No less than fourteen of those twenty-one townships are described and bounded in part by naming special lines of the old Manors, or the Manors themselves as a whole. Eleven towns out of the twenty-one, were formed wholly out of the Manors. These were Morrisania, Yonkers, Greenburgh, Mount Pleasant, Pelham, Scarsdale, Mamaroneck, North Salem, Cortlandt, Yorktown, and Stephentown. Two, Salem (now Lewisborough) and Poundridge, were partly so formed, about half of the former and onethird of the latter, being portions of the Manor of Cortlandt.

13.

The Manor of Cortlandt, Its Oriyin, First Lord and his Family. Special Franchises, Division, Local History, and Topography.

The most northern part of the County of Westchester, a tract reaching from the Hudson River on the west to the first boundary line between the Province of New York and the Colony of Connecticut, on the ciust, twenty English miles in length by ten in width, in shape nearly a rectangular parallelogram, formed, " The Manor of Cortlandt." Acquired by direct purchase from the Indians, in part, by Stephanus van Cortlandt, a native born Dutch gentleman of New York, and in part by others whose titles he subsequently bought, this tract, together with a small

HISTORY OF WESTCHESTER COUNTY.

tract on the west side of the Hudson River opposite the promontory of Anthony's Nose, which he also purchased from the Indians, was, by King William the Third through his Governor, Benjamin Fletcher, on the 17th of June 1697, erected into " the Lordship and Manor of Cortlandt." The original Manor-Grant covering two skins of vellum beautifully written, and bearing the Great Seal of the Province, its opening words highly ornamented, still exists in perfect preservation. Above the writing is an elegantly engraved border nearly two inches in width, of rich Italian arabesque design of fruits, flowers, figures and birds, in the centre of which appear the arms of England in full.