Elsie Van Rensselaer Lansing

by

Elsie Van Rensselaer was born in February 1758. She was the daughter of Kiliaen and Ariaantie Schuyler Van Rensselaer. She was a younger child in a large family and was raised on the family farm in the part of Rensselaerswyck called Greenbush. However, her mother would die giving birth in 1763 and, six years later, her father remarried.

Five years later, Elsie was not yet fifteen when, in September 1774, she married Abraham A. Lansing - an Albany businessman who was almost eight years older than his bride. Six months later, the first of her ten children was christened at the Albany Dutch church. Her last child was baptized in November 1794.

These Lansings would live on Market Street in a house attended by many slaves. They also also spent some time at her brother's farm on Cherry Hill.

Elsie Van Rensselaer Lansing died in March 1796 at the age of thirty-nine and was buried at Cherry Hill. Her husband soon remarried and lived until 1822.

biography in-progress


notes

the people of colonial Albany Sources: The life of Elsie Van Rensselaer Lansing is CAP biography number 5078. This sketch is derived chiefly from family and community-based resources.




first posted 2005; recast and revised 3/19/17