Margarita Schuyler, called Peggy, was born on September 19, 1758, in Albany, New York, the third surviving daughter of Philip Schuyler and Catherine Van Rensselaer Schuyler. She grew up among fifteen children in one of New York’s wealthiest and most politically connected families. Her father was a merchant, major landowner, general, and statesman; her mother belonged to the powerful Van Rensselaer patroon family. The Schuyler mansion was multilingual and cosmopolitan. Peggy learned reading, writing, religion, household management, music, dancing, and French, while also hearing Dutch traditions maintained by older relatives and neighbors. Enslaved servants and laborers sustained the family’s homes and estates, an essential part of the privilege surrounding her childhood. The Revolution transformed the household into a center of military activity. Officers and political leaders visited frequently, and the family faced danger during Burgoyne’s campaign and later Loyalist and Indigenous raids. A famous story credits Peggy with rescuing her infant sister during an attempted kidnapping at the Albany mansion. Although details vary in later retellings, the episode reflects the genuine wartime insecurity experienced by the Schuylers. Peggy was known within family correspondence as lively, intelligent, and strong-willed. She participated in the close relationship shared by her elder sisters Angelica and Elizabeth. Through Elizabeth’s marriage to Alexander Hamilton, Peggy also entered Hamilton’s affectionate correspondence and the wider political circle of the new nation. In 1783 she married Stephen Van Rensselaer III, a distant cousin and heir to the enormous Rensselaerswyck estate. He was younger than she was, and the match united two branches of New York’s landed elite. Before becoming mistress of the manor, Peggy had been shaped by a large family, elite female education, Dutch-American traditions, slavery, revolutionary danger, and intimate exposure to military and political life. Her identity was substantial in its own right, not merely as the “third Schuyler sister” of later popular culture.