Maria van Cortlandt

Maria van Cortlandt van Rensselaer, also known as Maria van Rensselaer (July 20, 1645 – January 29, 1689) was the administrator and treasurer of the Manor of Rensselaerswyck, now Albany, New York.

Early life Maria van Cortlandt was born on July 20, 1645, in New Amsterdam to Anna (Annetje) (née Loockemans) van Cortlandt and Olaf Stevens (Olaff Stevensz) van Cortlandt, a successful trader for West India Company. He was also a successful landholder. Her father, the founder of the Van Cortlandt family in America, who emigrated from Holland in 1638, was the fourth wealthiest man in New Amsterdam in 1674 and was a city official under the Dutch and English regimes. and Jacobus Van Cortlandt, both of whom served as Mayor of New York City.

Marriage and children

On July 12, 1662, the nearly seventeen-year-old Maria married Jeremias van Rensselaer, who was the Patroon and Director of Rensselaerswyck. Jeremias was the first of the van Rensselaers to settle in America.

After her husband's death, van Rensselaer sent Kiliaen to New Amsterdam from 1678 to 1682, and then to Boston, for apprenticeship and training as a silversmith. In Boston, now a journeyman, he studied under Jeremiah Dummer from 1682 to 1683, with expenses paid by his uncles. Under Dummer's tutelage, he was able to make large silver pieces.

I had planned to send over Kiliaen, but as the war still rages so severely I have on the advice of friends, apprenticed him here in this country to a silversmith to learn that trade and meanwhile to see what God may grant with respect to the war. — Maria van Rensselaer, June 1678

Business Bearing in mind his wife's work experience, Jeremias established a brewery by mid-1665 on the east side of the Hudson River; their house was on the west side of the river. Van Rensselaer worked in that business. and treasurer of the Manor of Rensselaerswyck. It had a gristmill and sawmill, which she oversaw as administrator of the manor. She also managed the finances, and negotiated agreements with Dutch family members who took income from the estate and with tenants. She had to manage attempts by van Rensselaer family members, like Nicholas, to take control of the manor, which she sought to hold for her children. Van Rensselaer became the acting director upon the death of Nicholas, with her brother, who lived in New Amsterdam, as the official director. Jasper Danckaerts, a Labadists missionary, visited the manor in 1680 and described van Rensselaer as "polite, quite well-informed, and of good life and disposition". She was a complicated woman who could be self-sacrificing and a woman of many positive traits and at other times could be "duplicitous and scheming, ambitious, avaricious, and mean-spirited". In 1687, her son Kiliaen became the fifth Patroon of the manor, upon the death of his cousin (and brother-in-law) Kiliaen.

Personal life In the fall of 1662, van Rensselaer contracted smallpox during an epidemic that Jeremias wrote to his mother "raged here so severely that it is indescribable." Maria recovered but had evidence of having had smallpox for some time. She was then pregnant with their first child, Kiliaen, who was born on August 24, 1663. After having given birth, she had pain in her right leg that emanated from her hip. It made it difficult for her to stand on her legs and walk, particularly during stormy and cold weather. She became lame due to a combination of osteomyelitis of the femur and septic arthritis. For the rest of her life she used crutches to get around, sometimes within limited confines of the house. Van Rensselaer's twelve-year-old sister, Catherine (also Catrina), came to live with the van Rensselaers by January 1665.

House at the Watervliet farm, built by Jeremias van Rensselaer following the April 7, 1666, flood. By April 7, 1666, chunks of ice had log-jammed on the Hudson River and caused an extensive flood, which cleared away 40 buildings and barns. Included in that total were the van Rensselaer's house, brewery, and a barn. They could only carry away a trunk of their best clothes and linens and then retrieve a few of their household items that had washed away. Until they could rebuild their house, the family lived in a room at a friend's house. During that time, around the first of November, van Rensselaer gave birth to the couple's third child, Hendrick. Jeremias had a new house on their farm called Watervliet built within a mile north of Albany. It was completed in the winter and the new brewery was completed in the summer of 1667. In January 1669/1670, she had a stillborn baby. In December 1670, she had their fifth child, the fourth surviving baby, Johannes.

She lived in Albany and was a member of the Albany Dutch church. Van Rensselaer died at age 43 on January 29, 1689, at Rensselaerswyck.