Gerrit Frederickse Lansing 1610 to 1655

From: https://www.geni.com/people/Gerrit-Lansing/6000000010394064482

Gerrit Frederickse Lansing was born in about 1610 in Hasselt, Zwartewaterland, Overijssel, Netherlands. He was the son of Frederick Gerrit Lansing and Catharine Fox(?).

Gerrit married Elizabeth Hendrickse in about 1628 in the Netherlands.

Elizabeth and Gerrit had six children, all of whom were born in the Netherlands.

Gerrit came to New Netherland with his wife and children in about 1640.

Gerrit Frederickse Lansing died in about 1655 in Albany.

With more than 400 family members in the city before 1800, the Lansings are, by far, the largest early Albany family. After Beverwyck became Albany in 1664, the Lansings became mainstays in the colonial city, spread throughout the region, then settled across New York and the United States. Today, they are one of the most widespread and broadly successful of the New Netherland-era early Albany families.

The Albany Lansings are the descendants of Gerrit Frederickse and his wife Elizabeth Hendrix who came to America with their European-born children about 1640. Within a few decades of settling in Albany, Gerrit Frederickse was dead, but three sons and three daughters had found partners and were raising families of their own. The city census of 1697 listed the households of sons baker/contractor Gerrit Lansing, butcher/trader Hendrick, trader/landholder Jan Lansing, grandson Abraham G. Lansing, and also the home of Wouter Albertse van Den Uythoff – a widowed baker who had married widow Elizabeth Hendrix several decades earlier. Of the daughters, Gysbertje – the wife of Hendrick Rooseboom, and Hilletie Ketelhuyn – the widow of Storm Vanderzee, were living in the city.

Over the next century, the Lansings spread out in Albany and in the greater region. More so than most New Netherland families, the Lansings maintained a strong and even expanded presence in the city of Albany. The mix of trades, crafts, and business activities of the householders of 1697 was characteristic and became even more diversified through succeeding generations. The Lansings were prominent within the Albany community and more widely known as silver and gun smiths. Middling with some upward mobility, Lansing sons often followed in their father’s footsteps while daughters were well-represented as wives in traditional and newcomer city homes. Thirteen Lansing-named families appeared on the census of householders taken by the British army in 1756.

Although the family continued to expand into the growing countryside, in 1790, the census still listed seventeen Lansing-named households in the city of Albany. These included the homes of gunsmith Robert Lansing, baker Sanders Lansing, and businessman Abraham G. Lansing who married the daughter of Abraham Yates, Jr.

Always involved in city affairs, the American Revolution elevated the Lansing family to new prominence. Several Lansings attended the Albany Committee of Correspondence as members and associates while others served in the military and on supply lines. John Lansing, Jr., a one-time clerk and secretary, was elected to the New York State Assembly, was appointed mayor of Albany, was a delegate to the Federal Convention of 1787, and later became chancellor of New York State.