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Henry
Holland, Jr.
Henry Holland, Jr. was born in Albany in 1704. He was the second son of garrison officer and sheriff, Henry Holland and Irish-born Jenny Seeley.
By
the time he was five, he was accompanying his soldier
father. In 1709, he was identified on a duty roster
as a "boy" and unfit for the Canadian expedition." He continued to serve in his father's company until 1719, when he was apprenticed for seven years to learn business in New York under merchant Thomas Kearney.
At
the end of that term, he returned to Albany to tend
to some of the administrative aspects of his father's
operations. In 1727, he was elected assistant alderman
for the first ward. A year later, he married Alida
Beekman - daughter of a successful Albany merchant.
The marriage produced but one daughter. Settling
in Albany, he purchased a lot on the Plain in 1730.
Later, he would erect a substantial house on a riverside
lot along Market Street.
Over
the next two decades, Henry Holland, Jr. lived in
Albany but acted to solidify his image as a loyal
adherent among provincial authorities in New York.
He was rewarded with royal appointments as justice
of the peace, master of the chancery court, and sheriff
of Albany County in 1739. He held that post through
some local controversy until 1746. By that time,
Albany leaders openly resented the appointment of
royal placemen to the sheriff's office. Native son
but still British-identified, Henry Holland Jr. was
a compromise appointee. He also was able to participate
in frontier land patents - an initiative that left
him with valuable acreage in the Mohawk country
and to the north of Albany. During that period, he
began to conduit cargoes out to frontier developer
William Johnson.
During
the hostilities with the French in 1744-48, Holland
served as a commissary - procuring provisions and
supplies on behalf of the British war effort. Still
the sheriff, he came under fire in Albany for his
tactics in securing materials from Albany storehouses.
He was replaced as sheriff in September 1746.
By
the 1750s, Henry Holland, Jr. had relocated to New
York City to pursue business opportunities. During
the Great War for Empire, he was an owner of at least
two privateers. He also acquired an estate on Staten
Island and represented Richmond County in the provincial
Assembly from 1761 to 1769.
In
March 1777, he filed a will calling himself a New York merchant and in good health. No wife nor children were named. His executors were instructed to sell his real estate for the education of his grandchildren. His slave Dinnah, was to be freed within a year of his death. And the remainder of his estate was to be divided among his three living grandchildren. The will cleared probate in May 1782.
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Notes: The life of Henry Holland, Jr. is CAP biography number 8490.
By Stefan Bielinski, Colonial Albany Social History Project [http://www.nysm.nysed.gov/albany]
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