Jun 12 at 12:00 PM - Sale 2708 -

Sale 2708 - Lot 149

Estimate: $ 800 - $ 1,200
(NEW YORK.) Previously untraced song from the Anti-Rent War titled "The Grafton Tories!" Letterpress broadside, 13½ x 6 inches; moderate wear at folds, minor dampstaining, tightly trimmed, a few unrelated inked notes on verso. No place, circa December 1844
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This broadside dates from the Anti-Rent War which shook upstate New York from 1839 to 1845. Much of the land in the Hudson Valley was owned by a handful of wealthy Dutch-American patroons who rented out small parcels on very long leases. After the 1839 death of patroon Stephen Van Rensselaer III, his heirs started pressing tenants for back rent. The tenants organized and pushed back, often in American Indian garb meant to evoke the Boston Tea Party. The militia failed to put them down.

This song, meant to be sung to the popular tune "Dandy Jim," recounts an incident from late in the conflict which took place in Grafton, Rensselaer County, northeast of Albany. It stands unapologetically on the Anti-Renters' side. It begins "Come listen Anti-Renters hear / And to my story lend an ear / Listen to me, while I describe / A few of the Grafton Tory Tribe." The chorus sets up the Anti-Renters in defiance of the Tory authorities: "Law and order is their cry / Now we conquer or we die."

A central incident of the rebellion was the 19 December 1844 killing of Elijah Smith in Grafton, NY. A longstanding nemesis of the Anto-Renters, he had been contracted to cut wood from a Rensselaer tenant's land, and was surrounded by a group of 30 Anti-Renters disguised as Indians. When he rushed at the men with his woodcutter's ax, a shot rang out and he was mortally wounded.

This song tells the story in 37 verses, mentioning Smith by name three times: "There was the famous Black Smith, too / Who at an Indian swiftly threw / His tomahawk with good right will / He did the Indian mean to kill." The use of the Anti-Renters' famous tin horns to gather their forces is noted: "The distant horn aloud did sound / The Indians from rest did bound / They seized their arms and on the run / In long and sweeping files they come." After the killing, "The Indians meet, shake hands and laugh / No more the Tories cross their path / Or if they do, themselves they shoot / Thus Smith was killed, so it does look. . . . That Smith was killed I much regret / Who did the deed is not known yet / Some say it was his dearest friend / Who brought him to his fearful end." Two Anti-Renters were arrested and charged with the murder on 26 December, so we suspect this song was written and published in the one-week window after the killing.

We can trace no other examples of this broadside or this song in OCLC; at auction; in newspapers; in Christman's definitive 1945 book "Tin Horns and Calico," which published several other songs from the uprising; or in Newman's 2025 book "Songs and Sounds of the Anti-Rent Movement." Provenance: purchased from an estate in Stephentown, NY (about 15 miles south of Grafton), circa 1999.

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