Time to Build the Highway, Citizen

Repair Public HighwaysRemember how residents of the city of Albany in 1800 were required to pave not only their sidewalks, but half their streets? That’s nothing compared to their obligations with regard to the city’s highways.

The laws of 1800 don’t make it clear exactly what was considered a public highway – it was likely at least the King’s Highway (think of Washington Ave. heading west), and possibly the extensions of Broadway north and south. But they do make it clear that most people in the city were responsible for working on the roads.

There was a complicated formula. The Mayor, aldermen and council were commissioners of the highways, and they were charged with forming a list of “all freeholders, housekeepers and other persons exercising any trade, business or labor for themselves or on their own account, or receiving wages for such labor, (Ministers of the gospel excepted).” They were to take an assessment of 1200 days of work for the highways, and “shall affix to the name of each respective person mentioned in such list, the number of days which each person shall be liable to work on the roads, for the said twelve hundred days during the continuance of this law, and the same assess in proportion to the estate and ability of each person.” No one was to be rated at more than twenty days.

The list was to be delivered to the chamberlain, who was, within three days of receiving it, to cause public advertisements to be put up in at least two places in each ward, announcing when and where he would be in attendance to receive payments.

Oh, did you think everyone was actually going to be required to work? Not quite. Anyone on the list could pay two shillings (within the time prescribed in the advertisements) would be exempted from working on the roads, and the moneys received were to be applied to repairing and improving the public highways by contracts or otherwise. The chamberlain, by the way, got 2.5% for his troubles.

So, once it was determined who had paid their way out of work, the list was sent on to overseers appointed by the commission.

“Such overseer or overseers of the highways shall from time to time warn such and so many persons, not less than thirty, whose names shall be contained in such list to be delivered to such overseer or overseers by the said chamberlain as may be necessary from time to time to make and repair such roads or parts of roads as the said Mayor, Aldermen and Commonalty shall . . . designate and for that purpose direct, and shall employ such persons as shall from time to time appear to work in consequence of such warning, until each person so rated . . . shall have worked the whole number of days at which he or she shall have been so rated as aforesaid; and that the said overseer or overseers shall from day to day (Sundays excepted) continue to employ, weather permitting, so many of the said persons as shall be necessary to work on such road, until the whole shall be completed, or until all the persons so rated shall have worked out the number of days at which they shall be so rated as last aforesaid, in the manner herein after mentioned.”

In fairness, you could send someone in your place – “some able bodied man to be by him or her employed for the said purpose.” Failing to appear (or send an able bodied man), ready to work and with such proper tools as the overseer shall have directed, would cost 62 cents and five mills. You should also have expected to work at least an eight hour day.

In addition to having to show up, you could also be required to provide a wagon and two horses with an able-bodied man, or a cart and a horse with an able-bodied man, to be used to move materials needed to repair the highways; providing a wagon with two horses and a man reduced your assessment by four days, and providing a cart, horse and man reduced it by three days. If you had a wagon or cart and a “horse proper for drawing the same” and refused to furnish them, you would forfeit 75 cents.

We don’t know how long this arrangement existed, but it wasn’t unusual, as we have seen similar arrangements in other towns.

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