KNOX — The town of Knox has finally received something it has not had in its 200 years of existence, a town seal. At its  Jan. 9 meeting, the town board voted on a design that was initially created by Councilman Dennis Barber, settling on a circular seal divided into three parts: a farmer at his plow, a pill box, and a mask and tin horn.

Barber said that, after finding out that the town did not have a seal, he had a request for one put out in the last two town newsletters, but nobody submitted a design.

Barber, who is also the president of the town’s historical society, then decided to submit his own design. He went through local web designer Jonathan Lane, who found an artist, Tom Payne, to touch up his  design.

Barber said he researched other towns’ seals and based the images featured in the seal on Knox’s history. The pill box commemorates the town’s former pillbox manufacturing industry — residents once made the boxes from basswood, Barber wrote in a statement. The image of the farmer commemorates the rural towns’ agrarian roots, and the image of the mask and tin horn represent residents’ participation in the Anti-Rent Wars in the mid-19th Century. Tenant farmers protesting feudal rent to the patroon disguised themselves as “calico Indians” and signaled each other with tin horns.

Barber presented two designs, each with slight differences from the other, at the September town board meeting.

The tin horn and mask were not originally part of the design. Instead, Barber had incorporated a schoolhouse, because Knox had several schoolhouses in town before students attended Berne-Knox-Westerlo Central School District. Supervisor Vasilios Lefkaditis and former Councilwoman Amy Pokorny suggested adding a design that would commemorate the Anti-Rent Wars.

At the following town board meeting in October, Pokorny presented a design with the tin horn and calico mask in lieu of the schoolhouse; Tara Murphy, the town clerk at the time, said residents would be able to vote online for one of the three designs and the board said they could also vote at the polls on Election Day.

Barber told The Enterprise that the town was not allowed to conduct such a vote at the polls, and so the election process fell through for choosing a new seal. At the last town board meeting in January, Lefkaditis presented a design for the seal drawn by an acquaintance. After some debate about the designs, the board agreed to adopt the seal featuring the tin horn and mask.

The design is important, said Barber, as the town’s bicentennial is approaching in four years in the year 2o22. The seal will also be featured on town vehicles, letterhead, and other items.