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Evert Bancker
Christina Van Buren was born in Rensselaerswyck in 1644, the daughter of Cornelis Maas and Cathalina Martens Van Buren. Her parents both died on the same day in 1648. She was raised on the farm of Teunis Dirckse and Cornelia Van Vechten of Papskanee Island.
At
nineteen, this orphaned farm girl married twenty-four-year-old
Dirck Wesselse - a successful fur trader and a major
figure in early Albany history. The couple moved
into the Anneke Jans house on lower State Street,
joined the Albany Dutch church, and began to raise
a family.
A
young bride, Christina gave birth to thirteen children
between 1664 and 1689. Eleven of her children survived
to marriage age - making her the matriarch of a large
extended family over her long life.
Dirck
Wesselse acquired extensive acreage across the upriver
region. After 1700, these Ten Broecks retired to
their estate or Bouwerie along the Roeloff Jansen
Kil on Livingston Manor.
On the death of Dirck Wesselse in 1717, his "well-beloved" Christina inherited the bulk of her husband's vast estate with the proviso that she remain a widow and not sell any of the real property to strangers. In 1718, the now seventy-four-year-old widow appointed her sons, Wessel and Johannes, and son-in-law Johannes Cuyler as her attornies to administer the estate in accordance with the wishes of her late husband.
Christina
Ten Broeck then went to lived in their old Albany
house under the care of the family of Johannes Ten
Broeck. She died in November 1729 at age 85 and was
buried in the church cemetery.
Notes: The
life of Christina Van Buren Ten Broeck is CAP biography
number 29. The most extensive narrative account
of her life appears in Emma Runk's Ten Broeck Genealogy
By Stefan Bielinski, Colonial Albany Social History Project [http://www.nysm.nysed.gov/albany]
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