History of Westchester county : New York, including Morrisania, Kings Bridge, and West Farms, which have been annexed to New York City, Vol. II, Part 40

Author: Scharf, J. Thomas (John Thomas), 1843-1898,
Publication date: 1886
Publisher: Philadelphia : L.E. Preston & Co.
Number of Pages: 1286

USA > New York > Westchester County > History of Westchester county : New York, including Morrisania, Kings Bridge, and West Farms, which have been annexed to New York City, Vol. II > Part 40

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2. We have realized not only that it is not the business of the historian to make faets, but that it is his business to record accurately what has been and is. We have been compelled to put on record not only all conditions of our city that have our heartiest sympathy, but also, with equal fairness, its conditions with which we have no sympathy whatever. It has been our object to unveil the eomposition, habits, spirit and working of our people and of our eity life. One must have an understanding of a place to adapt himself to it and it to himself, and especially to be useful in it. Yonkers is the most cosmopolitan eity on the Hudson, and it derives an entirely unique character from its close involvement with the great metropolis so near at hand. It is an exceedingly cu- rious study, whether for the man of pleasure, the man of business, the seholar, the teacher or the profes- sional man. It is especially curious as a study for the minister of the gospel, and for all classes of Christian workers. Its opportunities are great and its dangers are proportionate. That it has a vast unfolding before it, to be involved in the unfolding of the great city of New York, is eertain. How to keep back its evil and develop its good forces, how to repress the selfishness that breeds with such vigor at the great business centre of the Western Continent, and how to stimulate those better impulses that are our greatest hope-these are the problems that will growingly press upon all who may be called to share in the Christian and philanthropie work of the future. It was one of our great ends in undertaking this work to put into the hands of present and eom- ing workers what they may need for the comprehen- sion of our eivil, social, industrial, educational and religious conditions, and we hope we have, at least to a good extent, accomplished what we set out to do.

3. We now hand over our work to the people of Yonkers, dedicating it to them as a labor of love. It reveals that we have had a history. The forest soli- tudes of Nepperhan, trailed back and forth by sav- ages, have given way. Civilization has displaced bar- barism. The same hills, stream, river and Palisades that Hudson saw are still here, but population and

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HISTORY OF WESTCHESTER COUNTY

labor have changed the scene to one of greater beauty and of busy life. The slope from the river up has become a succession of cultivated lawns. rising above each other in terraced grace, dotted with man- sions and churches, and bowered within the shade of ornamental trees. All this we see. It is our glory. But is there anything we still need? We have thought much on this. Plainly, we need, first of all, to be grateful to the God of Providence both for our past history and our present condition. The out- growth from what we have written ought to be a gen- uine patriotic spirit that will take up what the father- have given us, and carry it to proportionately greater results. No doubt we need further material develop- ments, improved sanitary conditions, the increasing adaptation of our river- front to the growing wants of business and travel, multiplied ways and means of communication with the metropolis, and expanded postal facilities. Possibly we need some political changes. Perhaps we ought to be a distinet county by ourselves. If not this, we must have at least our due weight in the County Board of Supervisors, and the means of conducting our legal business without going to White Plains. These things we need, and they will come. But we need more. We need an esprit de corps among ourselves as a people. Our proximity to the larger city subjects us to a drain upon our spirit. Against this we must guard. To make You- kers a perfect success we need to concentrate our support upon our local interests and our own men. And the intelleet and culture of Yonkers need to know and assert themselves. No eity of our size, without a college or professional school in it, has a larger proportion of scholars and of minds trained and ac- tive in arts and science. These ought to know each other. True, each one has his own burdens, but the publie good demands some concessions of time, and a breaking up of that intense self-hood which makes each scholar and thinker by himself an in- dependent microcosm, related to others, not through rational and willing sympathy, but only through ir- resistible gravitation. It is true that the conditions of social life largely fix themselves, and no one can break them up. Yet there is a limit beyond which caste feeling cannot go without trampling upon the best instincts of the human soul and endangering the bet elements of a community life. And. then, there is one more need that touches the very heart of all genuine prosperity and progress,-it is the determi- nation on the part of our citizens that law shall be obeyed within our limits. It requires no long resi- dence in Yonkers to discover that here, as well as elsewhere, law is defied by men who lie in wait for bodies and for souls day and night, Sabbaths and week-days, bent only on the money gain their wicked traflie brings. One of the greatest needs of Yonker- is strong assertion of moral principle and an irresist- ible expression of a popular will that all haunts of vice shall close, that our Sabbaths shall not be pro-

faned and that our avenues shall be kept healthful and safe. Topographie features may make a city beautiful, and geographic relations may give it advan- tage, but righteousness only can exalt a community, and sin is a reproach to any people. This, more than any other thing, our city needs to feel. We have a great future before us without doubt. What the character of that future is to be will depend, humanly speaking, upon ourselves and our fidelity to that stern principle which alone can make a people truly strong and truly great.

David Colep

CHAPTER II.

GREENBURGH.

BY REV. JOHN A. TODD, D.D., Pastor of the second Reformed Church, Tarrytown.

THE township of Greenburgh, which had previously been a part of the Manor of Philipsburgh, was set off' and established with its present name and boundaries in the year 1788. The name is of uneertain origin. Two etymologies may be given, neither of which seems improbable. Its inhabitants at the time were largely of Hollandish deseent, and in the language familiar to them, the word groen, signifying green, and the words graan and grein, both signifying grain, might well, either the one or the other, have sug- gested the first syllable of the name, while the word burg, in the same language, signifying a borough, or an incorporated town or district of country, very evi- dently supplied the second. Green-district or Grain- district would thus express a prominent feature of the locality. The burg already belonged to it as part of its recognized title of Philipsburg, and when the Philipse proprietor and his family became Tories during the Revolution, and their property was con- fiseated at its close, the name Philipse naturally dropped out, and the descriptive term Green took its place. The fact that it has always been known as Green-burgh, and never as Grain-burgh, seems to determine its true etymology.

The whole region, when it first became known to the Dutch, was inhabited by a powerful tribe of aborigines, whose name, derived from that of a partic- ular place within its limits, though variously written by different early explorers and historians, may be given as Weekquaesquerks. It is said to mean " the place of the bark kettle," and to have been corrupted by the English into "Wickers Creeks." The terri- tory occupied by these Indians is described by De Vries, in 1640, as lying on the east bank of what is now the Hudson River, opposite to Tappaan, which lies on the west. The Indians belonged to the Mohi-

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GREENBURGH.

can branch, one of the sub-divisions of the great Algonquin race. From Lake Erie to the mouth of the Mohawk, on the Hudson, extended the territory of the Five Nations, to whom the French gave the name of the Iroquois. From Albany southward to Spuyten Duyvil Creek, on the east of the Hudson, and down to the lower slope of the Highlands on the west, stretched the dominion of the Mohicans. Of course, it iucluded all of what now constitutes the county of Westchester. The Manhattan tribe occupied the island of Manhattan, which has since become the world-renowned city of New York, while the Tap- paans and Monseys dwelt on the west side of the Hudson, from the Dunderberg southward below the New Jersey line.

In regard to these Indian tribes, it is stated by the Rev. Dr. Cole, in his very able and carefully prepared Historical Discourse at the Bi-Centennial celebration of the city of Yonkers, October 18, 1882, that they " were all divided into families, and each family had one or more villages. From Poughkeepsie down the Mohicans had on this (the east) side of the river the Wappinger family above and in the Highlands, the Kitchawank family along the Croton, the Sintsinck family within our present Ossining, and the Weck- quaesqueck family from the Sintsincks down to Spuyten Duyvil, and between the Hudson and the Bronx." The name Weckquaesqueek, he adds, " was applied not to the family only, but to a rivulet empty- ing into the Hudson at Dobbs Ferry, and also to a family village at the rivulet's mouth."

From 1614, when the commercial intercourse be- tween the Dutch and the Indians had already com- menced, dowu to 1693, when, by a royal charter from the English crown, the Manor of Philipsburgh, stretch- ing from the Spuyten Duyvil Creek to the Croton, and from the Hudson to the Bronx, was erected, the mutual relations of the colonists aud the savages were sometimes warlike and sometimes peaceful, though happily the latter condition for the most part prevailed. No grants nor charters were ever given by the Dutch that did not require the grantees to buy of the Indians whatever lands they appropriated, at a purchase, and by a payment, to which both parties agreed. Still, there were occasions of ill-feeling and sometimes of violence brought about by personal aggression from one side or the other, which resulted in mutual bloodshed and wrong.

The treaty of peace concluded between Director- General Kieft and the Indians represented by their chiefs on August 30, 1645, led to the re-establishment of a good understanding with the natives in what is now Westchester County, and was followed by renewed intercourse in trade and the purchase of several tracts of Indian lands. Two years after the treaty Governor Kieft was succeeded in office by the cele- brated Peter Stuyvesant. In July, 1649, two years later still, we find Director-General Stuyvesant acting in behalf of the Dutch West India Company, pur-

chasing of the Indians a large "parcel of land, and all their oystering, fishing, etc.," "lying on the North River of New Netherland, on the cast shore, called Wixquaeskeek." This purchase constituted a part at least of the present township of Greenburgh.

The property was seized, however, in 1665, when the rule of the Dutch was superseded by that of the English, and New Netherland passed over to the control of his Royal Highness, James, Duke of York. Thenceforward it continued under English clomination, until that, in turn, was swept away by the Revolution in 1776.

There frequently were conflicting claims to title ; and jurisdiction, arising partly from the ignorant or careless way iu which grants and patents were giveu by the governments across the oceau, and partly from the fact that the same territory seems to have been sold by the Indiaus at different times to two or three different purchasers. Thus the same property bought for the Dutch West India Company by Governor Stuyvesant, in July, 1649, was sold again to Connecti- cut by the Indians in 1662. Three years after that it was seized by the English as property of the Dutch West India Company, and later on-that is, from 1681 to 1684-it was sold again by the sachems of Weckquaesqueek to Frederick Philipse, by whom it was incorporated into his manorial estate. A simi- lar instance is that connected with the case of Thomas Pell, who, in 1654, came over from Connecticut, and began a settlement near Vredeland, in Westchester, upon lands " which had long before been bought and paid for " by the Dutch. Governor Stuyvesant sent Cornelius Van Tienhoven, the fiscal, to forbid the English from settling there, but Pell, disregarding Governor Stuyvesant's mandate, soon afterward pur- chased from the Indian Sachem Wampage, or " Ann Hoock," as he called himself after the murder of Mrs. Ann Hutchinsou at the Hoock, and from five others of his tribe, a large tract of land that had been sold to the Dutch already, including the present town of Pellaun.

Among those who had come over to New Amster- dam from the old country at an early day, as early at least as 1653, was "the Honorable Frederick Philipse, of East Friesland, in Holland." The orthography of the name is given variously. There is a vane in shape of a banneret on the east end of the old Dutch Church of Sleepy Hollow, which was probably his own device, and put there by his own order, and into that is cut the monogram of the church's founder, in combination, representing in the Dutch orthography Vreedryck Felypse or Felypsen, while upon F one of the two silver cups of the communion service given to the church by himself and his wife there is graven the name Fredryck Flypse, and upon the other the name of his wife, Catharina Van Cortlant. His name alone with the same orthography is also graven upon the baptismal bowl.

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HISTORY OF WESTCHESTER COUNTY.

On December 10, 1681, Frederick Philipse-for thus his name is given in the English documents and records-became the purchaser of a tract of land along the "Pekantico," mainly in the present township of Greenburgh, but partly also in that of Mount Pleas- ant, the said tract " beginning on the north side of a creek called Bisightick (now known as Sunnyside Brook, running through lands of Edward S. Jaffray, Esq., and directly in front of the late residence of Washington Irving, where it empties into the Hudson River), and so ranging along said river northerly to the land of the said Frederick Philipse (previously purchased north of the present Greenburgh line in Mount Pleas- aut), and thence along the said land, northeast and by east until it comes to and meets with the creek called Neppiran," etc.

For this tract Frederick Philipse gave a quantity of wampum and other goods enumerated in the deed of conveyance as follows : "10 fathom of duffils, 10 blankets, 8 guns, 7 shirts, 1 anker of rum, 25 lbs. of powder. 10 bars of lead, 2 iron pots, 5 earthen cans, 12 steels to strike fire, 2 cooper's addz, 2 half vats of beere, 70 fathom of wampum, 7 pairs of stockings, 6 howes, 12 axes, 9 kettles, 40 knives, 6 brass tobacco boxes, 6 coates, 2 drawing knives."

In the following spring, April 12, 1682, he made a second purchase of lands in Greenburgh, lying south of those included in the first purchase, "ranging along Hudson River southerly to a creek or fall called by the Indians Weghquegsike, and by the Christians called Lawrence's plantation ; and from the mouth of the said creek or fall upon a due cast course to a creek called by the Indians Nippiran, and by the Christians Youncker's Kill." This purchase included what are now the villages of Tarrytown, Irvington and Dobbs Ferry. The consideration, as in the previous case, consisted of pots, kettles, wampum, shirts, stockings, blankets, "yearthen jugges," rum, " beere," guns, pow- der, lead, knives, " axis," "cooper's addz," etc.

On September 6, 1682, five months later, Frederick Philipse made his third purchase of land in Green- burgh from the native Indians, "being on the cast side of Hudson's River, beginning on the north side of the land belonging to the Youneker's Kill, or Nep- perhaem, at a great rock, called by the Indians Siggles, and from thence ranging into the wood east- wardly to a creek, called by the Indians Nepperha, and from thence along the said creek northerly till you come to the eastward of the head of a creek, called by the Indians Weghqueghe, being the utmost bounds of the lands formerly bought of the Indians." This purchase included the yet unsold land lying north and west of the Nepperhan, extending thence up to the lower limit of the last purchase and across to the Hudson River. The consideration in this case, as before, was paid in blankets, shirts, guns, powder, lead, rum, etc.

On June 5, 1684, Frederick Philipse made his fourth and last purchase of the Indians in Greenburgh, and

the tract thus transferred includes the lands lying east of the Nepperhan (or Saw-Mill) River and west of the Bronx. The payment consisted of the usual quantity of clothing and other dry-goods, and of kitchen uten- sils, together with guns, powder and rum, to which were added "10 spoons and 2 rools of tobacco."

By these successive conveyarces, running through a period of nearly three years, with others previously made, and upon what now seems a very ridiculous consideration, Frederick Philipse became the pro- prictor of an immense landed estate within the limits of the present townships of Greenburgh and Mount Pleasant. He had already become the owner of other lands in addition to these, having made a joint pur- chase in Upper Yonkers with Thomas Delaval and Thomas Lewis on November 29, 1672, which seems to have been his first transaction of the kind in this neighborhood. He afterwards bought of white peo- ple, west of the Hudson River, the Tappaan salt- meadows, lying opposite to Irvington and Dobbs Ferry, on June 27, 1687, which was probably his last. These last-named purchases, however, lic outside of the territory whose history is here to be traced.

Although he completed his title as proprietor of all these lands in Greenburgh by his final purchase in 1684, it was not till 1693, nine years later, that Fred- erick Philipse received the royal charter from Wil- liam and Mary, King and Queen of Great Britain, con- stituting him lord of the Manor of Philipsburgh, confirming his claims to the lands and defining their bounds.

The title to the possessions thus acquired and the rights and prerogatives conferred by the royal char- ter were transmitted by inheritance through a period of eighty-six years, until they were all extinguished in 1779 by the Legislature of New York, which de- clared Colonel Frederick Philipse, the great-grandson of the original lord of the manor, to be guilty of treasou against his country by casting in his lot with her enemies during the War of the Revolution, and on that ground it confiscated all his property to the State. The Legislature went further and enacted a law providing for the appointment of Commissioners of Forfeitures to sell the lands thus confiscated. . 1 supplementary act was passed on May 12, 1784, under which Isaae Stoutenburgh and General Philip Van Cortlandt we're duly appointed as said commissioners, and in 1785 they accordingly sold the lands in fee to those largely who had been former tenants under the hereditary proprietor and lord. The deeds given by these commissioners were to operate as a warranty of the State against all future claims. The title to a large part of the land in Westchester County, and to all, in fact, in Greenburgh and Mount Pleasant, is traceable directly back to these commissioners' deeds.

The Philipse family had a history that was marked by varied fortunes. Its origin was in Bohemia, where it is said to have ranked as noble. Being in active sympathy with John Huss and Jerome of Prague,

HORTICULTURAL BUILDING. LORD & BURNHAM, PROPRIETORS.

'REDWOOD COTTAGE,"

IRVINGTON, N. Y.

RESIDENCE OF FREDERIC A. LORD AND W. ADDISON BURNHAM.

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GREENBURGH.

those Reformers before the Reformation, some of its Dutch Church of Sleepy Hollow and with Castle Philipse, or the manor-house, on the Pocantico Creek. Frederick Philipse died in 1702, aged seventy-six ycars, and was buried under the old church. His widow, the Lady Philipse, survived him twenty-eight years and died in 1730, which is the date of her last will and testament. members became the subjects of persecution. They suffered severely, both in person and property, and were at length constrained to leave their native country and to seek for an asylum in Holland. In Friesland, on the north western shore, among a people -the Frisians-who are said to be the only Germanic tribe that has preserved its name since the time of Tacitus, and who were characterized as much by their physical force as by their courage and lofty inde- pendence, the head of the Philipse family made for himself a home in the little town of Bolsward. Here, about the close of the sixteenth century, the father of our American Philipse was born. The child hay- ing grown to man's estate, took for his wife Grietje or Margaretha Dacres. To them a son was born in Bols- To his adopted daughter Eva and his own daugh- ter Anna he left a large amount of property in New York City, New Jersey and elsewhere outside of the Philipsburgh Manor. But the manor itself he divided into two parts, and left one part to his son Adolphus, and the other to his grand- son Frederick, whose father had died in Barbadoes. The part above Er Dobbs Ferry he left to his son Adol- phus. The part below he left to his grandson Fred- erick. Thus the manor continued divided for forty- seven years, till PHILIPSE MANOR HOUSE, PUTNAM COUNTY, N. Y. 1749, when Adol- ward, about 1626, who was named Frederick, after his father and grandfather. Some years later, when that son and only child became a young man, the parents emigrated to New Amsterdam (now New York), in America. Being poor, the son had learned the trade of a carpenter in order to earn a living. He is said to have worked at his trade on the old Dutch Church in the fort, down near the present Bat- tery. Itis claimed, indeed, that the pulpit of that church was the work of his own hands. Having made his way by industry and thrift, } phus died unmarried, and his nephew, Frederick, he afterwards left his trade and engaged in mereantile business.

The children of Frederick Philipsc were: 1. Eva de Vries Philipse, who was really his step-daughter, but whoin he adopted as his own child. She married Jacobus Van Cortlandt in 1691, the year before his own second marriage. 2. Adolphus. 3. Philip, who died in Barbadoes in 1700, two years before his father. He left an only child, Frederick, five years old. 4.' Anna.

At length he married the rich widow of Peter Rudolphns de Vries, whose maiden-name was Marga- retha Hardenbroek. She had an only daughter, Eva, whom he adopted as his own, and who is spoken of in the history of the times as Eva Philipse. After some years of continued prosperity, during which he amassed a large fortune, his wife died, not later prob- ably than about 1690, and on November 30, 1692, hc married a second time. The lady in this case was Catharina Van Cortlandt, daughter of Oloff Stephanus Van Cortlandt and widow of John Derval. She brought him a double fortune, first from her father and then from her late husband, who had left her with ample means. This is the Catharine Van Cort- landt and wife of Frederick Philipse, whose name is so intimately connected with Tarrytown, with the old

having inherited his uncle's estate, the two parts were reunited and became one. Having been born in Barbadoes and educated in Europe, Frederick was a stranger to the church of his grandfather, the Dutch Church, but was devoted to the Church of England. His wife was Joanna Brockholes, daugliter of General Anthony Brockholes, whom he married in 1719. He died in New York City, July 26, 1751, aged fifty-seven years, leaving a widow and five children.

The oldest of these children was his son Frederick, born September 14, 1720, and he became the third and last lord of the Manor of Philipsburgh. He completed his education and graduated at King's College (now Columbia), in New York City. From the fact of his being colonel of the militia, he was most frequently spoken of as Colonel Philipsc. His wife was the widow Elizabeth Rutgers and daughter

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HISTORY OF WESTCHESTER COUNTY.

of Charles Williams, an English gentleman, connect- ed with the custom-house. Colonel Philipse was a devoted adherent of the Church of England. Being a Tory in the Revolution, he was arrested by the Am- erican authorities after the battle of White Plains, or Chatterton's Hill, which took place ou October 28, 1776. In 1,77 he betook himself for refuge to the eity of New York, which was then in the hands of the British. From thenee he went to England, where he died in the city of Chester on April 30, 1785, aged sixty-five years. He was buried in the great catlicdral church of that city, where a monument was erccted to his memory. The following words, taken from the in- scription upou it, give, probably, a truthful state- ment of his attitude and spirit during the Revolution- ary War: "Firmly attached to his sovereign and the British constitution, he opposed, at the hazard of his life, the late Rebellion in North America : And for this faithful discharge of his duty to his King and country he was proscribed, and his estate, one of the largest in New York, was confiscated by the usurped Legislature of that Proviuee. When the British troops were withdrawn from New York, in 1783, he quitted a province to which he had always been an ornament and benefactor, and came to England, leav- ing all his property behind him."

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History of Westchester county : New York, including Morrisania, Kings Bridge, and West Farms, which have been annexed to New York City, Vol. II, Part 40

Author: Scharf, J. Thomas (John Thomas), 1843-1898, Publication date: 1886 Publisher: Philadelphia : L.E. Preston & Co. Number of Pages: 1286

Author: Scharf, J. Thomas (John Thomas), 1843-1898,
Publication date: 1886
Publisher: Philadelphia : L.E. Preston & Co.
Number of Pages: 1286