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Appendix  DRAMATIS PERSONAE This book introduces the reader to a host of relatively little-known people. This set of minibiographies is intended to sort out some of their identities and relationships. MATTHEW ADGATE (1737–1818) arrived in the hill settlements from Connecticut in the 1760s. He played a key role in having the King’s District established in 1772 and emerged as the region’s most powerful populist Clintonian leader during the Revolution and the following decades. Translating his power into land grants, he resettled in the Lake Champlain region about 1800. His son ASA ADGATE (1767–1832) was elected to Congress in 1814. HANNAH BARNARD (circa 1754–1825), with her husband Peter, a carter by trade, was part of the Quaker emigration from Nantucket that settled in Hudson in the 1780s. She was active in the spiritual and organizational life of the Hudson Monthly Meeting and the Nine Partners Quarterly Meeting, preaching and serving on committees. After challenging the peace testimony of Quakers in London during a trip to the British Isles, she was disowned by the Hudson Meeting in 1802. In 1811 Barnard organized the first women’s organization in Columbia County, the Hudson Female Benevolent Society, and nursed it along through hard times for about eight years. She was known for her proto-Unitarian theology, her wit, and her sparkling intellect. A series of BENJAMIN BIRDSALLs run through this story. Though there are conflicting accounts, they appear to have been father, son, and grandson. COLONEL BENJAMIN BIRDSALL (1743–1828) was born into a Dutchess QuakerfamilyrecentlyremovedfromLongIsland.Expelledfromthemeeting for his active role in the Revolution—he commanded a regiment of levies— Birdsall settled in Hillsdale, joined the Temple Lodge, and led the petition against theVan Rensselaers in 1789. A pointman for the Genesee Companyof Adventurers in the assembly in the early 1790s, hewas a leading Republican in the county into the next decade. His son, BENJAMIN BIRDSALL, JR. (1767– 1861), was a tenant leader in the Copake neighborhood in Great Lot No. 1 of the Upper Manor. In the late 1790s he was a leader in the tenant insurgency against the Livingstons, after which he became a stalwart of the county Re- 476 ) Appendix publican committee and the Vernon Lodge in Hillsdale. In 1811 Benjamin, Jr., led a second campaign against the Livingston title, in close association with Martin Van Buren, which resulted in his indictment for conspiracy in 1814. In 1816 these two Benjamin Birdsalls, with a number of other relations, moved west to Chenango County.The grandson, MAJOR BENJAMIN BIRDSALL III (1786–1818), was farming land rented from Stephen Van Rensselaer at Watervliet in Albany County when war broke out in 1812. Raising a rifle company that fall, Birdsall served with distinction in the Fourth United States Rifle Regiment, was seriously wounded, and—retained in federal service —was killed by a soldier at the Greenbush barracks in 1818. SAMUEL EDMONDS (1760–1826) served in the Continental ranks during the Revolution and arrived in Hudson with little but his name. By the 1790s he was well established in trade, a leading Mason, and trusted Federalist. His son JOHN W. EDMONDS (b. 1799) studied law with Martin Van Buren and started the Democratic Gazette in 1824. In the late 1830s hewas practicing law in NewYork City, and in 1845 hewas the presiding judge at the Smith Boughton Anti-Rent trial. JACOB FORD (1744–1837) led companies of Hillsdale militia on a series of campaigns during the Revolution, including Saratoga in 1777 and the defense of Cherry Valley in 1778. In the assembly in the 1780s, he and Matthew Adgate were condemned by Alexander Hamilton as “a couple of New England adventurers . . . of the leveling kind.” By the mid-1790s the complexities of land politics led him into an alliance with Peter Van Schaack and the Federalists, for which hewas rewarded with a county judgeship. Later in life hewas a leading member of the Baptist church at Red Rock, Austerlitz. ELEAZER GRANT (1748–1806), one of the Connecticut settlers in the Mawighnunk Patent, was the quartermaster of the Seventeenth Regiment and then a lieutenant in the NewYork Line. A founder of the Unity Lodge in 1786, he led a Federalist faction in New Lebanon with WILLIAM POWERS, served as Canaan’s first postmaster, and was involved with the Albany-toCanaan Turnpike. As a justice of the peace he held hearings regarding the Shakers in the 1780s and in 1800. PIETER MEES HOGEBOOM was born in a family that settled in...

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