Solomon Van Rensselaer

Solomon Van Rensselaer

Signature of Solom Van Rensselaer

Solomon Van Vechten Van Rensselaer (born August 6, 1774 in Greenbush , New York Province, † April 23, 1852 in Albany , New York ) was an American politician . Between 1819 and 1822 he represented New York State in the US House of Representatives .

Career

Solomon Van Vechten Van Rensselaer, son of Alida Bratt and General Henry Killian Van Rensselaer , was born in Greenbush about nine months before the outbreak of the War of Independence . He studied and completed his preparatory studies. Van Rensselaer enlisted in the US Army . At the age of 18 he was promoted to cornet . He served under General Anthony Wayne and was wounded in August 1794 while fighting the Miami . Van Rensselaer was promoted to captain in a volunteer company and on January 8, 1799 to major . His retirement took place in June 1800. He was then adjutant general in the New York National Guard in 1801, 1810 and 1813 . During the British-American War he served as a Lieutenant Colonel with the New York Volunteers . Politically he belonged to the Federalist Party .

In the congressional elections of 1818 Van Rensselaer was elected to the US House of Representatives in Washington, DC in the ninth constituency of New York , where he succeeded Rensselaer Westerlo on March 4, 1819 . He was re-elected to the next Congress , but resigned from his seat on January 14, 1822.

Van Rensselaer was postmaster in Albany between 1822 and 1839 and between 1841 and 1843 . On November 4, 1825, he took part in the opening ceremony of the Erie Canal as a delegate from New York . He died on April 23, 1852 near Albany and was buried there in the North Dutch Church Cemetery , but later reburied in the Albany Rural Cemetery . Congressman Killian Van Rensselaer was his uncle.

Trivia

Alida Bratt named her son after her grandfather Solomon Van Vechten . He was also mistakenly called the son of Jeremiah Van Rensselaer.

literature

• Tricia Barbagallo: "Fellow Citizens Read a Horrid Tale" (PDF; 2.3 MB) , March 10, 2007
• Isa Carrington Cabell: "Killian Van Rensselaer" , Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1889

Web links

• Solomon Van Rensselaer in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)

• Solomon Van Rensselaer in the database of Find a Grave (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ The struggle for the Midwest - Karl May Foundation
2. ^ Records of the Reformed Dutch Church in Albany, Part 6, p. 25; Catharina Van Rensselaer Bonney, "Legacy of Historical Gleanings" (J. Munsell, Albany, NY, 1875), pp. 10 and 91.