A CONVERSATION WITH DONNA THORLAND
Q. I had no idea that feudal estates like the patroonships ever existed in America. How did these come into being?
A. The Dutch West India Company wanted more than trading posts in America, but colonization was an expensive business. To encourage settlement without incurring expense, they came up with the patroon system. Starting in 1629 the company began granting the title of patroon to invested members who met certain conditions. Patroons were required to build a manor house and recruit and transport settlers to the New World. In exchange they received land grants with extraordinary rights and privileges, including the ability to create and administer civil and criminal courts and appoint local officials. For every fifty settlers over the age of fifteen that a patroon brought to New Netherland, he received a grant of land sixteen miles along one side of the Hudson or eight miles along both sides “and so far into the country as the situation of the occupiers will permit.”
Q. Why did farmers choose to live within the patroonships? Why didn’t they buy their own land?
A. Farmers took up leaseholds because they had no other choice. Most of the land in the Hudson River Valley was owned by the patroons. Scarcity drove up prices so that what little land was available was too expensive for smallholders to buy. Lease terms often seemed attractive at first, especially to new arrivals in America. In the middle of the eighteenth century a man might rent roughly two hundred unimproved acres from a patroon for about three pounds a year. He’d receive a discount for the first few years while he was clearing the land and building a house and barns. After that, though, he would pay his full rent and discover that conditions on the estate made it difficult to get ahead. He was obligated to use the patroon’s mills for his lumber and his grain, and he had few choices but to purchase his seed, equipment, and most finished goods from the patroon’s stores. Many leases ran for three life terms, meaning that his son and grandson were bound to the land by the same terms.
Unrest, given the spirit of the age, was almost inevitable, and Annatje’s father is loosely based on the revolutionary William Prendergast, who was jailed for leading revolts against the Hudson Valley landlords in 1765 and 1766. Riots followed his arrest. He was sentenced by the patroon-dominated New York courts to be hanged, drawn and quartered, beheaded, and burned. Several attempts were made to break him out of jail. Prendergast was so popular that no willing executioner could be found. He was pardoned by King George III, most likely a move to defuse tension in the valley. Ten years later, during the Revolution, the British would encourage tenants to revolt against landlords who chose the Rebel side.
Q. Highwaymen are fixtures of swashbuckling adventure fiction, but the novel suggests that real highwaymen were active in the Hudson River Valley during the Revolution. Can you describe the conditions in the region during this period?
A. By the end of 1776, Washington had been forced to evacuate New York and the British were firmly in control of Manhattan. That left Westchester County with the British Army camped on its doorstep. The political sympathies of the population were mixed, and no strong local Rebel government emerged in the area, leaving the country south of Dobbs Ferry prey to ceaseless raiding, mostly by irregular loyalist units, often referred to as Cowboys. Interestingly a mythology grew up in the nineteenth century, largely created by James Fenimore Cooper for his Revolutionary War novels, that the Cowboys were opposed by a similarly ruthless Rebel band called the Skinners—but the term appears in only one diary entry for the entire duration of the war. The Skinners make terrific drama but suspect history. If they existed, they were most likely another loyalist band similar to the Cowboys. What is certain, though, is that lawlessness prevailed in what became known as the Neutral Ground. When John André was captured with the plans for West Point stuffed in his boot, it was casual bandits with only a loose affiliation to the Continental Army who waylaid him.
Q. The silkwork picture that hangs in Anna’s academy sounds remarkable. Did schoolgirls really create art like this?
A. Yes. Anna’s silkwork landscape is modeled on a picture embroidered by Hannah Otis (1732–1801) called View of Boston Common. It’s an extraordinarily accomplished work, made around 1750 out of wool, silk, metallic threads, and beads on a linen ground. Hannah’s older sister Mercy served as the inspiration for my previous book Mistress Firebrand. You can view the picture at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts Web site. English and American schoolgirls, in addition to academic subjects, learned both practical and decorative skills—polite accomplishments—such as dancing, singing, playing the harpsichord, painting, needlework, and drawing.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
The novel has many elements that place it in the Gothic tradition: a remote house; a powerful, landed aristocrat; a heroine separated from her home and family. How does it conform to and defy the conventions established by books like Jane Eyre and Rebecca?
What do Anna’s klompen symbolize to Gerrit? Do they mean something different to Anna herself? What do they mean to you?
How did you feel about the choices Annatje made to survive after she left Harenwyck?
Kate Grey blackmails Anna into traveling to Harenwyck, but Anna acknowledges, if only to herself, a debt owed to the Widow. Do you think Anna made the journey to save herself from exposure as an imposter, or for more complicated reasons?
The Widow told Anna that she would make a good teacher, but that it was not a role she could play forever, because of her strong sense of social justice. Was the Widow right?
Andries Van Haren has a vision for reforming the patroonship that will provide his tenants with schools, doctors, better roads, and more favorable markets for their goods. Would you choose the security of tenancy under a regime like Andries’, or the independence—and uncertainties—of life as a freeholder?
Gerrit resorts to highway robbery to destabilize his brother’s regime. Is he more or less justified than the partisan bandits terrorizing the Hudson River Valley on behalf of the British and Rebel armies?
Did Anna really see the ghost of Barbara Fenton in the woods, or was it a hallucination?
Barbara Fenton’s tragic romance with her Dutchman serves as a counterpoint to Anna’s happy union with Gerrit. Anna and Gerrit both find meaning in the story. What is it that Anna learns from Barbara’s tale? What is Gerrit’s lesson?
Photo by Peter Podgursky
After graduating from Yale with a degree in classics and art history, Donna Thorland managed architecture and interpretation at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem for several years. She then earned an MFA in film production from the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts. She has been a Disney/ABC Television Writing Fellow and a WGA Writer Access Project Honoree, and has written for the TV shows Cupid and Tron: Uprising. Currently a writer on the WGN drama Salem, Donna is married, has two cats, and splits her time between Los Angeles and Salem, Massachusetts.
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