Jan Van Hoesen House on Route 66, north of the City of Hudson, NY and just east of Claverack Creek in Columbia County, is a rare surviving house characteristic of the Upper Hudson Valley in the first half of the 1700s.
As both a site of enslavement and a site of freedom, the house is arguably one of the most significant historic sites in Columbia County.
Jan van Hoesen, who married in 1711 Tanneke Witbeck, a daughter of Hendrick Witbeck of Claverack, was a grandson of Jan Franse van Hoesen. It was the elder Van Hoesen who in 1662 purchased from the Mohicans the tract of land that included the present city of Hudson and town of Greenport.
Jan served as a deacon in the Lutheran church at Lunenberg (in present day Athens) across the Hudson River and, along with his wife, was active in Lutheran church affairs.
Built between 1715 and 1724, the house remained in the family for several generations, one of about a dozen pre-Revolutionary War Dutch homes still standing in New York.
In 1979 it was was listed on the National and State Register of Historic Places (one for the first to be listed in Columbia County). In 2005 the Van Hoesen House Historical Foundation was established and in 2009 the Preservation League of New York State listed the house on the Seven to Save.
The Jan Van Hoesen house is also now thought to also have been the home of Charles Marriott, a Quaker abolitionist and activist in the Underground Railroad movement which helped enslaved people escape the south.
As a major port city on the river and Hudson Valley center of industry, the City of Hudson, NY, was a site of significance to freedom seekers from the South and from New York City and the Lower Hudson Valley.
An 1838 letter from Marriott reports that “Many fugitives from the South effect their escape. 3 passed through my hands last week.” Marriott died in 1843.
Upcoming Event
On Sunday, February 2 from 2 until 4 pm ET the African American Archives of Columbia County and the Hudson Area Library will host an in-person presentation with Fergus Bordewich and Ed Klingler on the Jan Van Hoesen house at the Hudson Area Library, at 51 North 5th Street, in Hudson, NY.
The program will examine the house’s ties to the Underground Railroad movement.
To register for this program online here.
Fergus Bordewich books include Bound for Canaan: The Epic Story of the Underground Railroad, America’s First Civil Rights Movement (Amistad, 2006) and Klan War: Ulysses S. Grant and the Battle to Save Reconstruction (Knopf, 2023).
Ed Klingler, is a co-founder of the Van Hoesen House Historical Foundation and has been a builder specializing in accurate historic restorations for over forty years – an interest cultivated in him by the Van Hoesen house as a child growing up in Columbia County in the 1960s.
The African American Archive of Columbia County is a descendent-focused organization that researches, documents, preserves and shares the history of Black people in Columbia County from their arrival in 1626 onward.
The Hudson Area Library History Room houses a collection that pertains to the history of the City of Hudson, Greenport and Stockport; as well as Columbia County and New York State. The History Room also hosts the Local History Speaker Series at the library, offering free monthly talks on diverse topics related to local history.
Illustration: The Dutch style Van Hoesen House in Claverack, Columbia County, NY.
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