HISTORY OF AGRICULTURE 61 



who would bring into the new country fifty adult 

 settlers within four years. These grants were to 

 have a frontage of sixteen miles on the Hudson River, 

 eight on either shore, and with indefinite boundaries 

 inland. This was the basis of the Patroon settle- 

 ments by which the owners of these grants were 

 known. The Patroon was obliged to divide his land 

 into farms and to aid in their equipment, with build- 

 ings, tools, seeds, plants and stock. Pent was in 

 stock and produce, usually fifty bushels of wheat a 

 farm. Tenancy was for ten years, during which 

 the tenant was securely bound to the Patroon who 

 was officer and court. In addition to the first right 

 to purchase the tenant's products, he controlled the 

 rights to establish mills and to fish and hunt. 



The largest and most noteworthy grant of this 

 sort was to Killan Van Rensselaer who acquired 700,- 

 000 acres extending from Albany, which he founded 

 in 1630, twenty-five miles south along the river and 

 forty-five miles inland. In 1684 after New Amster- 

 dam had become permanently English and changed 

 its name to New York, Chancellor Livingston ac- 

 quired a tract of 160,240 acres further south in the 

 Hudson Valley in what is now lower Columbia and 

 northern Dutchess counties. By the English these 

 grants were made from time to time but the principle 

 of tenancy rather than actual ownership by the op- 

 erators of the land was firmly established and led to 

 important agrarian movements that are still visible 

 in the political structure of the State. 



In 1685 the Huguenots or French Protestants came 



