Ancram Main Street

The town of Ancram, which bills itself today as a Historic Farming Community Moving Forward, was a sleepy little hamlet when this picture from the archives of the Roeliff Janssen Historical Society was snapped in 1940.

This area on Roeliff Jansen Kill was part of the original land grant to the Livingstone family and was first called Livingston Forge. An iron forge developed on the river created metal products for the community throughout the 18th century and, during the American Revolution, produced shot, cannonballs and perhaps most importantly the huge chain installed across the Hudson River at West Point as a defense against British ships going upriver.

Founded in 1803, the town, itself, was originally part of Gallatin but separated from it in1814 to become an independent municipality.

Ancram’s name is derived from the Livingston homestead in Anchoram, Scotland where Robert Livingston, first Lord of Livingston Manor, was born in 1654. The town comprises 27,000 of the 160,000 acres the Livingston family once held through a grant from the English crown.