had a planting field, which for many years after was known as Van der 

 Donck's planting field, on what is now the parade ground of Van Cort- 

 landt Park. His first house was erected on the banks of the Neperhaem, 

 now called Saw Mill River, in Yonkers, that name being derived from 

 the sawmill which he operated there for some years. 



The ancient cellar ruins recently uncovered in the park, near the 

 Van Cortlandt House, could not have been those of a house erected by 

 Van der Donck, as some have claimed: but were either the ruins of an 

 ancient block-house or more probably were those of the house of George 

 Tippett, which he, describing it as his "home lott," sold to Jacobus Van 

 Cortlandt in 1713. Whatever, if anything, Van der Donck built on this 

 site, was at best nothing more than a farm hut, and was certainly de- 

 stroyed in the Indian uprising of 1655 ; when they threatened to "wipe 

 out the Dutch," and too well, indeed, did they keep their word. 



He had obtained from the States General, the authority to devise 

 his property or Colony of Colen-donck; and upon his death left it to 

 his widow, who was the daughter of Francis Doughty, an English clergy- 

 man, who for certain alleged heretical tenets, had been driven out of the 

 English Colony along the Connecticut, and who had been given safe har- 

 borage by the Dutch on Long Island, near Flushing. His widow trans- 

 ferred the Colony of Colen-donck to her brother, Elias Doughty, of 

 Flushing. 



Doughty disposed of it mainly in three parcels. The first parcel, 

 comprising the southerly part of the Manor and including part of the 

 planting field, and that part of the Park where the old Van Cortlandt 

 house now stands, to Wm. Betts and his son-in-law George Tippett, in 

 the year 1668. This is the only one of Dough ty's sales that need interest 

 us, George Tippett's name being perpetuated in the stream that runs 

 the entire length of the park. 



The Van Cortlandts first began to acquire the property in the year 

 1696 ; Jacobus Van Cortlandt in that year buying 320 acres. Having 

 acquired various other parcels of land in the vicinity, largely from Tip- 

 pett's and Bett's heirs, Jacobus Van Cortlandt planned to dam the brook 

 called by the Indians Muskota, and by the white settlers Tippetts, form- 

 ing a lake and erecting a sawmill and gristmill. This was in the year 

 1718. These mills, principally the gristmill, served the people of the 

 community for more than a century and a half following. The com- 

 munity suffered a loss historically, when the mills were destroyed by 

 lightning and fire in the year 1901. 



When Jacobus Van Cortlandt acquired the property on which the 

 Van Cortlandt Mansion now stands, which was in the year 1713, George 

 Tippett, who sold it to him, stipulated that the burying ground included 



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