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Anti-Rent War: Rebellion In The Catskills
We never know when we may be caught up in a vortex of circumstances and events large than our own small world. One day may swallow up the rest of our lives. This was the fate of small quiet farming communities in eastern Delaware County in 1845. The steady, reassuring ritual cycle of plowing, planting, mowing, and harvesting took a back seat to Anti-Rent protest.The Anti-Rent conflict began in 1839 in the Helderbergs in Albany County. Tenant farmers rebelled against oppressive leases under which they labored as little more than serfs of wealthy landlords, without opportunity to ever own the land. They had also begun to question the legality of the landlords’ titles to the land. The outbreak was triggered by the demand of Stephen Van Rensselaer IV for back rents which his father had not collected during economic hard times.
