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Henry Van Antwerp was born in the town of Stillwater, (now Mechanicsville) Saratoga county, on the 29th, of September, 1802, where he received the rudiments of his early education. He afterwards attended the academy at Fairfield, New York, where having graduated he went to NewYork city, and began the study of medicine with Dr. Christopher C. Yates, then a resident of that place. Yellow fever was prevalent in New York, and Mr. Van Antwerp, became ill with it, and when his convalescence was sufficient to resume his studies he became a pupil of Dr. Platt Williams in Albany. He became a licentiate of the Medical Society of the state of New York in 1825, and opened an office in Albany. He joined the county Society in 1828, of which he became an active member and served as its Librarian. In the cholera season of 1832, he performed an honorable part of the severe labor rendered by the medical profession of the city.
Dr. Van Antwerp removed his residence to Charleston, South Carolina, in 1885, and after a few years again removed to New Orleans. Circumstances induced him after a brief period to settle in Balize, Louisiana, a few miles above New Orleans, where for nearly twenty years he was emerged in the duties of his profession. Here he had abundant opportunities to become familiar with the yellow and congestive fevers incident to the locality, and in their successful treatment he acquired a considerable reputation. His practice was always general, though the breaking out of a species of ophthalmia led him to pay particular attention to the treatment of diseases of the eye, in which the skill awarded to him, was equal to that he had gained in the management of fevers.
In 1857, possessed of all the means which a moderate ambition considered as essential to his comfort, he retired from practice, and returned to the north to enjoy the leisure that he had denied himself in earlier years. But his long residence in the south had unfitted him for the severity of northern winters, and he determined to spend his winter months in New Orleans; the existence of a pulmonary disease being already manifested. In his journey north he became more seriously ill, and died in Cincinnati on the 1st day of May. 1859, at the age of fifty-seven years. His remains were brought to Albany for sepulture. Dr. Van Antwerp was never married. He was a man of modest, and retiring disposition, neither seeking distinction or publicity: but contented to act well and faithful his part in the sphere providence had alloted to him.
