Charles Mulford Jenkins was a partner from 1850 to the mid 1890’s. In January 1900, at age 90, Jenkins died, having been the oldest practicing lawyer in Albany.
Jenkins joined the firm in 1850, as a partner of Teunis Van Vechten and Duncan McMartin. Shortly thereafter, Van Vechten retired due to illness and Paul Fenimore Cooper joined the firm. McMartin left in 1854, and the firm became known as Jenkins & Cooper and remained so for the next three decades.
While Jenkins was well versed in the general practice of law, his principal client was Stephen Van Rensselaer IV and, after his death, the Van Rensselaer estate. The Van Rensselaer “Patroons” were Dutch landowners who received their real estate titles from the Dutch crown when New York was a Dutch colony. Afterwards, they operated what can only be described as feudal estates in the region (“Manorial Titles”). Abraham Van Vechten, the firm’s founding member, represented Stephen Van Rensselaer III, who was known as the “Good Patroon.” Van Vechten’s friend and fellow Federalist, Alexander Hamilton, though widely praised as the leader of early American capitalism, drew deeds which tied the tenant farmers to the Van Rensselaer land in a manner that was feudal but technically avoided the legal prohibition on feudalism in the guise of an “incomplete sale.”
Stephen Van Rensselaer III died in 1839. During the 1840’s, the tenants of his lands, prompted by his heirs’ effort to enforce rents, fought an armed rebellion (known as the Anti-Rent Wars) to eliminate all vestiges of feudalism from Upstate New York. As a result, the type of lease that tied the tenant farmers to the land was made unlawful by the 1846 New York Constitutional Convention. Nonetheless, legal battles followed over back rent and Jenkins and Cooper represented the rent claimants. The State, on behalf of the tenants, challenged the validity of the manorial titles. In 1853, Charles M Jenkins, achieved a victory on behalf of the Van Rensselaers in the significant Court of Appeals decision People v. Van Rensselaer, 9 N.Y. 291 (1853), where Court held land titles devolving from the Dutch crown were valid and enforceable.
