Frederick Philipse (1626 – December 23, 1702Frank Allaben "Frederick Philipse" in "John Watts de Peyster. Volume 1", Adamant Media Corporation, , pp. 62-63) was a Dutch-born landowner, merchant, and slave trader. In some early records, his first name is also spelled Vredrick and Vredryk;Chronicles of Tarrytown and Sleepy Hollow by Edgar Mayhew Bacon. The Knickerbocker Press. (1900), p. 5. 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.(William Jay, The Life of John Jay: with selection of his correspondence and miscellaneous papers. New York: J. & J Harper, 1833, p. 10). On his Bohemian aristocratic ancestry, see also: Thomas Capek, Ancestry of Frederick Philipse: First Lord and Founder of Philipse Manor at Yonkers, N. Y. New York: The Paebar Co., 1939. Philipse arrived in America as early as 1653.Appleton, W.S. The Heraldic Journal, Recording the Amorial Bearings and Genealogies of American Families, Wiggen & Lunt, Boston, 1867 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 . 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 tract became the present-day Putnam County, New York.
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.Maika, Dennis J. (2005). "Philipsburg Manor". Encyclopedia of the State of New York, First ed. (Peter Eisenstadt, ed.). Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press. p. 1199. 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 , about (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.In the late 18th century, the Lower Mills area was often referred to as "Philipse's." 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.
The British Parliament’s Bolting Act (enacted in 1678 and reinforced in 1680) granted New York City an exclusive monopoly on the "bolting" (sifting and milling) of wheat and corn and on the export of flour within the Province of New York. It led to a sharp rise in the Hudson Valley's demand for enslaved labor, and Philipse seized on the opportunity. In 1685, he imported about 50 slaves directly from Angola on his own ship. He was also an interloper, trading to the east of the Cape of Good Hope, and becoming a known trading partner of Madagascar pirate-merchants such as Adam Baldridge and Edward Welch, employing traders like Thomas Mostyn and John Thurber to make the New York-to-Madagascar voyages. In the 1690s, Baldridge supplied many of the slaves traded and owned by the Philipse family. In return, Philipse sent Baldridge guns, alcohol, and other supplies much in demand by pirates. As local lore has it, the massive boulder known as Kidd's Rock near the Philipsburg Manor House (in what is now Kingsland Point Park) was a clandestine meeting place for Frederick Philipse and Captain Kidd, a privateer-turned-pirate and allegedly a business associate of Philipse. According to Westchester County historian Stephen Jenkins, Philipse was one of the backers of Captain Kidd in colonial Governor Bellomont's time, and Lord Bellomont once remarked: "If the coffers of Frederick Philipse were searched, Captain Kidd's missing treasures could easily be found."Jenkins, Stephen (1911). The Greatest Street in the World: The Story of Broadway. G. P. Putnam's Sons.
Philipse's tenant farmers grew wheat, which was by far the most valuable crop grown in colonial New York, and he was among the first New York traders to begin exporting wheat. His ships also carried furs, tobacco, stoneware, textiles, and a variety of other items, both luxury and practical. As mentioned above, the ships also carried enslaved Africans. Philipse served on Governor Bellomont's executive council from 1691 to 1698, when he was banned from public office by Bellomont for engaging in piracy and the slave trade. He preempted the order by resigning.
Philipse died in 1702 and was buried alongside his two wives in the family crypt under the floorboards of the Old Dutch Church of Sleepy Hollow.
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 PhilipseSavery, Florence M., Cold Springs Recorder, 1912 Spellings of Philipse varied in the New World, among them: F-l-y-p-s-e, F-i-y-p-s-e-n, V-i-y-p-s-e, Y-i-y-p-s-e-n 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:Morris, F.O., Philipse of Philipsburgh, in The New England Historical and Genealogical Register, vol. 10 (1856) Married 1662, name listed as "Philipszen", New York Genealogical & Biographical Record (quarterly), 1875, selected extracts Philip Philipse,Philipse Manor Hall State Historic Site: Philip Philipse, oldest son of Frederick Philipse I, and his wife, Mary, both died in Barbados in 1689 (on September 14 and October 18, respectively). Their death notices, signed by the rector of nearby St. James Church, list cause of death as "belly ake", aka dysentery, a frequent cause of death during that time period on the island. 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.Glenn, p. 258: Her will is dated 7th January, 1730 Glenn, Thomas Allen, "Some colonial mansions and those who lived in them: With genealogies of the various families mentioned", H. T. Coates & company, Philadelphia1900 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.Jeff Canning and Wally Buxton, History of the Tarrytowns. Harrison, NJ: Harbor Hill Books, 1975. 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.Smith, Philip Henry, General History of Putnam County: From 1609 to 1876, inclusive, published by the author, Pawling, NY, 1877, p. 44