Philipse Patent

The Philipse Patent was a large tract of land purchased by Adolphus Philipse, a wealthy landowner of Dutch descent in the Province of New York, which became today's Putnam County.

Bought from two Dutch traders and Royally sanctioned as the Highland Patent in 1697, it encompassed some 250 square miles spanning from the Hudson River to the then Connecticut Colony along the northern Westchester County border. It was divided in 1754 among heirs but remained in the Philipse family until seized during the American Revolution. The Commissioners of Forfeitures auctioned it in parcels, without compensation to its prior owners.

Adolphus was the second son of Frederick Philipse, the first Lord of the Manor of Philipsborough, a Dutch immigrant to North America of Bohemian heritage who had risen to become one of the greatest landholders in the New Netherlands.

In 1697 he Philipse purchased a tract of land from Dutch traders Lambert Dortlandt and Jan Sybrandt, who had bought it a few years before from several Wiccopee chiefs. This became known as the Highland Patent, and extended approximately 13 miles along the east shore of the Hudson River, from Annsville Creek to the Fish Kill, and eastward some 20 or so miles to the border of the Colony of Connecticut, including Pollopel Island in the Hudson.

Shortly after purchasing it, Philipse, whose residence was the Philipse Manor Hall near Tarrytown, and who maintained only a bachelor shooting lodge on Lake Mahopac in the Highland Patent, opened the tract to tenant settlers. Thus began a policy that lasted throughout his lifetime and his heirs' so long as they owned the land, to rent rather than sell, a practice which led to stunted growth for two and a half centuries to come.

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