 The Old City Hall |
The Albany Common Council in the American Revolutionby Edward Knoblauch |
At Cartwright's Inn at the corner of Green and Beaver Streets in Albany on the evening of June 3, 1776, twenty-two year old Staats Dyckman proposed a toast: "Damnation to the enemies of the King!" Among others joining in the toast was the Mayor of Albany, Abraham C. Cuyler, and the City Clerk, Stephan DeLancey. They gathered that evening at Richard Cartwright's Inn to celebrate the king's birthday. As the highest officials in the government of Albany under its charter, they should have been safe from disturbance in their celebration. But several weeks earlier, on May 11, 1776, Mayor Cuyler and City Clerk DeLancey had refused to sign an "Association" presented to them by the de facto government at Albany, the Committee of Correspondence and Safety. As a result of their refusal they and others who declined to sign were disarmed.[1]
Unlike his predecessors, Abraham C. Cuyler would not retire from public service quietly, but he and his government would be deposed in the revolution that swept over New York and the other American provinces. Such a revolution in affairs was not imagined on October 14, 1770, when Abraham C. Cuyler first produced a commission from the Royal Governor appointing him the "Mayor & Clerk of the Market of the City of Albany & Coroner of the City and County of Albany" and took the oaths appointed by Law. The ritual of beginning each new year's Common Council with the Mayor presenting his commission from the Governor was as old as the Dongan Charter of 1686. Abraham C. Cuyler would repeat this ritual after the election of the Alderman and Assistants on the Feast of Saint Michael, September 29th, as prescribed by Albany's charter every year for the next five years.[2]
When he became mayor at age twenty-eight, Abraham C. Cuyler was not the richest or among the richest men in the City or County of Albany.[3] In the 1767 assessment his property was assessed at £55. The richest man in the County was probably Robert Livingston, Jr. of Livingston Manor, who was assessed at £300. Within the City of Albany, Abraham C. Cuyler was solidly upper middle-class, with twenty other heads of household assessed at or above £55. Of course, in the society that was colonial Albany most heads of household were much poorer. The median assessed value of the 474 households in Albany in 1767 was only £5, with the mean (average being about £12/7/0. Officers of the Corporation of Albany and the Alderman and Assistants of the Common Council of Albany in the years immediately preceding the Revolution were, with few exceptions, in the same comfortable middle-class as their Mayor. The richest men in Albany, if they were involved in public affairs, were at a higher level than the Common Council. The undoubtedly richest man in Albany City, Philip John Schuyler (assessed at £182 for his Albany and Saratoga properties), was a member of the Provincial Assembly. The only member of the Common Council of 1775 who was in the highest class of assessments was Cornelis Van Scherluyne, the Assistant for the Second Ward, who was assessed in 1767 at £160. (see Table 1)
In the years 1773-75, immediately before and at the beginning of the American Revolution, the Common Council met and transacted the mundane business of running the city. There was much to do. The Corporation responsibilities included for managing its lands in Schaghticoke and Tionandorage (now Fort Hunter) These lands were granted (or at least the right to purchase them from the Indians was granted) to Albany under the Dongan Charter. The Common Council had to approve leases and sales of these lands as well as engage in what seems to be endless negotiations with the Mohawks about which lands had been purchased by the City.[4] On April 9, 1774, Peter Sharps proposed making a drain for the springs "behind the Fort to the Pumps near the English Church and also for erecting Cisterns at those Springs" for £61. After reviewing his proposal for "400 feet best pitch pine Gutter Timber 3d @ foot" and other details of work, with Sharp promising to "furnish every thing except the Bricks," the Council agreed to have the work done, naming a committee of two members for "overlooking, directing and ordering said works."[5]
Annually, the Council passed ordinances fixing the price and weight of bread, regulating taverns and inns, prohibiting hawkers and peddlers from the city, made regulations for the public market and the cartmen who brought carried things on and off ships at the City docks. The City docks on the Hudson were repaired and rented to managers. The ferries across the Hudson to Greenbush (now Rensselaer) were a City monopoly granted, for a fee, to various captains.
Fire prevention and fire fighting was a constant worry in this closely built city. The City had bought from England its first fire engine in 1731 and built its first engine house in 1741.[6] By 1775, the City owned several fire engines, in constant need of repairs. Each of the three wards of the City had two fire marshals appointed by the Common Council who did regular inspections of every building and house, looking for unsafe conditions. Chimney sweeps were hired and paid by the City for its own buildings and for those who did not keep their chimneys clean to the satisfaction of the fire marshals. In 1771, the City bought twenty street lamps that needed to be maintained, filled with oil, and lighted nightly. The Common Council appointed and directed a night watch, each ward having two constables as well as a high constable over the whole city. [7]
The old British Army hospital near the fort constantly needed repairs, and squatters were chased out of the big building regularly. Water supply and drainage were concerns of the Common Council, and inspections and repairs to the wells, pumps and cisterns were annual affairs, if not more often. The city was cut through with several streams and most streets running perpendicular to the hill had at least one bridge, which required frequent maintenance. The Common Council had its traffic concerns, passing an ordinance to "prevent accidents by fast and immoderate riding." The Common Council ordered a bell to be hung (at a cost of £100) in the City Hall. It regulated midwives, fences, and prescribed the yoking of unattended swine. All these things were the mundane work necessary for the smooth operation of Albany.[8]
As the revolutionary crisis was building in the spring of 1775, the Common Council was concerned with the assessment of taxes "for defraying the charges of the Night Watch in this City and lighting the Lamps in the streets thereof." Although the Councilmen and the officers must have known of the existence of a revolutionary movement, it was over the matter of the Night Watch that that the Common Council had its first official encounter with the "Committee of twenty-one persons called the Committee of Correspondence, Safety and Protection." [9]
The first meetings of the Albany County Committee of Correspondence are hinted at in the extent records, but no details are known.[10] Starting informally, continuous records of its meetings begin with a meeting at Richard Cartwright's Inn on January 24, 1775, when reference to a previous committee is made. The first meeting of new Committee had members from the three Wards of Albany City, the Manor of Rensselaerwyck, Half Moon, Schaghticoke, Duanesburgh and Schoharie. Districts in Albany County that did not send members to the meeting were requested to re-elect members or explain their reasons for not doing so.[11] Abraham Yates, Jr., of the Third Ward, was unanimously elected chairman. Abraham Yates, Jr., a lawyer and politician had earlier served as the Albany County Sheriff and had sat on the Albany Common Council for twenty years previously to 1773. In the tax assessment of 1767, he was assessed at £65 for his property in Albany. The second meeting of the Committee discussed a letter from the Provincial Assembly members Phillip Schuyler, Abraham Ten Broeck (who was the conservator of the Manor of Rensselaerwyck during Stephan Van Rensselaer's minority) and Peter R. Livingston of Livingston Manor. These provincial assemblymen, who were at the very top of the social and economic pyramid of Albany County, were in the minority in the Provincial Assembly. The loyal New York Assembly had refused to name delegates to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, so these assemblymen (all of whom would become revolutionaries) asked the Committee of Correspondence to appoint such delegates instead.
The revolutionary crisis came to war in Massachusetts in April of 1775, after the battles of Lexington and Concord and the ensuing siege of the British Army in Boston. On May 4, 1775 the Committee, "at these times of Publick commotions and disturbances," requested the Common Council to increase the night City Watch. The Common Council refused such an increase. The committee then organized a "Burger Watch" answerable to them, not the "Mayor, Aldermen and Commonality of Albany" (as the legitimate government of Albany was styled).[12] The committee, which had been meeting at various inns and houses up until then, began meeting in the City Hall Common Council Chambers the next day.[13] For more than a year, the Common Council and the Committee of Correspondence would share the City Hall with the Council dealing with the mundane matters of running the city.
The Committee's work during this time was principally the work of war and revolution, not governance. Arms and supplies needed to be found and forwarded to the Canadian front. The Indians needed to be dealt with, in hopes of keeping them neutral. Active enemies of the revolution needed to be identified and disarmed. However, in following the advice and orders of both the Continental and Provincial Congresses, the Committee was brought nearer to some the traditional roles of the city government. . In particular, prices of staples such as flour were regulated and merchants who sold above the established price were fined. By June of 1775, the minutes of the Committee begin to resemble the minutes of the Common Council in form, particularly in dispersing money.
On June 10, 1775, a delegation of Mohawks came to Albany wishing to treat with the Committee. The Mohawks recognize the Committee as the dynamic force in Albany in this uncertain time and make their traditional greetings to a legitimate government. The Committee dances quickly in their response. They assure the Mohawks that although the members of the Committee may be appear to be the government they are not. However, they use the language of the old relationship between Albany and the Mohawks thanking them for coming to Albany to "brighten the Old Chain of Friendship and Peace with us."[14]
Preserving the dignity of the Committee became an issue in July 1775. Alderman and Committee member Peter W. Yates wrote a sarcastic piece describing the procession of "Congressional General" Philip Schuyler through Albany a few days earlier. Assistant Alderman and Committee member Jeremiah van Rensselaer brought the piece (the author then unknown) to the Committee's notice on July 11, 1775. The Committee pondered through the afternoon whether or not to "take notice" of the paper, deciding that it ought to. Peter W. Yates confessed to being the author of "the Scandalous reflection published against this Committee" on July 13, 1775 and was required to give a public confession and an affidavit of loyalty to the Committee. He was then expelled. Later in the month, he was re-elected to the Committee by the citizens of the First Ward, but the Committee refused to seat him.[15]
On September 29, 1775, the usual elections for the Common Council were held and the last Common Council under the Royal Charter convened. Peter W. Yates was elected Alderman for the First Ward. The mundane business of the city continued to dominate the meetings of the Common Council. On November 6, 1775, three days after Montréal surrendered to a revolutionary army under the over-all command of the richest man in Albany, the now Major General Philip John Schuyler, Robert Lansing submitted a bill "for keeping the fire Engines in repair." The Common Council ordered the Treasurer to pay Mr. Lansing. The revolution appears in records of the Common Council only in the most tangential of ways. Frederick Clute requested an abatement of his rents for land at Fort Hunter "by reason of his being repeatedly interrupted by the Mohawk Indians in the possession and cultivation of those Lands." On February 12, 1776 the Common Council passed the usual annual ordinances regulating the internal life of the city, but the regulation of the economic lifeblood of the city, the river trade, was disrupted. The minutes noted,
Whereas this Board had intended this day to have exposed to sale at publick Vendue [an auction for the management of] the Docks and Wharfs for the ensuing year, but on the application of some of the Skippers and by reason of the publick confusion and the unhappy state of the Country at this time, this Board have Resolved to postpone such sale to a future day.[16]
In the spring of 1776, the British Army evacuated Boston, and it was rightly feared they would next attack New York City. The Revolutionary expedition to take Qu‚bec City which had begun with such promise the year before ended in dismal failure when the Royal Navy sailed up the Saint Lawrence River to lift the siege and routed the Revolutionary Army. In Philadelphia, the Continental Congress in Philadelphia began to consider declaring independence. In Albany on March 9, 1776 the Committee applied to the Common Council for funds to pay the expenses of the "Burger Watch" in the service of the Committee. The Council took an interesting approach to this question.
Whereupon it is Resolved by this Board that the Aldermen of each respective ward do as soon as possible take the sence [sic] or opinion of the Citizens on the Subject in writing and that they make report at the next Common Council, and if in case it shall appear that a Majority of the Citizens do consent and agree to such request of said Committee then the Board will comply with said request and grant an order on the Treasurer for that purpose.[17] In neither the record of the Common Council or the Committee is there further mention of the "sence" of the citizens or if the Council complied with the Committee's request.
The Common Council under the Royal Charter met for the last time on March 25, 1776. Abraham J. Yates was appointed Dock Master and Joseph Yates was appointed "inspector of Bread"[18] The Revolution overtook the legal government of Albany.
On May 10, 1776, the Committee staged a coup against the Common Council. It ordered the records of the city and county seized. A militia guard was formed to guard the papers, but the city and county Clerk, Stephen DeLancey, was allowed access, under guard, "that the necessary business of the said office may not be impeded." The Mayor, Abraham C. Cuyler, and the Clerk and other suspected loyalists of the city were ordered to appear in front of the Committee to sign an "association" agreement in opposition to Royal government. They refused and were disarmed. By the end of May 1776 the barracks master of the fort was ordered to prepare a jail in the fort for the reception of loyalists and subcommittee of the Committee members from Albany City and nearby Rensselaerwyck was formed.
You would think that the Mayor, Clerk and other loyalists of Albany would have been more discreet, but they met at Cartwright's Inn on June 3, 1776, as earlier described, to celebrate the King's birthday. The Committee, who had earlier found objection to sarcasm, could not let this affront stand. On June 5 the Committee ordered the city and county records to be taken charge of by Jacob C. Ten Eyck and Henry Bleecker. The Mayor's wife asks for and receives the protection of the Committee. The next day, Mayor Abraham C. Cuyler, Clerk Stephen DeLancey and young troublemaker Staats Dyckman and others are arrested and sent to the new "Tory Gaol [jail]" They will soon be sent to Connecticut for safe-keeping. The regular government of Albany under the Dongan Charter was over.
Simply because there was no government did not mean that the functions of government halted. The mundane work of the Common Council continued, but by the Committee, not the Council. As the news of the Declaration of Independence and the appearance of the British Fleet off Staten Island carrying an army to invade New York City arrived in Albany in July 1776, the Committee ordered Samuel Loadman paid for cleaning the Hall and Common Council Room.
On the Feast of Saint Michael (election day, September 29, 1776) Peter W. Yates wrote a pro forma letter to the now non-existent "Mayor, Recorder and Corporation of the City of Albany" expressing the fear that if no election is held on the feast of St. Michael, the Charter will be forfeit.[19] The consequences of the Charter being in forfeit might be devastating to rights and privileges of the Corporation of Albany. No new Royal Charter for Albany would be as liberal as the old charter. The lands at Fort Hunter and Schaghticoke would never be re-granted by an outraged Crown, wrote Yates. If for no other reason than the real possibility of losing the War of the Revolution, all the provisions of the Charter should have been adhered to. In September of 1776, the position of Albany was not secure legally or militarily. The British had taken New York City and Montr‚al. The two traditional outlets of trade were cut off. Albany was under siege.
But the mundane work of the city continued. On November 25 through 27, 1776 the Committee ordered the wells, pumps and cisterns repaired and Fire Masters appointed. The faithful Robert Lansing was paid for repairing the fire engines. The Committee asked the State to appoint inspectors of flour. On December 5, the city chimney sweeps were allowed 16p for every chimney cleaned. In February of 1777, the Committee regulated taverns and appointed a committee to inspect the taverns. On March 15, 1777 the fire companies and regular jail were on the Committee's agenda. On April 11, a regular "Sunday Morning Patrol" was formed to keep the city quiet during Church services. On May 1, the traditional moving day, when leases were renewed (or not), a sub committee to hear tenant disputes was formed.[20]
Just before the first Battle of Saratoga, on September 16, 1777 the Committee ordered the leaded windows of the city to be dismantled so the lead could be melted for bullets. After the battle, but before Burgoyne final defeat and surrender in October, the Committee formed a sub committee to superintend new elections of Aldermen and Assistants on the traditional election day of the Feast of St. Michael, September 29th. The new government of the City of Albany did not convene immediately. The Committee still functioned as the government of Albany for several more months. On November 6, 1777 chimney viewers appointed, and the lead melted for bullets was ordered returned to the windows. On November 15, the Committee ordered the Aldermen to look to the repairs of the bridges, wells and pumps of the city, but the Committee paid Rykert Van Sante £2/11d for the repairs. The Committee attended to Fire company organization matters on three different days in December. Collections and distributions for the poor were organized in January and February of 1778.
On February 17, 1778 the State legislature passed "An act to remove doubts concerning the corporation of the city of Albany." The State, acting as the new sovereign in the name of "The people of the State of New York, by the grace of God, free and independent" declared "Whereas the inhabitants did not at the proper period, owing to the confusion of the times occasioned by the calamities of war, elect their Aldermen in strict conformity with the charter, nor appoint their officers...the charter and all the rights of the corporation which they held on the 19th day of April 1775, were confirmed." In March the State appointed a new Mayor, John Barclay, and Clerk for the city. On April 8, 1778 Matthew Visscher, the new Clerk of the City and County of Albany formally inquired about the location and safety of the government records, which are brought and deposited with him. On April 17, 1778 the new city government met in the Common Council chambers in the City Hall. The new Mayor of Albany was John Barclay, the Chairmen of the Committee that has been running the City of Albany since 1776. On June 10, 1778 the Committee audited their books and shut down. The transition from revolutionary committee to restored Charter government of Albany was complete.
Table 1: The officers of the Corporation of Albany in 1775; Tax assessment of 1767
| Office | Name | Assessment | Fate |
| Mayor: | Abraham C. Cuyler | £55 | exiled |
| Clerk: | Stephen De Lancey | £20 | exiled |
| Recorder: | John Ten Eyck | £18 | revolutionary |
| Sheriff: | Henry B. Ten Eyck | £16 | exiled |
| Treasurer: | Henry Bleecker, Jr. | £30 | revolutionary |
| First Ward Alderman: | Gerritt Van Zandt | £50 | found suspicious |
| First Ward Alderman: | Peter W. Yates | £18 | new oath required |
| Second Ward Alderman: | Gysbert G. Marselis | £6 | exiled |
| Second Ward Alderman: | John Ja. Beeckman | £40 | revolutionary |
| Third Ward Alderman: | John Ten Broeck | £18 | revolutionary |
| Third Ward Alderman: | Thomas Hun | £14 | "well affected" |
| First Ward Assistant: | Arie La Grange | £10 | militia service |
| First Ward Assistant: | Jacob Roseboom | £14 | revolutionary |
| Second Ward Assistant: | Cornelis Van Scherluyne | £160 | new oath required |
| Second Ward Assistant: | Jeremiah Van Rensselaer | not found | revolutionary |
| Third Ward Assistant: | Abraham Schuyler | £25 | revolutionary |
| Third Ward Assistant: | Abraham Ten Eyck | not found | revolutionary |
| Sources: Philip John Schuyler Papers, Rare Books and Manuscripts Division, Astor, Lenox
and Tilden Foundations, New York Public Library. Photocopies may be found at the Schuyler Mansion, Albany, New
York. An unreliable but well indexed transcription of these tax rolls may be found in Florence Christoph, Upstate New York in the 1760s (Camden, Maine: Picton Press, 1992). Fate is determined
from James Sullivan, ed. Minutes of the Albany Committee of Correspondence, 1775-1778, 2 vols., (Albany: The University of the State of New York, 1923) and Victor Hugo Paltsits, ed. Minutes of the Commissioners for detecting and defeating conspiracies in the State of New York. Albany
County Sessions, 1778-1781, 3 vols. (Albany: J. B. Lyon, 1909). N.B.: Abraham Ten Eyck's 1767 assessment is not legible; Jeremiah Van Rensselaer was too young in 1767 to be a head of household. "Revolutionary" means the Councilman serviced as an officer in the army, militia or a revolutionary committee. Other notations are explained in the text. |
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Table 2: The officers of the Corporation of Albany in 1778; Tax assessment of 1779
| Office | Name | Assessment |
| Mayor: | John Barclay | £1800 |
| Clerk: | Matthew J. Visscher | £600 |
| Recorder: | Abraham Yates, Jr. | £2300 |
| Sheriff: | Hendrick J. Wendell | not found |
| Treasurer: | Henry Bleecker | £2400 |
| First Ward Alderman: | John Roorbach | £1100 |
| First Ward Alderman: | John Price | £1150 |
| Second Ward Alderman: | Jacob Lansing, Jr. | £1450 |
| Second Ward Alderman: | Abraham Cuyler | £1850 |
| Third Ward Alderman: | John M. Beeckman | £2500 |
| Third Ward Alderman: | Samuel Stringer | £2150 |
| First Ward Assistant: | Matthew Visscher | £600 |
| First Ward Assistant: | Abraham J. Yates | £200 |
| Second Ward Assistant: | Isaac D. Fonda | £750 |
| Second Ward Assistant: | Jacob Bleecker | £2400 |
| Third Ward Assistant: | Cornelis Swits | £500 |
| Third Ward Assistant: | Abraham Schuyler | £1800 |
| Sources: Lansing Papers, folders 17, 29, 35-39, 41-46; microfilm roll 1, tax rolls March 1799; Joel Munsell, ed. The Annals of Albany, 10 vols., vol. 1 (Albany: J. Munsell, 1850-59), 277. | ||
[1] James Thomas Flexner, States Dyckman, American Loyalist (Boston: Little Brown, 1980), 9; James Sullivan, ed. Minutes of the Albany Committee of Correspondence, 1775-1778, 2 vols., (Albany: University of the State of New York, 1923), 1: 402, 434-35 . Return to Text
[2] Joel Munsell, ed. The Annals of Albany, 10 vols. (Albany: J. Munsell, 1850-59), 1:218-19; Stefan Bielinski, Government by the People: The Story of the Dongan Charter and the Birth of Participatory Democracy in the City of Albany (Albany,: Albany Tricentennial Commission, 1986), 39. Return to Text
[3] Lorenzo Sabine, Biographical Sketches of Loyalists of the American Revolution, with an Historical Essay, 2 vols. (Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1864), 1: 855-56. Return to Text
[4] Munsell, Annals, 1: 258-59; The Papers of Sir William Johnson, 14 vols. (Albany: University of the State of New York, 1921-65), 8: 943, 949, 955-68. Return to Text
[5] Munsell, Annals, 1: 261-62. Return to Text
[6] Codman Hislop, Albany: Dutch, English and American (Albany: Argus Press, 1936), 142. Return to Text
[7] Jon C. Teaford, The Municipal Revolution in America: Origins of Modern Urban Government, 1650-1825 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975), 53. Return to Text
[8] Munsell, Annals, 1: 258-76, passim. Return to Text
[9] Ibid., 1: 271. Return to Text
[10] Sullivan, Minutes, iv-v. Return to Text
[11] Ibid., 5. Return to Text
[12] Sullivan, Minutes, 23-25; Munsell, Annals, 1: 271-72. Return to Text
[13] Sullivan, Minutes, 23. Return to Text
[14] Ibid., 71-75. Return to Text
[15] Ibid., 152-60, 164, 170. Return to Text
[16] Munsell, Annals, 1: 275. Sullivan, Minutes, xxx. Return to Text
[17] Ibid., 1: 276. Return to Text
[18] Ibid. Return to Text
[19] New York State Archives, Autographed signed letter. 3 pages. Return to Text