Van Rensselaer
Americannoun
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Kiliaen 1595–1644, Dutch merchant: founder of Dutch West India Company 1621; large landowner in America, colonizing along the Hudson River (ancestor of Stephen Van Rensselaer).
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Stephen the Patroon, 1765–1839, U.S. political leader and major general.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Their father, Philip, was a major general in the Continental Army, and their mother, Catharine, was a Van Rensselaer, another prominent Dutch lineage.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 21, 2025
Stotesbury led a big contingent from the Naval Red Cross, and Mrs. Alexander Van Rensselaer a big division from the Navy League.
From Slate ● Jun. 20, 2020
Adjacent to that gallery is the floor’s one domestic interior, from Van Rensselaer Hall in Albany, created from 1765 to 1769.
From New York Times ● Jan. 5, 2012
Van Rensselaer had already confessed to me that he had invented these people after his publisher complained that his book needed to be livened up or it would not sell.
From Newsweek
Wasn’t it fun having everyone bow and scrape because they thought you were a Van Rensselaer?
From "On the Far Side of the Mountain" by Jean Craighead George
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
