Hendrick Lansing was born in 1737, the only son born to Albany gunsmith Robert Lansing and his first wife, Albany native Margarita Roseboom.

He followed his father in the tinkerers trade and also helped him care for the city fire engine. By the 1770s, he was the active part of a business where most local people still called on his well-known but aging father.

In 1762, Henry Lansing married Albany-born Maria Marselis in the Albany Dutch church where both parents became members and where Henry later became a church officer. Over the next decade, at least five children were born to this Albany couple. For the first twenty years of the marriage, Henry's family continued to live with his father in his Court Street home. With Robert Lansing's death in 1795, the Henry Lansing family was a fixture at what became 444 South Market Street for the next twenty-five years.

In 1764, he had been appointed firemaster for the first ward - making a connection to city government that lasted until his death. During the 1770s, he helped his father repair weapons, lent financial support to the crusade for American liberties, cast musket balls, and was elected a member of the Albany Committee of Correspondence in January 1778. Later, he was awarded a special land bounty right.

In 1788, he joined his aged father and a number of local men in signing a statement issued by the Albany Antifederal Committee.

By the 1790s, Henry had made the transition from tradesman to merchant and was elected to the Albany Common Council. He also held municipal appointments as "overseer of the poor" and, as late as 1819, as "sealer of weights and measures" living at 444 South Market Street.

At age eighty-one, Henry R. Lansing died in August 1819 and was buried in the Dutch Church cemetery.

first posted: 7/25/00