Van Rensselaers

Dutch Doors in Colonial New York

October 28, 2025 by Jaap Harskamp 1 Comment

The term “Low Countries” is a political and historic concept rather than a geographic one. Prior to modern nation-building, it referred to an area of northern Europe roughly stretching from Pas-de-Calais in France to the area of Schleswig-Holstein in Germany, including French-speaking Wallonia and Dutch-speaking Flanders.

Born in Ghent in 1500 Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain, ruled over the vast Habsburg Empire that included the Low Countries. Flanders was crucial to its economy. [Read more…] about Dutch Doors in Colonial New York

The Anti-Rent War: A Second American Revolution

September 29, 2025 by Editorial Staff Leave a Comment

Between 1839 and 1845 tenant farmers in New York State revolted against paying rents to the patroon system — a system of land ownership implemented by the Dutch in New Netherland that prohibited farmers from owning their land outright.

Disguising themselves in calico gowns and leather masks to demand change. Their struggle, known as the Anti-Rent War, helped shape the future of American democracy and land ownership. [Read more…] about The Anti-Rent War: A Second American Revolution

Angelica Schuyler Church: A Woman at the Center of Revolution

September 25, 2025 by Editorial Staff 2 Comments

Angelica: For Love and Country in a Time of Revolution (W. W. Norton & Company, 2025) by Molly Beer is a women-centric view of revolution through the life of Angelica Schuyler Church (1756-1814), the eldest daughter of General Philip Schuyler and Catherine Van Rensselaer.

The Van Rensselaers of the Manor of Rensselaerswyck were one of the wealthiest and most politically influential families in what was then the still heavily Dutch-influenced Province of New York. [Read more…] about Angelica Schuyler Church: A Woman at the Center of Revolution

Rensselaer County Rises for the Anti-Rent War

February 25, 2025 by Guest Contributor 4 Comments

Few of us think back to the troubled times when the farmers of Rensselaer, Columbia and Albany counties were involved in sometimes violent demonstrations against rents collected by the Manor of Rensselaerswijck and the feudal conditions imposed by the land leases of the semi-feudal patroon.

It can be said to have started in the 1790s when Stephen Van Rensselaer III encouraged the development of his land holdings stretching from the Helderbergs in Western Albany County east to the Rensselaer Plateau in Eastern Rensselaer County, which dated back to the original Dutch grants in 1629 made to Kiliaen van Rensselaer (1586-1643). [Read more…] about Rensselaer County Rises for the Anti-Rent War

Stuffing the Ballot Box: It’s Nothing New in American Politics

November 10, 2024 by Bruce M. Venter 1 Comment

It was a cold wintry night in early January 1793 in Upstate New York when a trio of political operatives reined in their horses at the home of John Van Alen. The two story wood framed farmhouse stood in newly formed Rensselaer County on the east side of Hudson River.

One of the men, John Van Valkenburgh struggled with a box and several canvas bound books. Once inside the house, the weary Dutchman was approached by Van Alen’s wife, lugging a large chest. Anne Van Alen suggested the chest could be used to store the important items Van Valkenburgh was manhandling. [Read more…] about Stuffing the Ballot Box: It’s Nothing New in American Politics

New York Land Grants: Some History Until The American Revolution

December 14, 2023 by Richard Williams 3 Comments

Land policy in colonial times in what is now New York State favored nobility and prominent men with connections to the Crown. This involved several countries (The Netherlands, England, and France), several explorers, several early pioneers, and appointed officials who oversaw the disbursement of land by land grants or patents. [Read more…] about New York Land Grants: Some History Until The American Revolution

Albany’s Abraham Ten Broeck: A Short Biography

May 15, 2023 by Peter Hess 1 Comment

Abraham Ten Broeck was born in 1734 to Dirck Ten Broeck (1686-1751) and Margarita Cuyler (1682–1783). Abraham was one of twelve children born to the couple. Abraham first-generation grandfather had come to America from Holland in 1626 on the same ship with Peter Minuit, the first Director General of the Dutch colony of New Netherland. [Read more…] about Albany’s Abraham Ten Broeck: A Short Biography

New York’s Anti-Rent Wars & The End of the Patroonships

May 9, 2023 by Guest Contributor Leave a Comment

In this episode of A New York Minute In History, Devin Lander and Lauren Roberts delve into the history of the Dutch Patroon system in New York State, and tell the story of the anti-rent movement of the 19th Century, during which tenant farmers banded together to (sometimes, violently) opposed the system under which they were not allowed to own their land outright. [Read more…] about New York’s Anti-Rent Wars & The End of the Patroonships

Wealth and Slavery in New Netherland

February 22, 2023 by Dr. Liz Covart Leave a Comment

In this episode of Ben Franklin’s World, Nicole Maskiell, an associate professor of History at the University of South Carolina and the author of Bound By Bondage: Slavery and the Creation of the Northern Gentry (Cornell Univ. Press, 2022) joins Liz Covart to investigate the practice of slavery in Dutch New Netherland and how the colony’s elite families built their wealth and power on the labor, skills, and bodies of enslaved Africans and African Americans. [Read more…] about Wealth and Slavery in New Netherland

Stephen Van Rensselaer III: The Last Patroon

May 4, 2022 by Peter Hess 6 Comments

Stephen Van Rensselaer III (1764-1839), was orphaned at the age of ten. His father had died when he was five and his mother remarried Reverend Eilardus Westerlo, minister of the Dutch Reformed Church in Albany. She died five years later and Stephen was raised by Abraham Ten Broeck (later Brigadier General) and his wife (Stephen’s aunt) Elizabeth Van Rensselaer.

Stephen attended the John Water’s School in Albany, grammar school in Elizabeth Town, New Jersey and Classical School in Kingston. He then attended college at Princeton, but withdrew to Harvard because of the dangers in Northern New Jersey during the Revolutionary War. In 1776, Stephen’s grandfather Philip Livingston (who had married Ten Broeck’s sister Christina) had signed the Declaration of Independence. [Read more…] about Stephen Van Rensselaer III: The Last Patroon

Albany’s Role In Three Little-Remembered Colonial Wars in the Northeast

January 24, 2022 by Peter Hess 2 Comments

From the time Henry Hudson sailed up the Hudson River in 1609, the area that is now Albany, NY was considered the focal point of trade with Indigenous People.

For over a hundred years, Albany (formerly Fort Orange) was the trading post furthest west and most remote in the colonies. Originally a Dutch colony, most of their neighboring colonies were English. To the North were the French.

Outside these colonies Native People ruled the land. From the early 1600s into the 1760s, French, Dutch, and English empires fought several major wars to gain control of this land. [Read more…] about Albany’s Role In Three Little-Remembered Colonial Wars in the Northeast

Berne’s West Mountain Methodist Episcopal Church: Some History

January 18, 2022 by Harold Miller Leave a Comment

The 1609 voyage by Henry Hudson up the river that bears his name caused the Dutch to claim the adjacent land. In 1621 these lands, the home of the Mohawk and Mohican people, were granted to the Dutch West India Company. The company established the Patroon System to attract settlers. A Patroon was given a large tract of land to sponsor settlers to colonize their land.

In 1629 the new Patroon, Killaen Van Rensselaer, was granted land to create the Manor of Rensselaerswyck in exchange for helping settle the land with Europeans. It incorporated most of the area in Albany, Rensselaer, Greene, and Columbia counties. Fort Orange (later the city of Albany), became the center of the Dutch fur trade. [Read more…] about Berne’s West Mountain Methodist Episcopal Church: Some History

Colonial Conflict, Native People, Anti-Catholicism & The Burning of Schenectady

January 12, 2022 by Peter Hess 5 Comments

In 1652, New Netherland Director General Peter Stuyvesant declared that Fort Orange and everything around it, including the village outside the fort, often called Oranje after the fort, was independent of the ownership of the Van Rensselaer family. He named the small mostly Dutch village “Beverwyck.”

Possibly at the urging of the Van Rensselaers, their earlier manager Arendt Van Curler (Corlear) began planning the construction of a new village. [Read more…] about Colonial Conflict, Native People, Anti-Catholicism & The Burning of Schenectady

Life In Dutch Albany When The English Took Over

December 29, 2021 by Peter Hess 2 Comments

In 1664, Charles II, King of England, bequeathed to his brother, James, Duke of York and Albany, all the land in the Hudson River Valley and Long Island from the west side of Connecticut to the east side of Delaware Bay, in short, all of Dutch New Netherland.

He also bequeathed four men-of-war and 300 soldiers under the command of Colonel Richard Nicolls to take possession of New Netherland from the Dutch. Learning of this, the Dutch in New Netherland appealed to the Dutch West India Company asking for a loan of five or six thousand guilders to prepare fortifications. No loan or assistance appeared. [Read more…] about Life In Dutch Albany When The English Took Over

Palatines In The Helderbergs: The Zeh and Warner Sawmill

December 26, 2021 by Harold Miller 4 Comments

The people we call Palatines were displaced during the turmoil of the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714). More than 13,000 mostly, though exclusively, Protestant Germans from the Middle Rhine region of the Holy Roman Empire first fled to England.

Known then as “Poor Palatines,” opposition to their immigration resulted in nearly 3,000 of them (about a third the size of the population of the city of New York) being sent to the colonial Province of New York in 1710. Many were forced to work off their passages at at work camps on Livingston Manor. In 1712, more than a hundred other families, sought new lives in the Schoharie Valley, then a frontier between the English, French, and Native People. From there, some moved to the Helderberg Escarpment, in what is now Western Albany County. [Read more…] about Palatines In The Helderbergs: The Zeh and Warner Sawmill

The Third Patroon & The English Take-Over of New York

December 6, 2021 by Peter Hess Leave a Comment

The third patroon was Kiliaen Van Rensselaer II (1655-1687) son of Johannes, who was the first patroon to live at Rensselaerswyck, the van Rensselaer Patroonship in most of what is now Albany and Rensselaer Counties, along with parts of Columbia and Greene Counties.

Kiliaen II was only seven years old when his father died however, so his uncles continued to manage the colony. Jeremias was director in 1664 when the English seized New Netherland and renamed Beverwyck “Albany.”

Jeremias’ constant conflict with Stuyvesant and his possible establishment of overland fur trade with the English in Massachusetts, avoiding Peter Stuyvesant’s tax collections in New Amsterdam (New York City), may have facilitated the English take-over. [Read more…] about The Third Patroon & The English Take-Over of New York

Rensselaerswyck, Beverwyck & Schenectady: The Stuyvesant, Van Rensselaer and Van Slichtenhorst Conflict

December 5, 2021 by Peter Hess 4 Comments

In spite of his involvement and investment, Kiliaen Van Rensselaer never visited his new patroonship Rensselaerswyck; it was managed by his agent, and cousin, Arendt van Curler, commissioner general of the colony of New Netherland.

The second patroon, Johannes Van Rensselaer (1625–1662) succeeded his father after his father’s death in 1643 but also never came to America. He governed through an agent, Brant van Slichtenhorst. [Read more…] about Rensselaerswyck, Beverwyck & Schenectady: The Stuyvesant, Van Rensselaer and Van Slichtenhorst Conflict

Early Settlers at Albany: The Founding of Rensselaerswyck

November 23, 2021 by Peter Hess 1 Comment

In 1620, the English Puritans landed at Plymouth, Massachusetts and the following year the Dutch West India Company was chartered and given the exclusive right to conduct trade in New Netherland.

In 1624, eight families joined the Dutch traders at Albany arriving on the ship New Netherland captained by Cornelis May.

These settlers built homes and cultivated farms; they also constructed Fort Oranje (Fort Orange) on the west bank of the Hudson River. [Read more…] about Early Settlers at Albany: The Founding of Rensselaerswyck

Early Settlement Above The Helderberg Escarpment

October 19, 2021 by Harold Miller 1 Comment

From 1630 until the Anti-Rent Movement of the 1840s, most of what is now Albany and Rensselaer Counties, along with parts of Columbia and Greene Counties, was part of the estate of the van Rensselaer family. They leased the land, but did not generally sell it.

Running north-south through Albany County is the Helderberg Escarpment, a vertical limestone cliff hundreds of feet high (Thatcher Park forms a part of this geologic feature) that separates the Hudson Valley lands in the eastern part of the county from the lands to the west, above the cliffs. Because the land above was difficult to reach, and the soils poorer, that area was settled somewhat later by Europeans. [Read more…] about Early Settlement Above The Helderberg Escarpment

Thurlow Weed, Stephen Van Rensselaer III and the Disputed Election of 1824

October 7, 2021 by Peter Hess Leave a Comment

Thurlow Weed was born on November 15, 1797, the son of Joel and Mary (Elis) Weed, in Cairo, Greene County, NY where his grandfather settled after the Revolutionary War. His father was a farmer who was apparently hard working but never prosperous, occasionally spending time in jail for debt.

In 1799, the family moved to Catskill where young Weed received a small amount of schooling. His first job was pumping a blacksmith’s bellows while the blacksmith formed heated iron. He made six cents per day. At nine, he got a job as a cabin boy on a Hudson River sloop. [Read more…] about Thurlow Weed, Stephen Van Rensselaer III and the Disputed Election of 1824

Van Rensselaers

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