Person Page - 608

She came to New Netherland with her parents in 1647 and came of age in Rensselaerswyck where her father served as director of the colony.
Philip Pieterse Schuyler was an immigrant carpenter who, following the marriage, became one of the leading traders of Beverwyck/Albany. The marriage produced twelve children between 1652 and 1672. Eight of those offspring went on to establish the Schuyler family in Albany and beyond.
By the 1660s, these Schuylers were established in a new house on upper State Street. Before his death in 1683, Philip Pieterse had stretched the Schuyler family holdings by acquiring property around Albany and beyond.
A widow at age 55, by virtue of their joint will filed in 1683, Margarita Schuyler assumed control of her husband's extensive estate. From her Albany house and at the farm known as "the Flats," Margarita continued her husband's business and sat as the matriarch of early Albany's foremost family. Her children included Pieter Schuyler - first mayor of the city; Alida, the wife of Robert Livingston; and future mayor - Johannes Schuyler. Her other offspring established themselves in favored locations throughout the region.
Margarita Van Slichenhorst Schuyler lived until 1711. For much of that time, she was one of colonial Albany's most prominent residents. This active widow participated in business, landholding, and was an active member of theDutch Church. Surrounded by family and supported by a number of slaves, this able women's life was full and advantaged.
Her will, filed in 1707, identified her as a "sometime ... Albany merchant" and mentioned the real and personal estate she had acquired since the death of her husband. This seventy-nine-year-old widow had the presence of mind to circumvent English inheritance laws when she divided the Schuyler estate equally among her eight surviving children and their heirs.²

He served as a surgeon with the 10th New Hampshire Infantry, Volunteers.⁵

Her father was for nearly half a century pastor of the Congregational church of Weymouth. and her mother a direct descendant of Thomas Shepard, the eminent Puritan divine of Cambridge, and a great grand-niece of the Puritan preacher, John Norton, of the Hingham meeting-house, Boston. She had few educational advantages in the way of access to books, as they were kept from her owing to her delicate constitution. To in a measure compensate for this, she was instructed in the duties of the housewife and took great interest in home affairs. She became an adept in domestic economy, and added to it the rudiments of penmanship and arithmetic. As she reached womanhood her strength increased, and she took up French, Latin, and a well-directed course of reading, although this was only cursory before she became a wife. She was married to John Adams Oct. 25, 1764, and passed the next ten years as the frugal wife of a rising Braintree lawyer. To them were born, during this time, one daughter and three sons. The political events of the period marked the next decade of her married life as one of great anxiety. Her husband was absent most of the time, first as a delegate to Congress and afterwards on a diplomatic mission across the seas. The patriots led by her husband were urging the termination of the unhappy relations existing between the colonies and the mother country, by a declaration of independence. His earnest advocacy of heroic measures gained for him the appelation, "Colossus of Independence." No more positive and unyielding advocate of the measure sustained the course of John Adams than his patriotic wife, and while she had in full view the dire consequences of failure, yet her courage never faltered and her voice never uttered an uncertain sound. Alone with her children she passed the period of war, doing what she could for the patriot cause. In 1784 she undertook the long and dangerous voyage to Europe to join her husband in France, and then she accompanied him to London, as the wife of the first American minister at the court of St. James, and where as such she was not accorded decent courtesy. This rudeness greatly wounded her and increased her devotion to the new republic. Upon the accession of Mr. Adams to the presidency, his wife became the first mistress of the White House, and there the charm of housekeeping was not dispelled by the pride of position; She is the only woman in American history who has been the wife of one president and the mother of another. She resided at Braintree, Mass., after leaving Washington, but always retained an interest in public affairs. A memoir of her life, was published by her grandson Charles Francis Adams.³