Crailo State Historic Site

06/21/2026

Happy Father's Day from Crailo State Historic Site

🖼Detail from Portrait of a Family, Abraham Willaerts, c. 1639-1659, Bavarian State Painting Collections

06/19/2026

Happy ! As we celebrate the end of slavery in the United States that occurred in 1865, it’s important to remember that enslaved people and their allies had been fighting for freedom in various ways since the institution of slavery was established in North America over two centuries prior. Here’s what that looked like in the 17th century colony of New Netherland, among some of the first African people enslaved in North

On February 25th, 1644, eleven enslaved men successfully petitioned the Council of New Netherland for their freedom and the freedom of their wives. Their names were Paulo Angola, Manuel Groot, Cleyn Manuel, Manuel de Gerrit de Reux, Simon Congo, Anthony Portugues, Gracia d’Angola, Pieter Santome, Jan Francisco, Little Anthony, and Jan Fort Orange.

They had been some of the first enslaved people in New Netherland, who had arrived in 1627. According to these men, the Dutch West India Company had told them that their enslavement was to be temporary and that they were promised freedom after their term of service was finished; after nearly two decades, they were successful in holding the company to that promise.

But their newfound “freedom” wasn’t fully free. The status that New Netherland Director Willem Kieft ascribed to these individuals was later known as Half-Freedom, a form of conditional freedom unique to New Netherland.
Half-Free individuals were required to make an annual payment to the Dutch West India Company, consisting of crops grown and livestock raised on tracts of land designated to them north of New Amsterdam. They were also still obligated to provide labor to the Dutch West India Company whenever requested (though this was “on condition of receiving fair wages from the Company”). If the individuals failed to meet these requirements, the company would re-enslave them.
Kieft’s manumission listed the names of the men it freed, but not the names of their wives. Thus the women’s freedom depended on their marriage status; if they were suddenly widowed, they might be re-enslaved.

Finally, the manumission specifically stated that the children of these families were not granted freedom. Not only was this true for “many children” these couples already had, but those “yet to be born” were also to “remain bound and obligated to serve the [Company] as slaves.”

It’s important to remember that Director Kieft’s decision to grant Half-Freedom to these families was not for their benefit as much as it played a part in his military and economic strategies for New Netherlands as a whole. Freeing this aging contingent of enslaved workers meant that they now had to provide for themselves in terms of food, clothing, and medical care, thereby reducing costs for the Company. Around this time Kieft also began granting tracts of farmland to Black men and women but chose a specific area for them North of New Amsterdam. This meant the Black settlers would provide a human buffer zone between the Dutch settlement and the Lenape Native Americans, with whom Kieft had recently begun a deadly war. In this way Kieft was seeing to the interests of the New Netherland colony- always on the backs of and at the expense of Black men and women.

📷 Manumission of Manuel de Gerrit and 10 other Negroes, February 25th, 1644, via New York State Archives

06/16/2026

Piracy, treasure, and naval heroism may seem the stuff of movies and legends, but they were all in a day’s work for the Dutch Admiral Piet Heyn.

In 1628, while operating as a privateer under the employ of the Dutch West India Company (WIC) in the waters around Cuba, Admiral Piet Heyn captured a Spanish treasure fleet traveling from New Spain (Mexico) to deliver silver to Spain. Heyn seized gold, silver, jewels, indigo, silk, hides, and other goods worth more than 11 million Dutch guilders, and delivered the loot to the directors of the WIC. The money was used by the company to reimburse investors while also paying for the company’s successful, albeit brief, capture of much of Portuguese controlled Brazil. Moreover, the silver Heyn took was money that Spain could not use to further their efforts to reimpose their power over the Dutch during the 80 years’ war.

In honor of his achievements the WIC and Dutch government commissioned the creation of silver medals in Heyn’s honor. These medals depict Heyn’s portrait on one side and the Spanish ships he captured on the other. Others have text describing the feat instead of the portrait. These silver medals quickly became a patriotic symbol in the Netherlands celebrating the victory against their Spanish oppressors. Heyn was famous on both sides of the Atlantic, as is demonstrated by Jeremias Van Rensselaer’s 1656 request to his mother, Anna, to send him a replacement for his Piet Heyn medal. Jeremias sold the medal for three beaver pelts valued in 1656 at about 4 or 5 guilders, meaning the small medal carried the hefty price of between 12 and 15 guilders. Piet Heyn’s capture of the Spanish treasure fleet was instrumental in the success of the Dutch navy and the West India Company in the early and middle 17th century and it made him a national hero of the Netherlands.

🖼Capture of the Silver Gleet in the Bay of Matanzas by Admiral Piet Hein, unknown artist, 1628, Rijksmuseum.
Portrait of Piet Hein, unknown artist, c. 1630-1640, Rijksmusem.
Conquest of the Silver Fleet by Piet Hein, History Medal, Willem Versteegh, 1629, Rijksmuseum.

06/12/2026

Our next installment in our series of Revolutionary Van Rensselaer is Philip K. Van Rensselaer.

Philip was born in 1747 to parents Kiliaen van Rensselaer and Ariaantie Schuyler. When Philip was entering adulthood in the 1760s, he had established a personal and business relationship with Robert Sanders, a successful Albany merchant. By 1765, Philip had received proprietorship of the Sanders family business and Sanders had included Philip into his will and died shortly thereafter. A few years later in 1768, Philip Van Rensselaer married Robert Sanders’ daughter, Maria.

Philip became a well-respected merchant, which is likely why General Phillip Schuyler appointed him to be the Keeper of Stores for the Northern Department of the Continental Army in the spring of 1776. Philip often wrote to the Commander-in Chief, George Washington, requesting specialists and supplies. Quite famously, however, he was often ignored and forced to improvise. One notable improvisation Philip Van Rensselaer devised was in 1777, when the Continental Army failed to send critically needed ammunition to the Northern Army in the days leading up to the Battles of Saratoga. With no other alternative, Philip ordered the Committees of Safety to harvest lead for bullets from the houses in Albany, by melting down weights, frames and window lattices. The improvised ammunition did reach the army before the pivotal battles.

Philip found great success after the Revolutionary War, receiving some compensation for his service in the form of land grants, which he traded and consolidated into a new property where his country home, Cherry Hill was built in 1787.

Today, Historic Cherry Hill functions as a historic house museum, which preserves and shares the stories of Philip Van Rensselaer and his descendants.

🖼Miniature Portrait of Philip Van Rensselaer, Attributed to John Ramage, c. 1780, Historic Cherry Hill

06/10/2026

This weekend!

Please join us at this historic event. For further information, please contact Kelly Grimaldi at St. Agnes Cemetery.

06/10/2026

When life gives you lemons…paint them! 🍋🖌

If you look closely at the numerous 17th century Dutch still life painting you may notice something odd about the lemons…Often in these painting the peels look to be unusually long compared to the fruit being peeled.
The technique required to paint the texture of lemon peeled allowed artist to show off their skills and some artists really liked to show off!

🖼 Still Life with a Gilded Beer Tankard, Willem Claesz Heda, 1634, Rijksmuseum
Young Woman with Lemon, Godfried Schalcken, c. 1685-1690, Rijksmuseum
Still Life, Abraham van Beijeren, c. 1655, Rijksmuseum
Still Life with a Fish, Pieter Claesz, c. 1647, Rijksmuseum

06/07/2026

06/04/2026

Today is 🧀 Cheese was an important food for 17th century colonists in the Hudson Valley. Cheesemaking was a great way to preserve dairy and make it last longer. It could even be shipped overseas, as in the story we are sharing with you today:

In April of 1663, Jeremias van Rensselaer (1632-1674) and his wife Maria van Cortlandt van Rensselaer (1645-1689) received a gift of two cheeses from his mother Anna van Wely van Rensselaer (1601-1670). One was an Edam cheese, and the other was full of caraway seeds. 🧀

However, more than just some tasty dairy morsels, these cheeses also served as a peace offering. The young couple had been married in July of the previous year, shortly after Jeremias had moved back to the colony after spending some time in Holland. Both Jeremias and Maria were pleased with the match, but the marriage had taken place without the knowledge, approval, or permission of Anna, who remained in Holland. “I know that you must have thought it strange to hear [that I have married],” Jeremias wrote to Anna in 1662, “fearing perhaps that in haste I had taken a foolish step, because I had not informed you of it before. This is due to my timidity, for I had been thinking of her already a year or two before, when now and then I did an errand at the Manhatans.”

When she learned that her son had been married overseas without consulting her, Anna turned a cold shoulder and ceased replying to Jeremias’ letters. But sending the cheese was a sign of her forgiveness, as along with the gift she sent Jeremias and his wife her “hearty greetings.” Jeremias was relieved that his mother’s anger had apparently passed. He wrote to her in September of 1663 to thank her for the gift: “I [received] with your greetings the two cheeses sent over, for which my wife and I thank you most highly, as they show us that you are still kindly inclined toward us, which on our side, owing to our absence, can not be shown outwardly, but which nevertheless will always be manifested to you by our dutiful obedience.”

🖼 Still Life with Cheese, by Floris Claesz van Dijck, c. 1615, Rijksmuseum.