Peter Schuyler (1657-1724) was a son of Philip Pieterse Schuyler (d. 1683), who migrated from Amsterdam in 1650. The family was one of the wealthiest and most influential in the colony, and it was closely related by marriage to the van Rensselaers, the van Cortlandts and other representatives of the old Dutch aristocracy.
Representatives of Mass., R.I., N.H., Conn., N.Y., Pa., and Md., met in Albany in June, 1754, for the purpose of confirming and establishing a close league of friendship with the Iroquois and of arranging for a permanent union of the colonies. This was the first important effort to bring about a Colonial confederation.
The Indian affairs having been satisfactorily adjusted, the convention, after considerable debate, in which Benjamin Franklin, Stephen Hopkins and Thomas Hutchinson took a leading part, adopted a plan for a union of the colonies on the basis of a scheme submitted by Franklin. This plan provided for a representative governing body to be known as the Grand Council, to which each colony should elect delegates for a term of three years. Neither the British government nor the growing party in the Colonies which was clamoring for colonial rights received the plan with favor—the former holding that it gave the colonies too much independence and the latter that it gave them too little.
At about this time a Swedish naturalist, Peter Kalm, visiting Albany, reported that "there is not a place in all the British colonies, the Hudson Bay settlement excepted, where such quantities of furs and skins are bought of the Indians as at Albany." Most of the houses at this time were built of brick and stood with gable ends to the street; each house had a garden and a stoep, where the family were accustomed to sit summer evenings, the burgher with his pipe and his "vrouw" with her knitting. Well-to-do families owned slaves, but according to Mrs. Anne Grant, an English writer of the day who spent part of her childhood in Albany, "it was slavery softened into a smile."
North Pearl St., Albany (About 1780) Looking North from State St. to Maiden Lane
(From an old French print in the N.Y. Public Library)
In the left foreground is the south end of the Livingston house. Just beyond, with two high gables facing the street, is the Vanderheyden Palace, erected 1725. The square building at the rear, corner of Maiden Lane, is the residence of Dr. Hunloke Woodruff. In the right foreground (on the corner) is the Lydius House, erected in 1657.
It was here that the English from all the colonies, before and during the French and Indian wars met to consult with the Indians and make treaties with them. It was the gathering place of armies where troops from all the colonies assembled and the objective of hostile French forces and their Indian allies on several occasions, yet was never taken by an enemy and never saw an armed foe. Even during the Revolutionary War, when its strategic importance was fully recognized by both armies, it remained immune, though at one time the objective against which Burgoyne's unsuccessful expedition was directed.
In 1777 the English general, John Burgoyne (1722-1792), was placed at the head of British and Hessian forces gathered for the invasion of the Colonies from Canada and the cutting off of New England from the rest of the Colonies. He gained possession of Ticonderoga and Ft. Edward; but pushing on, was cut off from his communications with Canada and hemmed in by a superior force at Saratoga Springs, 30 M. north of Albany. On the 17th of Oct. his troops, about 3,500 in number, laid down their arms, surrendering to Gen. Horatio Gates. This success was the greatest the colonists had yet achieved and proved the turning-point in the war.
In 1797 Albany became the permanent state capital. The election of Martin Van Buren as governor in 1828 marked the beginning of the long ascendancy in the state of the "Albany Regency," a political coterie of Democrats in which Van Buren, W.L. Marcy, Benjamin Franklin Butler and Silas Wright were among the leaders.