Elizabeth Van Rensselaer Schuyler

Elizabeth Van Rensselaer was born at the Manor House in August 1768. She was the last child born to the marriage of Stephen Van Rensselaer II and Catherine Livingston. Her father died in 1769 when she was little more than a year old. In 1775, her mother married the domine of the Albany Dutch church but continued to live at the Manor House until Elizabeth's older brother came of age in 1784.

In 1769, Elizabeth had been bequeathed substantial property (on both sides of the river above Albany) and money in the will of her father. Her father had been lord of the Van Rensselaer patroonship and her older brother succeeded to that title in 1784.

In 1787, Elizabeth married John Bradstreet Schuyler - son of General Philip Schuyler. The marriage produced only two sons before Schuyler's untimely death at age thirty in 1795.

However, these Schuylers lived well on the re-built Schuyler estate in what became Schuylerville. In 1790, they were attended by fourteen slaves.

Following Bradstreet's death, she returned to Albany and to the Pearl Street home of her widowed mother where the personal property of "the widow of John B. Schuyler" was valued substantially on the assessment roll for 1799.

In November, 1799, she married Albany native John Bleecker - son of an Albany leader and a thirty-six-year-old widower with children. They had one daughter and two sons and lived in the Bleecker house at 56 North Pearl Street until his death in December 1733.

Elizabeth Van Rensselaer Schuyler died in March 1841.

Sources: The life of Elizabeth Van Rensselaer Schuyler is CAP biography number 5075. This sketch is derived chiefly from family and community-based resources.