§3 Land Grants and the Little Nine Partners Patent

It might be helpful at this time to understand how land grants were made under the colonial governments and how this affected subsequent settlement of the region and the fate of the Mahican village of Shekomeko and the Moravian Mission there.

Development of New Amsterdam under the Dutch had been slow To illustrate, four-fifths of the land in Dutchess County was not even opened for settlement until after 1730, and in 1691, there were only five white men living on the site of present-day Poughkeepsie. Part of the problem was the fact that the Dutch were surrounded by hostile forces: the French to the north, Indians to the west, and the English to the east. Also, the Dutch were not known as road builders; the King's Highway which followed the general course of an ancient Indian trail, was not begun until the eighteenth century. Yet, travel was still predominantly by water until after the arrival of the railroad in 1850, and the arrival of the English in the late seventeenth century did not bring substantial growth right away. A more important reason for the retarded social and economic progress of this region was the leasehold system of land management and a succession of incompetent governors who made no serious attempts to promote settlement.

There were nine English manorial grants in the colony replacing the earlier Dutch patroonships. Both systems had their roots in feudal Europe. Charters to the manors were issued under the English Crown, and title to the land was vested in the lord of the manor. Under this leasehold system, a man could not hope to own the land that he cultivated. By a lease in fee, a settler paid to the lord of the manor a quit-rent in kind (e.g. "two fat fowls"), and the lease-holder only remained in possession of the land so long as he, or his descendants, depending upon the term of the lease, paid the quit-rent.

In Dutchess County there were no manorial grants. Instead, the county was divided into eleven royal patents. With this arrangement, individuals or groups of individuals who possessed the right amount of capital purchased large tracts of land from the Crown. As a rule, the intent of each original patentee was to divide up his large holding into smaller parcels to sell as homesteads to independent freeholders. There were exceptions, however, and Dutchess County had a few instances of where patentees retained title to their land and developed the property by the leasehold system. This system was not abolished by law until the early nineteenth century.

Overall, the homesteader fared better on land covered by the patents than did the tenants on the manors, so the land occupied under freeholds built up more rapidly and was ultimately more prosperous. Thus, by 1756 Dutchess County had become second only to Albany County in population, a significant increase from twenty years earlier when it had ranked seventh. However, the settlers sometimes did not take up their farms immediately after purchasing their land. As a result of this, and because the land was often inaccurately surveyed or not surveyed at all, squatters frequently took up temporary possession, and the era is marked by boundary disputes and land riots.

Until the land was surveyed, actual title could not be given. The Little Nine Partners Patent, encompassing the present Town of Pine Plains, had been granted in 1706 but was not surveyed until 1743, at which time it was divided into sixty-three lots. The deed of partition is dated October 19, 1744. By this time, many of the original patentees had died, so the rightful heir or other person or persons so designated had then to be determined. In the meantime, settlers, many from the Palatine in Germany had begun to enter the region and squat on these lands.

It would be appropriate at this time to examine the history and events of the Palatines. The Palatines were native Germans living in an area of Germany known as the Palatinate. Centuries of political strife outside their influence caused constant suffering and shifting of geographic boundaries. Macaulay described the Palatines as "honest, laborious men, who had once been thriving burghers of Manheim and Heidelberg, or who had cultivated the banks of the Neckar and the Rhine. Their ingenuity and their diligence could not fail to enrich any land which should afford them asylum."

After centuries of ill-treatment in their native homeland, 3,000 Palatines relocated to England. This was to be the beginning of their journey to a more permanent home in America.

The next step came with the written recommendation of the English Lords of Trade to the Queen, dated November 30, 1709, that the Palatines be sent to New York to engage in the production of naval stores. Their expenses should be paid to get them there, and in time each family should be granted forty acres of land. They should be naturalized and become the subjects of the English Crown. The Queen agreed, an agreement was struck, and steps were taken immediately towards these ends.

Robert Hunter was appointed the new governor of the New York Province, and he began his task to settle the Palatines along the Mohawk and Hudson Rivers, areas recommended by the Board of Trade. Hunter is believed to have left England on January 20, 1710, with 3,000 Palatines aboard ten ships. He arrived in New York on June 16,1710, with seven ships. Two were separated en route and arrived later in July. One vessel, the Herbert, was lost somewhere near the east end of Long Island but with no loss of life. The greater number of the Palatines landed at Nutten Island, where they resided temporarily for five months while the governor arranged for a permanent location.

Hunter purchased from Robert Livingston six thousand acres on the east side of the Hudson. On the west side, he arranged for settlement on eight hundred acres belonging to the Queen.

The eastern settlement fell within the famous Livingston Manor running some sixteen miles along the river front and stretching twenty-four miles inland to the Massachusetts line. This tract included the present townships of Livingston, Copake, Taghkanic, Ancram, Gallatin, Clermont, and Germantown. Hunter's six thousand acres fell mostly within the limits of Germantown, and it was here that roughly two-thirds of the Palatines were settled.

They built shelters and began the task of the great plan to provide the naval stores so greatly desired by England. Despite the processing of as many as 15,000 trees per day, very little tar or other stores were sent back. Thus, as a business venture, the plan was soon seen by all to be a failure. Along the way Hunter was forced to lay out most of his personal wealth to support the Palatine families according to the agreement. The English Treasury unfortunately refused reimbursement and his wealth remained unrecovered. The contract was perceived as void, and having recognized their freedom, more than two-thirds of the Palatines left the Manor. Most of these relocated to Schoharie.

About thirty families moved southward to settle in lands covered by the patent given to Henry Beekman. During the period of 1713 to 1715, he sold them lands in the area of what would become Rhinebeck. A census of Palatines accounted for 126 families and 499 persons on the east side of the river. From Rhinebeck, families spread throughout the region that today is Dutchess County.

Now let us return to the story of the Little Nine Partners Patent. Although title could not be given until the land was surveyed, patentees could, and in many cases did, reassign their shares or portions thereof. In 1741, Richard Sackett, one of the original patentees, went so far as to have a parcel of three hundred acres of his choice surveyed in order to sell to settler Johan Tise (also Hontise) Smith, apparently with the sanction of the other patentees. This was not a customary practice, however, and it is not surprising that it did not hold. Lot twelve in the patent, which included the land conveyed by Sackett to Smith, was assigned to Robert Lurting when the patent was partitioned in 1744, and Smith ultimately settled on other land in the vicinity. Lot twelve was the land on which the Indian village of Shekomeko was located, and the Moravian Mission, and it was here that the Phoenix Deuel, Samuel Tanner, and Edward Huntting farms were later established. This lot was also among those lots of the Little Nine Patent which came into boundary disputes with the patentees of the Great Nine to the immediate south, who claimed half of these lots as their northern boundaries. Lot thirty; directly to the north of lot twelve, was later to contain the larger portion of the hamlet of Bethel.

Under the Dutch, Native American land titles had been recognized and an attempt was made to purchase land from them. This practice was continued to some extent by the English. However, there were problems with this. The Indians initially had no concept of the white men's definition of property and regarded their deeds of sale simply as permits of habitation. Then, once the Indians had ceased to occupy the land, they unknowingly forfeited ownership in the eyes of the white settlers. Unscrupulous settlers also frequently got the Indians in debt to them for liquor and were thus able to swindle them out of their land. Other difficulties arose from the fact that where land had not yet been surveyed, it was almost impossible to determine where the white settlers' land ended and the native land began. Needless to say, where Indian deeds were in question, they did not fare well in the colonial courts, although many attempts at redress were made. As will be mentioned later, it was one such endeavor by a couple of Mahicans from the village of Shekomeko that brought them to New York City in 1740, where they chanced to meet the Moravian missionary, Christian Henry Rauch.

Although whites generally did not approve of Christianizing Indians, possibly because it made it more difficult to justify their ill-treatment of them, there initially was a harmony of existence between the Moravians, their Mahican converts at Shekomeko, and the white settlers. But in early 1744, problems began to surface between the white settlers in the area and the mission. It has been suggested that perhaps the settlers grew to resent their Moravian neighbors for the loss of liquor customers in the newly converted Mahicans, who now practiced temperance. Since it may have taken a few years for the settlers to feel the economic effects of this and to react to it, this theory makes sense. However, it was probably just one contributing factor to the difficulties that followed.

There was also the matter of the land. The patent had been surveyed only the year before which meant that the land could now be divided up into lots and sold. In the Little Nine Partners Patent, Richard Sackett had promised the Shekomeko Indians that their land would remain undisturbed by white settlement, and indeed, in the document conveying the three hundred acres of land to Johan Tise Smith, the existence of a wigwam is mentioned and thus the claim of the Indians is respected. Maybe the settlers became resentful of the prospect that they would lose their rights to the lands they had been squatting upon, but the Indians would be allowed to stay, or maybe they feared the Indians laying claim to the same land they claimed, and this aggravated an already uneasy situation.

Finally, there was the matter of the French and Indian War, and John Sackett, Richard's son. John Sackett was not as magnanimous as his father when it came to the Indians of Shekomeko. When the land of the patent was being surveyed, John, representing his father, began spreading rumors that the Shekomeko Indians were dangerous and that the patent could not be safely surveyed because of them. Did he really believe this? Regardless of his motives for this attack, the settlers apparently believed it. With the French and Indian War only ten years away, they were familiar with stories of Algonkian attacks on frontier communities, and John Sackett was a man of influence, someone they would have listened to. To make matters worse, the Moravians were confused with the Jesuits, a Catholic religious order who were believed to be used by the French to alienate the Indians against the English. The settlers needed little provocation to turn against those in their midst whom they perceived as a threat to their livelihood, and as a result, the future of the mission was now in jeopardy

Meanwhile, the Mahicans were experiencing a similar treatment from their own people. In 1744, a group of non-Christian Mahicans arrived at Shekomeko from the tribal seat and inquired whether their brethren would live in friendship with the new chief. This was not the last time such an attempt was made to draw the Christian Indians away from the Moravians, and what must have been perceived as the threat of white civilization in general.

In 1746, the New York Legislature passed an act authorizing bounties of twenty pounds for adult French or Indian scalps (ten pounds for scalps of children of sixteen or younger). But Proclamations of 1761 and 1762 finally protected the rights of the Native Americans by law People squatting on land claimed by Indians were ordered to remove themselves from it, and officials were forbidden to pass any land claimed by Indians without obtaining the proper license from a lawful authority.

The Struggle for Dominion	Table of Contents		Bethel Churches - An Introduction
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