Wilhelmus Vandenbergh

Wilhelmus Vandenbergh was born in January 1713. He was the third son born to the marriage of Wynant W. and Volkie Van Hoesen Vandenbergh. He grew up in the home of a North End brickmaker.

In May 1749, he was among the five children named in the will of his father. His mother had died two years before.

In November 1761, Wilhelmus would have been approaching fifty when he married the Widow Anna Vanderwerken (possibly born Vosburgh) at the Albany Dutch church. The marriage is said to have delivered widow Anna two additional children.

Mostly known as "Wilhelmus" (and sometimes confused with an older uncle), this mainline individual appears to have lived in the third ward either with or near his brothers and sisters. Perhaps those properties had been described in the will of their father several decades earlier.

During the 1760s and afterwards, he was paid on a number of occasions by the city government. In 1769, he delivered gravel with his horse and cart. In 1770, he transported two Indians to Half Moon. In 1781, he was called an "Albany city laborer" when he posted a bond for a Rensselaerswyck farmer.

In 1776, he was paid by the Albany committee for firewood and barracks repair.

In 1785, the State government paid his account for supplying "pasturage" for thirteen horses for twenty-three days.

In 1790, this individual would have been in his late sixties and appears to have been considered the head of a Vandenbergh family group - although a "Wilhelmus Vandenburgh" also was the head of a household in nearby Watervliet. In 1792, his houselot on the west side of Montgomery Street between Columbia and Steuben was shown on a city map.

The Albany Wilhelmus Vandenbergh probably died sometime thereafter. By the end of the century, the Vandenbergh property in the third ward was off of the city rolls.

Sources: The life of this Wilhelmus Vandenbergh is CAP biography number 5864. This sketch is derived chiefly from family and community-based resources. Inconsistently referenced and widely used, the name prompts caution in the assignment of qualitative information.