Jacob Kip

Born August 25, 1666, in New Amsterdam. He married 1695 in Albany, New York. He died February 28, 1733/1753 in Kipsbergen, Ulster County, New York.

Founding Kipsbergen

Jacob Kip was born August 25, 1666, in New Amsterdam and baptized at the city's Dutch church, growing up to work as a sloop captain on the Hudson River. In July 1686 he and his brother Hendrick purchased 2,200 acres of land on the east bank of the Hudson, opposite Rondout Creek, from Sepasco Esopus leaders Ankony, Anamaton, and the sachem Calycoon, paying in trade goods, guns, tools, and rum — land that would become Rhinebeck and Rhinecliff, New York, and the fourth major European settlement on the Hudson River, the first on its eastern bank. Governor Thomas Dongan formally patented the tract to the Kip brothers as “the Manor of Kipsburg” under King James II. Around 1706 Jacob began operating an informal ferry across the river from what became Rhinecliff, using a hollowed buttonwood-log boat under sail and oar, a business he eventually passed to his son Abraham; he served as a militia lieutenant and later captain, as a local justice, and as lay governor of Kipsbergen.

A Landowner's Legacy

Over four decades Jacob steadily expanded his holdings around Kipsbergen, buying additional tracts from neighboring Dutch settlers and from the Beekman family, and in 1708 built a stone house at the Long Dock ferry landing with walls two feet thick — its ground floor later became Kip's Tavern, serving ferry passengers. In 1730 he helped secure land for a church and graveyard in Kipsbergen's North Ward and was appointed one of its first two elders the following year. By the time of his death, around 1733, Jacob owned some 900 acres; his February 1731 will divided the property evenly among his nine children, giving each roughly a hundred acres.