Frederick Philipse (1626 – December 23, 1702) was a Dutch-born landowner, merchant, and slave trader. In some early records, his first name is also spelled Vredrick and Vredryk; he spelled his last name three different ways, sometimes in the same document, such as his own last will—Flypsen, Flypse, and Flipse.
The first lord of the Manor of Philipseborough (the original spelling, used in the 1693 royal charter, would be later changed to Philipsburg) and patriarch of the Philipse family, he immigrated to North America from Friesland. Philipse arrived in America as early as 1653. In 1662, he married Margaret Hardenbroeck, a wealthy and driven widow. By associating and collaborating with respectable merchants and prominent political figures on one hand and criminal elements—including pirates and slave traders—on the other, the Philipses built a massive fortune.
Beginning in 1672 Philipse and some partners started acquiring land in what was to become lower Westchester County, New York. When the English took over the Dutch colony in 1674, Philipse pledged his allegiance to England and was rewarded with manorship for his holdings, which ultimately grew to some 81 mi2 (210 km2). Serving later on the governor's executive council, he was subsequently banned from government office for conducting a slave trade into New York.
Upon his death, Philipse was one of the greatest landholders in the Province of New York. He owned the vast stretch of land spanning from Spuyten Duyvil Creek in the Bronx (then in lower Westchester County), to the Croton River. He was regarded by some as the richest man in the colony. His son Adolphus acquired substantial land north of modern Westchester sanctioned as the royal Philipse Patent. Stripped from the family after the Revolution for their Tory sympathies, the some 250 mi2 (650 km2) tract became the present-day Putnam County, New York.
Contents
Biography
Frederick Philipse emigrated from the Friesland area of the Netherlands to Flatbush, New Netherland, on Long Island, and started as a carpenter for the Dutch West India Company.
Much of the land that would become Philipsburg Manor had previously belonged to Adriaen van der Donck, who had invested in an unsuccessful Dutch patroonship in New Netherland before the English takeover in 1664. In 1672, Frederick Philipse I, Thomas Delavall, and Thomas Lewis purchased from his widow's brother the first tracts of land in current-day northern Yonkers. Philipse made several additional purchases between 1680 and 1686 from the Wiechquaeskeck and Sintsink Indian tribes, expanding the property to both the north and south. He also bought from Dr. George Lockhart a "meadow at Tappan," a land plot west of the Hudson River. This acquisition allowed Philipse to maintain a strategic economic foothold on the other side of the river, across from the greater part of his estate.
Philipse also bought out his partners' stakes during this time, enticing friends from New Amsterdam and Long Island to move with him with the promise of free land and limited taxes. The manor grew to around 52,000 acres (21,000 ha), about 81 mi2 (210 km2) (210 km2), comprising much of today's lower Westchester County, New York.
The estate's boundaries were the Spuyten Duyvil Creek, the Croton River, the Hudson River, and the Bronx River. Philipse was granted a royal charter in 1693, creating the Manor of Philipsburg, and making him first lord of the manor. Along with the three other main manors of the colony—Rensselaerswyck, Cortlandt, and Livingston—Philipsburg created one of the richest and most powerful families in the colony.
After being granted his manorship, he built the first bridge connecting New York City with the mainland, erecting King's Bridge over the Spuyten Duyvil at Marble Hill. On the northern part of his land, he also began construction of a gristmill and a stone church, now known as the Old Dutch Church of Sleepy Hollow. That part of the manor became referred to as the Upper Mills. On the southern part of the manor (the Lower Mills), Philipse built a simple residence near the confluence of the Nepperhan River with the Hudson. Later, it was expanded by his descendants into a full-fledged mansion, Philipse Manor Hall. Its location is now the Getty Square neighborhood of Yonkers, New York. The neighborhood of Kingsbridge, Bronx, is named for his bridge over the Harlem River. Some of Philipse’s construction projects were built through the labor of enslaved individuals.
Family
The Philipse family is of Bohemian origin. According to Supreme Court Justice John Jay (whose maternal grandmother, Eva de Vries, had been adopted by Frederick Philipse upon his marriage to Margaret Hardenbroeck): "Frederick Philipse, whose family, originally of Bohemia, had been compelled by popish persecution to take refuge in Holland, whence he had emigrated to New York." By another account, Philipse was the son of Vicount Philipse of Bohemia and Margaret Dacres, supposed to have been a lady of good family from the parish of Dacre, England.
Philipse had eleven children with his first wife, Margaret: Philip Philipse, Adolphus Philipse, Annetje Philipse, Adolph Phillipse, Anna Philipse, Rombout Philipse, Frederick Phillipse, Charles Phillips, Hendrick Phillips, Catherine Phillips, and William Phillips.
Margaret died in 1691. A year later, Frederick married the widow Catharine Van Cortlandt Derval, who survived him for many years. She was the sister of Stephanus Van Cortlandt, an adviser to the provincial governor. Her brother Jacobus Van Cortlandt married Frederick's adopted daughter Eva and their son Frederick Van Cortlandt later built the Van Cortlandt House Museum in Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, New York. Jacobus and Eva's daughter, Mary, was the mother of John Jay by her marriage to Peter Jay.
In 1697 Adolphus Philipse, Frederick's second son, purchased a tract from Dutch traders which received British Royal sanction as the Highland Patent. Subsequently, known as the "Philipse Patent", the roughly 250 square miles parcel extended eastward from the Hudson River at the northern border of Westchester County some 20 or so miles to the Colony of Connecticut.
Philip Philipse, the eldest son and heir to the Manor, hereditary title, and family commercial holdings, died in either 1699 or 1700. By predeceasing his father, the legacy that would have gone to Philip bypassed him and was distributed between Adolphus and Philip's son, Frederick Philipse II. By the terms of Frederick Philipse's last will and testament, dated October 26, 1700, proved 1702, Adolphus received all the Manor north of Dobb's Ferry, including the present town. He was also named proprietor of a tract of land on the west bank of the Hudson north of Anthony's Nose and executor of Philip's estate.
Notable descendants
John Jay (1745–1829), delegate and president of Continental Congress, drafter of the US Constitution, US ambassador to France and Spain, first Chief Justice of the US; great-grandson of Frederich Philipse I through adoption and marriage
Henry Brockholst Livingston (1757–1823), Justice of US Supreme Court
Alexander Slidell MacKenzie (1842–67), an officer in the United States Navy during the American Civil War and his brother General Ranald S. Mackenzie
Jay Pierrepont Moffat (1896–1943), notable American diplomat, historian and statesman who, between 1917 and 1943, served the State Department in a variety of posts, including that of Ambassador to Canada during the first year of United States participation in World War II
John Watts de Peyster (1821–1907), Brigadier General in the New York State Militia during the American Civil War and philanthropist and military historian after the war
Eva Philipse, adopted daughter of Frederick Philipse I, born Eva de Vries 1660, married Jacobus van Cortland
Margaret Philipse, youngest daughter of Frederick II, bap. Feb. 4, 1733; heiress to Philipse Patent, died intestate some time after 1751 bequeathal and before 1754 division; share redistributed to siblings Philip, Mary, and Susanna
Mary Philipse (1730–1825), eldest daughter of Frederick Philipse II, and possible early romantic interest of George Washington, loyalist, wife of British Colonel Roger Morris, owner of the Mount Morris in Manhattan; heiress to Philipse Patent
Philip Philipse, son of Frederick Philipse II, heir to Philipse Patent
Susanna Philipse, middle daughter of Frederick Philipse II, married to Beverley Robinson, mother of Frederick Philipse Robinson, heiress to Philipse Patent; possible romantic interest of George Washington