Teunis Visscher

by

Teunis Visscher was born in April 1702. He was a middling child in the family Albany residents Bastiaan Harmanse and Dirckje Teunis Visscher. He grew up in the first ward of Albany learning the art of brewing from his father.

In January 1727, Teunis married Albany native Machtelt Lansing at the Albany Dutch church . By 1746, eight children had been christened in the church where he was a member and regular baptism sponsor.

For more than fifty years, he was a Market Street mainstay whose brewery supplied beverages for Albany people and those of the countryside as well. In 1733 and again in 1740, he served as a firemaster. His name was included on rosters of qualified voters. He also owned additional lots south of the city and, with his brother, in the third ward. Assessment rolls for the second half of the eighteenth century (1779 & 1788) valued his varied holdings moderately.

Teunis lost his wife in 1757 but continued on aided by six slaves in his household in 1790. In his mid-seventies at the outbreak of the war, his grandson, Matthew Visscher, was a leading revolutionary operative.

He probably was the Teunis Visscher whose simple death notice appeared in an Albany newspaper in October 1794. Thus this mainliner would have lived for more than ninety-two years.


biography in-progress - 2017


notes

the people of colonial Albany Sources: The life of Teunis Visscher is CAP biography number 4174. This sketch is derived chiefly from family and community-based resources. Hopefully, we are careful not to confuse his life with Teunis Visscher of Schenectady/Lishakill.




first posted 5/5/05; recast and revised 9/13/17