Hardenbergh Patent

Date: 1709 [unknown]
Location: New York Colony
Surname/tag: Hardenbergh

"In 1707, Johannis Hardenbergh and his seven partners parlayed a deed to a few thousand acres of Ulster County backlands into the largest of the great patents granted by Gov. Edward Hyde Viscount Cornbury during his administration....The final tract totaled 1.5 million acres...."

At the time, the land tract was within Ulster County, one of the 21 original counties formed in colonial New York. Later, after the Revolution, the Constitution and early governance of New York, county borders changed, new counties were carved out of earlier counties and the early land grants were divided.

Beginning with the antirent movement, landowners were forced "to grant fee-simple ownership to farmers on patent lands by the end of the 1860s."

Sources

• "Hardenbergh Patent." in The Encyclopedia of New York State, Peter Eisenstadt, Editor in Chief, Laura-Eve Moss, Managing Editor. Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, New York, 2005, page 693, accessed April 11, 2023.