Decades after slavery was abolished in New York, the Elmendorfs, Historic Cherry Hill’s 3rd-generation Van Rensselaer descendants in Albany, used orphaned African American children as servants.
Jimmy (1843-1885), Jane (1845-?), Richard (unknown), and Minnie (1852-1903) Knapp became wards and servants of several Van Rensselaer households after the death of their mother, Jane Jackson Knapp, in 1854.
Conjectured to have descended from prior generations enslaved at Cherry Hill — two of the children are named after Van Rensselaers — the children had quasi-family status, but were servants.
[Read more…] about Albany’s Historic Cherry Hill To Highlight Slaves, Servants
Women played a crucial role in the American Revolution, but information about them can be hard to come by. HVA Press has recently discovered and republished Catherine Schuyler: A Woman of the Revolution by Mary Gay Humphreys, which was first published in 1897. 
In the late summer of 1664, four English frigates arrived off shore New Amsterdam. Rather than resisting, the Director-General of New Netherland, Peter Stuyvesant, surrendered the city and colony to the English.
Douglas Hamilton, a fifth great-grandson of 
The Van Rensselaer library collection at 
When the 
The Albany County Historical Association recently completed a project repairing and restoring plaster and lath in the Ten Broeck Mansion, the historic home built in 1798 for Brigadier General Abraham Ten Broeck and his wife, Elizabeth Van Rensselaer Ten Broeck.
The Albany County Historical Association (ACHA) has recently begun the repair and restoration of plaster and lath in the Ten Broeck Mansion, the historic home of Brigadier General Abraham Ten Broeck and his wife, Elizabeth Van Rensselaer, constructed in 1798.
Historic Cherry Hill and the Children’s Museum of Science & Technology are set to present “Paws, Claws & Slippery Tails: The Pets of Cherry Hill” on September 29th from Noon to 4 pm.
In the 17th and 18th century, as New Amsterdam grew from a trading post into a village, a village into a town, and then a town into the port city of New York, its wealthiest residents were financially invested in the trans-Atlantic slave trade. And because they were among the most prominent of its early citizens, many of the city’s oldest streets are named after slaveholders and slave traders. An online database,