselves. Williams, Ashley and Dwight knew very well that the Indians had "gone home" to England to complain of the loss of Stockbridge of over 10,000 acres, and of the Massachusetts law that took from them all protection of law against these hungry landsharks. Solomon, Sachem of the Mahikans, fought later at Bennington with the Americans. Jacob and he were at Boston in 1775, with Nimham. The riots and raids by Noble and his gang all over Livingston Manor are blithely passed by, and sympathy given to the Yankee cause alone. Finding that the Yorkers meant business, the Bay State resentfully quietened down. Some guerrilla riots followed, but the back of the invasion was broken. Hallenbeck returned to Salisbury, where the beautiful Hallenbeck Brook and Valley join the Housatonic. The name of the old rebel now adorns the most peaceful of countrysides, where by a grim irony and exclusive club of New York fishermen holds sway over the lovely brook and its lively trout. The old man must have turned in his grave. Robert Noble settled in Massachusetts. Some of the landgrabbers transferred their activities to the Wyoming, where Connecticut was presenting its claims to Pennsylvania. But most of them went to Vermont, where the free-for-all was now under Allen's rule. They carried their Tory predilections there, and some of their clients from Dutchess as well as Columbia followed them. But the northbound trend cannot be wholly attributed to their skill as Yankee salesmen. Something of allure must be allowed the Green Mountains. Meanwhile in spite of the absence of salesmen, and in spite of the historians, too, Dutchess and Albany continued to flourish, both counties reaching the mark of 50,000 population about the same time, 1800. The Hallenbeck Hubbub revived in 1790, but was quickly put down by Governor Jay. The Livingston title in Manor lands, - no longer a manor - was more fully disputed by a claim to its northern gore in 1811 and 1812. "Lady Mary Allen" Livingston, widow of Henry Walter Livingston, defended the suit, which had been carried on by the Attorney General Van Vechten of New York, at the direction of Governor Daniel D. Tompkins. Yet with all this weight of counsel she won the suit by a directed verdict of the Chief Justice. An entry of Lady Mary reads like an extract of the Hallenbeck times. June 1812. "A villainous plot has lately been discovered, as was formed principally by . . . to burn several houses and to kill Mr. John Livingston. These three men are the ringleaders in this lot, and in the Commotion which exists; they engaged to pay largely one . . . if he would destroy by fire Genl Livingston's works at Ancram & my house and barns &c. Van Gelder employed . . . Kline to assist him . . . is lodged in jail. Very soon after this on the 3 of July my house was discovered to be on fire at the roof . . ." "Lady Mary" may fittingly close the story of the Hallenbeck Hubbub. This is a different story from that of the Van Rensselaers, which wound up at Hudson in the 1840s with tin horns and calico, the Ku Klux paraphernalia of night-riding. Some of this originated in real grievances, which law nor economics could properly settle; more often in mere violence for its own sake; and part of it in that element of romance which seeks the irony of turning the tables upon the rich, fortunate, and vindictive, by exalting the poor and illiterate.