Rensselaer New Home

Rensselaer County is filled with wonderful contradictions and juxtapositions. It's a special place where rural charm meets urban delights, where cultural opportunities and pastoral pastimes happily coexist, and where American heritage meets cutting-edge technology. Stretching thirty miles along the Hudson River, it offers thousands of acres of parks, miles of trails, and more than 500 lakes, ponds, and even championship golf courses. Year-round activity abounds, whether it be swimming, boating, hiking, biking, skiing, snowmobiling, ice fishing, or maybe even dog sledding. During the growing season, the county offers an array of locally produced fruits, vegetables, herbs, meats, baked goods, arts, crafts, and even a buffalo hide or two!

New Homes:

Rensselaer

Saratoga

Albany

Clifton Park

Colonie

Delmar

Guilderland

Malta

A magnificently grand territory, Rensselaer County began playing a key role in American history back in 1630. It was then part of the Van Rensselaer patroon holdings, an important part of the great Dutch West Indies Company. Van Rensselaer's stand as a patroon ended with the Anti-Rent wars of the 1840's, when local farmers refused to pay rent to the sheriff's deputies - then proceeded to tar and feather them for even trying to collect!

Before that happened however, in 1824 Stephen Van Rensselaer founded the oldest degree granting engineering school in the English-speaking world. At the same time, the county's proximity to waterpower and markets forged the growth of the region's iron industries, which quickly became legend for the production of such items as the iron plates for the Civil War battleship 'Monitor' and most of the horseshoes for the Union Army. And, in 1876, the 13,000-pound replacement for the cracked Liberty Bell was cast here.

Congress long ago designated Troy as the home of "Uncle Sam" - Samuel B. Wilson, a meat packer who stamped his barrels bound for U.S. Army troops with "U.S." Local troops soon recognized their meat deliveries as coming from "Uncle Sam." The label stuck - and the rest is history! Sam Wilson is buried in Troy's beautiful Oakwood Cemetery, along with a host of Civil War generals, industry powerhouses, inventors, and community leaders. The nation's first female labor union, the Collar Laundry Union, was founded in Troy in 1864 by Kate Mullaney and Ester Keegan. Another classic American icon - this one of a musical sort - was created at the old van Rensselaer manor house, Fort Crailo, where 'Yankee Doodle' is rumored to have been written. More...