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Nicholas
Van Rensselaer
Nicholas Van Rensselaer was born in Amsterdam, Holland in 1636. He was the fifth son of West India Company director and Rensselaerswyck founder Killiaen Van Rensselaer. His mother was Van Rensselaer's his second wife, Anna Van Wely.
His
powerful father died before the boy reached his eighth
birthday. As the spirituality in his personality
emerged, he began to experience practical difficulties.
Initially apprenticed to learn business, Nicholas
proved uninterested and reportedly "did not care to work." Returning to his widowed mother, he became devoutly religious and used his inheritance to write and publish several small books which his cousins dismissed as "naught but foolishness."
At
age twenty-two, Nicholas went to Brussels and showed
his writings to the exiled English monarch, Charles
Stuart, who was taken by Van Rensselaer and his vision
of the Stuarts' future. Later, Nicholas travelled
to England for an audience with the now King Charles
II. The king remembered "the young mystic" and had him ordained in the Church of England. Continuing his personal meditations, later he was appointed chaplain to the Dutch ambassador to England.
Misunderstood
and mistreated by his family - who thought him insane
or at least disturbed, Rensselaer charged that his
brothers and uncle had imprisoned and tried to poison
him. Estranged from his family in the Netherlands,
Nicholas called on his connections with the English
Stuarts to be permitted to accompany Edmund Andros
when he took over as governor of New York in 1675.
Shortly
after arriving, Andros appointed him co-minister
at Albany and asked the Albany community to accept
this Van Rensselaer as a good-faith gesture toward
the Duke of York. However, Van Rensselaer's reputation
had preceded him. He was rejected by the Albany congregation
and shunned by Gideon Schaets, dominie of the Albany
Dutch church. Almost immediately, politicking and
litigation followed. But Van Rensselaer never was
able to take the pulpit in Albany.
In
the meantime, Nicholas Van Rensselaer was setting
down roots in the upper Hudson Valley. In 1675, at
age thirty-nine, he married nineteen-year-old Alida
Schuyler. The couple resided in a house he recently
purchased on the Elm Tree Corner but had no children.
Now related by marriage to Albany's foremost trading
family, Nicholas sought to assert himself in another
area.
Following
the death of his brother Jeremias in 1674, Nicholas
expected to take over management of the Van Rensselaer
estate in New York. Not surprisingly, Governor Andros
granted his petition to name him interim administrator
of Rensselaerswyck. Over the objections of the Albany
Van Rensselaers, the family in Holland appointed
Nicholas director of the patroonship in 1676. His
tenure was anything but peaceful as his brother's
widow, Maria, maintained control of patroonship finances
- claiming that he was sick and incompetent.
In
America only a few years, Nicholas Van Rensselaer
died on November 12, 1678. A year later, his widow
married Robert Livingston, Van Rensselaer's former bookkeeper. In 1680, Alida Livingston was granted permission to administer his estate which included the Albany house and extensive personal property.
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Notes: The
life of Nicholas Van Rensselaer is CAP biography
number 5056. This profile is derived chiefly from
family-based resources. Substantial quality material
on the family is beginning to appear on the Internet.
He is the subject of an article by New
York History 35:2 (1954), 166-76. Although substantial, that
work is marred by many unfortunate errors. Also interesting
are the references to him in Arnold J. F. Van Laer's
translated edition entitled: Correspondence
of Maria Van Rensselaer, 1669-1689 (Albany, 1933).
Anna
Van Wely (c. 1601-1670): She bore eight Van Rensselaer
children before her husband died in 1643. Her wedding
ring was brought to America by youngest son, Nicholas.
It was used eight generations later when Kiliaen
Van Rensselaer married Dorothy Manson on November
23, 1905. The ring is now in the New York Metropolitan
Museum of Art.
Van
Rensselaer's frustrations and this controversy is
closely chronicled in Leder, "Unorthodox Domine" (cited above).
By Stefan Bielinski, Colonial Albany Social History Project [http://www.nysm.nysed.gov/albany]
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