Alexander Lindsay Glen (Sander Leeandertse Glen) (1605 -1685) and Katherine Dongan (Dougan) ( 1615 - 1684) - my 8th Great Grandparents

[From:  Genealogical Notes regarding the Family of Glen, or Glenn, Thomas Allen Glenn

The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 36, No. 4 (1912), pp. 480-499] 

Starts with Alexander on first line:  

[Story found in the book: ""Old Schenectady" by C. K. Ogden, pages 157-160]  The father of Alexander Lindsey Glen, a Scottish Chief, intensely religious and patriotic, gave his life and estate to his king, Charles the First, as did so many of the Highland Chiefs. When he found that the price of his loyalty to his king was his life and property, he persuaded his son to flee across the North Sea to Protestant Holland, that refuge where the noble and simple might worship, according to the dictates of their consciences, instead of according to the dictates of one mart. For a time, this son of a Highland Chief, remained in Holland and then sailed across the ocean to America. Inheriting from his Scottish ancestors indomitable will, sound judgment and unbounded hospitality and charity, he founded a family, the descendants of which were as prominent in the Colonial governments, and later in the State governments, as they were socially and charitably. There is every probability that Alexander Lindsey did not add the name of Glen till after he was obliged to flee from Scotland, the name being simply Lindsey. The greater number of families who were forced to flee from Scotland during the Reformation changed their names by dropping a portion of it or adding to it a syllable, or in the case of such families as possessed them, the name of the estate was added. The Lindseys of Scotland are famous. The branch of the family from which the Glens of Schenectady County is descended is probably, Sir Alexander Lindsey, the younger brother of Sir James Lindsey, of Crawford, the hero of Otterburn. By marriage with the heiress of Sterling, Sir Alexander became possessed of large estates in Angus and Inverness, one of them being Glensk. This was in the last half of the fourteenth century. Sir James, the hero of Otterburn, dying without an heir, David, the son of Sir Alexander, became the chief of the family and when David married the sister of Robert III, Robert raised David to the Earldom of Crawford, in 1398. While the Glens of Schenectady were not in line for the title, that going by primogeniture to the eldest son, and they being descended from a younger son, they still are of the same blood as the hero of Otterburn, and Sir Alexander Lindsey, who married the sister of Robert III and became the Earl of Crawford. The fine old Colonial mansion at the end of the Dike which, with the bridge, joins the pretty suburb of Scotia to the city of Schenectady, overlooking the Mohawk and bearing on its front the large hand-wrought iron letters and numerals: "A O 1713," is notable, for many reasons, to every American who inherits his citizenship from Colonial days. It was built of material taken from the original mansion built by Alexander Lindsey Glen, the founder of the family in America, who was one of the original Fifteen Proprietors of Schenectady. This original Glen mansion was the first house built upon the north bank of the Mohawk river for the entire 135 miles of its length. Its second point of interest is that it was, for many generations, the place of safekeeping of Indian, Colonial and Revolutionary official documents and correspondence, and its third point of interest is that it stands on the property which has been in the family of the original proprietor of the estate for two hundred and forty-six years. The original residence was built about 1659, on the bank of river, one hundred feet south of the present residence ; but the land upon which it stood has been entirely eaten away by the river and nothing- of even the foundation now remains. This particular place was a favorite one with the Indians. On a knoll, a little to the east of, and midway between the sites of the two houses, was the spot on which they indulged in the gladsome pastime of burning their prisoners at the stake. The original proprietor, Alexander Lindsey Glen, whom the Hollanders called Sander Leendertse, was born near Inverness, Scotland, about 1610. He was a partisan in the days of Charles I., and was obliged to flee to Holland, where he was warmly received and whence he emigrated with the early Dutch settlers to the Colony of New Netherlands, with his wife, who was Catharine Dongan. Mr. Glen was a man of liberal education, obtained in the land of his birth, a gentleman by birth and a man of large fortune, by inheritance. He was very Scotch in physique and temper and was endowed with a degree of catholicity which made him notable for his broad-minded tolerance for all denominations of the Christian faith and for his untiring efforts for the good, success and safety of others. In 1643, Mr. Glen was agent of the Dutch West India Company, stationed at Fort Nassau, on the Delaware, where he had received a grant of land. In 1646 he was granted land in New Amsterdam, afterward New York, and was possessed of considerable other property, consisting of houses, land and cattle at Graves End, on Long Island. In 1658, he left for Schenectady, and built the stone mansion on the north bank of the Mohawk and named his estate "Scotia," in memory of the land of the thistle, the heather and of hardy manhood. The title to the Scotia estate was held from 1658 to 1665, under title granted by the rightful and original owners, the Mohawk Indians ; in the latter year, he obtained the patent to the property from the representative of the Crown. The flats along the river belonging to Scotia — the estate, not the present village — were free from timber and very fertile, for they had been cultivated by the Mohawk Indians for more years than their traditions could number. The flats east of the residence down to a point near the present Freemans bridge, were known as the "cornfield," and were so designated in the deed from the Indians to Mr. Glen. Mr. Glen's character appealed strongly to the Mohawks. They regarded him with respect and admiration, for, while he was kind and just, he was fearless — a quality which the Mohawks could understand much better than kindness— so whenever raids were made upon the white settlers, he, his family and his property, were exempt from their ferocity. He had also gained the admiration and even affection of the French who held Canada, by his many acts of kindness toward them, when captured by the hostile Mohawks of the valley, who were not of the portion of the tribe which had left the Mohawk valley for Canada, after their conversion to the Catholic faith. In Mr. Glen's day, there was no Dutch Reformed Church, nor any church nearer than Albany, but the Rev. Mr. Schatts went from Albany to Schenectady, once in three months, to administer the sacraments. This did not satisfy Mr. Glen's ideas of duty in the matter of attending worship, for he frequently made the journey to Albany, leaving his home on Saturday morning- and returning on Monday night. In 1682, in order that Schenectady might be better provided for, he built, at his own expense, the first Dutch Reformed Church in Schenectady — the site of which is marked by a bronze tablet at the junction of State, Water and Church streets and Mill lane. As was the custom in those days, the church was, also, the town-hall. This church was given to the community and, in 1684, the Rev. Petrus Tasche- maker became its first pastor. Mrs. Glen died in 1684 and Mr. Glen, in 1685, and both were buried under the church which he had built. As an original proprietor, Mr. Glen had a lot in Schenectady of two hundred feet frontage on Washington avenue and this residence was occupied by a descendant till the great fire of 1819, when it was destroyed.

[story taken from the book: MORE COLONIAL HOMESTEADS AND THEIR STORIES Bv Marion Harland, starting on page 156-160]

UPON the 27th day of July, in the year of our Lord 1661, a commissioner appointed by Peter Stuyvesant, " Director-General and Commissary of the Privileged West India Company at Fort Orange and the town of Beverwyck " (now Albany), countersigned a deed of sale from "certain chiefs of the Mohawk country" "unto Sieur Arent Van Curler of a parcel of land or Great Flat called in
Indian, Schonowa." In payment for this tract, upon which the city of Schenectady now stands, the Mohawks received a "certain number of cargoes," character and value unknown.  The " Flats and Islands" thus conveyed were neither a wooded wilderness nor a barren waste, but cleared lands that had been cultivated for generations by the least barbarous of the aboriginal residents. The Mohawks had five strong villages, or castles, between the mouth of the river bearing their name and Canajoharie, their upper, and great, castle in Herkimer County. "Schonowa," or Schenectady Castle, was the second sold by them to the whites.

Among the petitioners to the Director-General for permission to negotiate for the tract was Alexander Lindsay Glen, a Scotch Highlander who, like hundreds of other pioneers, had tarried in Holland on the way to America long enough to identify himself with Dutch immigrants. To associate with them he owed the name by which he was known in the early days of his residence in the Colonies, "Sander Leendertse Glen," His original intention to settle himself upon a grant of Delaware lands was frustrated by the unfriendliness of the Swedes, who were in possession there in 1643. He applied for, and received, another grant in New Amsterdam (New York) in 1646.

As a trader in Albany, then Beverwyck, he amassed a considerable fortune, owned lands, houses, and cattle at Gravesend, Long Island, and in 1658, built a mansion of stone, on the north bank of our beautiful river, under protection and title of the Mohawks ; for which site and some adjacent
uplands, with some small islands and all the flats contiguous, he obtained a patent in 1665." '

That the Highlander was canny in his generation these facts denote. An anecdote extracted from another early history is in evidence of other Scotch traits. An agent of the West India Company attempted to arrest a negro slave belonging to "Sander Leendertse Glen." Her master resisted the official, and when threatened with imprisonment and confiscation if he persisted in his contumacy, boldly declared himself a subject of the Patroon of Rensselaerwyck, the determined opponent of the West India Company's authority and claims. "I cannot serve a new master until I am discharged
from the one I live under," he maintained, sturdily.   And when the infuriated officer "drew his rapier and threatened to run his adversary through, Glen fearlessly seized a club to repel his assailant, who then prudently retired."

Loyalty, thrift, and courage were united, in the staunch Presbyterian, to blameless integrity that earned the confidence of white and savaofe neicfhbours (savage neighbors). He bought lands from
the Mohawks and paid for them; Indians and Negroes worked together in his broad meadows, and ate from the same board. Beyond the stone mansion, to which he gave the name of "Scotia," in loving memory of his native land stretched away to the north hundreds of miles of woodlands and fertile valleys, unclaimed by the whites. Between him and the bounds of Canada the Indians held everything, and were prepared to resist every trespass upon their rights. While Alexander Glen lived these rights were religiously respected, and the foundations laid of an hereditary friendship between the residents of Scotia and the Mohawks which, as we shall see, bore much fruit in after years.

"Reared in the religious tenets of John Knox,” the successful freeholder was also a valiant churchgoer. Four times a year an Albany dominie visited Schenectady, to administer the sacrament of the Lord's Supper and to baptise such infants as had helped swell the population of the young colony
since his last services there. There was a Reformed Dutch church in Albany, twenty-odd miles away, and perhaps a dozen times in the twelve-month" Sander Leendertse Glen" was in his pew in the sacred edifice, having left Scotia early Saturday morning to accomplish the journey by Saturday night. In 1682, he built, at his own expense, "and presented the same to the inhabitants of Schenectady as a free gift," a frame building, to be used as a church on Sundays, as a public hall during the week. The first pastor was installed and the building was consecrated in 1684.

Catherine Dougan Glen, the wife of Alexander, died at Scotia in August of the same year, and at her husband's request was buried in the chancel of the church. One year and two months thereafter a grave was opened for him at her~~~~~~~~~~~~~


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(BELOW: is from the book The Abridged Compendium of American Genealogy, Genealogies of the First Settlers of Schenectady, Virkus & Company, Chicago, Illinois.)

SANDER LEENDERTSE GLEN
BORN
DIED 11/13/1685

Sander Leendertse Glen later known as Alexander Lindsay Glen was a native of Scotland.

Alexander was an agent for the West India Company when he arrived on the North American continent at Fort Nassau on the Delaware. Records also show he was later in Albany and an original settler at Schenectady.

Alexander received a land grant at Fort Nassau in 1651 and a patent for lands near Schenectady which he named Scotia.

In 1665 on the land mentioned above, which was located on the North side of the Mohawk River he build a stone house. He called his estate Scotia but this was later changed to Glenville when a town was built in the area. Glen’s house was on the opposite side of the river when the Schenectady raid occurred but his home was spared because of past favors to the French.

Alexander married Catalyn Dongan (Doncassen) and they settled in the Schenectady area between 1658 and 1661. Catalyn died August 12, 1684. Known children are Jocob, Sander and Johannes.

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(BELOW  is from the book The Abridged Compendium of American Genealogy, Genealogies of the First Settlers of Schenectady, Virkus & Company, Chicago, Illinois.)

Sander Leendertse Glen – Genealogies of The First Settlers of Schenectady

JOHANNES ALEXANDER GLEN
BORN 11/05/1648
DIED 11/06/1731

Johannes Alexander Glen was born on November 5, 1648 in Bererwyck, Albany, New York. Johannes is referred to in some of the records as Capt. Glen. He married Annatie Peek on May 2, 1667.

Annatie was the daughter of Jan Peek and she died December 19, 1690. Prior to her death they had a daughter by the name of Maria Glen.

Johannes remarried on June 21, 1691 in Albany, New York. He married Diwer, daughter of Evert Janse Wendel and she was the widow of Myndert Wemp. She died April 10, 1724. He built the Sanders mansion in Scotia, New York in 1713 and occupied the house until his death.

The mansion is shown in an 1800’s photograph printed in “Glen Sanders Mansion, An Historical Overview” Copyright 1995 by Donna Masi. Johannes Glen’s property was spared when Schenectady was burned, by the order of the Governor of Canada, for kindness shown to French prisoners captured by the Mohawks.

  

Alexander married Catalyn Dongan (Doncassen) and they settled in the Schenectady area between 1658 and 1661. Catalyn died August 12, 1684. Known children are Jocob, Sander and Johannes.