Our Incrredible Valley Page 3 - Columbia County Historical Society

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to the Livingstons. The failure of this shortlived endeavor is well known. Even the exact site of Germantown Landing is unclear, although it is possible that there was one at Sharp’s Landing in 1710–1712. Philip Livingston’s development of the Ancram Ironworks after 1743 dramatically increased port activity at Linlithgo. Water transportation was necessary to carry the ironworks’ bar iron and finished metal products to market and to bring stores to the manor’s workers. By 1730, Robert Livingston of Clermont had established the county’s southernmost landing at his Clermont estate. Manor lords such as the Livingstons and wealthy merchants such as Abraham Staats owned their own vessels for transporting lumber, agricultural products, and livestock. Both Philip and Robert Livingston, Jr., owned barques, large square-rigged sailing ships. But shoals and primitive docking facilities in Columbia County made such vessels impractical. The craft most frequently used were yachts and sloops. The term yacht, derived from the old Dutch verb jaagen (to Columbia County Historical Society www.cchsny.org The sloop originated from the Dutch longboat... hunt or pursue), was applied in the seventeenth century to a variety of shallow draft sailing vessels. Initially these were small craft, fore and aft rigged, and possibly equipped with leeboards. By the late seventeenth-century the unique Hudson River high-sterned yacht had evolved with fore-and-aft rigging. The sloop originated from the Dutch longboat and was originally equipped with oars but the name came to be applied to a slightly larger for-and-aft rigged work boat. In the eighteenth century the “Albany sloop” became a larger freight and passenger carrier. Skiffs were also used in shallow waters and creeks. For local traffic, and particularly ferry service to the Hudson’s west bank, both the Dutch and the English adopted the native canoe for transport. These were of two types, a dugout often made of tulipwood and a bark canoe usually made of elm bark. During most of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries passports were needed to go up and down river when leaving Albany County, of which Columbia County was then a part. Ships and passengers could be 10 searched by officials in Albany and New York City. Jaspar Danckaerts left a vivid description of his voyage up the Hudson in 1680, “We left New York about three o’clock in the afternoon with a southerly wind, in company with about twenty passengers of all kinds, young and old, who made great noise and bustle in a boat not so large as a common ferry-boat in Holland; and as these people live in the interior of the country somewhat nearer to the Indians, they are more wild and untamed, reckless, unrestrained, haughty and more addicted to misusing the blessed name of God and to cursing and swearing. However there was no help for it; you have to go with those with whom you are shipped.” Such scenes remained commonplace until the more sophisticated expansion of Columbia County’s ports after the Revolution. � JOHN A. ALVAREZ & SONS, INC. Manufactured Housing 3572 ROUTE 9, HUDSON, NEW YORK 12534 518-851-9917 • FAX 518-851-9937
Columbia County History & Heritage Spring 2005 HUDSON, THE RIVER SEAPORT The Early Gateway to the Interior By Margaret Schram Margaret Schram is the author of the wellreceived book Hudson’s Merchants and Whalers which was reviewed in the Summer 2004 issue of this magazine. She is a highly regarded authority on the whaling industry and Columbia County history. She has been a long-time resident of Claverack. It was the perfect landing site! Deep water flowed past the shoreline, almost lapping the banks. permitting unobstructed passage directly to land, with nothing to impede a vessel from skimming directly to the mooring. Was Jan Frans Van Hoesen aware of the prize he had acquired when he bought his tract from the native Americans in 1662? The Hudson holds few sites suitable for landing a vessel. In some places rocky cliffs and boulders hug the shore. More often, however, vast expanses of marsh and mud flats extend for long distances along both banks, blocking access to land. The Van Hoesen shoreline, which would extend from the South Bay to a mile above the city of Hudson offered many safe mooring sites. North of the tract, the river becomes shallow and filled with shoals and sandbars. This made navigation difficult, if not impossible for all but shallow draft vessels. The city became known as the “head of navigation” on the Hudson River, a boast continuing as late as 1928 in a local paper. For nearly two centuries, the sloop was Southeastern view of the City of Hudson, New York, from Academy or Prospect Hill, c1841. Picture from Hudson’s Merchants and Whalers, courtesy Black Dome Press the workhorse of the river. Adapted from the Dutch yacht, the vessels were broad, nearly flat bottomed, could skim the shoals and carry tremendous loads. Sloop captains adapted unique maneuvers to propel the single masted craft in the contrary winds. There were two hundred and six sloops on the Hudson by 1810, used for carrying freight and passengers. The area between the two bays of the Van Hoesen parcel became known as Claverack Landing. Claverack was the name of the reach on this eastern section of the river and a settlement a few miles inland. Sloops stopped at the Landing to pick up farm products to be shipped to other river market harbors. As farms were established in the interior, a “wagon” road was made to the Landing. The importance of the Landing was illustrated in 1679, when Maria Van Rensselaer petitioned to have a house built near the shore for the convenience of the farmers needing accommodation after a long wagon journey. Meanwhile, the Van Hoesen heirs had proliferated. The original parcel was divided among them. In 1745, Jeremais Hogeboom, married to Annatje Van Hoesen, acquired the parcel adjoining the North Bay. Here he built a wharf and storehouse, as well as a mill nearby. A public landing was located at the point where the road from inland met the river. Colonel John Van Alen, married to another Van Hoesen heir, laid claim to the river 11 shoreline near the South Bay, where he too erected a wharf and a storehouse. He applied for water lots (laid under water) one thousand yards along his holdings and extending five hundred yards into the river. There was a need for storehouses. This was especially true when the roads were frozen and passable goods were stored until the river, closed by ice, was open for passage in the spring. All this illustrates the importance of this piece of river frontage: excellent landing sites, deep water to shoreline, an an active commerce with the interior. In 1783, these advantages brought a pair of New England Quakers to the Landing with offers to buy the entire settlement. These Jenkins brothers represented eighteen men seeking a safe port and a commercial settlement, because their businesses were ruined during the Revolutionary War. The purchase prices must have been favorable for the entire original Van Hoesen holdings were soon in the hands of the Proprietors, as they were called. The Proprietors’ agreement, which they all signed, bound them to “settle there in person, and carry his stock” on or before 1785. It also stated that all should be merchants or “ concerned in navigating the deep.” Eight more joined in 1785 and five more a few years later. The first parcel purchased was the Hogeboom holdings. The wharf there was designated the city dock. The Van Alen parcel, as well as the entire waterfront, was in The Proprietors met to name the settlement Hudson and to plan the city — laying out the streets in a grid pattern.
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