Angelica Schuyler was born in Albany, New York. She was the eldest child of Philip Schuyler and Catherine Van Rensselaer Schuyler. Her parents were from wealthy Dutch families prominent since early colonial days. Catherine was a descendant of Kiliaen van Rensselaer, one of the founders of New Netherlands. The Schuylers were also fourth-generation residents. She had seven siblings who lived to adulthood, including Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton, Margarita Schuyler Van Rensselaer (known as "Peggy"), and Philip Jeremiah Schuyler.

Angelica came of age during the troubled times leading up to the American Revolution, and met many prominent Revolutionary leaders. Because of her father's rank and political stature, the Schuyler house in Albany was the scene of many meetings and war councils.

One of the visitors in 1776 was John Barker Church, a British-born merchant who made a fortune during the war supplying the American and French armies. At the time of their meeting and subsequent courtship, Church was on a mission from the Continental Congress to audit army supply records. Knowing that her father would not bless their marriage because of his suspicions about Church's past, Angelica eloped with John in 1777. They had eight children together.

In 1783, Angelica and her family left for Europe, where they would remain for 16 years, apart from brief visits to America.

From 1783 to 1785, Angelica and her family lived in Paris while John performed his duties as a U.S. envoy to the French government. Angelica never failed to enchant the famous, intelligent men she met, and in Paris she soon befriended Benjamin Franklin, who was then America's Minister to France.[4] She also developed lasting friendships with Franklin's successor, Thomas Jefferson, and with the Marquis de Lafayette.

After a brief visit to New York in 1785, the family sailed for England, taking up residence in London. Now the wife of a very wealthy man, Angelica entered a fashionable social circle that included the Prince of Wales (later King George IV), Whig party leader Charles James Fox, and playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan. She also befriended and sponsored the émigré American painter John Trumbull, whose works included some of the most famous portraits of the American Revolutionary War era. Artists Richard and Maria Cosway also numbered among her close acquaintances in Europe.

In 1788, with the intention of running for Parliament, Church purchased a country house in Wendover, Buckinghamshire, and from 1790 to 1796, he served as a Member of Parliament. During this period, Angelica made a visit home in 1789 to attend the inauguration of George Washington as the first president of the United States.

John and Angelica Church returned to the United States in May 1797 for a visit, and returned permanently in 1799 to be reunited with the Schuyler family in New York.

In May 1796, John Barker Church accepted a mortgage on 100,000 acres (40,000 ha) of land in present-day Allegany County and Genesee County, New York, against a debt owed to him by his friend Robert Morris.[5][6] After Morris failed to pay the mortgage, the Churches' eldest son Philip Schuyler Church acquired the land in a foreclosure sale in May 1800.[5] To take possession of the land, Philip traveled in 1801 to the area, near the Pennsylvania border, with his surveyor Moses Van Campen and four others.[7] Philip Church selected specific acreage for a planned village along the Genesee River, with plots and design to be reminiscent of Paris.[7] The plan included a circular road enclosing a village park at the center of town, streets radiating from the circular road to form a star, and five churches situated around the circle. Philip named the village Angelica, after his mother.[7] By 1803, the village was populated with log cabin homes, including Philip's, and he had erected a sawmill and a gristmill.[7]:406

Philip Church married Anna Matilda Stewart in Philadelphia on February 4, 1805.[8] Soon after the wedding, the two settled permanently in the village of Angelica, where a small whitewashed house (locally known as the "White House") had already been built for the couple on the banks of the Genesee River.[9]

In 1806, Angelica and John Barker Church began construction on a thirty-room mansion nearby, called Belvidere, which still stands as a privately owned home on the banks of the Genesee in Belmont, New York, near the town of Angelica.[9] Although they had intended to make it their summer home, it instead became the residence of Philip and Anna Church when it was partially completed in 1810




Written by Angelica Schuyler