ARCE: Albany Rural Cemetery Explorer

John Hillhouse (1817 – 1882) [Section 4 Lot 1]

First granite marker, 42 acres of family property purchased for South Ridge, family property in Syracuse became the site for the New York State Fair

John Hillhouse was born on December 17, 1817, in West Troy to Thomas Griswold Hillhouse and Anna Van Schaick Ten Broeck. His father purchased over 294 acres from General Philip Schuyler for the amount of $12,000, which may have been part of the Schuyler Flatts. He attended school located on property that is now Albany Rural Cemetery, near Consecration Lake. John graduated from U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1842, a contemporary to Ulysses Grant, who graduated the following year. During the Civil War, he served as a captain in the Union Army.

In 1847 he married Catherine Mynderse Van Vranken of Schenectady and had three children. The Hillhouse family resided in West Troy until the 1850s when they moved to Syracuse. The U.S. Census reports his occupation as a “Gentleman” or person of independent means. John and other family members owned large homes in Syracuse which became the site of the New York State Fair.

John moved to New Brunswick, NJ where he lived out the remainder of his life, dying on March 29, 1882. He is buried in the Hillhouse family plot next to his wife who preceded him two years earlier. His father’s remains were reinterred into the family plot after the opening of the cemetery in 1844. The Hillhouse marker is reportedly the first granite one erected in the cemetery.

John was associated with Albany Rural Cemetery early on, serving as one of the first surveyors and the second superintendent. In 1846, 42 acres of the family’s land was purchased by Governor William Marcy and Thomas Olcott. Before laying out the cemetery, John gave detailed information on what existed on the land before the sale:

“The brook (called by the old Dutch inhabitants of the valley ‘Moordenaer’s kill,’ from a tradition of a murder committed near the bridge that crossed its mouth at the time the road between Albany and Troy ran along the river bank), originally hugged the base of the hills bounding the dell on its northerly side. The school-house stood directly on its bank on the south side, at the base of the most prominent of these hills, whose top was crowned with a lofty pine. The mill was further up the stream, on the same side with the school-house, just at the point where it emerged from the ravine and entered the open dell. A bridge now occupies its site. It was called the “old oil mill,” and was originally built by my father for the purpose of preparing oil-cake for the fattening of cattle. The house was for the miller’s use. There were two dams on the creek above for the supply of water for the mill, one at the bend just beyond the high bridge, the other on the site of the present dam at the outlet of the lake above. From the former the water was conveyed in an open plank race carried along the slope of the hill, and discharged through a long, high trough upon the over-shot wheel. The mill and dwelling were erected about 1816. How long they served their original purpose I am not able to say exactly, but probably some five or six years….

“The brook (called by the old Dutch inhabitants of the valley ‘Moordenaer’s kill,’ from a tradition of a murder committed near the bridge that crossed its mouth at the time the road between Albany and Troy ran along the river bank), originally hugged the base of the hills bounding the dell on its northerly side. The school-house stood directly on its bank on the south side, at the base of the most prominent of these hills, whose top was crowned with a lofty pine. The mill was further up the stream, on the same side with the school-house, just at the point where it emerged from the ravine and entered the open dell. A bridge now occupies its site. It was called the “old oil mill,” and was originally built by my father for the purpose of preparing oil-cake for the fattening of cattle. The house was for the miller’s use. There were two dams on the creek above for the supply of water for the mill, one at the bend just beyond the high bridge, the other on the site of the present dam at the outlet of the lake above. From the former the water was conveyed in an open plank race carried along the slope of the hill, and discharged through a long, high trough upon the over-shot wheel. The mill and dwelling were erected about 1816. How long they served their original purpose I am not able to say exactly, but probably some five or six years….

About 1829, the mill, having been leased to some parties for the manufacture of printers’ ink, the school, with its fixtures and dunce-block, was removed to the new school building, which my father built and which is still standing on the south side of the Cemetery Avenue. The manufacture of ink not proving a success, the work was abandoned and the school-house became thereafter the home of one of the farm laborers, while the mill was given up to the bats and flying squirrels, and suffered to go to decay.”