Maria van Cortlandt van Rensselaer
[3][4] Her father, the founder of the Van Cortlandt family in America, who emigrated from Holland in 1638,[1][5]: 25 was the fourth wealthiest man in New Amsterdam in 1674 and was a city official under the Dutch and English regimes.
[7] On July 12, 1662,[2][b] the nearly seventeen-year-old Maria married Jeremias van Rensselaer, who was the Patroon and Director of Rensselaerswyck.
[8] Upon her marriage, Maria gave up the life of the city of New Amsterdam to live with her husband in what was then the wilderness, and would later become Albany.
At that time, van Rensselaer was pregnant and had five children, [3] including Kiliaen, Johannes, Anna, Hendrick, and Maria, who married Pieter Schuyler.
[6] Anna first married her cousin, Kiliaen Van Rensselaer fourth Patroon of the manor, who died in 1687.
[10] After her husband's death, van Rensselaer sent Kiliaen to New Amsterdam from 1678 to 1682, and then to Boston, for apprenticeship and training as a silversmith.
[1][11] I had planned to send over Kiliaen, but as the war still rages so severely I have on the advice of friends, apprenticed him here in this country to a silversmith to learn that trade and meanwhile to see what God may grant with respect to the war.She kept the three youngest children—Maria, Johannes, and Jeremias—with her.
She also managed the finances, and negotiated agreements with Dutch family members who took income from the estate and with tenants.
She had to manage attempts by van Rensselaer family members, like Nicholas, to take control of the manor, which she sought to hold for her children.
Jasper Danckaerts, a Labadists missionary, visited the manor in 1680 and described van Rensselaer as "polite, quite well-informed, and of good life and disposition".
[3][10] In the fall of 1662, van Rensselaer contracted smallpox during an epidemic that Jeremias wrote to his mother "raged here so severely that it is indescribable."
[5]: 27 By April 7, 1666, chunks of ice had log-jammed on the Hudson River and caused an extensive flood, which cleared away 40 buildings and barns.
