Hendrick van Rensselaer

Hendrick van Rensselaer was director of the Eastern patent of the Rensselaerswyck manor. The estate was composed of land in Columbia County, New York, and land opposite Albany, New York, on the Hudson River, named Greenbush (later Rensselaer, New York)

He was born in Greenbush on October 23, 1667, ads the fourth child of Jeremias van Rensselaer. He received as his portion of his grandfather Kiliaen's estate what was variously known as the Eastern Manor or Greenbush. It covered about 62,000 acres of land in Columbia County, and encompassed lands south of Kinderhook, north of Livingston Manor and west to the Hudson River and was the “Lower Manor” to the “Upper Manor” of Rensselaerwyck. It was originally a part of Albany County, now Columbia County, New York. In addition he received 1,500 acres out of the manor proper, opposite the city of Albany. Hendrick built a substantial brick house on the latter estate named Fort Crailo.

He was a merchant and ship owner who served the public as an alderman in the Albany assembly and on the Commission of Indian Affairs. In 1698 he bought from the Schaghticoke tribe a tract of six square miles on Hoosac River, for which he procured a patent. This purchase interfered greatly with the city of Albany. With van Rensselaer declining to sell his patent to the council, the controversy became a state affair. In 1707, he sold that patent to the city.

Hendrick Van Rensselaer died at his Greenbush home on July 4, 1740 at age seventy-four. He was buried from the Albany Dutch church.