|
Sara
Cuyler Van Brugh
Sara Cuyler was born during the mid-1660s, the eldest daughter of Hendrick and Anna Schepmoes Cuyler of New Amsterdam/Beverwyck. About that time, her parents had relocated to Albany where they established the Cuyler family in the upper Hudson region.
Growing
up in the business environment of both New York and
Albany, her father's numerous contacts among the
colony's commercial elite brought home a number of
potential suitors. In November 1688, Sara married
aspiring trader Pieter Van Brugh at the New York
Dutch Reformed Church. Their only child was baptized
there in 1689. By 1692, Sara had brought her husband
and daughter to the Cuylers' Albany house where Pieter
entered the family business.
Aided
by family connections, Pieter Van Brugh prospered
in the Albany setting. Although without a large family
of her own, Sara helped raise her younger siblings
in the Cuyler house on upper State Street while her
widowed mother tended to their Manhattan business.
By 1697, Pieter and Sara Van Brugh's home was an
Albany landmark.
In
1707, the Van Brugh household grew when Pieter was
appointed guardian of the orphaned daughters of his
sister and John Donaldson - a recently deceased soldier.
After that, Sara had more than enough family with
the twelve children born to her daughter, Catharina
Livingston, living next door. Like her husband, Sara
Van Brugh was an active member of the Albany Dutch
church and a frequent baptism sponsor.
With
the death of her husband in 1740, Sara inherited
his large estate. However, Sara Cuyler Van Brugh
died less than two years later. In May 1742, she
was buried with her husband beneath the Albany church.
With no sons, the Van Brugh family name passed from
Albany rolls.
~ ~ ~
Notes: The
life of Sara Cuyler Van Brugh is CAP biography
number 609. The standard work on the Cuyler family
is Maud Churchill Nicoll's The Earliest Cuylers in
Holland and America (New York, 1912). However, it
makes scarce reference to Sara Cuyler Van Brugh.
Hendrick
Cuyler died in 1690 and owned a substantial house
on Manhattan.
By Stefan Bielinski, Colonial Albany Social History Project [http://www.nysm.nysed.gov/albany]
|
