Representative Killian Killian Van Rensselaer

Killian Killian Van Rensselaer (June 9, 1763 – June 18, 1845) was an American lawyer and Federalist politician who served in the United States Congress as a Representative from the state of New York. He was born on June 9, 1763, at the old family mansion owned by his uncle Johannes in Greenbush in the Province of New York. He was the youngest of nine children of Kiliaen Van Rensselaer (1717–1781) and his first wife, Ariantje “Harriet” Schuyler (1720–1763), who died four months after his birth. His siblings included Henry Kiliaen Van Rensselaer (1744–1816), Philip Kiliaen Van Rensselaer (1747–1798), and Nicholas Van Rensselaer (1754–1848), and his sister Catharine Van Rensselaer, who married William Henry Ludlow (1740–1803). His father, commissioned a colonel of the 4th Regiment, Albany County Militia on October 20, 1775, was wounded at the Battles of Saratoga during the American Revolutionary War and received high commendation for his courage from General George Washington.

Van Rensselaer was born into two of the most prominent Dutch-descended families of colonial New York. On his father’s side, he was a grandson of Hendrick Van Rensselaer (1667–1740), director of the eastern patent of the Rensselaerswyck manor, and Catharina Van Brugh, daughter of merchant Johannes Pieterse Van Brugh (1624–1697). He was a cousin of Jeremiah Van Rensselaer, who also served as a U.S. Representative from New York. Through his mother, he was a grandson of Nicholas Schuyler (1691–1748), nephew of Pieter Schuyler (1657–1724), the first mayor of Albany, and a descendant of Philip Pieterse Schuyler (1628–1683), the Dutch fur trader who became the progenitor of the American Schuyler family. This extensive network of kinship placed him within the political and social elite of the Hudson Valley in the late colonial and early national periods.

Killian K. Van Rensselaer completed preparatory studies and attended Yale College, where he studied law. He was admitted to the bar in 1784 and commenced the practice of law in Claverack, New York. Early in his professional life he served as private secretary to General Philip Schuyler (1733–1804), a leading Revolutionary War officer, later a United States senator, and a cousin through his mother’s Schuyler connections. His legal practice and family background ensured his integration into the political and commercial circles of upstate New York. Like many members of his class and era, he owned slaves, a fact that reflected both the economic structure and social hierarchies of late eighteenth-century New York. In 1794 he corresponded with James Madison regarding a letter of introduction for his nephew Robert S. Van Rensselaer, the son of his brother Philip, in connection with the latter’s trip to Europe, during which Robert met members of the extended Van Rensselaer family in Holland.

On January 27, 1791, Van Rensselaer married Margaretta “Margaret” Sanders (1764–1830), daughter of John Sanders (d. 1782) and Deborah Glen (d. 1786) of Scotia, New York, and a cousin of his brother Philip’s wife. Her sister Maria Sanders was married to Mayor Johannes Jacobse Beekman, further strengthening the family’s civic and political ties in Albany. Killian and Margaretta had five children: John Sanders Van Rensselaer (1792–1868), who married Ann Dunkin (1795–1845); William Van Rensselaer (1794–1855); Deborah Van Rensselaer (1795–1796), who died in infancy; Richard Van Rensselaer (1797–1880), who married first Elizabeth Van Rensselaer (d. 1835) and later Matilda Fonda Van Rensselaer (d. 1863); and Bernard Sanders Van Rensselaer (1801–1879), who married first Elizabeth Hum (d. 1834) and later Mary Targee (d. 1858). In 1801 a residence at 112 State Street in Albany was built for Killian and Margaretta, at the same time that Philip S. Van Rensselaer, then mayor of Albany, constructed his own nearby home at the corner of Chapel Street, a house later purchased by industrialist Erastus Corning.

As a member of the Federalist Party representing New York, Killian Killian Van Rensselaer entered national politics at a formative moment in the early republic. He was elected as a Federalist to the Seventh United States Congress and took his seat on March 4, 1801, in the first Congress to meet in the new federal capital at Washington, D.C., after previous Congresses had convened in New York and Philadelphia. His arrival in Congress coincided with the contentious presidential election of 1800, in which Thomas Jefferson was chosen over Aaron Burr by the House of Representatives. Van Rensselaer was subsequently reelected to the Eighth, Ninth, Tenth, and Eleventh Congresses, serving continuously until March 3, 1811, for a total of five terms in office. During this decade-long tenure he contributed to the legislative process as a Federalist voice from New York, participating in debates over fiscal policy, foreign affairs, and the evolving balance between federal and state authority.

While in Congress, Van Rensselaer was appointed to the influential Committee on Ways and Means, which oversaw taxation, revenue, and public expenditures at a time when the young nation was grappling with war in Europe, maritime tensions, and questions of national finance. His social and political standing in the capital is reflected in his being invited to dine at the White House with Presidents Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, as well as at The Octagon House, the Washington residence of Colonel John Tayloe, a close friend of George Washington. He also cultivated relationships with foreign diplomats, including Count Fyodor Palen, the plenipotentiary of the Czar of Russia to the United States, and Louis Marie Turreau, Napoleon’s ambassador to the United States, indicating his engagement with the international dimensions of American policy during the Napoleonic era.

After leaving Congress in 1811, Van Rensselaer returned to Claverack and resumed the practice of law, remaining a figure of local prominence in the Hudson Valley. He continued to be associated with the extended Van Rensselaer and Schuyler networks that shaped regional politics, landholding, and commerce in the first half of the nineteenth century. His later years were spent largely in Albany and its environs, where his family’s influence remained significant in civic and economic affairs. Among his descendants was his grandson Charles Van Rensselaer (1823–1857), who served as first officer on the SS Central America and perished when the ship was lost in a hurricane in September 1857, an event that became one of the most noted maritime disasters of the era.

Killian Killian Van Rensselaer died on June 18, 1845, in Albany, New York, at the age of 82. He was interred in a private cemetery at East Greenbush, New York, near the lands and communities where his family had been established since the seventeenth century.