March 17, 2020 update: Effective immediately, the Ancram Town Hall, Town Court and Town Garage will be closed to the public until further notice. Town employees will continue to be working normal hours at the Town Hall or from home, so can you reach them by email, phone or mail. Our Highway Department is working a regular schedule. If you have something to drop off with a town official, please just put it in the mail box on the far edge of the parking lot.
The Town of Ancram is located in the southeastern section of Columbia County. The City of Hudson is approximately 20 miles to the northwest, the City of Albany approximately 50 miles to the northwest and the City and Town of Poughkeepsie approximately 35 miles to the southwest. The town was founded in 1803, and was originally part of Gallatin. In 1814 Ancram separated from Gallatin and became an independent Town. The name was derived from the Livingston homestead in Anchoram, Scotland. Robert Livingston, first Lord of the Manor was the son of a Scotch clergyman, born in Anchoram, Scotland in 1654. The town comprises 27,000 of the total 160,000 acres the Livingston family had held from the initial grant by the English Crown in 1686. Philip Livingston, grandson of Robert, founded the first iron works in 1743, the only one of its kind on the banks of the Roeliff Jansen Kill and in the NY Colony. There were four forges, a blast furnace and a refinery forge that employed 75 to 100 men at full operation. Three iron mines and a lead mine supported the iron works.
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The Ancram Freeground Cemetery, sometimes referred to on maps and the internet as the Ancram Old Cemetery, was established at the very end of the 18th Century. Because the cemetery was created before the 1803 incorporation of the town of Ancram, there are no town records of its establishment but it is widely believed that the one acre plot that comprises the cemetery was donated by the Livingston family. The Livingston’s settled in the area in the late 17th century and received a royal charter land grant from King George I in 1715 for 250 square miles of land. Most of that land, known then as Livingston Manor, is now Columbia County. Read more >
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