Geertje Coeymans Ten Eyck
by
Stefan Bielinski


Geertje Coeymans was born in April 1654. She was the daughter of landholder Barent Pieterse Coeymans.

About 1676, she married Manhattan shoemaker Jacob C. Ten Eyck who was in the process of relocating to Albany. Over the next two decades their children were baptized at the Albany Dutch church where both parents were members and regular baptism sponsors.

These Ten Eycks were Albany residents who lived on the hill in what became the second ward.

Geertje lost her husband during the 1690s. She was an Albany mainstay who continued to live in their Pearl Street home surrounded by her grown children and their families. She filed her will in September 1716. It devised her substantial estate to her four living children and to the child of another deceased son.

She lived two decades longer and died on February 27, 1736. Geertje Coeymans Ten Eyck was buried in the Dutch church cemetery a few days later. Her children and their offspring established the Ten Eyck family in early Albany society.

biography in-progress


notes

the people of colonial Albany Sources: The life of Geertje Coeymans Ten Eyck is CAP biography number 241. This sketch is derived chiefly from family and community-based resources.




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first posted: 8/30/04