Pieter Van Brugh

Pieter Van Brugh was the Mayor of Albany, New York from 1699 to 1700 and from 1721 to 1723. He was also one of the wealthiest businessmen in Albany.

Pieter’s father, Johannes Pieterse, was Manhattan-based overseas trader who prospered in New Netherland by exporting furs and other forest products consigned from upriver. Pieter married Sara Cuyler in 1688 and shortly thereafter joined his wife’s family in Albany. There he continued the family practice of collecting farm and forest products for shipment to New York. Pieter prospered in business, inherited land in the Delaware valley from his father and acquired more land on his own in the city and in the countryside. Combination of his business acumen and family inheritance placed him among the wealthiest of Albany businessmen during the first decades of the eighteenth-century. He was also active in public affairs and his career as a public servant culminated by two appointments as Mayor of Albany, from 1699 to 1700 and from 1721 to 1723.