Catskill Creek Land Grant.

Catskill Creek Land Grant.
Commissioners of the KattsKill Patent. This is a map of a certain parcel of land ... lying at a place called Kattskill in the County of Albany on the west side of Hudsons River. New York Secretary's Office 18th May 1769. The preceeding is a true copy of the original mapfiled in this office by the Commissioners for the partition of the KattsKill Patent.
Detailed manuscript map, ink on vellum, of the land holdings around Catskill Creek, New York State. "Scale of 40 chains to an inch". 840 x 700 mm. The map or patent orientated North to the left, with the Hudson river running along the lower right, and the CatsKill Creek snaking south to north, with a 4 mile diameter circle of land plotted out, marking the various parcels of land, their plot numbers and acreages, also marking an Indian foot path. The explanatory text for the map laid out along the lower margin, and signed below by the four New York commissioners and the secretary. Some light browning and discoloration, old fold lines.
Provenance: Owen D. Young Collection. Van Hornesville, New York State.

A fine and rare map of a portion of land in the eastern part of the Catskills adjoining the Hudson River originally granted in 1688 to Elizabeth Van Dyck, Harton Gerrits and others, describing the area as "Five great plains". The map showing the subdivision of that land, for future sale, according to an earlier map patent of 1767, which was lodged with the New York Commissioners of the Partition of the Kattskill Patent, presumably in Albany.

The European population of the Catskills was initiated by Dutch settlers who moved up from New Jersey and New York in the late 17th and early 18th century. In 1706 speculators Johann Hardenbergh and Jacob Rutsen petitioned the Governor of New York State for the land grant of Ulster county on the Hudson. Normally grants could only be of 2000 acres, but as a corporation they ended up in 1708 with a huge triangle of land from Kingston west to the Delaware and northwards, forming "the Catskills." Without a survey they could not sell off the land, and with Indian activity, the surveyors had difficulty getting into the area. By the time Hardenbergh died in 1745, he had managed to sell off 1 million acres to the west to Robert Livingstone, and Livingstone's son, a Scot from Lothian, envisioned a grand scheme like the Highlands, but was thwarted when an English officer, John Bradsteet claimed in 1769, that Hardenburgh had illegally acquired his land and claimed his share. The eastern portion of the Catskills appears to have been taken under the jurisdiction of the New York State Land Commissioners, hence the drawing up of this map to create future sales of land in the area.