April, 1914 
AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 
123 
The historic Glen-Sanders house near Schenectady. New York 
A Treasure House of Colonial Days 
By Don Cameron Shafer 
r all the numerous historical buildings in 
New York State the old Cilen-Sanders 
homestead in the Mohawk \ alley is 
easily the first in value to the antiquarian 
and the historian. I‘or nearly 200 years 
this mansion, constructed of stone quarried 
from nearby rocks and timbers hewn from the primal forest, 
has stood there on the north side of the stately Mohawk, 
just across the river from the city of Schenectady, and 
watched the old city grow from an Indian castle to a strug- 
gling little hamlet and then to one of the most Important 
industrial cities in the world. Its 
rooms are a veritable treasure-house 
of historical documents, furniture, 
paintings, crockery, books, clothing, 
etc. The building has never been 
out of the family and Charles P. 
Sanders, the present occupant, is a 
direct descendant of Alexander 
Lindsey Glen, the son of a Scottish 
Chief who, exiled from his native 
home, found another Scotia in 
.•\merica. 
It was the 27th day of July, 1661, 
that Peter Stuyvesant, Director-Gen- 
eral and Commissary of the Privileged West India Com- 
pany, at l ort Orange, in the town of Beverwyk (now 
Albany), countersigned a deed of sale from certain chiefs 
of the Mohawk X'alley unto Sieur Arent \'an Curler, for 
the Indian Village called in Mohawk "Scliouawa" (where 
Schenectady now stands), “for a certain number ol car- 
goes,” presumably of clotlis, arms, trinkets and rum. 
Schenectady was secorul of the five M<diavvk “castles,” or 
villages, to be sold to the whites, wlio found the flats cleared 
and the land already cultivated. 
d'hree years before this Alexander Lindsey Glen, tlie 
Scotch highlander, had settled on a 
tract of land north of the Indian 
village of Schonawa and built him- 
self a mansion of stone under the 
protection and title of the Mohaw'ks. 
I le was one of the fifteen petitioners 
three years later in the \'an Curler 
land deal, and in 1665 secured a 
patent for his lands on the north of 
the river, (ilen was a man of keen 
business ability, honest in all his 
dealings and won ami held the re- 
spect and protection of his Indian 
and French neighbors. He had 
Rear of the Glen-Sanders house 
