By his second wife he had one child, a son, the late Colonel Pierre van Cortlandt, who died only on the eleventh of July 1884, leaving him surviving, his widow, Catherine, eldest daughter of the late eminent Theodrick Romcyn Beck, M.D., of Albany, one son, Mr. James Stevenson van Cortlandt, and two daughters, Catharine, the wife of the Rev. John Rutherfurd Mathews, and Miss Anne Stevenson van Cortlandt. The Manor House and adjoining estate is still the home of Col. Pierre van Cortlandt's widow and children, having continued in the family and name of Stephanus van Cortlandt since 1C83, a little upwards of two hundred years.

The necessarily very brief sketches of the van Cortlandts in this essay are only intended as an outline, to show the general descent of the elder branch of the van Cortlandt family, the van Cortlandts of the Manor of Cortlandt.

The nature, origin, and existence of the Quitrent, payable from the Crown granted lands, to the Colonial, and, subsequently, to the State, Government of New York, have already been explained.' Those for which the Manor of Cortlandt, and all the prior grants within its limits were liable were paid at intervals, but in full, till their final extinction by commutation under the acts of the Legislature, and the action of the state government of New York as late as 1823.

In the cijsc of the Manor of Cortlandt the first payments of its (]uitrent, were receipted for by the King- Receiver-Cieneral and Collector, on the back of the Manor-Grant itself, which has been already described. This course was unusual and was owing probably to the early death of its first lord and the careful attention of his widow and executrix. The receipts for similar payments being generally given on separate i)as pers. These receii)ts are four in number, and cover from 1G97, the date of the Manor Grant to 1732,-- the date of the first division -- thirty-five years, and are as follows :