APPENDIX A. 



ANCESTRY. 



Samuel Youmans, the great-great-grandfather of E. L. 

 Youmans, was of English descent, and was born on Long 

 Island about 1700. He was a wheelwright. He moved 

 from Long Island to Fishkill-on-the-Hudson, in Dutchess 

 County, about 1720. He had two sons, John and Anthony, 

 who were farmers, livmg in Dutchess County till their father 

 was an old man. When, about i77o-'75, the cheap land on 

 the west side of the Hudson below Albany was opened to 

 emigrants, these men migrated with their growing families, 

 taking with them their aged father, and settled at Coey- 

 mans upon "lease land." The land along the Hudson 

 was mostly owned by a few Dutchmen, who held it by 

 letters patent from the King of Holland. Only in this 

 region did feudalism ever get a foothold in our country, 

 and the last vestige of it disappeared half a century ago in 

 a civil conflict known as the anti-rent war. Each of these 

 Dutch landlords made his own terms with settlers inde- 

 pendently of the others, and the business shrewdness of a 

 man was shown as much in the choosmg of his landlord as 

 in the choosing of his land. John Youmans took up two 

 hundred acres of heavily timbered land, for which he^ 

 agreed to pay what in the end proved a ruinous rent; but 

 five years were given free of rent for clearing the land and 

 getting ready for cropping. 



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