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Stephen
Van Rensselaer II
Stephen Van Rensselaer II was baptized in the Albany Dutch church in June 1742. He was the sixth and last child of Patroon Stephen Van Rensselaer and his wife, Elizabeth Groesbeck. With the death of his father in 1747, this sole surviving son became lord of the manor of Rensselaerswyck at the age of five!
In
January 1764, he married Albany native Catharina
Livingston in New York City. That November, their
first son, Stephen, was born in New York City. The
marriage also produced another son and a daughter
- who were born on the manor.
While
just twenty, Stephen II was commissioned a captain
in the Albany County Militia. He remained an officer
of the Albany troop of horse for the remainder of
his life. In 1768, he was commissioned Colonel of
the Rensselaerswyck regiment!
In 1763, the Albany government had granted him the "freedom of the city." However, his Rensselaerswyck responsibilities precluded an active role in Albany affairs. Following his marriage, he took up residence at the family farm while also keeping the city property inherited from his father. In 1765, he built a new Manor House from where he sought to rehabilitate the manor that had lacked active leadership since the death of his father almost two decades earlier.
Those
plans were dashed when he died on October 19, 1769.
Stephen Van Rensselaer II lived just twenty-seven
years! His will, filed only two months earlier, claimed
that he was in "a reasonable state of health." As one of the richest men in the region, the will detailed his extensive estate to be shared by his widow and three living children.
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Notes: The
life of Stephen Van Rensselaer II is CAP biography
number 5114. This profile is derived chiefly from
family and community-based resources.
Portrait
of Stephen II by Thomas Mc Ilworth, about 1767. Poor
quality copy of a painting in the collection of the
Albany Institute of History and Art.
Manor
Lord: Stephen II sought to structure leaseholds and
rein-in the loose land policies of his family in
the past. His abbreviated management of Rensselaerswyck
is considered in Sung Bok Kim, Landlord
and Tenant in Colonial New York" Manorial Society, 1664-1775 (Chapel Hill, NC,
1978), pp. 176, 194-95, 211-13, 225, 364. His lease
of a large tract of land near the Massachusetts border
to a group of New Englanders (eventually became Stephentown)
in 1765 was an attempt to co-opt potentially troublesome
newcomers.
By Stefan Bielinski, Colonial Albany Social History Project [http://www.nysm.nysed.gov/albany]
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