Computer Science Department

University at Albany

Dissertation Abstract

New Light on the Frontier:
New England Squatter Settlements in New York
During the American Revolution (1984)

Our enduring interest for the American Revolution often centers on the “internal” revolution, the struggle to determine “who shall rule at home” after the British were expelled from most of the continent. This dissertation views the struggle at home from an ethnic perspective. It focuses on the successful attempt of New Englanders, living in New York (in an area now included in Columbia County), to obtain a viable and legitimate political place in New York by using the Revolution to force an acknowledged entry into the larger New York society.

By the end of the American Revolution, perhaps one in four inhabitants of New York was a native of New England, recently settled in New York. Most of these Yankee emigrants crossed over the New York border after 1760 and established squatter settlements on the New York – New England frontier, creating a veritable Yankee zone that reached from Dutchess County to Lake Champlain. This zone was composed almost entirely of New Englanders who organized distinct cultural enclaves. The specific communities studied here “squatted” on land claimed by John Van Rensselaer, landlord of the Claverack estate.

Although settled in New York, Yankees preferred their native New England’s models for social and political organization rather than New York’s. As a result of this defensive cultural outlook, the Yankees were alienated from most of their neighbors. Yet, the precarious situation that prevailed immediately before and after independence required that the Yankees be enlisted in the provincial body politic to resist the British and their local supporters. In this unstable political environment, they maneuvered to advantage by employing the revolutionary upheaval to settle old political scores and by associating themselves with the radical Whigs in Albany to extend their influence. Not coincidentally, they resisted (and vilified) the political and military leadership of Philip Schuyler, the son-in-law of their landed antagonist, John Van Rensselaer, and the political spokesman for the landed interests The Revolution, then, became the catalyst for improving the Yankees’ social and political status in New York.

The pre-Revolutionary political and social isolation felt by the Yankees was compounded by an equivalent religious alienation that prompted them to attempt to create a congregational society on the frontier. Nevertheless, the fragile religious environment that prevailed in the Yankee zone before 1776 was seriously disrupted by the Revolutionary struggle. By 1779, the socio-political fallout from the Revolution motivated the religiously impressionable in the region to undergo a revival, which in turn in 1780, led to mass conversions to the sect headed by Ann Lee. The New Englanders thereby provided the necessary vitality and critical mass to transform a dormant English sect into an emerging native movement. Under this interpretation, the origins of Shakerism cannot be understood without reference to the Berkshire revivals and the political dilemmas that prompted them.

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