Robert Schuyler Van Rensselaer was born in Burlington, N.J., October 27, 1847, the son of Robert Schuyler Van Rensselaer, [the] superintendent of the Camden and Amboy Division of the Pennsylvania Railroad, and Sara Charlton (Kidd) Van Rensselaer. His father’s parents were Col. Jacob Rutsen Van Rensselaer, of Claverack, N. Y., and Cornelia (de Peyster) Van Rensselaer. Colonel Van Rensselaer was associated with Governor DeWitt Clinton in building the Erie Canal, was a member of the Legislature, and was offered and refused the nomination for the Lieutenant-Governorship of the state. He [Col. Jacob R.] was the second son of Brigadier General Robert Van Rensselaer, proprietor of Claverack Manor, and Cornelia (Rutsen) Van Rensselaer, who was a daughter of Col. Jacob Rutsen and Alida (Livingston) Rutsen, the granddaughter of Gilbert and Cornelia (Beekman) Livingston, and the great granddaughter of Robert Livingston, First Lord of the Manor. General Robert’s parents were Col. Johannes Van Rensselaer and Angelica (Livingston) Van Rensselaer, whose grandfather Pieter Schuyler, was deputy royal Governor of New York; his [Gen. Robert] grandparents were Hendrick Van Rensselaer and Catharine (Van Brugh) Van Rensselaer. Hendrick Van Rensselaer was the second son of Jeremias Van Rensselaer, the Director of Rensselaerwyck and later the third Patroon, who was born near Amsterdam, Holland, in 1630 and died at Watervielt, N. Y., in 1674; he married Maria, daughter of Oloff Stevenson Van Cortlandt.

He was prepared for Yale at New Brunswick, New Jersey, at the Burlington Military College, and under private tutors. Entering the Sheffield Science School in the fall of 1866, and he took the civil engineering course.
After graduation he became an engineer on the northwestern branch of the Pennsylvania Railroad, from Bellwood across the Allegheny Mountains into the Berwind and White coal regions. He surveyed the northwestern branch of the Pennsylvania Road across the Allegheny Mountains, and also surveyed many branch railroads. For some years previous to his death he was engaged in surveying and mapping for the Rochester & Pittsburgh Coal & Iron Company at Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. At the same time he served as borough engineer of Punxsutawney, and was also for a while county road viewer. He had been licensed as a lay reader by Bishop Whitehead and senior warden of Christ Protestant Episcopal Church of Punxsutawney, which he had organized.

His correspondence for sixteen years with the Home Government in the Netherlands is still preserved in Amsterdam and is an authority for events in the early days of the Dutch settlement. His minute chronicle of events in America is entitled the “Netherland Mercury.”

Mr. Van Rensselaer died January 24, 1919, at Punxsutawney, after an illness of three days. He was buried in the Circle Hill Cemetery in that town. He was married in Camden, New Jersey, on December 29, 1879, to Arietta Deborah, daughter of Samuel and Anna Eliza (Hancock) Archer. She survives him with their two children, LeRoy Campbell and Nina Archer.

Source:
~ Transcribed Obituary Record of Yale Graduates, 1918-1919, p. 1135 ;shared by FindAGrave Contributor-Leighj (#46977250)13Feb2015