Philipsburg Manor: The Westchester plantation where it all began

Pictured is the restored Philipsburg Manor House and mill in today’s Sleepy Hollow. The manor is a National Historic Landmark and is open to the public. (Wikimedia Commons)

An historic tour of the Gilded Age mansions and estates of the lower Hudson River Valley has to begin with the grandfather of all its estates, Philipsburg Manor. 

It was from the ashes of Philipsburg Manor that the neighboring villages of Irvington, Tarrytown and Sleepy Hollow (known as North Tarrytown until 1996) would arise in 1850.

The manor began as a “patroonship” granted by the Dutch West India Company in the Dutch colony New Netherland after 1629 and owned by patroon Adriaen van der Donck. The patroon enjoyed virtually complete control of his manor and the residents on it.

After the English takeover of what was renamed the colony of New York in 1664, Dutch-born Frederick Philipse and business partners Thomas Delavall and Thomas Lewis began purchasing land from the van der Donck manor -- the first purchase in Yonkers in 1672 -- and continued adding more land from adjacent properties including tracts held by three Hudson Valley Indian tribes, the Tappan on the west side of the Hudson River, the Weckquaesgeek in what is now southern Westchester County and the Sintsink (the origin of the name Sing Sing Prison in Ossining) on the east side of the Hudson.

Those Native American tribes were part of the greater Wappinger tribe which was closely related to the Lenape of Delaware and the Mohican of upstate New York.
The manor would eventually extend from Spuyten Duyvil Creek in what is the northern Bronx north to Croton Creek in northern Westchester County and from the Hudson River to the Bronx River in the east and west.

This map of historic Philipsburg Manor (white background) shows what would be its borders today overlaid on the agricultural estate which purchased, imported and employed slave labor until its forfeiture in 1779 by the revolutionary-era government of what would become the State of New York. (Wikimedia Commons)

During Philipse’s lifetime the manor would climb to 52,000 acres after he bought out his partners. In 1693 he was granted a Royal Charter by the English King William and Queen Mary after swearing allegiance to the crown, making him the first Lord of Philipsburg Manor.

His immediate heirs -- son Adolphus Philipse, and grandson Frederick Philipse II, son of Frederick’s late, eldest son, and great-grandson Frederick Philipse III -- would keep the title Lord and add to the estate which some estimates say eventually reached 90,000 acres, making the family among the richest in colonial North America. The property included what is now Putnam County.

Farming wasn’t the only Philipse business. The Philipses were heavily involved in the Atlantic slave trade and slaves were used as a key labor source on the manor.

Many people are unaware of slavery’s role -- or even its existence -- in New York, but it was only abolished in the state in 1827. It is unclear how many slaves were owned by the Philipses and attached to Philipsburg Manor, but records show that Frederick Philipse I imported 50 slaves directly from what is now Angola in southwestern Africa on his own ship in 1685.

The Philipses later partnered with pirates and slave traders who obtained slaves in Madagascar in exchange for guns, alcohol and other goods made or grown on Philipse lands.

The Philipse family encouraged farmers to operate leased farms on its properties. Those tenant farmers were given an opportunity to buy their properties at the conclusion of the American Revolution.

Frederick Philipse III sided with the British during the Revolution and because he was a Loyalist -- or Tory -- had his land taken by the Americans under the leadership of his cousin, Founding Father John Jay, in 1779, losing his title in the process. He fled with the departing British to England in 1783 and died in Chester, England two years later.

Frederick Philipse III, a Loyalist to the British Crown
 during the American Revolution, was the final
Lord of Philipsburg Manor. His ancestral lands were seized
by the Revolutionary government of New York including
his cousin, Founding Father John Jay, in 1779. Philipse
died in 1785 after emigrating to England. (Wikimedia
Commons, public domain)

Four Dutch farmers -- Wolfert Ecker, Barent Dutcher, Capt. John Buckhout and Capt. Jan Harmse -- leased Philipse land in what is now Irvington. Their farms ran west to east from the Hudson River up well past what is now Broadway and were similar in size. The farms started in the north with Ecker’s land and home -- Wolfert’s Roost of Washington Irving and Sunnyside fame -- on both sides of what is now Sunnyside Lane, then came Dutcher’s farm in what would now be all of Matthiessen Park and all of what is now Main Street and its grid of north-south side streets.

To the south encompassing basically what is now Barney Park, Jaffray Park, Spiro Park and Memorial Park was the Buckhout farm -- eventually the Buckhout-Jewell farm. South of modern Dows Lane to about the town line in Ardsley Park was the Harmse farm. The Harmse farmhouse -- Odell Tavern -- still stands on private property at the southeast corner of Dows Lane and South Broadway.

The Odell Tavern on South Broadway in Irvington, N.Y., is pictured ca. 1933, is one of the oldest buildings in Westchester. It was built in 1690 and was the tenant farmhouse of Capt. Jan Harmse, who farmed on the Philipse family’s Philipsburg Manor estate. The tavern still stands today, but it is held under private ownership. (Library of Congress)

The original Ecker house was burned by the British during the American Revolution after an Ecker relative fired at British ships on the adjacent Hudson River with a “goose rifle charged with nails.”

The above descriptions are basically between the river and Broadway. Remember all the farms extended well east above Broadway.

William Dutcher eventually inherited the Dutcher farm and sold half of it -- the part that makes up the Main Street and its north-south side streets today -- to Justus Dearman in 1817. Dearman then sold it to Gustavo F. Sacchi in 1848 for $26,000. Sacchi sold the parcel the same year to John Jay – the grandson of the American Founding Father. Jay laid it out as a village named Dearman Town after Justus Dearman. Jay’s lots were sold at auction in Manhattan on April 25, 1850 and a town was born.

The town was renamed Irvington in 1854 in honor of author Washington Irving and incorporated as a village within the Town of Greenburgh in 1872.

Pictured is Philipse Manor Hall State Historic Site in the Getty Square neighborhood of Yonkers. The family seat of the Philipse family of Philipse Manor, it was built in about 1682 by Frederick Philipse I and is Westchester County’s oldest building. It is located near the Hudson River at Warburton Avenue and Dock Street and is a museum open to the public. (Wikimedia Commons)

The Philipse family seat Philipse Manor Hall (Yonkers) still stands as do the Philipsburg Manor House and the Old Dutch Church, both in Sleepy Hollow. All three are National Historic Landmarks.

The Philipsburg Manor property in Sleepy Hollow (known as North Tarrytown from the second half of the 19th century until 1996) was purchased by Gerard Beekman. It was then owned by an early 20th century singer/entertainer named Elsie Janis (1889-1956) -- she was known as “The Sweetheart of the AEF” for entertaining troops of the American Expeditionary Force in France during World War I. The property was in receivership when bought by John D. Rockefeller of the nearby Kykuit estate in 1940 and opened to tourists in 1943.

Today, Historic Hudson Valley -- a non-profit begun by John D. Rockefeller as Sleepy Hollow Restorations in 1950 -- operates Philipsburg Manor and five other landmark sites in the area: Sunnyside in Tarrytown, Van Cortlandt Manor in Croton-on-Hudson, Union Church of Pocantico Hills, Montgomery Place in Annandale and Kykuit in Pocantico Hills.

* Click here for links to dozens of Gilded Age stories by this author

AUTHOR'S NOTES

The Manor House at Philipsburg Manor was held privately by the Beekman family throughout the 19th century and in September 1915 was sold to singer and film and stage actress Elsie Janis who restored it and modernized it while keeping many of its key historic details. Janis was friends with many of the pioneers of the motion picture industry, at that time based in New York City and northern New Jersey, among them Douglas Fairbanks Sr., Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin, all of whom frequented Philipsburg Manor. In fact, Fairbanks and Pickford, both married at the time to other spouses, met at Janis' home in November 1915 and became Hollywood's power couple when they married each other in 1920. They and best friend Chaplin founded United Artists shortly thereafter.

Janis, in deep financial trouble after a car accident and reverses worsened by the Depression, sold the property to John D. Rockefeller Jr. in 1940. ...

Elsie Janis gained international fame during World War I, traveling throughout France entertaining the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) under the command of Gen. Black Jack Pershing throughout 1917 and 1918. Her devotion to the troops led to them nicknaming her "The Sweetheart of the AEF." She reprised those efforts in the 1940s, traveling widely entertaining U.S. troops with Bob Hope's USO shows during World War II. The following video offers a brief biography of Janis ...

Here are several videos exploring life at historic Philipsburg Manor during the Philipse family period ...

... This video, Runaway, was produced by Historic Hudson Valley. It is the story of an enslaved woman named Sue and her encounter with fellow slaves who are trying to escape and find freedom ...

... The following video from Historic Hudson Valley explores the spring festival Pinkster celebrated at Philipsburg Manor. Pinkster was celebrated over several days by African and Dutch New Yorkers from the 17th to 19th centuries. The holiday was brought to the New World by Dutch settlers in the 1620s and flourished in the Dutch settlement areas of the Hudson Valley, northern New Jersey, and western Long Island. These same areas also had significant populations of enslaved Africans from the 1600s until complete emancipation in New York State in 1827. For enslaved people, the year offered few holidays or breaks from tedious and often grueling work. For rural captives in particular, who were often isolated from larger African communities, Pinkster became the most important break in the year.

... This next video recreates an historic rye harvest at Philipsburg Manor, courtesy Historic Hudson Valley ...