Jacob Leisler Institute

Jacob Leisler Institute for the Study of Early New York History

An independent, not-for-profit study and research center devoted to collecting, preserving, and disseminating information relating to colonial New York under British rule.

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Recent News Posts

Exhibit Reception Event on Saturday, August 1, 4PM to 7PM

Institute Exhibit OPEN Until Sept. 12 | From Glorious Revolution Toward Independence: America’s Forgotten First Revolution

Lecture – “Wartime Refugee Crisis in the Hudson Valley, 1754-1763”, June 4 at 6PM

Lecture:“Wartime Refugee Crisis in the Hudson Valley, 1754-1763,” by Tom Arne Midtrød, Ph.D.Date/Time:Thursday, June 4, 2026 at 6PMLocation/Registration:Virtual Lecture on Zoom, click here to register. Tom Arne Midtrød, Ph.D. discusses how the outbreak of the Seven Years’ War affected Mahican and Munsee-speaking populations in the Hudson Valley. During this conflict, many Native groups felt themselves […]

New Trustee – Peter Van Dyke

Peter Van Dyke (B.S., University of Richmond; M.B.A., New York University) is a New York–based consultant and investor with longstanding interests in history, preservation, genealogy, and civic institutions. He is active in charitable and educational initiatives through the Van Dyke Family Foundation, where he supports organizations focused on education, community engagement, and historical preservation. He […]

Latest YouTube Lectures

Jacob Leisler Institute

Jacob Leisler Institute
This presentation by BJ Lillis about changing land rights in the colonial Hudson Valley including Indigenous and tenant resistance to a manorial system was hosted by the Jacob Leisler Institute for the Study of Early New York History, in collaboration with the library. Lillis traces Indigenous survival and resistance to colonialism on Hudson Valley manors from the early 18th century to the 1760s, when an unlikely alliance between tenant farmers and Native people organized tenant uprisings, rent strikes, and coordinated legal action against Hudson Valley landlords. In the 1760s, some landlords intensified their approach to market-oriented agriculture, replacing customary lease terms with shorter leases and money rents. Tenants turned to extra-legal action even as their Wappinger and Mohican allies pursued their land rights within the imperial legal system. Together, their actions reveal the contingent, contested foundations of rural capitalism and property on the eve of the American Revolution. BJ Lillis is the Hench Post-Doctoral Fellow at the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, MA. They completed their Ph.D in history at Princeton University in 2024. Their project, A Valley Between Worlds: Slavery, Dispossession, and the Creation of a Settler-Colonial Society in the Hudson Valley, 1674-1766, brings together histories of Atlantic slavery, Indigenous North America, and English, Dutch, and German colonialism to explore the contested relationship between land, labor, and property in the 18th-century Hudson Valley. The Jacob Leisler Library Lectures are made partially possible through the generous support of the Van Dyke Family Foundation, HRBT Foundation, and Bank of Greene County Charitable Foundation. Recording by Karl Frederick Mattson, 542films.
A Layered Landscape Indigenous Land and Colonial Property in the Hudson Valley
The Jacob Leisler Institute for the Study of Early New York History, in collaboration with the Hudson Area Library, hosts this in-person presentation with Professor Rosenblatt on the Zenger trial. The landmark 1735 trial of New York printer John Peter Zenger, which acquitted him for seditious libel in publishing articles critical of New York’s colonial governor, established the power of a jury to function as a check on government power and inspired the movement for freedom of the press later enshrined in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Its importance today is as great as it was in the eighteenth century. Judge Albert M. Rosenblatt served as a Judge on New York’s high court, after having served on other New York Courts. A graduate of UPenn, and of Harvard Law School, Rosenblatt has written widely on New York law and culture, including a book, with his wife, Julia, on Dutch New York. He now teaches law at NYU Law School. The Jacob Leisler Library Lectures are made partially possible through the generous support of the Van Dyke Family Foundation, HRBT Foundation, and Bank of Greene County Charitable Foundation.
Freedom of Speech in New York: The John Peter Zenger Trial by Albert M. Rosenblatt
The Jacob Leisler Institute for the Study of Early New York History, in collaboration with the Hudson Area Library, hosted a presentation with Germantown Historian Thomas Shannon on the Palatine Germans who settled in our area. All across Columbia and surrounding counties are traces of the 1709 Palatine Migration to New York. This history has not always been so clear causing one writer, in 1878, to claim “that to study their history seems like looking for a lost age and a lost people, a romance of the past,”. The finest historical narrative of the Palatines to date, Becoming German by Philip Otterness, follows those who left for Schoharie in 1712. By contrast, this talk will cover the local aftermath of the Palatine Migration, the persistence of many family names, more than a century of co-existence with Livingston Manor, and the factors that eventually swept away much of the outwardly obvious Germanness of southern Columbia County, with an emphasis on those traces that have survived. The Jacob Leisler Library Lectures are made partially possible through the generous support of the Van Dyke Family Foundation, HRBT Foundation, and Bank of Greene County Charitable Foundation. Recording by Karl Frederick Mattson, 542films.
The Enduring Impact of the Palatine Migration on Columbia County
When Independence Led to Chaos: Authority in the Early Eighteenth Century Dutch Reformed Church, by Dr. Kenneth P. Shefsiek Dr. Kenneth P. Shefsiek, associate professor of Early American and Public History at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, tells how authority in the North American Dutch Reformed church in the eighteenth century was determined. In the mid-18th century, the church was wracked by conflict about whether the Dutch church in America would remain subordinate to the Classis of Amsterdam or whether the American Dutch would become independent. Regardless of which side they stood, all believed that the American church had been subordinate to Amsterdam since the early days of New Netherland. They had, however, misremembered their past. The Dutch church in America became subordinate to Amsterdam in the early years of the 18th century, and only at the request of a group of American ministers who sought to tie themselves closer to Amsterdam in response to the chaos created in New York by one troublesome minister, Rev. Bernardus Freeman, who had destabilized the church from Schenectady to Long Island. This presentation is the fourth in a series of Leisler Lectures for 2024 in collaboration with the Hudson Area Library. The Jacob Leisler Library Lectures are made partially possible through the generous support of the Van Dyke Family Foundation, HRBT Foundation, and Bank of Greene County Charitable Foundation.
When Independence Led to Chaos: Authority in the Early Eighteenth Century Dutch Reformed Church
A virtual lecture from Toya Dubin, hosted by the Jacob Leisler Institute, Hudson Area Library, and with support from the Columbia County Libraries Association. Impressions of a New World: Jacob Leisler, Nicasius de Sille, & the promised Eden of 1660s New Amsterdam
Impressions of a New World: Jacob Leisler, Nicasius de Sille, & the promised Eden of New Amsterdam
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