Interpretations of Locust Lawn 
and the evolving New Paltz cultural landscape

This report was compiled as part of the process of the Locust Lawn Landscape Study and Master Plan conducted in 2001 and 2002.

Neil Larson, Historical Consultant
February 2002

SECTION I: HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

1. Introduction
When the development of Locust Lawn was completed in 1814, it represented the most elegant and modern house and landscape in New Paltz, if not Ulster County. Its design and construction occurred during a period of significant change in the region following the War of Independence and the creation of new governments and economic systems. This was an era where the idealism that had led to the conception of a free American republic was put into practice. It was a thrilling and empowering time, but it also caused upheavals in traditional patterns of life, particularly in old, ethnic communities like New Paltz, which was established by twelve Huguenot families in 1677. The builder of Locust Lawn, Josiah Hasbrouck (1755-1821), was the personification of this age. Active in state and national politics, he was also a leader of New Paltz's Huguenot community. His strong familial ties to the established traditional life and his direct participation in the national events that forged a new world order posed a dilemma that was visually manifested in the design of Locust Lawn. The interplay of continuity and change is embodied in the farm, and results in a highly stylized fashion that epitomizes the cultural shifts that characterized the rural experience in the first half of the 19th century (1).

2. Evolution of the New Paltz Landscape, 1677 - 1814
The initial landscape the Huguenot settlers established in New Paltz after 1677 was
planned on a European town model, as well as the plans of other towns in the Hudson Valley, such as Kingston and Hurley where many of them had lived previously. Their dwellings were concentrated in a defensible enclave on high ground east of the Wallkill River. The fertile alluvial plain west of the river was divided among the twelve patentees for farms. The town plan provided house lots of two acres or more, with space for barns, gardens and orchards. These lots were oriented to a single road that paralleled the river. It has been speculated that a portion of the town was fortified with a stockade. The Huguenot families had been assaulted earlier in an Indian raid while they resided in Hurley, and they would have been wary of their adversaries, although the tribe had been decimated in reprisals that followed. However, New Paltz was a small colony of only twelve families and would not have had the resources or formal town government that would have led to the development of much of an infrastructure (2).

The Huguenot leaders were intent on building an agricultural community and prospering from it. They were ardent capitalists and were determined to participate in the expanding regional economy. Wheat, peas and other cash crops were cultivated on the flood plains; livestock was raised for market on upland pastures. A landing was established on the Hudson River to convey farm products to New York City. Roads were constructed to link the town with the river, which was five miles to the east and with other towns to the north (Kingston) and south (Newburgh). Specialty trade and craft shops appeared to support this growing agricultural community. By 1750 (and perhaps earlier), a store operated in the ancestral home of Locust Lawn's builder that provided a wide range of goods and luxuries manufactured outside the town. Thus, the landscape and patterns of interaction in New Paltz were established in a traditional European town model where domestic space was separated from agricultural space and concentrated in an urban grouping where trades, crafts and mercantile occupations also took place. Although perhaps more of a family enclave than a community in its early years, New Paltz would expand by natural increase, intermarriage and an influx of tenants to support more and more internal commerce. The Hasbroucks, as well as other families, would come to profit from this growing demand for goods and services. Their fortunes would also grow from a great surplus of land that was leased to outsiders. New Paltz was governed by the twelve families that owned the patent until it was finally forced by the state to adopt a conventional form of town government in the 19th century. Prior to this, it operated more like a family-held real estate corporation with twelve shareholders (3).

The small town plan could not accommodate the expansion required once the second generation of the twelve families reached maturity. New subdivisions were made within the patent immediately north of the settlement on both sides of the Wallkill and distributed among the families. This would happen at various times in the 18th century. When an area within the patent was targeted for development, a surveyor was brought in to divide the parcel into twelve lots of equal size or value; and the lots were distributed among the heads of the families. The traditional town plan was not expanded. By the early 1700's, it was evidently no longer the preferred model. Rather, individual homestead lots were created where home and farm were included in a single parcel. A network of these homesteads appeared first along the Wallkill, since this was where the most productive farmland was located. Roads on both sides of the river linked them together and connected them to the old settlement, which became known as the "village." These roads also connected to other Wallkill Valley settlements north and south of New Paltz. These farms were around 100 acres in size, enough to support a traditional subsistence farm (4).

In addition, land outside the boundaries of the New Paltz Patent were available to buy and the scope of the Huguenot settlement quickly expanded beyond the bounds of the original land grant. Some of this expansion occurred around the periphery of the patent, but Huguenot land purchases ranged much farther: north into the towns of Kingston, Saugerties and Catskill; south to Newburgh; east into Dutchess County; and west to Marbletown, the Delaware River and into the Catskill Mountains. In every case, the productive valleys of the Hudson's many tributaries were sought out and development of farms and lands progressed in a conventional manner. New towns were formed but not in the domestic cluster of the initial settlement. Rather, they were geographical centers where creeks and roads intersected, mill sites located and commerce concentrated (5).

Huguenot families acquired much of the land immediately south of the New Paltz Patent in the second generation. New York land speculators had picked up this land in the late 17th century when Captain John Evans's huge patent was voided. (The New Paltz Patent was a part of this confiscated land.) There were numerous smaller patents ranging from 1,000 to 10,000 acres that were partitioned for farms. Hugo Freer was one of these patentees, acquiring 1200 acres along the Plattekill in 1715. He conveyed the northern half of the patent to his son, Isaac Freer. The southern half of this patent, which included a fall of water on the Plattekill, came into the possession of Evert Terwilliger upon his marriage to Hugo Freer's daughter Sara in 1728 (6).

Evert Terwilliger built a one-room stone homestead near the falls where he established a mill. At first, this was likely a sawmill that transformed trees felled to clear farmlands into building materials. When farms in this area began producing wheat and other grains, a gristmill was added to the site. The neighborhood became more populated and the Terwilliger mill was a central feature of an area contained in the watershed of the creek that extended north towards the New Paltz Patent line, west to the Wallkill, and east and south a fair distance. A regional road from Newburgh to Kingston passed through the Terwilliger property on its way to New Paltz. The curve it made to cross the Platte Kill at Terwilliger's mill still exists in the state highway (NY Route 32) that it has become. The area became known as Platte Kill. Nearly 100 years later Josiah Hasbrouck would obtain title to most of the Terwilliger land (7).

The landscape that developed at Platte Kill was quite different from the original New Paltz settlement, and it was like those in scores of other new farming areas created in the Hudson Valley in the 18th century. With more and more land becoming available for independent freehold farms, old traditions of land-use and domestic life were changing. New farms of 100 acres, more or less, were created as single units that comprised all the important agricultural and domestic components. Previously, a New Paltz farmer would have had one or more fields for crops in the clearings along the Wallkill River floodplain, common pasturage for his animals, a garden and orchard on his house lot in the town, and wood lots hither and yon. As the century progressed, the landscape surrounding New Paltz evolved into a pattern of farms. Each of these farms had a nucleus of a house and a barn. There would have been yards around the house and the barn. The house yard was small. Houses were typically situated close to roads. The level of ornamental planting in front of houses is not known; however trees would have sheltered the buildings. A kitchen garden was planted at the side or rear of the house. Its location relied on the soils and the topography of the yard, solar orientation, and the proximity of the kitchen. Kitchen gardens would have been fenced to protect them from roaming farm animals. An orchard would have been at the periphery of the yard. The barnyard was characterized by packed earth. The barn was the only farm building early in the century. It was a multi-function building where wheat crops were processed and stored, where horses and one or two milk cows were housed, and where valuable equipment was protected from the weather. All other animals - cattle, sheep, swine and poultry -- fended for themselves outdoors. Hay was stored outside in piles or under roofs called barracks (8).

New farms needed to be cleared and cultivated. This work progressed slowly (an individual farmer would clear one or two acres a year) but deliberately over the course of the 18th century. Slaves and wage laborers played an important role in this work, thus wealthier farmers who owned slaves or could afford to buy labor developed their land more quickly, although they would have likely started with more area as well. Initially, animals foraged in the meadows and forest. Cattle and swine were fattened with vegetables grown by the farmer and, in the case of swine, acorns gathered for that purpose. Fodder was collected from natural meadows and wetlands. The first land that was cleared was planted with wheat, which remained the major market crops until the end of 18th century, rye for home consumption, and Indian corn that served a myriad of home and farm uses. Gradually, as more and more land was cleared, functional spaces became more distinct and the farm became more efficient. A pattern of fields, meadows and pasture emerged, each divided by hedge and tree rows or stone and wood fencing. They were linked by paths and roads and were alive with grazing animals, the daily work of farm labor, the growth progression of crops and the changing seasons (9).

Farm production changed dramatically after the Revolutionary War. The region's wheat production, which had provided significant prosperity for its farmers, began to suffer from soil exhaustion, blights and market competition from new farms in western New York. The agricultural economy in the Hudson Valley rather quickly shifted to dairy products, which were in great demand in New York City. Other products would be carted to the Hudson and shipped to the city, such as vegetables, fruit, beef and hay, but butter was gold for farmers for the next 100 years. The cow population increased, and grazing bovines became a prominent landscape feature. Census records show that farms supported between ten and twenty cows with about half the total number producing milk at any one given time. The region's sheep population declined significantly as home and local wool manufacturing diminished. Locust Lawn supported a large flock into the 1850's but was an exception, due to the fact that wool processing was done at the mill there. Improved farming methods were adopted as part of a concerted, state-directed effort to revitalize the region's agriculture. The animals produced manure that helped rejuvenate the exhausted soil. Grains were gradually replaced with increasing amounts of corn, which was shown to increase milk production and butter fat. Hay production also increased significantly as cow herds consumed great quantities for fodder (10).

In New Paltz and other "Dutch" or non-English communities, the Dutch barn was assiduously preserved as a visible landmark of traditional cultural identity in the rapid proliferation and improvement of farm buildings. The old Gothic structure with its gable-end faÁade framed by its huge roof was the only farm building to be found on 18th-century farmsteads. It originated as a wheat-processing barn where cut wheat was stored and dried in the immense oven of the towering roof. When cured, the grain was dropped to the threshing floor below, with the large end doors providing the cross draft to separate the kernels from the chaff. Storage bins were built into the side aisles where the grain was stored until transported to the mill. Once dairy cows became the principal concern of the farmer, stalls were built in the side aisles and hay, rather than wheat was stockpiled under the roof. In New Paltz, it was common for the roof to be raised in height so that the barn could accommodate more hay. New barns were built that contained these advanced features but preserved the outward appearance of the traditional Dutch barn. Tremendous effort and cooperation was needed to keep the Dutch barn viable in the community through this period. Josiah Hasbrouck built a Dutch barn at the north end of the farmyard (now burned and demolished) (11).

New buildings appeared on the landscape during the period of agricultural revitalization that occurred in the early 19th century. The valuable milk cows were better accommodated in cow houses that were generally attached to existing barns. In addition to providing shelter for animals, hay was stockpiled in the upper level of the cow house. The substantial increase of hay production required new storage facilities. Hay invaded the barn as well, and grain was stored in a separate, smaller building: the granary. Old barns were often enlarged by additions to the plan and height of the building to accommodate more hay; new barns were built to a larger scale. On larger farms, other smaller buildings appeared, such as stables, sheep sheds, piggeries, smoke houses, workshops, and wagon sheds. Each had spaces under the roof where surplus hay could be stored, if necessary. The dairy was incorporated into the kitchen of the house. Butter- and cheese-making were domestic tasks of the farmer's wife and were accommodated in her realm. Locust Lawn retains a valuable collection of farm buildings that reflect this diversification of functions.

Houses also changed after the War of Independence, but not nearly to the radical degree of Josiah Hasbrouck's creation at Locust Lawn. His father, Major Jacob Hasbrouck, Jr. (1727-1806) built a new stone house in 1786, which was decidedly traditional in its long, one-and-one-half-story form and three-room plan, even though it incorporated materials and finishes that reflected contemporary technology and taste. The father was in his 60th year when he vacated the old homestead in the village and left Josiah in residence there. Josiah's younger brother, Jacob J. Hasbrouck (1767-1850), inherited their father's new stone house when he died in 1806, but he was not satisfied with the out-moded architecture. Like his brother, Jacob J. left the traditional stone dwelling behind and built an elegant new brick residence in Bonticoe, a lush farming area along the Wallkill River in the northern section of the New Paltz patent. This house was built about a decade after the mansion at Locust Lawn was completed, and Jacob J. may have been influenced by his brother in his ambition; but his taste not nearly as avant garde. While the brick walls and stylized Federal Period trim were distinctive innovations, the traditional one-and-one-half-story form and three-room farmhouse plan was fastidiously preserved. This house is one of a notable group of brick dwellings that were built in New Paltz during Josiah and Jacob J. Hasbrouck's generation. These buildings represent a significant phase in the local architectural history and reflect the dramatic changes that were occurring in the Huguenot community and the broader society (12).

SECTION II: THEMES FOR INTERPRETING THE LOCUST LAWN
LANDSCAPE AS CREATED BY JOSIAH HASBROUCK

1. A Contradictory Symbol of the Preservation of Rural Tradition and Social Progress
Josiah Hasbrouck's move from the social and economic center of the old Huguenot settlement in the village of New Paltz to the rural environment of Platte Kill was a notable event. One of the popular interpretations is that he left the village to remove his young son from the temptations of the town. However, there was clearly more reason than that for such an expenditure of money and effort. Josiah had been born and raised, and until he moved to Locust Lawn had continued to reside in the Jean Hasbrouck House, the most unusual and pretentious house that New Paltz had known for a century. Perhaps the prominent position of his family and their affinity for grand architectural statements led to Josiah Hasbrouck's conception of Locust Lawn. This, combined with rubbing elbows with the state's and nation's elite during the heady political times following the Revolutionary War when the American Republic was being formed, could explain the uniqueness of his mansion. Hudson Valley farmers were staunch Jeffersonians, and Josiah Hasbrouck was no exception. It is not difficult to imagine his returning to New Paltz after a term in the Eighth Congress in 1805 to the ancient stone house and its equally old store determined to make a symbolic gesture of his part in the new world order (13).

The spirit of this new order that Josiah embraced developed in and was nurtured by his political activism, first on the local scene, then in Albany and culminating in Washington, D.C. From this, Josiah's ambition to improve what he possessed into something better was born. Yet, these ambitions were deeply rooted in and conditional to his connection to his family and his Huguenot community of which he was a leader. Following his service as an officer in the Ulster County Militia during the War of Independence, Josiah was repeatedly elected Supervisor of the Town of New Paltz. From the establishment of town government in 1784 to 1805, Josiah served in this position for a total of twelve years (14).

While his actual relocation did not occur until his new house was completed in 1814, it was evidently a move planned over a period of many years. The development of Locust Lawn occurred between 1805, when Jonathan Terwilliger's widow Mary sold Josiah 135 acres (including the family homestead and mill site), and 1814, when the new house was reputedly completed. In the meantime, Josiah had obtained clear title to another 250 acres from the heirs of John Terwilliger, Jr. that contained four or five small farmsteads and a second mill site. It is, perhaps, no surprise that this period coincides with a twelve-year interruption in his Congressional service (15).

With the death of his father, Maj. Jacob Hasbrouck, Jr. in 1806, Josiah would have had another reason to retreat from politics and refocus his energies to interests at home. He and his younger brother Jacob J. assumed control of a vast amount of property in New Paltz. Their father had inherited patentee Jean Hasbrouck's one-twelfth share of what remained of the original land grant, and he willed the brothers their great-grandfather's legacy. This amounted to a long list of scattered parcels that Josiah and Jacob eventually divided between themselves in 1809, as well as a role in the final partitioning of the patent, which was still largely held in common by the twelve founding families. Josiah and Jacob J. Hasbrouck were among the most powerful men of their generation in New Paltz, and they were entrusted with the preservation of the Huguenot community (16).

Locust Lawn's references to the old order are as significant as its aspirations to the new. In this way, the property is very instructive in how the traditions of the community were preserved while compelling evidence of contemporary societal and political change was incorporated into it. Old and new was visually expressed, but in the fiery rhetoric of the age where the "old" was an honored rural tradition extending back to ancient Rome, and "new" was the revolutionary social order that uprooted a decadent class aristocracy and instituted a popular republic in its place. The outward appearance of Josiah Hasbrouck's mansion at Locust Lawn was completely new in its local context, but it belied a traditional plan of rooms arranged around a center passage. His principal farm building was a Dutch barn modified for contemporary use but preserving a historic form identified with his cultural group. The siting of his mansion amid his barns, mills, tenant house and farmyards continued old traditions and reinforced his identity as a farmer. And he would have endeavored to maintain his farm landscape with impeccable neatness, which would be the measure of his success. Old and new, tradition and change, community and world were physical and expressive qualities that Josiah Hasbrouck brought into balance at Locust Lawn.

2. The Influence of Elite Design Principles
It is evident that Josiah Hasbrouck and his builder were familiar with the published house designs of Asher Benjamin. The design for the principal elevation of the house at Locust Lawn was remarkably similar to a "Design for a House in the Country" pictured in Plate 37 of Benjamin's American Builder's Companion (1806). This was an unprecedented event in New Paltz. The house broke the envelope of the local architecture drawing attention to its builder and his progressive mentality. Within the constraints of the property and its principal function as a farm, it would be expected that Josiah brought the same elite design principles into the planning of the ornamental domestic landscape.

While published material on landscape design was not as readily available architectural pattern books, there were other ways that Josiah Hasbrouck could have informed himself on the subject. He would have been introduced to the cutting edge of landscape design in Washington, D.C. where L'Enfant's capital plan was in development. A man as interested in architecture as Hasbrouck demonstrated himself to be would have had ample opportunity during his term in Congress to discuss house and landscape design with men with similar interests. Thus the family lore of Josiah coming home to New Paltz with ideas about architecture has a certain resonance for both the outcome of the house and landscape at Locust Lawn.

The Hudson Valley was also a significant source of ideas for landscape gardening. There were country houses with pleasure grounds that were well known in the region, such as Samuel Bard's Hyde Park and the Chancellor Robert R. Livingston's estate at Clermont. John Armstrong, who had married the Chancellor's sister, was creating a model farm at La Bergerie (now known as Rokeby). He had returned from a diplomatic position in France having made a study of European agriculture that he published in a treatise on American framing upon his return. Like Hasbrouck, Armstrong sited his elegant Neo-classical dwelling near his barns and farmland. Numerous other properties owned by the Livingston family and their circles were employing skilled builders and gardeners were in creating new landscapes that epitomized the idealism of the Federal Period. Still many of them, like Janet Livingston Montgomery's elegant estate built near Red Hook in 1805, had landscapes that were designed to be picturesquely functional than recreational. Pleasure grounds would appear in coming generations. That Locust Lawn, unlike Montgomery Place, never really evolved beyond this early phase of landscape design makes it particularly significant and interpretable. (See the part entitled "Federal Period Landscape Design in the Hudson River Valley Region" in this report for a more detailed account of these elite landscapes) (17).

3. An Inevitable Expression of Wealth and Position
Josiah's wealth put him in a class above most of his family and neighbors, and Locust Lawn clearly represented that status. Class was an inherent part of 18th- and 19th-century rural society. Unlike the large proprietorships that controlled much of the land in the Hudson River, local society in New Paltz was not consciously structured in an aristocratic fashion. However, the families of the twelve patentees were by-in-large the landholders, and they formed a class that was distinct from the cultural outsiders who bought into the patent and tenants who labored on large farms or leased their own. It made a big difference if one had Huguenot blood in their family or not. There was a wide range of wealth within the group. As time progressed and the families multiplied, wealth became concentrated in certain lines such as Josiah and his brother, and they emerged as leaders.

But while he was a leader and member of an elite class within his own community,Josiah's status was validated within the local society rather than from the outside. Even though he mingled with other groups and identified with them on certain levels, his loyalty would have been to his traditional Huguenot community and his locality. Paradoxically, since the trappings of wealth and class were targets of derision in nineteenth-century rural culture as they symbolized anti-democratic and anti-local values of opposing Federalist factions in regional politics, the leaders of old farming communities like New Paltz were careful to espouse simple lifestyles and modest demeanors. As it had for generations of Quaker merchants, Puritan elders, and Dutch Boers in the eighteenth-century, this contradiction of reality and image was effectively rationalized within the Hudson Valley rural society. Thus, Locust Lawn could embody elements of both pretension and restraint, and Josiah Hasbrouck could identify with modest men (18).

4. A Commitment to the Improvement of Farming
Improvement was a pivotal ideal in agriculture and manufacturing in the early American republic. This was not the same as the 18th-century Enlightenment ideal of cultivation and control; rather it was a modern ideal of self-sufficiency and productivity. Soon after the Revolutionary War was won, when Josiah Hasbrouck was planning his farm, President Thomas Jefferson declared an embargo of English goods in response to that nation's harassment of American shipping. While this did not deter the British in their efforts to undermine the independence of their lost colony, it motivated American leaders to improve agricultural production and home manufactures to remove the nation's dependency on foreign goods, and jump-start the domestic economy. Josiah's shift from the import-based commerce of his family's store in the village to a production-based economy at the mills at Platte Kill- where wood products, including furniture; flours, meals and feeds; processed wool and woven textiles were manufactured- epitomizes this ambition. Farms participated as well, growing the crops and raising the animal products that contributed to the independence and growth of American markets. Improvement of farms involved increasing production, rejuvenating exhausted soil with fertilizers and crop management, and implementing quality-control measures (19).

A popular yardstick of success for farms was neatness. Farm journals, farm fairs and granges all promoted the benefits and the patriotism of maintaining a neat and productive farm. Farmers adopted the ideal of neatness as a credo of rural solidarity in their perpetual dispute with the city. Neatness became the landscape equivalent of plainness in architecture and a modest lifestyle. A neat landscape created a vista of rectilinear spaces outlined by well-built walls and fences and well-kempt hedgerows. The visual pattern of fields, meadows and pastures full of grazing animals was as aesthetically appealing to a farmer as a formal garden was to a gentleman, and it was morally superior as far as the farmer was concerned because it was productive and the result of an honest day's work. A good farmer spent his extra hours rebuilding his walls and fences, clearing drainage ditches, and keeping his buildings in good repair.

Josiah Hasbrouck created a farm at Locust Lawn that was a model of improvement. While he might have created a formal landscape around his elegant house, it appears that he refrained doing so in favor of locating the mansion in the midst of working garden and farm spaces in full view of his mills and the highway. In this way, he was identifying himself with the region's farmers and their republican political agenda. Josiah's position was not simply defined by his wealth. He created and maintained a large modern farm that displayed his respect for his rural heritage and his commitment to preserve it through improvement. If his house was too esthete or ambiguous to convey his ancestry, his Dutch barn and the relic of Evert Terwilliger's old stone house served as traditional symbols (20).

5. The Plain Style
Ironic as it seems, the development of Locust Lawn occurred as rural communities like New Paltz were in the midst of a crucial movement to preserve their cultural identities, rural economies and political autonomy in the face of the centralization of money and power in the urban society. No rural group was more threatened than the prosperous Huguenot farmers who inhabited New Paltz and its surrounding countryside. They, together with other long-established Dutch and British communities in the Hudson Valley had come to dominate the politics and economy of New York State through their control of the most valuable land, their collective wealth, and the demand for their products. Josiah Hasbrouck's generation experienced the diminishment of this power as city-based financial and political interests gained force in the unrestrained climate of the independent republic. Furthermore, the exodus of New Englanders to western New York quickly tipped the balance of population from a native Hudson Valley majority to that of the newcomers who were disinterested in the state's historic people and hostile to any sense of their entitlement.

Farm communities pulled in ranks and waged a moralistic celebration of their lifestyle and a tactical defense of their position in the state political debate. This was a period full of rhetoric and recriminations. It reached its peak in the 1820's and 1830's when the Plain Style emerged to distinguish the moral distance between the city and the country, to honor the achievements of the traditional community (and claim superiority over the immigrant rabble), and to extol the simplicity and piety of rural life. Plainness was expressed in speech, dress and demeanor, as well as in more public displays in art, architecture, and decorative arts. It would be expected to be manifested in landscape architecture, as well, and demonstrated in an emphasis on farm space over ornamental space and the perception of agricultural space as beautiful through neatness, improvement, and productivity. By 1850, the region's farmers would lose their political, economic and moral authority, but this preservation instinct remained strong for the rest of the century (21).

Locust Lawn After Josiah Hasbrouck
On 19 March 1821, Josiah Hasbrouck died leaving his estate to his only son, Levi who had worked with his father every step of the way in developing Locust Lawn. Levi Hasbrouck continued to build up the production of the farm and mills. It was Levi who lived through the most turbulent period of rural politics in the Hudson Valley. The years following Josiah's death were the most contentious in the struggle for supremacy waged by the city and the country. Jacksonian politics on the national scale helped keep the city at bay, even though its financial clout was increasing. The resumption of international trade and the opening of the Erie Canal made New York City the most important trading port in the United States, which only further diminished the power of the rural constituency. Following a financial panic in 1837, city banking interests in the state prevailed over the traditional farmers' banks. By 1840, the farmers finally lost control of the state government. By the time Levi Hasbrouck died in 1861, the rural community had grown isolated and alienated. Locust Lawn had changed little in the forty years since Josiah's death. The farm remained neat and productive, but it had long since reached its peak and its vitality was dwindling. The mills had closed.

Levi Hasbrouck's only son Josiah (1828-1884) managed the farm in a dispirited fashion up to his untimely death in 1884. He no longer had the pride of ownership or spirit of improvement shared by his forebears. It was not his occupation of choice. The rural identity was at ebb. Within the short span of 70 years, Locust Lawn had gone from a dramatic symbol of community preservation and rural pride to being a monument to the men who created it. After her brother died, Laura Hasbrouck Varick (1834-1925) mothballed the house and her family heirlooms as a sort of mausoleum. Absentee family caretakers and tenant farmers inhabited Locust Lawn for over a century, far longer than the bright period in which it had been created and thrived. The farm has since been closed and the landscape has gone fallow. Locust Lawn has become non-productive and had been dismantled. The farm has been separated from the house, which now functions as a museum. The mill site has disappeared. The distinctive landscape of Locust Lawn remains undeveloped but it has clearly lost the neat appearance that provided an appropriate setting for the house. Recapturing this visual quality will be a challenge at this point in time, yet the interpretation of Locust Lawn will be incomplete without it.

SECTION III: ENDNOTES

1. A survey of the literature regarding the historic architecture in New Paltz, ranging from booklets periodically published by the Huguenot Historical Society to more formal publications such as Eberlein and Hubbard's Historic Houses of The Hudson Valley (1942) confirms that Locust Lawn was a singular and avant garde residence in the local context. Sources like Early Architecture in Ulster County, published by the Junior League of Kingston in 1974, also fail to identify properties that rival Locust Lawn in Ulster County. This distinction is well known to regional historians and architectural buffs, and no other examples have emerged that equal Locust Lawn's renown.

Much has been written about the new world order that materialized from the revolutions in America and Europe in the late 18th and early 19th centuries and the shifting ideologies about the nature of society and the role of government. From Charles A. Beard (The Rise of American Civilization, 1927) to Daniel Boorstein (The Americans, The National Experience, 1965) to, more recently, Joyce Oldham Appleby (Inheriting the Revolution: the First Generation of Americans, 2000), the age has been characterized by optimism for change and improvement that was shared by national leaders and citizen farmers alike. Thomas Jefferson remains the principal figure in the articulation and nurturing of this vision, as well as the enduring symbol of democratic idealism (see Merrill D. Peterson, The Jefferson Image in the American Mind, 1962). It is no small matter to the interpretation of Locust Lawn that Josiah Hasbrouck served in the U.S. Congress during Jefferson's presidency, and if his high profile as a farmer and anti-aristocratic Huguenot was not enough, his correspondence shows him to have been a vocal supporter of the President.

2. The early history of New Paltz is repeated in many sources. Nathaniel B. Sylvester and Alphonso T. Clearwater published Ulster County histories in 1880 and 1907, respectively, that provided detailed descriptions of the settlement of New Paltz. This Huguenot community continues to be one of the most important, and compelling, components of the county's heritage. Ralph Lefevre's History of New Paltz, New York and Its Old Families (2nd edition, 1909) remains to be the most comprehensive account of the settlement and development of the town, although its accuracy has been questioned of late.

Accurate maps of early New York towns do not exist, but based on general site analysis, it is unlikely that house lots in the three original Dutch towns, New Amsterdam (New York), Beverwyck (Albany), and Wiltwyck (Kingston) would have exceeded one acre. The newer towns of Hurley and New Paltz were smaller and less urban, and they would have afforded more personal space within the confines of the village, with one or two acres appearing to be the norm. The area of New Paltz village lots described in the 1798 Direct Tax assessments for the town (Town Records Collection, HHS Archives) range from two to seven acres.

3. The settlement of the Hudson Valley during the late 17th and early 18th centuries was spurred by the ambition to capitalize on New York's prominent position in the international wheat trade. Ulster County, notably the Esopus and Wallkill drainages were the major wheat producer in the region. The production of this crop was rivaled by peas, which was used for both food and fodder. See Thomas Wermuth, Rip Van Winkle's Neighbors: The Transformation of Rural Society in the Hudson River Valley, 1720-1850. (Albany: SUNY Press, 2001) and David Steven Cohen, "Dutch-American Farming: Crops, Livestock and Equipment, 1623-1900" in New World Dutch Studies: Dutch Arts and Culture in Colonial America, 1609-1776 (Albany Institute of History and Art, 1987), pp 185-200. See Ralph LeFevre's History of New Paltz for details of early development in New Paltz.

4. The expansion of New Paltz is discussed in LeFevre's History of New Paltz in a genealogical fashion, and much of this evidence is still visible in the landscape today. There is a small collection of maps in the Ulster County Clerk's Office (of which there are copies in the Haviland-Heidgerd Historical Collection of the Elting Memorial Library in New Paltz) that document various partitions made by the New Paltz proprietors within the patent.

5. The distribution of lands within the New Paltz Patent and outside it in the larger Town of New Paltz is recorded in great detail in the 1798 Direct Tax assessment lists and pictorially represented on a 1797 map of the town (NYS Archives; copies at the Haviland-Heidgerd Historical Collection), which includes information on land ownership outside of the original patent as well (see below). There are similar documents for the towns of Kingston, Hurley and Marbletown where the New Paltz patentee families were also acquiring land.

6. The break-up of the Evans Patent is explained in Samuel Eager's An Outline History of Orange County, New York (1846) where much of the land was located. Numerous references to the land transactions are contained in Documents Relating to the Colonial History of New York, E.B. O'Callaghan, ed. (1849-81). The story of the Freer purchase can by found in LeFevre's History of New Paltz and Ruth P. Heidgerd's The Freer Family (HHS, 1968). Evert Terwilliger made an account of his ownership of the southern half of the patent in a 1759 deed by which he conveyed a portion of the land to a son (Ulster County Deeds, Book FF, Page 412).

7. This history is documented and explained in more detail in Section II of this report.

8. For further description of an 18th century farmstead, see David Steven Cohen, The Dutch-American Farm (NYU Press, 1992).

9. See Ulysses Prentiss Hedrick's A History of Agriculture in the State of New York (1933; rpt. NYSHA 1966) for further descriptions of farms and farming.

10. Hedrick provides a detailed account of the transition of agriculture in this period.

11. See two articles by Neil Larson: "The Dutch Barn, A Functional Perspective," in William D .Walters, ed., Pioneer America Society Transactions, vol. X (1987), pp. 37-41; and "Agrarian Changes: Learning from Barn Additions," in Dutch Barn Preservation Society Newsletter, vol. 1 no. 2 (Fall 1988), pp. 1-2.

12. There is no single source about New Paltz's distinctive architecture. LeFevre's History of New Paltz provides good temporal, geographical and genealogical frameworks for the Huguenot houses. The stone house Maj. Jacob Hasbrouck, Jr. is documented and analyzed in a National Register nomination written for the property (New York State Historic Preservation Office, Waterford, NY). For an essay on the brick architecture of New Paltz, see Neil Larson, The Masonry Architecture of Ulster County, New York, An Evolution, 1665-1935 (Washington, D.C.: The Vernacular Architecture Forum, 1986).

13. Issues of national identity had a tremendous impact in local politics, especially in the Hudson Valley where old, established communities were threatened with losing their autonomy and influence. Numerous sources include: Lee Benson's The Concept of Jacksonian Democracy, New York as a Test Case (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1961); Elliot R. Barkan's "The Emergence of a Whig Persuasion: Conservatism, Democratism, and the New York State Whigs," New York State History 52 (1971), 369-395; and Edward Pessen's Jacksonian America: Society, Personality and Politics (Homewood, IL: Dorsey, 1969). For an account from the period, see Jabez Delano Hammond, The History of Political Parties in the State of New York (1842).

14. This information was culled from Eric Roth's introduction to the finding aids for the Levi Hasbrouck Family Papers in the archives of the Huguenot Historical Society.

15. The long and complicated history of the land transactions Josiah Hasbrouck made to obtain title to the Terwilliger lands in Platte Kill is detailed and documented in Section II of this report.

16. LeFevre's History of New Paltz recounts the story of the Hasbrouck family and the manner by which Jean Hasbrouck's estate descended to his great-grandsons. Josiah Hasbrouck's wealth and position is certified in local tax lists and in the assessment lists of the 1798 Direct Tax.

17. The relationship of buildings at John Armstrong's La Bergerie still survives at Rokeby. Montgomery Place is owned and interpreted by Historic Hudson Valley, and after an intensive study of the landscape there, the staff is quick to point out that sheep pastures and agricultural land surrounded the house when it was completed. The present pleasure grounds with lawns, great river and mountain vistas, specimen trees and decorative plantings, rustic walks and carriage trails came later in the 19th century, much through the direct work of Andrew Jackson Downing.

18. See Frederick B. Tolles, Meeting House and Counting House: The Quaker Merchants of Colonial Philadelphia (NY: Norton, 1948), Perry Miller, The New England Mind (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1937).

19. See two articles by Donald B. Marti: "Early Agricultural Societies in New York: The Foundations of Improvement," New York History, 48 (1967), 313-331 and "In Praise of Farming: An Aspect of the Movement for Agricultural Improvement in the Northeast, 1815-1840," New York History, 51 (1970), 351-375. Also see chapters on "Agricultural Organizations" and "The State Aids Agriculture in Ulysses P. Hedrick's A History of Agriculture in the State of New York (Albany: 1933).

20. See Benson, The Concept of Jacksonian Democracy, New York as a Test Case and Hammond, The History of Political Parties in the State of New York.

21. This was a cultural preservation movement not to be confused with the current idea of historic preservation, although the latter shares much of the motivation of the former. See Clifford Geertz's "Art as a Cultural System," MLN, 91 (1976), 1473-1499. Also see Neil Larson, The Politics of Style; Rural Portraiture during the Second Quarter of the Nineteenth Century, unpublished Master's Thesis, University of Delaware, 1980.