Theophilus Roessle - Colonie's Celery Magnate

Near the Gansevoort-Melville lot on the South Ridge, a massive granite shaft marks the grave of a man who owed at least part of his substantial fortune to the cultivation of celery and owned a large portion of what is now the town of Colonie.

Born in 1811 near Stuttgart, Theophilus G. Roessle was a German immigrant from who came to Albany penniless at the age of fifteen having lost both his trunk counting his few possessions and his traveling companion who took ill and died not long after their arrival in Rochester.

He worked at various jobs and learned both landscaping and market gardening until he was able to afford to lease a farm and, with the income from the farm, began to buy land along the Albany-Schenectady Turnpike (now Central Avenue between Osborne and Wolf Roads). This area would later become the hamlet of Roessleville and, as his wealth increased, Theophilus Roessle built a large, elegant mansion near present-day Elmhurst Avenue. The estate, its entrance road flanked by stone lions, is long since gone.

A wholesaler of produce whose property included orchards with about five thousand fruit trees, he focused his attention on the cultivation of celery, especially the white variety which was achieved by covering the young plants with earth to deprive them of sunlight. He reportedly sold a thousand bunches of celery a day in season which a good percent of the sales being out-of-state. He even authored a book on the subject, How To Cultivate and Preserve Celery in 1860. He later purchased Albany's famed Delavan House in 1849, founded the Fort William Henry Hotel in near Lake George, and later took over the Arlington Hotel in Washington, D.C.. Roessle died in 1890 and his sons followed him in the produce business.

Edward Delavan

This cross-topped marble monument on the Cemetery's high Middle Ridge marks the grave of Edward C. Delavan, a prominent Albany hotel owner and temperance advocate.

Mr. Delavan owned the eponymous Delavan House, one of old Albany's most famous hotels.  Located on Broadway on the site of Union Station, the hotel hosted Charles Dickens, the Lincoln family, Boss Tweed (he used a luxury suite there as his local headquarters, complete with a private entrance), Theodore Roosevelt, and many other famous figures before it was destroyed in one of the city's worst fires.  Nineteen people were killed in the inferno on December 30, 1894.

Born in Westchester County in 1793, Delavan was one of the wealthiest New Yorkers by 1860.  Much of his fortune had been made in real estate investments after the opening of the Erie Canal.

Despite an early career as a wine merchant, Edward Delavan was, by the late 1820s, a fanatic participant in the temperance movement and founding member of the American Temperance Union.  He is said to have emptied the entire contents of his own expensive wine cellar into the gutters.  He also traveled to Europe to promote temperance in Italy and France, both countries famed for their wine production and consumption.  An enthusiastic propagandist, he used his personal wealth to distribute a million temperance tracts to Union soldiers during the Civil War.

Of course, a "dry" hotel was not profitable and the managers of his Delavan House reportedly found loopholes in the establishment's lease which allowed wine and liquour to be served there despite its owner's zealous objections to all alcohol.

It was Edward Delavan who bought the first deed to a lot at the new Albany Rural Cemetery in 1845.  He was buried there after his death in 1871.