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The Manor of Philipsburgh

A Paper Read Before The
New York Historical Society
by T. Astley Atkins,
Vice-President of the Yonkers Historical and Library Association
on June 5th, 1894
Published by the Yonkers Historical and Library Association, 1894

This page was last updated: Wednesday, 05-Nov-2008 14:32:44 MST

Part I — Creation of the Manor

To many men there is in the unknown an inexplicable fascination. This fascination has at all times impelled the more venturesome to action, to investigation and to conquest. History is crowded with examples of the truth of this saying. The history of our country furnishes numberless cases of the seeking after prosperity or glory in the favoring continent upon which we live. For several generations the mystery of the Atlantic Coast was sought to be solved by Dutchman, Englishman, Spaniard and Frenchman, not to speak lightly of the efforts of the valorous Swede in the same direction. Could gold be found? Could religion be furthered? Could honor be secured in this mysterious region? Such were the questions asked.

Across the turbulent Atlantic—so our Dutch ancestors learned from report, from travelers and from written sources of information—there was country of unlimited possibilities, a country both like and unlike their own beloved Netherland. Their interest was aroused, when, from various sources, they heard of great rivers landlocked harbors, marsh and meadow land, and tree-clad hills, with open valleys, growing familiar products, and all near the ocean and easily reached, once the great sea was safely passed.

While the Dutchman was piously inclined, he made no claim of salvation of souls to justify his seizure of aboriginal land, and while he would not fail to secure the golden nugget by fair means, he scorned its acquisition by foul. Your true Dutchman prefers, and always did prefer, something like himself, that is, something that was solid and when once acquired, would not take wings to itself. While the lighter spirited Spaniard digged and murdered for gold, the Dutchman delved and sought for land. And so with the lust of land in his mind, and with an eye to the possession of dryer and broader acres than the fatherland offered to its crowded children, the denizen of the low country made his quiet and almost unannounced settlement in the new world, the land of promise.

The Dutchman has and always will have a stolid, persuasive method of pushing his way to the front. Seldom discouraged by adverse circumstances, always possessed of an indomitable spirit of perseverance, hard to convince that he is beaten, he was just the settler for the country he coveted and possessed.

The reality never seemed to disappoint him as it did his English and Spanish co-settler. Probable the glitter did not attract him so much as the reality impressed him. Used to hardship and stern reality at home he had possibly not expected an easier life in the new world. Accustomed to earn his bread in true scriptural manner he had no expectation of finding the meadows and forests golden, otherwise than through the same toil and anxiety which ruled his early home. And so the wily, able-bodied Dutch settler came, and seeing, approved and claimed this little island for his own. He brought not only his unconquerable spirit with him, but also his family and his earthly possessions. He came to stay. So also, alas! did many who had neither family nor possessions to bring with them.

Soon even this island of the Manhates was not capacious enough to suit the now thoroughly aroused Dutch settler, and he looked longingly over towards the larger islands, and peered audaciously northward up the river of Hendrick Hudson.

To the Northward, but a little way up the river, and over on the Main, there seemed a goodly land. The lower portion was wonderfully like the home country he had so lately left. There were swift flowing tidal streams, and thousands of acres of salt marsh and meadow land, low lying along the stream and a little above the marsh. Possibly if it had been a little higher above the water we might have been treating of an English Manor instead of a Dutch one. Who knows? Less than this has turned the tide of conquest and settlement.

The settlement of Manhattan Island is over familiar to all, and we need not delay even a moment to consider it. The settlement of the Manor land adjacent to this island is not so well known, and deserves more consideration than has been accorded it by local historians.

When the dweller in New Amsterdam in very early days started northward, he seldom reached the tidal river known as the Harlem and Spuyten Duyvil Creek. Over that river still dwelt Indians, and the country was virtually unknown. It was easier to sail up the Hudson, or along the Sound, and immeasurably safer, than it was to investigate the qualities of meadow and forest to the north of the little stream, which separated the Main from the Island. Again it was the mysterious land. But long years after the Dutchman had settled this Island, the Main land was unsettled and practically unknown.

No doubt longing eyes had been cast that way, but it was too far away from the town to attempt settlement in earlier days. It was unsafe to do so.

As one passed up or down the noble river to the new settlements at the North, the future Manor of Philipsburgh looked pleasing, though hardly accessible. One proud spirited Dutchman saw it, coveted it, and later won it, Adriaen van der Donck by name.

Before further mention of this celebrated character, let us for a moment dwell upon the scene of the future Manor, as it appeared at the time of Hendrick Hudson's sail along its West line on his trips North and South.

Across from the island of the Manhates, over the Kill now known as Spuyten Duyvil Creek, the Manor land commenced on the river side with the majestic bluff known to the Indian as Sho-rack-ap-pock, and later to the Dutch as the Spuyt-den-duyvil, or the point of the quot;devils.quot; You will note that tradition gives this section of the Manor the credit of the first unpleasant contact of the hardy Dutchmen, or Englishmen as you will, with the black quot;devilsquot; of the Main. We often find the Indians mentioned as devils in the early New York and Jersey records.

To the east of Sho-rack-ap-pock the land under the bluff was salt meadow and sloping hill-side until a point on the Harlem was reached, where Fordham lies. The bluff reached along the Hudson nearly four miles, an unbroken forest; the meadow land stretched up into the country behind it full as many miles. To the Dutchman this rear country was indeed most charming, most homelike.

Four miles up the river the first break occurs. Happy Nap-peck-a-mack here came bubbling and sparkling fresh from the hills of quot;Chappequa,quot; and flowed untainted and pure into the Ma-hi-can-i-tuck, quot;ever flowing waters.quot; In fifty years after settlement by the Dutch we find Nap-peck-a-mack corrupted into Nepperhaem, and its Indian dwellers into Mahicanders, the Mohicans of their English successors.

Following the line of hills on the east bank of the Hudson, the next notable break was at Wick-quas-keck, corrupted into Wicker's Creek, at Dobb's Ferry.

At Tarrytown, Alipconck, the Po-can-ti-co broke through the forest-clad hill before one came to Sint Sinck, and last of all the hill sloped off at the Kitcha-wanck, or Croton River. East of this river bluff was a perfect jumble of narrow valleys and steep forest-clad hills, until the line of the Neperah (spell it as you will, Nepera, Nepperhan, Nipporha, or Nappeckamack) the eastern boundary line for many a mile north of the Bronx, to which the line shifted when the Nepperan struck out for the West. Incidentally you have the boundaries of the Manor.

And who dwelt there in those early days? Ruttenber is my authority for saying that the Manhates of the island spread over the lower mainland at and about Shorackappock, even so far as Nappeckamack, and then the Wickquaskecks north and east of them; for we hear of Wickquaskecks as far over as Greenwich on the Sound.

Pursuing our journey northward we find the wigwams of the Sint Sincks. Numerous small settlements also dotted the interior country. Thus we have discovered and peopled with Indians, that tract of land now known as the south west corner of old Westchester County, covered at present by the well known settlements of Kings Bridge, Spuyten Duyvil, Riverdale, Yonkers, Hastings, Dobbs' Ferry, Irvington, Tarrytown and Sing Sing.

In the days we write of, however, the Indian settlers had a worse name than have their white successors. A sample opinion may be given: One Wassenaar writes as follows: quot;On the east side (of the Hudson) on the main land, dwell the Manhattans, a bad race of savages, who have always been very obstinate and unfriendly towards our people.quot; Just why this writer gave the main-land folk such a bad name is puzzling, unless it be that the savage objected to the Dutch trespassing upon his little farm.

Of these North River Indians Adriaen van der Donck wrote as follows: quot;From sixteen to eighteen families occupied one house. quot; These houses, it would seem, were rudely constructed arbors, rarely exceeding twenty-five feet in length. He continues: quot;A single fire in the centre served them all, although each family occupied at night its particular division and mats.quot; They suffered, as might well be supposed, in this climate, and in such houses, from rheumatism and toothache, and were prone to apoplexy and gout. For all these ills their chief remedy was the sweating bath. He further says of them: quot;They are cheerful when they have a sufficiency to support nature.quot; Their food consisted of badgers, dogs, fish, snakes, frogs and such like. They made pap, which they called sapsis, and mixed it with beans. They were not particularly regular about meals, eating when hunger prodded them to it. A right royal feast is said to have been beaver tails, brains of fish and sapsis ornamented with beans. When eating they squatted.

The same writer says that in those days the river was rich in sturgeon, bass, sheepshead and the like, and he says that in his day, about the middle of the seventeenth century two frisky whales journeyed northward, even so far as Cohoes. Even the staid Dutchman loved to tell a wondrous tale.

It is my purpose to indulge this evening in as few dates and quotations as is possible, but to fix matters more clearly in our minds a date now and then seems absolutely necessary. It was in the year sixteen hundred and thirty-nine, and in the month of August, at Fort Amsterdam, that the first of those piously conceived robberies of the natives took place, and the Dutch West India Company bought from Feckquemeck and other guileless Indians Keckeshick, quot;which lies over against the flats of the Island of Manhates.quot;

About the year sixteen hundred and forty-six Adriaen van der Donck is reported as the purchaser of these or a portion of these lands, and land to the North, including Nepperhaem, from an Indian Chief named Tackarew. Titles were shadowy in those days, and boundaries uncertain, but van der Donck was recognized as quot;Patroon of the Colony of Nepperhaem, called by him Colendonck.quot; The probable boundaries of his estate took in most, if not all, of the old town and present City of Yonkers. It was bounded quot;on the North by a stream called Maccakassin, and ran South to Nepperhaem; thence to Shorakapkock Kill and to Pa-pi-ri-ni-men Creek, and Eastward to the Bronx.quot; Not quite all yet of the Manor of Phillipsburgh, but a very valuable portion of it, especially the low land.

Having treated the personal history of van der Donck at length in a paper read before the Westchester County Historical Society at their annual meeting at the Court House in White Plains, and having filed a copy of that paper in your library, you will not be asked to consider the first Patroon of Yonkers at any great length now. But a few words concerning this celebrated man, whose birthplace, Breda Holland, I visited a few years ago in search of historical material, may not be amiss.

Young van der Donck was brought up amid the din of war, and the disquiet of a religious struggle, which shook the little world around him to its very foundations. After pursuing his studies to the extent of the facilities of that day, he enjoyed the privilege of a course of law at the University of Leyden, which institution afterwards conferred on him the degree of Doctor of the Civil and Canon Law.

In the year sixteen hundred and forty-one he was appointed Sheriff of Renssalaerwyck. His stay at the North was not the most cheerful period of his life, for he was engaged in numerous squabbles, and rather wore his welcome out there, and probably was better satisfied with his Patroonship down the river. Certainly he was most of his life at variance with the constituted authorities, whether at Amsterdam, New Amsterdam, or Renssalaerwyck. It is said of these early times that when the Patroons were not busy fighting the natives, they were quarrelling with the home government, and when these pastimes failed, then they managed to embroil themselves with their Eng1ish neighbors.

After van der Donck came down from Renssalaerwyck the select men of New Amsterdam chose him and two other quot;persons of honor and of good name and fame,quot; to go home and quot;represent the poor condition of the country and pray for redress.quot;

Donck was an agitator, a reformer, and always a friend of the people. It reads like our Revolutionary history, that the New Netherlands Dutchman's wrongs arose from,

• 1st. Unsuitable government;
• 2d. Scanty privileges;
• 3d. Onerous imposts and exactions.

During his residence as People's Delegate at the Hague, he received many far more incendiary appeals than this simple statement, which he took with him. It is impossible to follow the career of van der Donck in detail; it would fill books to do so.

He returned to this Colony in the year sixteen hundred and fifty-three, but no account of his reception has come into my hands, and his movements from that date until his death are but slightly recorded. From subsequent records, in which the division of his property is mentioned, it is probable that he died within a short time after his return to his Colony. A few years later we find him spoken of by his ungrateful neighbors as quot;Old Ver Donck.quot;

Between the time of Adriaen van der Donck and the possession of the first of the Philipses, there was a period of unrest, and re-settlement in and upon the Main land. The Indian rising of Sixteen hundred and fifty-five cleared the land between the Croton and the Harlem and the Hudson and the Bronx rivers of inhabitants. It is supposed, although there is no real authority to back up the supposition, that the Indians swept from the face of the earth not only every vestige of van der Donck's descendants, but all their cattle and farm stock, as well as their houses and barns. But it is fair to presume that some of them, with their moveable property, fled to their relatives on Long Island. For several years, at least after the so-called quot;rising,quot; the main land adjacent to the Island of the Manhates was not the safest place in the world for a gentleman's country residence. Gradually, however, the towns people recovered from their fright, and we find transfers of parts of the land adjacent to the island, and some considerable settlements on the borders of our tract. But it is generally conceded that the events of Sixteen hundred and fifty-five reduced the south west corner of what is now Westchester County to the almost identical state of aboriginal quiet in which it was found by Adriaen van der Donck, when he took nominal possession, and started out to recruit a colony for it in Holland.

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