Maria van Cortlandt van Rensselaer is one of only a handful of seventeenth-century Dutch-American women whose lives can be documented from personal and family correspondence. The van Cortlandt and van Rensselaer names conjure up images of wealth and privilege, but in many respects Maria van Cortlandt van Rensselaer's personal history mirrors the course of all Dutch women's lives in early America.

As daughter, sister, wife, mother, widow, businesswoman, and church member, Maria experienced many of the same pleasures and trials as her female counterparts in New Netherland and early New York. Yet her connections to the elite van Cortlandt and van Rensselaer families, as well as her early widowhood, forced her to deal with business and legal matters that ordinarily were beyond the purview of seventeenth-century women. Maria van Rensselaer's letters, all dating from the period after her husband's death, enable the modern reader to gain entrance to...