Philip Van Rensselaer (1747 – 1798) [Sec 56 Lot 65]
Commissary for General Philip Schuyler’s Northern Army.
Philip Van Rensselaer was born in May 1747. He was the second son and the ninth child born to Kiliaen Van Rensselaer of Greenbush and his first wife, Schenectady native Ariaantie Schuyler Van Rensselaer. He was the grandson of onetime city father, Hendrick Van Rensselaer.
Initially, his career path was less defined by the mighty Van Rensselaers’ and instead came through the Sanders family when he married Maria, daughter of Robert Sanders in February 1768. (Maria’s father was initially a fur trader, later a merchant and businessman following the marriage to his second wife, 22 year-old Elizabeth Schuyler of Albany.) Together, Philip and Maria had twelve children; all were baptized in the Albany Dutch church where both parents were members.
These Van Rensselaers took up residence in the family house on the east side of Pearl Street from where Philip carried on his late father-in-law's extensive and complex businesses. Like Sanders, he was primarily an importer of West Indian products, cloths, and metal ware - accepting farm and forest products in return. For twenty years, he was a well-known Albany storekeeper. During that time, he shipped cargoes along the river on his own sloop. He also began to develop a farm on Van Rensselaer land running back from the river and south of the city line.
Philip Van Rensselaer was an early supporter of the crusade for American liberties. He was elected as a member for the second ward beginning in May 1776. His father Killian was Colonel of the 4th Regiment, Albany County Militia, and a member of the Albany Committee of Correspondence. Philip also joined the Committee of Correspondence, serving through the committees’ life.
By that time, he had been appointed storekeeper by General Schuyler and placed in charge of ordnance and other important military supplies, proving to be a valuable liaison with the supply side of the war effort. During the Revolution, he kept the "public storehouse" and at one time had charge of ten men. In 1777 he reportedly had issued an order to remove all glass from the windows of Albany, remove the lead frames, and immediately send them to the Patroon’s foundry to be melted down into musket balls for shipment to Saratoga to be used in the historic battle.
With the coming of peace, Van Rensselaer maintained a broad-based profile - maintaining his Albany store and using the Pearl Street home to be elected alderman for the second ward of Albany beginning in 1782. During the 1780s, he also purchased several parcels within the city, leased a tavern on property five miles west of the Hudson, speculated in land north and east of Albany, and continued to develop the farm known as "Cherry Hill."
About 1787, he built a new home on the South Albany property, replacing an earlier structure that previously had been the home of Henry Van Schaack. That Georgian mansion survives today as a historic house museum.
By 1790, his Cherry Hill farm was approaching a thousand acres and featured a tannery and brew house. His household was a prominent feature on the census for Watervliet with ten family members and five slaves. He was elected to be the first supervisor of the new town of Bethlehem in 1794.
Philip Van Rensselaer filed a will early in 1798. It provided for his wife and eleven living children. He died on March 3, two months shy of his fifty-first birthday. Maria Sanders Van Rensselaer and her children resided at Cherry Hill until her death in 1824.