24 Staten Island Association of Arts and Sciences 



the landscape, but axe and plow had made little inroad upon the 

 hillsides when the British fleet entered the harbor in the summer 

 of 1776. 



The watering place lay in a tract devised in 171 8 by Ellis Dux- 

 bury to the Minister Church Wardens and Vestry of St. An- 

 drew in the County of Richmond, and later known as Duxbury 

 Glebe. In 1765 the Church leased the glebe to Dr. John Bard 

 of New York City for a term of fifty- four years. (D Deeds 

 609.) 



To the west along the Kill Van Kull, the Dorland Patent lay, 

 and it is known to have been in the possession of Solomon Comes 

 about the year 1748 (106 N. Y. 1, 21), but his fate and the 

 disposition made by him of his property remain undiscovered by 

 the writer. 



In 1769 John Wandell owned a five acre tract bounded on the 

 west by the Jersey Street brook, which in later years became 

 known as the distillery lot; also an adjoining strip thirty-five 

 paces wide, on the opposite side of the brook, which is referred 

 to in the mortgage made by him as the lot " whereon stands 

 a certain bark mill and tan pits." (B Mgs. 16.) It is said 

 that the remains of old vats have been discovered on the 

 north side of Richmond Terrace, east of Jersey Street; Mr. 

 John Seaton and the late Silas N. Havens having informed 

 the writer that they had seen these uncovered when excavations 

 were made for the buildings erected by Edward Reilly soon 

 after the year 1869, but it is uncertain whether these were used 

 for the purposes of a distillery, or for the- earlier tannery. 



The Philip Welles Patent had been partitioned by the Van 

 Tuyl family into three longitudinal strips, of which the eastern- 

 most was purchased in 1775 by John Amerman; the middle strip- 

 was owned by Wilhelmus Vreeland, while the westernmost part 

 had come into the possession of Hendrick Van Tuyl and Cornelius 

 Vanderbilt. (B Mgs. 235; D Deeds 315; D Deeds 450.) The 

 farm adjoining the Glebe on the south, fronting the bay, had been 

 devised in 1734 by the Rev. David De Bonrepos, minister to the 

 French congregation, to David, son of Alexander De Bonrepos 



