Maria Van Rensselaer was an administrator of the Dutch patroonship of Rensselaerswyck. She was born Maria Van Cortlandt in New Amsterdam to Oloffe Stevense and Anna Loockermans Van Cortlandt. The family was wealthy and large; Maria had six siblings. Her father, a merchant, founded the Van Cortlandt clan in America, and became a city official under both the Dutch and English governments.
On July 12, 1662, Maria married Jeremias Van Rensselaer, the first patroon (proprietor) of Rensselaerswyck, his family's estate near Albany, New York. The couple had six children. When her husband died on October 12, 1674, Maria Van Rensselaer became the manager of her husband's vast property, with assistance from her brother Stephanus.
Van Rensselaer proved a skilled businesswoman. Her most significant achievement involved obtaining the title to the estate in the aftermath of three shifts of soveriegnty: the English conquest of the Dutch colony in 1664, the Dutch reconquest in 1673, and the final English reconquest in 1674. This task was finally completed in November 1685.
Van Rensselaer's control over her late husband's estate was threatened by his younger brother, the Reverend Nicholas Van Rensselaer, who arrived from the Netherlands in 1675. Maria and her brother fought his effort to assume patroonship. As a compromise, Nicholas was named director, Maria treasurer, and Stephanus became bookkeeper. When Nicholas died in 1678, Maria Van Rensselaer resumed her original post. Over the next few years, she suffered from health problems, debt, and the efforts of Robert Livingston to force a partition of the estate. Livingston, an Albany official and founder of a historically prominent New York family, had married Nicholas's widow.
Despite the challenges she faced, Van Rensselaer successfully passed the control of Rensselaerswyck to her children. She died at the age of forty-four in 1689.
Source: Notable American Women 1607-1950: A Biographical Dictionary. Edited by Edward T. James, Janet Wilson James, and Paul S. Boyer. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1971.