Catharina Cuyler was born in February 1709. She was the eighth of ten children born to Albany trader Abraham Cuyler and his wife, Catharina Bleecker Cuyler.

She was well past her twenty-sixth birthday when she married rising silversmith Jacob C. Ten Eyck in August 1736. Between 1741 and 1749, their four children were baptized in the Albany Dutch church where both parents were members and occasional baptism sponsors.

Inheriting substantial assets from parents who passed during the early years of their marriage, Catharina and Jacob were able to build on Jacob's work with silver and gold to be counted among the most affluent Albany mainstays during the middle decades of the eighteenth century. That success was recognized with Jacob's appointment as mayor of Albany in 1748.

These Ten Eycks lived in the second and also first ward where their home was among the most valuable pieces of city real estate. By 1790, they were alone in their lower State Street townhouse.

Their marriage lasted fifty-four years. Catharina Cuyler Ten Eyck died in November 1790. Her husband died in 1793. She had lived eighty-one years!

first posted: 3/11/02