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Catharina
Cuyler Ten Eyck
Catharina Cuyler was born in February 1709. She was the eighth of ten children born to Albany trader Abraham Cuyler and his wife, Catharina Bleecker Cuyler.
She
was well past her twenty-sixth birthday when she
married rising silversmith Jacob C. Ten Eyck in August
1736. Between 1741 and 1749, their four children
were baptized in the Albany Dutch church where both
parents were members and occasional baptism sponsors.
Inheriting
substantial assets from parents who passed during
the early years of their marriage, Catharina and
Jacob were able to build on Jacob's work with silver
and gold to be counted among the most affluent Albany
mainstays during the middle decades of the eighteenth
century. That success was recognized with Jacob's
appointment as mayor of Albany in 1748.
These
Ten Eycks lived in the second and also first ward
where their home was among the most valuable pieces
of city real estate. By 1790, they were alone in
their lower State Street townhouse.
Their
marriage lasted fifty-four years. Catharina Cuyler
Ten Eyck died in November 1790. Her husband died
in 1793. She had lived eighty-one years!
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Notes: The
life of Catharina Cuyler Ten Eyck is CAP biography
number 371. This profile is derived chiefly from
family and community-based resources.
By Stefan Bielinski, Colonial Albany Social History Project [http://www.nysm.nysed.gov/albany]
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