Margarita (Peggy) Schuyler Van Rensselaer
Margarita Schuyler from A Godchild of Washington: A Picture of the Past by Katharine Schuyler Baxter, 1897
Margarita (Peggy) Schuyler Van Rensselaer (1758–1801) was a daughter of wealthy patriot Philip Schuyler and sister to Angelica and Elizabeth. When she was twenty-five she married nineteen-year-old Stephen Van Rensselaer III, who was also from a prominent landowning family in the Albany area. The marriage created something of a scandal because of Stephen’s age and because the couple may have eloped.
Peggy’s husband became one of the most important public figures in early nineteenth-century New York, while Peggy pursued the typical life of a patroon wife. She had three children and managed the Van Rensselaer manor house. Two of her three children did not survive to adulthood, and she was only in her forties when she died.
