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A DISCOURSE f



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THE LIFE, SERVICES AND CHARACTER

OF

STEPHEN VAN RENSSELAER;

DELIVERED BEFORE

THE ALBANY INSTITUTE,
APRIL. 15, 1839.



AN HISTORICAL SKETCH

OF THE COLONY AND MANOR



Benssclaeriuscfe



AN APPENDIX.



By DANIEL D. BARNARD.



ALBANY:
PRINTED BY HOFFMAN & WHITE.

Mii: 1839.



-p."'



?3



\lzi'd



[Entered according to act of Congress, in the year one thousand eight hundred
and thirty-nine, by Hoffman & White, in the Clerk's Office of the Northern Dis-
trict Court of New-York.]



CORRESPONDENCE.



Hon. Daniel D. Barnard.

Dear Sir,

At a meeting of the Albany Institute, held April 15, 1839, it was unan-
imously resolved, that the thanks of the Institute be presented to the Hon. Daniel
D. Barnard, for his able and interesting Discourse on the Life and Services of
Stephen Van Rensselaer, and that he be requested to furnish a copy of the same
for publication.

As Chairman of the Committee of Arrangements, I have been instructed to
make this communication.

I remain, with sentiments of high respect and esteem,
Yours truly,

T. ROMEYN BECK.

April 16, 1839.



Albany, AprU 17, 1839.

Dear Sir,

My Discourse on the Life and Services of our late President, Stephen Van Rens]
selaer, having been prepared and delivered at the request of the Institute, the
Manuscript will be placed at the disposal of that Body.

With great respect and regard,
I am, dear sir,

Faithfully yours,

D. D. BARNARD.

Dr. T. RoMEYN Beck.



ADVERTISEMENT,



Those who did the Author the honor to attend the delivery of this
Discourse, will find in it some passages and paragraphs which were
then omitted for the sake of brevity.

The Historical Sketch contained in the Appendix, was read before
the Institute at one of its regular meetings; and has been thought of
sufficient public interest to be worth preserving. It was prepaied chief-
ly from a personal examination of the Manuscript Records in the Office
of the Secretary of State at Albany. It is presented, by request, in
connection with the Discourse delivered before the Institute, as belong-
ing not inappropriately to the subject and the occasion ; indeed, it will
be seen that it formed originally a part of the Discourse itself, from
which it was necessarily severed on account of its length — its place be-
ing supplied in the body of that paper by a brief reference to some of
the leading facts contained in the Sketch.



DISCOURSE.



The Albany Institute, embracing in its objects a wide field
for observation and study, is made up of three principal De-
partments, each having its President, Vice-President, and
other appropriate Officers. It was formed originally by the
union of two Societies previously existing under separate
charters. At the organization of the Institute, on the 5th
May, 1824, Stephen Van Rensselaer, then at Washington
as the Representative in Congress from this District, was
unanimously selected to preside over its deliberations. He
filled, at the time, the Presidency of the Albany Lyceum of
Natural History, henceforth to be merged in the Institute ;
and there was every thing in his position and stan :'ing, as well
as in his direct connection in many ways with the objects of
the new Society, to make the compliment of the selection
deserved and proper ; yet it was found that his own regards,
with characteristic modesty, had been directed towards anoth-
er worthy and eminent citizen, as fittest to occupy the Chair;
and it was only alter much hesitation and reluctance that he
communicated to a friend on the spot, his permission and
request to decide the question of acceptance or refusal for
him. It hardly need be added that the office was promptly
accepted in his behalf. By the Charter of the Institute, this
office is made elective annually ; and every year, since the
same agreeable act was first performed, and with the same
unanimity, have the Members of this Society oflfered the same
grateful testimonial of their respect and affection for their
beloved President. Alas ! my Friends and Fellow-Members,
that offering of ours has been made for the last time. We
are now called, in common with the whole country, to mourn
his loss. He departed this lil'e on Saturday, the twenty-
sixth DAY OF January last. It was at four o'clock in the
afternoon, of a day which had dawned upon him with as fair
a promise of closing on him in life, as any, perhaps, which he
had seen for the last two years, that in a small Cabinet of his
ample mansion, which his infirmities had made his chief asy-
lum and sanctuary for many months, sitting in his chair, with



6

just warning enough to convey the intimation to his own mind
that his hour had come, without enough of pre\'ious change
seriously to alarm the fears of anxious, watchful and tremb-
ling hearts around him, the venerable man bowed his head,
and died.

In the affecting ceremonies of his funeral, the Members of
the Institute had their humble part. It had been resolved, in
special session, that they would attend the funeral of their
President in a body. This, however, was not all their duty.
It was thought to belong appropriately to them to gather up
the memorials of his life and services, and cause them to be
arranged and presented before the Society in a regular Dis-
course. It has pleased those whose charge it was to make
the selection, to assign the duty of preparing and presenting
this tribute, to me. They might have found many to perform
the service more acceptably ; not one, since the time had
come when the duty must be discharged by some body, to
whom it could have been a more grateful office.

In entering on the execution of this trust, I should have
been glad, if time had permitted, to have claimed the indul-
gence of my audience, first of all, to carry them back to a
period in history somewhat remote from the times to which
the distinguished subject of this Memoir more immediately
belonged. Some of the acts of his individual career, and the
traits of his beautiful character, when we should reach them
in the progress of our narrative, would, I think, have devel-
oped themselves much the more strongly for the light which
might thus have been thrown on them from the past. They
would have been found, some of them at least, to have been
linked backward, by unbroken chains, to the times and events
of other and even distant generations. Men's virtues, any
more than their vices, are not all their own. To some extent
they are inheritors of virtues, and to some extent they are
moulded by circumstances. They may be trained in schools
of which the masters are dead long and long before, and of
which nothing remains but the transmitted lessons that were
taught without intending to teach them. In his personal his-
tory, Mr. Van Rensselaer was subjected to the strong in-
fluence of great events — events powerfully affecting property,
and rights, and ideas, and character. He was born the sub-
ject of a King, and he was born to a Chartered Inheritance,
which gave him the right to a considerable share of Feudal
honors and Feudal power ; at twenty-one, however, he had
become, through a forcible and bloody Revolution, a citizen
of a free Republic, with only his own share, as such, with all



his fellow-citizens, in the popular sovereignty of the country*
He was the proprietary of a remarkable landed interest — re-
markable for any country — connecting him and his affairs
directly with an ancestry, and through that ancestry with a
people, in a portion of whose doings and history are bound
up some interesting and valuable materials for the proper il-
lustration of events and characters in later and even present
times, in this part of our country. As such proprietary, look-
ing to the earlier periods of his life, he represented, in his own
person, a state of things in regard to property and its inci-
dents, and the structure of social and political institutions,
which in his own time and in his own hands, passed away
forever — not, however, without leaving behind them their
strongly-marked and indehble traces; and, looking at him
â–  from the days of his manhood onward, he was, in his charac-
ter and in his relations, a living witness and illustration of"
some important contributions which a former age had made
to the present, and by which the features of the latter, as
stamped by a new order of things, were not a little modified.
Undoubtedly we change with the times; yet no age can
choose but wear, more or less strongly, the lineaments of its
parent age — the complexion, even a very great way off, will
shew a tinge from the blood that was in the original fountain.
He, the subject of our present reflections, stood, in one sense,
between the present and the past ; between two distinct and
even opposite orders of things, and he belonged in a manner
to both. His life reached forward well into the heart of the
Republican system — and the whole country did not contain a
more thorough Republican than he was — while his days ran
back to a period when a feudal Aristocracy, of which he was
himself a part, had a legalized and legitimate growth in the
soil of this our native land. He was a thorough Republican,
in a Republican State, and yet he bore to his death, by com-
mon courtesy and consent — never claimed but always conce-
ded — the hereditary title which had anciently attached to the
inheritance to which he had been born.

The title, as is well known to you, by which he was usually
addressed and spoken of amongst us, was that of Patroon,
This title was derived, evidently, from the Civil Law, and the
Institutions of Rome. In the time of the Roman Republic,
the Latin Patronus was used to denote a Patrician, who had
certain of the people under his immediate protection, and for
whose interests he provided by his authority and influence.
At a later period, and after the power of Rome had been
greatly extended by her conquests, individuals and families



8

of the noble order, became Patrons of whole Cities and Pro-
vinces, and this protective authority, with large and extensive
legal and political rights and powers, in some instances de-
scended by inheritances. The family of the Claudii was
vested with this patronage over the Lacedemonians ; and that
of the Marcelli over the Syracusans. It was partly from
this source, it may well be supposed, that the Dutch, who
had adopted the Civil Law, derived the idea of governing a
remote territory, not easily to be reached by the Central
Authorities, by committing it to the ample Jurisdiction of a
Patroon.* This title was not applied in Holland, so far as I
know, to any order in the State there, nor was it employed
in, or by, any other of the Countries of Europe. It was not
a title of personal nobility, as that term is understood in
Europe since the time when Monarchs assumed the right of
conferring these distinctions by creation or patent. It be-
longed exclusively to the Proprietors of large Estates in lands,
occupied by a Tenantry ; and like the title of Seignior, which
the French bestowed with their Seigniories, or large territo-
rial estates and jurisdictions in Lower Canada, on the first
colonization of that country, it was deemed especially proper
for Transatlantic use. Yet it had attached to it, in connec-
tion with proprietorship, the usual incidents and privileges
of the old feudal Lordships, in direct imitation of which, both
title and estate, with their jurisdictions, were instituted. It
may be added as worth remarking, that, in the case before
us, this title has run on, and been regularly transmitted, with
the blood of the first Patroon, down to our day, though it is
now a Century and three Quarters since the Inheritance
ceased to be a Dutch Colony, to which alone the title proper-
ly attached, and became, by Royal Authority, after a foreign
conquest, an English Manorial possession ; and though, in
later time, a Revolution has intervened by which the Estate
was fully shorn of its Manorial character and attributes, leav-
ing to the proprietor, now for the last fifty years, to hold his
property merely by the same simple tenure and owner-
ship, with which every freeholder in the country is in-
vested.

Mr. Van Rensselaer was the fifth only in the direct line
of descent from the original Proprietor and Patroon of the
Colony of Rensselaerwyck. This personage, the founder of
the Colony, was a man of substance and character. He was

* I Iiave seen the " J?w Patronatus" of the Roman Law expressly referred to, in an
Official MS. of the Dutch Authorities themselves, as the foundation of the powers and
jurisdiction committed to the Patroons of New Netherlands.



9

a merchant of Amsterdam, in Holland, wealthy, and of high
consideration in his class, at a time when the Merchants of
Holland had become, in effect, like those of Italy, the princes
of the land. He was that Killian Van Rensselaer referred
to in our recent Histories as having had a principal share in
the first attempts made by the Dutch towards colonization in
America.

I think this occasion would have been held to justify a
more particular reference to the part which this Ancestor
of the late Mr. Van Rensselaer had in American Coloni-
zation, and especially at the important point where we are now
assembled ; and that it would not have been out of place, to
have introduced the personal memoirs of the latter, by a por-
tion at least of that curious and hitherto neglected history
which attaches to the Colony and Manor of Renssclaer-
wyck — that identical landed estate and inheritance, which,
nearly in its original integrity, though stript of its accesso-
ries, we have seen held and enjoyed, in our time, by a lineal
descendant of the first Proprietor. But the unavoidable
length to which the briefest outline of that History runs — ■
though fully prepared, after the labor of considerable re-
search — has compelled me, reluctantly I confess, to lay
it entirely aside. I must needs content myself now with
some very general facts and observations in this connec-
tion.

Killian Van Rensselaer — to whom I just now referred —
was a large proprietor, and a Director in the Amsterdam
Branch of the Dutch West India Company. This Company
was incorporated in 1621, and was composed of an asso-
ciate band of merchant-warriors and chiefs, with a chartered
domain and jurisdiction as well for conquests, as for trade
and colonization, extending in Africa from Cancer to the
Cape, and in America from the extreme South to the frozen
regions of the North, and with tLe right to visit and to figtit
in every sea where their own or a national enemy could be
found. Ample powers of government also attended them
every where. After they had obtained a footing in this coun-
try, a College of Nine Commissioners was instituted to take
the superior direction and charge of the affairs of New
Netherland. Killian Van Rensselaer was a member of this
College. This was in 1629. The same year, a liberal Char-
ter of Privileges to Palroons and others was obtained from
the Company. Colonization by the Dutch had its origin and
foundation in this extraordinary Instrument. The same In-
strument provided also for founding a landed and Baronial

2



to

Aristocracy for the Provinces of the Dutch in the New
World. Early in the next year, with the design of estab-
lishing his Colony under the Charter, Van Rensselaer sent
out an Agency, when his first purchase of land was made of
the Indian Owners, and sanctioned by the Authorities of the
Company at New Amsterdam. Other purchases were made
for him in subsequent years, until 1637, when, his full com-
plement of territory having been made up — nearly identical
with the Manor of our day, and forming, as subsequently de-
fined, a tract of about twenty-four miles in breadth by Ibrty-
eight in length — Killian Van Renssellaer himself came to
take charge of this Colony. Many of his colonists were al-
ready here, and others were sent out to him — all at his own
cost. The full complement for his Colony, required by the
Charter, was one hundred and fifty adult souls, to be
planted within four years from the completion of his pur-
chases.

The power of the Patroon of that day was analagous to
that of the old feudal Barons ; acknowledging the govern-
ment at New Amsterdam, and the States General, as his Su-
periors. He maintained a high military and judicial autho-
rity within his territorial limits. He had his own fortresses,
planted with his own cannon, manned with his own soldiers,
with his own flag waving over them. The Courts of the
Colony were his own Courts, where the gravest questions
and the highest crimes were cognizable ; but with appeals in
the more important cases. Justice was administered in his
own name. The Colonists were his immediate subjects, and
took the oath of fealty and allegiance to him.

The position of the Colony was one of extreme delicacy
and danger, it was situated in the midst of warlike and
conquenng Tribes of Savages, which, once angered and
aroused, were likely to give the Proprietors as much to do in
the way of defence, and in the conduct of hostile forays, as
were used to fall to the lot of those bold Barons of the Mid-
dle Ages, whose castles and domains were perpetually sur-
rounded and besieged by their hereditary and plundering ene-
mies. Happily, however, the Patroons of the period, and
their Directors, or Governors of the Colony, by a strict ob-
servance of the laws of justice, and by maintaining a cautious
and guarded conduct in all things towards their immediate
neighbors, escaped — but not without occasions of great ex-
citement and alarm — those desolating wars and conflicts
which were so common elsewhere among the infant Colonies
of the country.



11

While, however, they maintained, for the most part, peace-
able relations with the Indian Tribes around them, they were
almost constantly in collision, on one subject or another, with
the authorities at New Amsterdam, and those in Holland.
The boundaries of rights and privileges between them and
their feudal Superiors were illy defined, and subjects of disa-
greement and dispute were perpetually arising. Here, at this
point, was the chief mart of trade, at the time, in the Pro-
vince ; and this trade fell naturally into the hands of the Pro-
prietors of the Colony. Not a little heart-burning and jea-
lousy, on the part of the Company, was excited on this ac-
count, especially when the Director of the Colony was found
to have set up his claim to " staple-right," amounting to a
demand of sovereign control over the proper trade of the
Colony against all the world, the Company alone excepted,
and had made formidable preparations to enforce his right
by the establishment of an Island Fortress, planled with can-
non, and frowning over the channal and highway of the
river. The little village of Beverwyck too, clustering under
the guns of Fort Orange — the germ of the City of Albany —
became debatable ground. The soil belonged to the Colony,
and was occupied with the proper colonists and subjects of
the Patroon. The Company thought fit to assert a claim to
as much ground as would be covered by the sweep of their
guns at the Fort. This was of course resisted on one side,
and attempted to be enforced on the other; and so sharp did
this controversy become, and so important was it deemed,
that Gov. Stuyvesant, on one occasion, sent up from Fort
Amsterdam, an armed expedition, to invade the disputed ter-
ritory, and aid the military force at Fort Orange in support-
ing the pretensions of the Company — an expedition wholly
unsuccessful at the time, and happily too as bloodless as it
was bootless. But I cannot pursue this singular history in
this place.

In 16()4, the English Conquest of the Province took place.
The Colony of Rensselaerwyck fell with it. Jeremiah Van
Rensselaer, the second son of Killian, was then in possession.
He died in possession in 1674. The line of the eldest son
of Killian, the original proprietor, became extinct; and in
1704, a Charter from Queen Anne confirmed the estate to
Killian, the eldest son of Jeremiah Van Rensselaer. The
subject of our present Memoir was the third only in the di-
rect line of descent, in the order of primogeniture, through
the second son of this Killian Van liensselaer — the eldest
son having died without issue. The Estate came to him by



12

inheritance, according to the canons of descent established
by the law of England. It never passed, at any time,
from one proprietor to another by will, nor was it ever
entailed.

By a Royal Charter of 1685, the Dutch Colony of Rens-
selaerwyck had been converted and created into a regular
Lordship, or Manor, with all the privileges and incidents be-
longing to an JCnglish estate and Jurisdiction of the Manorial
kind. To the Lord of the Manor was expressly given autho-
rity to administer justice within his domain in both kinds,
in his own Court-leet and Court-baron, to be held by him-
self or by his appointed Steward. Other large privileges
were conferred on him ; and he had the right, with the free-
holders and inhabitants of the Manor, to a separate repre-
sentation in the Colonial Assembly. All these rights con-
tinued unimpaired down to the Revolution.

P^or eighty-four years immediately preceding the Revolu-
tion, the Manor w^as never without its Representative in the
Assembly of the Province — always either the Proprietor
himself, or some member, or near relative, or friend of the
family. Nearly the whole of this entire period was filled
up with a series of hot political controversies between the
Assemblies and the Royal Governors. I have looked into
the records of these contests, and I have not found an in-
stance from the earliest time, in which the Proprietor or Re-
presentative of the Manor was not found on the side of popu-
lar liberty. The last of the Representatives was that stern
patriot and Whig, Gen. Abraham Ten Broeck. He was the
uncle of the late Mr. Van Rensselaer, the last of the Ma-
norial Proprietors, and his Guardian in his non-age, and had
a right, therefore, to speak and act in the name of his Ward.
His official efforts, though often in a minority in the Assem-
bly, were untiring to bring the province of New-York into a
hearty co-operation with her sister Colonies in their move-
ments towards Revolution.

This brief reference to the connection of the Manor,
and of the family whose possession and estate it was, with
the political history of the period, preceding the Revolution ;
may serve not only to do justice to the parties concerned, and
thence incidentally to vindicate, if there were need of it, the
conduct of the Dutch inhabitants of this Province with refer-
ence to the progress of free principles — but also to shew that
great as the change certainly was in the personal fortunes
and prospects of the late Mr. Van Rensselaer, between
his birth and his majority, yet, in truth, that change was



13

neither sudden nor violent ; that it was altogether easy and
natural ; that the way had already been prepared ; and that,
though born as he was to hereditary honors and aristocratic
rank, he yet, while still a youth, was carried, by the strong
current of the times, over the boundary — to him, at the pe-
riod, but little more than an imaginary line — between two
very opposite political systems ; and found himself, at his
prime of manhood, and when called to take his own part
in the active scenes of life, not only a contented, but a glad
and rejoicing subject and citizen of a free Republic. With
the history of the past before him ; in possession of an estate
which connected him nearly with feudal times and a feudal
ancestry, and which constituted himself, in his boyhood, a
Baronial Proprietor, instead of what he now was — the mere
fee-simple owner of acres, with just such political rights and
privileges as belonged to his own freehold tenantry, and no
other — it would not, perhaps, have been very strange, if he
had, sometimes, turned his regards backwards, to contem-
plate the fancied charms of a life, sweetened with the use of
inherited power, and gilded with Baronial honors. Nothing,
however, 1 feel warranted in saying, was ever farther from
his contemplations. He had no regrets for the past. He