You may not have learned about the 19th century Anti-Rent Wars in your high school history class, but the story of indentured farmers fighting for their land and freedom is well-known in parts of the Catskills and Hudson Valley.
Shut out from purchasing their land, upstate New Yorkers who organized and disguised themselves as “Calico Indians” resisted rental payments to wealthy landowners.
The story of resistance, the 1845 killing of a Delaware County undersheriff, a government crackdown, and later, changing public sentiment and land reform, is told through the voices of the descents of the Anti-Rent movement…