8 Elizabeth and burgeoning family. Described as early “settlers” on this disputed territory, Van Amburgh had a great familiarity with it already. The couple occupied a farmhouse on the east side of the road running to Cold Spring. There they began to raise their two children, Harriet Ann (1797–?) and David Hunt (1798–1855), and practice animal husbandry. The census of 1800 recorded the family of four and their two slaves, with Joshua’s personal estate, including values for those he enslaved, totaling $597. A year later, his personal estate plummeted significantly to $159, while his relative John Van Amburgh had a personal estate of $3,300 and Robert possessed real estate worth $1,415. Van Amburgh’s finances had been restored in 1810, at which point he had 6 horses, 20 cattle, 30 sheep, and two slaves, who tended the farm’s livestock on pasture across the road. The young Van Amburghs now included John Edwin (b. ca. 1800), Sarah Anna (1806–1883), Margaretta Cooper (1807–1894), and Mary Cooper (1810–1895). As his final children, George Charles Hereford (1813–1891), James A. (1818–?), and Jemima Louisa (ca. 1825–1889) arrived, the farm had remained profitable. The absolute completion date of slavery on the Van Amburgh property is July 5, 1827—the day New York State illegalized the practice. Between 1834–36, Joshua made the decision to decrease his acreage, selling to Benjamin Brown, John Darley, and Amos Mosher, a long-time neighbor of the family to the south, who all kept miniscule farms. Slavery’s abolishment in New York produced the notion that agrarian enterprises in the Highlands were not to be its principal industry. The scarcity in labor which had necessitated slavery in the previous century vanished. When farming, a traditional task, required assistance, it came from family or hired hands. Still the men in Van Amburgh’s neighborhood scoured for means of profit and relevance, believing in the chance to make something of their Dutch ancestors’ sacrifices. Aside from their Calvinist faith, and their inborn affiliation of godliness with greatness in work, these years were the presidency of Andrew Jackson. Under Jackson, the premise of remaining stagnant in one’s social place was leveled by
