Pieter Van Brugh (1666 – July 1740) was the Mayor of

Albany, New York Albany ( ) is the capital of the U.S. state of New York, also the seat and largest city of Albany County. Albany is on the west bank of the Hudson River, about south of its confluence with the Mohawk River, and about north of New York Cit ...

from 1699 to 1700 and from 1721 to 1723.

Early life and family

Pieter Van Brugh was a member of the Dutch aristocracy of Albany. Pieter Van Brugh was the oldest son of Johannes Pieterse Van Brugh and Catharina Roeloffs (sometimes shown as Trijntje Roeloffs). His father, Johannes Pieterse van Brugh, had made a fortune by migrating from the

Netherlands ) , anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau") , image_map = , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands , established_title = Before independence , established_date = Spanish Netherl ...

New Netherland New Netherland ( nl, Nieuw Nederland; la, Novum Belgium or ) was a 17th-century colonial province of the Dutch Republic that was located on the east coast of what is now the United States. The claimed territories extended from the Delmarva ...

and exporting furs and other natural resources from

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

. Pieter's maternal grandparents were from

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of ...

. Roeliff Jansen (1602–1637) was born in Marstrandsön, a small island situated in

Bohuslän Bohuslän (; da, Bohuslen; no, Båhuslen) is a Swedish province in Götaland, on the northernmost part of the country's west coast. It is bordered by Dalsland to the northeast, Västergötland to the southeast, the Skagerrak arm of the North ...

province in Norway, today a part of

Kungälv Municipality Kungälv Municipality (''Kungälvs kommun'') is a municipality in Västra Götaland County in western Sweden. Its seat is located in the city of Kungälv. The present municipality was formed in 1971 through the amalgamation of the ''City of Kung ...

, Västra Götaland County,

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden,The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names states that the country's formal name is the Kingdom of SwedenUNGEGN World Geographical Names, Sweden./ref> is a Nordic countries, Nordic c ...

. Anneke Jans (later Anneke Jantz Bogardus) (1605–1663) was born on

Flekkerøy Flekkerøy or Flekkerøya is an island and residential district in Kristiansand municipality in Agder county, Norway. The district is located within the borough of Vågsbygd, and it consists of 4 main neighborhoods: Berge/Andås, Kjære, Lindeb� ...

, an island situated outside the town of

Kristiansand Kristiansand is a seaside resort city and municipality in Agder county, Norway. The city is the fifth-largest and the municipality the sixth-largest in Norway, with a population of around 112,000 as of January 2020, following the incorporati ...

Vest-Agder Vest-Agder (; "West Agder") was one of 18 counties (''fylker'') in Norway up until 1 January 2020, when it was merged with Aust-Agder to form Agder county. In 2016, there were 182,701 inhabitants, around 3.5% of the total population of Norway. ...

county,

. His sister, Catharina, married Hendrick van Rensselaer, the son of

Rensselaerswyck The Manor of Rensselaerswyck, Manor Rensselaerswyck, Van Rensselaer Manor, or just simply Rensselaerswyck ( nl, Rensselaerswijck ), was the name of a colonial estate—specifically, a Dutch patroonship and later an English manor—owned by the va ...

patroon In the United States, a patroon (; from Dutch '' patroon'' ) was a landholder with manorial rights to large tracts of land in the 17th century Dutch colony of New Netherland on the east coast of North America. Through the Charter of Freedoms ...

Jeremias van Rensselaer Jeremias van Rensselaer (Amsterdam, 16 May 1632 – October 12, 1674) was the third son of Kiliaen van Rensselaer, one of the founders and directors of the Dutch West India Company who was instrumental in the establishment of New Netherland a ...

Career

After serving time as a militia lieutenant in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

, Van Brugh entered the family business and lived with his wife's family in Albany. He became a

constable A constable is a person holding a particular office, most commonly in criminal law enforcement. The office of constable can vary significantly in different jurisdictions. A constable is commonly the rank of an officer within the police. Other peop ...

in 1692 followed by several other public duties in the following years. In 1697, he inherited the Cuyler's home. In 1699, Van Brugh's prominence led to his appointment as Mayor of Albany which he held until the following year. In September 1700, he was part of an expedition that traveled west into the

Iroquois The Iroquois ( or ), officially the Haudenosaunee ( meaning "people of the longhouse"), are an Iroquoian Peoples, Iroquoian-speaking Confederation#Indigenous confederations in North America, confederacy of First Nations in Canada, First Natio ...

country in an attempt to establish a fort among the Onondaga. In the following decades, he became one of the wealthiest businessmen in Albany and was named mayor for a second time from 1721 to 1723.

Personal life

In November 1688, Van Brugh married Sara Cuyler. Uncharacteristic for the era, the couple had only one child: *Catharina Van Brugh (born in 1689), who married

Philip Livingston Philip Livingston (January 15, 1716 – June 12, 1778) was an American merchant and statesman from New York City. He represented New York at the October 1774 First Continental Congress, where he favored imposing economic sanctions upon Great ...

(1686–1749), the second lord of

Livingston Manor Livingston Manor was a tract of land in the Province of New York granted to Robert Livingston the Elder during the reign of George I of Great Britain. History Livingston Manor was a tract of land in the colonial Province of New York granted ...

. By the time he died in 1740, Van Brugh and his wife had twelve grandchildren and had raised several orphaned nieces but had no sons thereby ending the Van Brugh family name in Albany. Van Brugh was one of the last people to be interred beneath Albany Dutch Reformed Church.

Descendants

Pieter was the great-granduncle of

American Revolutionary War The American Revolutionary War (April 19, 1775 – September 3, 1783), also known as the Revolutionary War or American War of Independence, was a major war of the American Revolution. Widely considered as the war that secured the independence of t ...

soldier,

Peter Gansevoort Peter Gansevoort (July 17, 1749 – July 2, 1812) was a Colonel in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. He is best known for leading the resistance to Barry St. Leger's Siege of Fort Stanwix in 1777. Gansevoort was also th ...

References

;Notes ;Sources
Pieter Van Brugh
- Biography written by Stefan Bielinski at New York State Museum web site.

- Biography written by Stefan Bielinski at New York State Museum web site.

- The Genealogy of Walter Gilbert

''Scandinavian Immigrants In New York 1630 - 1674'' by John O. Evjen

Early life and family

Career

Personal life

Descendants

See also

References

Related Reading