Stephen J. Schuyler
by
Stefan Bielinski


Stephen Schuyler was born in August 1737. He was the eighth child (and the third christened Stephanus/Stevanus) of Albany businessman Johannes and Cornelia Van Cortlandt Schuyler. He was the younger brother of General Philip Schuyler.

A few years after his birth, Johannes Schuyler's family moved out to the family farm at Schuyler Flats. Athough his father died in 1741, that Hudson River estate would be young Stephen's home base for the remainder of his life.

With the death of his mother in 1762, Stephen had accumulated a substantial inheritance including land at the Flats, in Albany city, a sizeable portion of the downriver Van Cortlandt estate, and lands in Saratoga and elsewhere. The next year, the twenty-six-year-old landholder married seventeen-year-old Lena Ten Eyck - daughter of an Albany merchant. A few months later, the first of their ten children was baptized in the Albany Dutch church where both parents were members.

Although Stephen had given his occupation at "brewer" at the time of his marriage, this wealthy legatee is best characterized as a landholder. By the mid-1760s, he was managing his property from the Flats - a larger family complex then under the jurisdiction of his aging aunt, Margarita Schuyler. Living in the countryside, he began selling off his Albany property - finally conveying the State Street homestead to Henry Staats in 1777.

He was known as a military figure. In 1755, he was an eighteen-year-old lieutenant in the Rensselaerswyck company of the Albany County militia. In 1760, he was commissioned a captain of militia and was empowered to offer a bounty for enlistments. He served on the Mohawk frontier.

The outbreak of hostilities in 1775 found Stephen J. Schuyler serving as colonel of the sixth regiment of the Albany County Militia. PAGE IN PROGRESS

In 1790, his Watervliet farm included nine slaves.

Stephen J. Schuyler died in December of 1820 at age seventy-two.

PAGE IN PROGRESS



notes

the people of colonial Albany The life of Stephen J. Schuyler is CAP biography number 1770. He was named for his maternal grandfather, Stephanus Van Cortlandt. He was known as Stephen J. Schuyler to prevent confusion with his more Albany-based cousin, Stephen P. Schuyler. This profile is derived chiefly from family and community-based resources.



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