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Peter
W. Yates
 Peter Waldron Yates was born in August 1747. He was a middle child in the large family of Albany blacksmith John G. and Rebecca Waldron Yates. He grew up at his father's third ward smithy and on their farm across the river in Rensselaerswyck.
Peter
W. Yates married twice. The two marriages produced
eleven children. In 1767, he was a month shy of his
twentieth birthday when he wed Ann Margarita Helmes
of New York City. She died in 1794. In 1798, he took
for his second wife Mary Terbush. Before the war,
he was a member of St. Peter's Anglican church. Afterwards,
he was a pewholder at the Albany Dutch church where
most of his children were baptized.
This
son of a middling tradesman was able to climb out
the working class, acquire a legal education, and,
by 1768, had become an attorney. For more than three
decades, his practice flourished even though interrupted
by the war with Britain. Afterward, he trained a
number of students including the poet and artist,
St. John Honeywood, who took their places in the
post-war legal profession.
In
1772, he was elected alderman for the first ward
- giving the upstart Yates family three of the six
seats on the Albany city council. Re-elected in 1773,
1774, and 1775, he attended the last meeting of the
council held under the royal government on March
25, 1776. Although still not thirty-years-old, Peter
W. Yates found himself in the front ranks of Albany
leadership!
In
1775, he was elected to the Albany Committee of Correspondence
as a member for the first ward. However, he resigned
two months later after publishing a derisive essay
expressing doubts over the course resistance was
taking. Re-elected, he declined to serve! Anglican
church member and connected to important people within
the provincial establishment, this native son was
watched closely throughout the war. However, he later
was granted a land bounty right for service in conjunction
with the First Regiment of the Albany County Militia.
With
the coming of peace, Peter W. Yates entered the statewide
political arena. In 1784, he was elected to represent Albany in the New York State Assembly. In 1786, he was a delegate to the Continental Congress. He was a prominent Albany Anti-Federalist. A lifelong member, from its earliest days, he was an officer in the Albany Masonic Lodge.
Attorney
Yates lived in Albany's first ward. At the start
of the war, he had broken ground on a new home south
of the core city on a large piece of land separated
from Schuyler Mansion by the Beaverkill. In 1782,
the dwelling was not quite finished but a few years
later, a visitor painted Peter Yates's mansion. It
figured prominently on the map drawn by Simeon De
Witt in 1790. In 1799, his South End property was
valued at $20,790 - second only to Philip Schuyler's
Albany estate. He owned a number of other Albany
real estate parcels as well. He also was able to
acquire land in other parts of New York. Following
more than four decades as an Albany mainstay, after
1810, he moved west. He became a judge serving western
New York. As a result, he changed residences. Peter
W. Yates died at Caughnawaga (Montgomery County)
in March 1826 at the age of seventy-nine.
notes
Sources: The life of Peter W. Yates is CAP biography number 4430. This profile
is derived chiefly from family and community-based
resources.
By Stefan Bielinski, Colonial Albany Social History Project [http://www.nysm.nysed.gov/albany]
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