Young Stephen's older sister, Elizabeth van Rensselaer, was married to Abraham Ten Broeck.

[3] As sole-surviving son, he inherited the Manor of Rensselaerwyck when he was 5 years old; upon his death, in 1769, the Manor was administered by his brother-in-law Abraham Ten Broeck (who also served as Mayor of Albany from 1779 to 1783 and, again, from 1796 to 1798) until his son, [Stephen van Rensselaer III], came of age, who served as the tenth Patroon of Rensselaerwyck from 1785 to 1839.

[4] At the age of twenty, Stephen II was commissioned a captain in the Albany County Militia.

[5] Shortly after his 1764 marriage, he built the new Manor House in 1765,[6] "from where he sought to rehabilitate the manor that had lacked active leadership since the death of his father almost two decades earlier.

"[5] In January 1764, he married Catherine Livingston (1745–1810), daughter of Philip Livingston, signer of the Declaration of Independence, and his wife Christina Ten Broeck (his older brother-in-law's sister), and had the following children:[7] Stephen Van Rensselaer II died in October 1769 at the age of twenty-seven.