Harmen Jansen Knickerbocker

Who was Harmen Jansen Knickerbocker?

Harmen Jansen Knickerbocker was a Dutch colonist in New Netherland.

Occasionally he added the termination van Wijhe indicating he came from the the present Wijhe.

Harmon married Elizabeth Bogaert daughter of Jan Bogaert and Cornelia Everts of Harlem, New York. Before 1682 Harmen settled near what is now Albany, New York, and there in 1704 he bought through Harnie Gansevoort one-fourth of the land in Dutchess County near Red Hook, which had been patented in 1688 to Pieter Schuyler, who in 1722 deeded seven lots in the upper fourth of his patent to the seven children of Knickerbacker. The eldest of these children, Johannes Harmensen, received from the common council of the city of Albany a grant of 50 acres of meadow and some acres of upland on the south side of Schaghticoke Creek. This Schaghticoke estate was held by Johannes Harmensen's son Johannes, a colonel in the Continental Army in the War of Independence, and by his son Herman, a lawyer, a Federalist Party representative in Congress in 1809-1811, a member of the New York Assembly in 1816, and a famous gentleman of the old school, who for his courtly hospitality in his manor was called the "prince of Schaghticoke," and whose name was borrowed by Washington Irving for use in his Knickerbocker's History of New York.