Exhibit - Duty & Disaster
Quit-Rent Receipts for Kingston, 1717 and 1737
Note: Quit-Rent was a kind of land tax that owners of real property owed to the Crown during the colonial period. In lieu of money, the fees could be paid in kind, such as in bushels of wheat, as is the case in these two quit-rent receipts. If a landowner failed to pay the quit-rent for a specified number of years, the Crown had the right to take back the land and grant it or sell it to another. These fees are considered the origins of today’s taxes on real property. In both of the above examples, the quit-rent was one hundred and four bushels for a one year period. The quit-rent fees apparently did not change in twenty years as recorded in these receipts dated 1717 and 1737. The top receipt is signed by the Receiver General of the Province at New York, Mr. Archibald Kennedy who received the wheat from one Evert Bogardus. The bottom receipt contains a reference to a sloop from Esopes, establishing the manner in which the wheat was transported to New York, and also using the original name of the settlement here, Esopes or Esopus, a name that first referred to a location on the east shore of the Hudson River, and later, about 1630, meaning the area near and around the mouth of the Rondout Creek.
Other seventeenth century records in the collection indicate that "Esopes" or "Sopes" referred to early native populations. Of additional note is the stamped signature on the lower receipt; an eighteenth century use of the"rubber stamp", an early time saving device even then.
