By 1697, Stephanus had completed his accumulation of property and obtained from Governor Fletcher and the Crown, the Royal Letters patent of the Westchester acreage, a vast domain which covered the Towns of Cortlandt, Yorktown, Somers, North Salem and Lewisboro, and for which he was to pay quit rent of "40 shillings on the feast day of the Annunciation of our blessed Virgin Mary." Of all the colonial manors in the new world, the Manor of Cortlandt was the largest. Three years after the establishment of his great estate, when he was beginning to enjoy the charming home on the Croton River, surrounded by his wife and eleven children (whose ages ran from infancy to full maturity), Stephanus Van Cortlandt died. His remarkable life is a challenge to the so-called leaders of our modern day. At the age of fifty-seven, in the year 1700, when he died, he had fixed his indelible mark upon the new world. Gertrude Schuyler Van Cortlandt, his widow, lived for twentythree years after her husband died. The great Manor of Cortlandt remained intact until 1730, seven years after her death. Then the eldest son, Johannes, died as had his brother Oliver before him. Johannes' daughter Gertrude had married Philip Verplanck and he had been chosen by the Van Cortlandt heirs to survey the entire manor into thirty lots, to be partitioned among the ten members of the family. It

seems strange that the law in vogue in Westchester allotted the share of a female heir who had married to her husband. Thus, Gertrude Van Cortlandt Verplanck's share was deeded by the commissioners to her husband, Philip Verplanck; Elizabeth's portion to her husband, William Shinner; Marie's to her second husband, John Milne; Ann's to her husband, Stephen De Lancey; Cornelia's to her husband, Colonel John Schuyler; and Catharine's to her husband, Andrew Johnson.