Delavan : The Marble House 25 



of New York. The writer has so far failed to discover what 

 became of David the devisee. (12 Wills 175, N. Y.) This land 

 probably came into the possession of the Corsen family prior to 

 the Revolution. The northern twenty acres were in possession of 

 Derby Doyle, the ferryman, in 1770. (B Mgs. 43.) 



South of the DeBonrepos farm the McLean family seemed to 

 have occupied the land nearly if not quite down to St. Mary's 

 Church in Clifton. (C Deeds 54.) 



The invading forces disembarked on Staten Island. The terri- 

 tory surrounding the watering place became a great camp. 

 (5 Harper's Enc. of U. S. Hist. 471.) Fences and standing 

 timber were converted into firewood and building material, until 

 bald hills surmounted by redoubts and rolling commons bare of 

 grass alone remained. (1 Morris, 313, 314, 315.) 



The close of the revolution found the two farms on the south 

 and west in the possession of Gozen Ryerss, who was county 

 judge from 1797 to 1802 and who sold the former, being the 

 Derby Doyle parcel, to Abraham Van Duzer, and the latter 

 (or all but six acres- of the Dorland Patent), to Cornelius Van 

 Buskirk. (E Deeds 367; 328.) 



Under the authority of Chapter 19 of the Laws of 1799, thirty 

 acres of land at the watering place were taken in the following 

 year by the State of New York, in the exercise of the right of 

 eminent domain, for the purpose of a marine hospital, and of this 

 tract five acres were subsequently conveyed to the United States. 

 These parcels became known as the Quarantine Ground and the 

 United States Ground, respectively. (Map No. 1 ; G Deeds 379.) 



At about this time Aaron Burr, actively engaged in consolidat- 

 ing the Bucktails of New York into the effective, if undesirable 

 political force since known as Tammany Hall, and in ending the 

 regime of the old landed aristocracy represented by the Clintons, 

 found an able and ambitious lieutenant in Daniel D. Tompkins, 

 upon whom Burr's mantle fell when he left New York after the 

 duel with Alexander Hamilton in 1804. A judge at thirty years 

 of age, sharing the bench with the learned James Kent, and 

 elected governor of the State of New York in 1807, the rise of 

 Daniel D. Tompkins was no less rapid than brilliant. 



