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Catharina
Van Schaick Gansevoort
 Catharina Van Schaick was born in August 1752. She was the last daughter born to Albany residents Wessel and Maria Gerritse Van Schaick. She grew up in a comfortable riverfront home and was educated to become a fitting mate for a son of Albany's commercial elite.
After
a courtship that included the exchange of letters
during the darkest days of the Revolutionary War,
Caty was almost twenty-six when she married American
army officer Peter Gansevoort at the Albany Dutch
church in January 1778. By 1790, their six children
had been baptized there.
The
early years of their marriage including the hardships
of wartime separations have been described by Alice
Kenney in The Gansevoorts of Albany.
After
the war, Peter Gansevoort established himself as
a leading businessman from his headquarters at the
family seat on Market Street. These Gansevoorts were
well-known residents of 58 Market Street across from
the Market House for the next thirty years.
Following
a lengthy illness, Catharina lost her husband during
the summer of 1812. The Widow Catharine Gansevoort
lived on in their landmark home until December 1830
when she died at age seventy-nine. Her daughter,
Maria, was the mother of American literary icon Herman
Melville.
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Sources:
The life of Catharina Van Schaick Gansevoort is CAP
biography number 3942. This profile is derived chiefly
from family and community-based resources.
Black-and-whte
photograph of a portrait by Ezra Ames, and dated
1814. In the collection of the Albany Institute of
History and Art.
By Stefan Bielinski, Colonial Albany Social History Project [http://www.nysm.nysed.gov/albany]
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