The Separation of 1812
by J. Winthrop Aldrich

Two centuries ago—on June 2, 1812—the legislature of New York enacted and Governor Daniel Tompkins approved Chapter 65 of that year’s state laws. The measure in question decreed “that from and after the first Monday of April next, all that part of the town of Rhinebeck, in the county of Dutchess, situate, lying and being within the following limits and bounds… shall be and is hereby erected into a separate town by the name of Redhook….” Thus did our town become a free and independent municipality on April 5, 1813, albeit with a spelling that, as far as we can determine, has never been officially amended.

From left to right: Edward P Livingston (oil on wood attributed to Samuel Waldo & William Jewett); Morgan Lewis (oil on canvas attributed to Henry Inman), and General John Armstrong (J. W. Jarvis). Livingston and Lewis were members of the Senate in 1812 who may have been sponsors of the bill to create the town of Redhook. Lewis came from Staatsburg and Livingston, son-in-law of the Chancellor, from Clermont. Armstrong was a major property owner in Red hook, and with General Van Ness, a likely prime mover in the establishment of the town. Livingston painting courtesy Clermont State Historic Site, NYS OPRHP; Armstrong painting courtesy Richard and J. Winthrop Aldrich; Lewis painting courtesy Staatsburgh State Historic Site, NYS OPRHP.

How and why did this separation come about, and what else was on people’s minds in those days? The latter question is easily answered, for on June 18, little more than a fortnight after the state took action regarding Red Hook, Congress voted at President Madison’s request to declare war on the British Empire. Our “second war for independence” had begun. Its causes were several, but of special concern to the agricultural economy of our region were the rival embargoes of the Napoleonic wars that hampered our exports to Europe and the Caribbean. New York would prove to be a major arena in this contest, on Lake Champlain, the St. Lawrence corridor, on Lakes Ontario and Erie and along the Niagara frontier.

John Armstrong of Red Hook, married to a local Livingston, had returned in 1811 from Paris where he had been Jefferson’s and Madison’s minister to Napoleon. He was busy establishing a sheep and fruit farm overlooking the Hudson and promoting the economic development of the neighborhood, while staying in close touch with his political and pro-war allies. In the month following the declaration of war Armstrong, an experienced soldier from the Revolutionary War, was appointed to brigadier general in the regular army and assigned to command the defenses of New York City. Seven months later he was appointed Secretary of War.

We take this detour in order to address the question: who made Red Hook’s separation from Rhinebeck happen? Armstrong is a likely player, before he went off to play for higher stakes. Although we do not know the identity of all the sponsors of the state legislation, we do know from the senate journal that the bill originated in that house, introduced by “Mr. Lewis” on February 26 when he “presented sundry papers relative to the division of the said town....” The senate passed the bill on March 2. The area’s representatives in the state senate included Armstrong’s brother-in-law, former Governor Morgan Lewis of Staatsburgh, and his nephew-in-law, Edward P. Livingston of Clermont, who had previously been an aide to Governor Tompkins. No members of the assembly in 1812 hailed from the immediate vicinity.

The senate sent the enacted bill to the assembly on March 21, when according to the assembly journal “the memorial of John Armstrong and others, praying the legislature to divide the town of Rhinebeck, was read.” Two days later the affidavit of George Burroughs of the town of Rhinebeck relative to the division of said town, was read. These undoubtedly were the “sundry papers” previously presented to the senate. The assembly passed the bill on March 26.

To effectuate such a municipal division, state law required that an application be made to the legislature by at least five resident freeholders (not leaseholders), and that the petition first be posted on the outer door of the building in which the next annual town meeting was to be held, at least ten days before such meeting. The minutes of no town meeting make reference to this historic item of new business, however—the secession of one half of their territory and population! The archives in Albany cannot help us, as all relevant records were incinerated in the catastrophic Capitol Library fire of March 1911.

Though we will probably never know which citizens beyond Armstrong and Burroughs were leading the effort to achieve a free and independent Red Hook (or Redhook), we can make a few reasonable guesses. Three prominent Red Hook residents had served in recent years as supervisors of the former, larger town of Rhinebeck: Andrew Heermance (1801–3), Peter Cantine, Jr. (1804–5) and David Van Ness (1806–8). Heermance was a prosperous farmer in Upper Red Hook, Cantine had successful wharfage and storage businesses in Tivoli and what became known as Barrytown, and Van Ness was the postmaster who had brought that federal function to the lower Red Hook village from Upper Red Hook. Known as General Van Ness due to a former militia appointment, he was married to a sister of Heermance. He built the great red brick house in lower Red Hook later known as Maizeland,

The organizing meeting of the Town of Red Hook was held on April 6, 1813, in Henry Walter’s Inn, which stood where the Mobil station now defaces the center of Red Hook village. General Van Ness, an ancient at 71, was elected Supervisor and the other posts duly filled. These positions included “Pound Master” (there was great concern about bulls, rams and male swine running loose and creating havoc); a half-dozen “Fence Viewers” (the zoning-enforcement officers and boundary dispute mediators of the day); 24 “Overseers of Highways,” one for each stipulated stretch of public road; and “Overseers of the Poor,” who were to promptly meet with their Rhinebeck counterparts to proportionally “divide the money and poor belonging to” each. Finally, the town formally acceded to the state’s bounty program for the elimination of “wolves, bears and panthers, and for the destruction of the noxious weed, Canada Thistle.” Was this a timely allusion to the soldiery ranged along the Canadian frontier menacing New York’s sovereignty?

What was the rationale behind this separation? There evidently was no state policy or formula dictating the size of towns, either in acreage or population. Moreover, there is no record suggesting resistance to the action on the part of either community. It seemed to evolve naturally, with the two towns as defined being roughly comparable in land area, population and taxable value. Both were served by the Post Road and by roads running east toward Connecticut and west to well-developed river landings for the farm-to-market commerce by downriver sloop. Rhinebeck had one prosperous settlement (Rhinecliff dates from the coming of the railroad in the 1840s), Red Hook had three, and Red Hook’s agricultural land was considered marginally better. This particular separation was probably made easier since the line dividing the towns precisely followed the bounds of a land patent granted by the Crown to Colonel Pieter Schuyler in 1688, so no survey was required, and no farms would be straddling town lines.

In 1810 the federal census reported a population of 4,486 for old Rhinebeck. By 1820 Rhinebeck’s was 2,729, Red Hook’s was 2,714. The acreage for Rhinebeck was 20,922; for Red Hook, 21,915. A few years after the separation of the towns, the agricultural and industrial census data continued to reflect a remarkable equivalency, although Red Hook edged out Rhinebeck in cultivated and pasture land and in real estate assessment value. Sheep-raising was a different matter; Red Hook’s herds totaled 8,000 head, more than twice Rhinebeck’s number. Red Hook had six grist mills to Rhinebeck’s 2, four sawmills to Rhinebeck’s two, and a distillery where the sister town had none.

Two statistical comparisons in this later census, however, are striking and may help us to understand, even two centuries on, the common notion that Rhinebeck is a more upscale place. The assessed value of personal property in the smaller Rhinebeck (money in the bank, carriages, household furnishings, books, shop merchandise, etc.) was nearly six times that for Red Hook; and the number of “scholars” and the sum of teachers’ wages substantially exceeded those next door.

With both areas enjoying a steady increase in population and developing their own village centers it was probably becoming more difficult to manage local government obligations efficiently in that era of travel by foot or horse. If so, a contributing factor surely was a sense that the best democracy is that which is closest to home. To quote from Spafford’s New-York State Gazetteer of 1813, “Much of the land in this town,” —i.e., old Rhinebeck—“is held in large tracts, and leased in farms to small tenants, but the freeholds are progressively increasing in number and value.” Self-government was on the march.

Ultimately, however, the impetus for the new town may have arisen from nothing more than the wish of a few men of local influence to be bigger fish in a smaller pond. Whatever the motivation, a good thing was accomplished two centuries ago, and Red Hook celebrates its bicentennial in 2012 with justifiable pride.