The Manor of Fordham^^ which forms the last division of West Farms, was, as we have noticed, originally included in the township of Westchester. Its early Indian proprietors appear to have been the sachems Fecquemeck, Rechgawac and Packanariens, who sold the lands of Kekeshiek, bordering the Haarlem

» Heath's Mem. 214.

b One of these trees measures fourteen feet in circumference, while its branches afford a shade of 120 feet.

0 On this stream a mill was erected by Lewis Morris in 1760, of which nothing remains but the mill dam.

d A word of Saxon origin, and compounded of Ford (ford) ham (mansion.)

3?*

320 ■ HISTORY OF THE - "

River, to the Dutch West India Company, A. D. 1639.^ In 1646, we find the whole of Fordham, as well as the Yoncker's land, in tlie possession of Adriaen van der Donck, whose widow Mary conveyed them to her brother, Elias Doughty. The following sales appear under the hands of the latter in 1666-7 : "Know all men, by these presents, that I, Elias Doughty, of Flushing, do sell unto Mr. John Archer, of Westchester,^ his heirs and assignees, fourscore acres of land and thirty acres of meadow, lying and being betwixt Brothers'' River and the watering place at the end of the Island of Manhatans ; and if the land be not fit to cleare for the plow or hoe, this land is to lye together; and if there be not all such land together as there should, or if there should happen eight or ten acres of land that is not for such use, then the said Archer is to have it with the rest ; and he shall have equal right privilege in the commons as any other man shall have within that Patent that hath no more arable land ; and the meadow is to be mowed all.