His father's career inspired him ; and at the age of thirty-four, six years after his marriage, he was elected mayor of New York. He must have succeeded beyond question for it is recorded in history that the public life of Stephanus Van Cortlandt was "undoubtedly the first brilliant career that any native of New York ever ran." It is interesting to learn that this man was not only mayor of New York, but that he and Nicholas Bayard drafted the

The Van Cortlandt Manor House, Croton-on-Hudson From a photograph taken in 1936.

famous Dongan charter under which New York was made a city; that he rose from ensign in the militia in 1668 to colonel in 1693; that he commanded the King's County militia; that in 1677 he was appointed first judge in Admiralty by Governor Edmund Andros, that he was named again and again a member of the Royal Council by King James II ; that he was deputy secretary and register of the Province of New York; that he was not only judge in the Admiralty but associate judge in the Colonial Court, deputy auditor, receiver-general, secretary of the Province and surrogate. In 1696, he was chosen chancellor, then Collector of the Revenue, and lastly Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

All this time he was a busy merchant, senior warden of Trinity Church, and a member of the council and board of trade. Four years after the Manor of Philipseburgh had been established, on June 17, 1697, Stephanus Van Cortlandt had secured the entire northern party of Westchester County, from the Croton River to Putnam County and Connecticut--amassing together eighty-six thousand two hundred and three acres with one thousand five hundred acres more across the Hudson on the Haverstraw shore. The only sizable tract that Stephanus missed was eighteen hundred acres now occupied by part of Peekskill and Buchanan, between Verplanck's Point and Annsville Creek.