Van Dyck, Henry H. (Henry Herbert), 1809-1888

Assistant Secretary of the United States Treasury.

Henry H. Van Dyck (1808-1888) was an editor, financier, and politician who held a variety of public and private offices throughout his lifetime. He served as a New York state senator for the Second District, which at the time included Westchester, Putnam, Dutchess, Rockland, Orange, Ulster and Sullivan counties, from 1837 to 1840. He was a proprietor and editor at the Albany Argus from 1840 to 1842. He sold his share in the Argus in 1842 and bought a stake in the Albany Atlas, an organ for the "Soft-Shell" Democratic Party, which he owned until 1856. That year he shifted his political allegiance to the newly-formed Republican Party, an affiliation he maintained for the rest of his life, and ran unsuccessfully for Albany's congressional seat. In 1857, Van Dyck was elected State Superintendent of Public Instruction, an office he held until 1861 when he was appointed the Superintendent of State Banking Department for New York. In 1859, he also became the representative agent for the Seneca Nation before the New York State Legislature. In 1865, President Lincoln appointed Van Dyck as Assistant U.S. Treasurer in New York. He was commissioned again by President Andrew Johnson in 1866 and served through 1869 under two Secretaries of the Treasury, Hugh McCulloch (1865-1869) and George S. Boutwell (1869-1873). After leaving the Treasury Department, he worked as president of New York & Boston Railroad and Erie Transportation Company from 1869 to 1883, and as president of the American Safe Deposit Co. from 1883 to 1888.

Van Dyck was a member of Elm Place Congregational Church in Brooklyn and elected to the Holland Society of New York on March 14, 1885. At the time of his death, he lived at 5 Spencer Place in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. Van Dyck is buried in Albany, N.Y.