Frederick Philipse - Family

Family

The Philipse family is of Bohemian origin, according to Supreme Court Justice John Jay, a descendant: “Frederick Philipse, whose family, originally of Bohemia, had been compelled by popish persecution to take refuge in Holland, from whence he had emigrated to New York.”

Philipse's first wife, Margaret, died in 1691. A year after her death, he married the widow Catharine Van Cortlandt Derval, the sister of Stephanus Van Cortlandt, an adviser to the provincial governor. Her brother Jacobus Van Cortlandt married Frederick's adopted daughter Eva and their son Frederick Van Cortlandt later built the Van Cortlandt House Museum in Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, New York. Philipse is buried with his two wives in the crypt of the Old Dutch Church of Sleepy Hollow.

Frederick's son Adolphus Philipse inherited his vast lands and title and his great-grandson, Frederick Philipse III, moved to Yonkers, New York, and leased the entirety of his property to William Pugsley before siding with the British in the American Revolution and leaving New York City for England in 1783. After the Revolution, New York confiscated Philipse's property and that of other loyalists. The entirety of the family property was divided up into almost 200 different parcels of land, with the vast majority becoming today's Putnam County, New York, in the form of the Philipse Patent, and other large parcels going to Dutch New York businessman Henry Beekman.