Dutch settlers came to the New World in the early 1600s seeking riches and soon recognized the value of the fur and timber trades, then turned to the agricultural possibilities of the Hudson River Valley when a steady food supply became necessary. At Kinderhook, settlers from Beverwyck, later Albany, established trading posts, sawmills, a small settlement, and farms including that of the Van Alen family. Lourens Van Alen was among the early settlers there and, in the 1600s, he and his business partners began acquiring land from the Mohican Indians. His son Luykas built the Van Alen house in 1737 and developed a farm that eventually reached 500 acres, and his descendants lived there for the next 200 years. By the 1930s the farm had shrunk to 33 acres, and the last Van Alens in the house sold it to a distant cousin who later gave the house, land, and restoration funds to the Columbia County Historical Society. Over the years as many as twenty people lived at one time in the three-room house, with family on the ground floor and the upper half-story used to store grain, hold a large loom, and provide sleeping space for hired hands or enslaved people. Slavery was widely practiced in Dutch settlements of the Hudson Valley, where enslaved men worked in the fields, in husbandry, carpentry, and blacksmithing, while enslaved women performed domestic labor and helped care for children and the elderly. The family preserved important documents and valuables in a keepsake box wrapped in beaver fur that reflected trade relations with the Mohicans, and a 1741 Dutch-language family Bible reflected their adherence to the Dutch Reformed Church while also recording births, deaths, and family history.