Preston-Potter Hollow, NY

Preston-Potter Hollow is a census-designated place made up of the hamlets of Preston Hollow, Potter Hollow, and nearby Cooksburg in the Town of Rensselaerville, southwestern Albany County. The 2020 census counted 367 residents. The communities sit near the Greene and Schoharie County lines, in a landscape of wooded hills, farm valleys, and old roads heading toward the Catskills, along Albany County's southern edge. It is a shared census name for several small places, not a single incorporated village.

Rensselaerville's history reaches back to the old Manor of Rensselaerwyck and the land holdings of the Van Rensselaer family. After the Revolutionary War, Stephen Van Rensselaer III advertised 160-acre tracts to settlers under rent terms that helped set the stage for the Anti-Rent Rebellion of 1839-1889. Potter Hollow District No. 19 School and the Sidney White House are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The result is a place where schoolhouses, farmsteads, and narrow hollows carry the history of Albany County's rural southwest.