When, in 1777 General Lincoln made the place his headquarters, he j)iled four barrels of gunpowder in a little shed in the rear of the house, answering the proprietor's remonstrances with the remark that " it was a good dry place for it." After the army marched away the Dutchman found that the barrels contained nothing but sand, and had been placed there as a ruse to deceive the enemy if any of their spies should come prowling about.

Here Washington entertained the Due de Lauzun, Count de Rochambeau, Steuben and others of the distinguished foreign oflicers, on July 6, 178L Alexander Hamilton presided, and his graceful manners and witty speeches provoked universal admiration. Here also Washington and Sir Guy Carleton, and their respective suites met to arrange for the evacuation of New York by the British. On the sequestration of the Philipsburgh Manor the property was purchased by Peter Van Brugh Livingston, and it thence took his family name.

The Roger Morris house, at the most elevated point of Harlem Heights, where the steep, rocky right bank of the Harlem River slopes gently to the southwest, was built, in 1758, for the man whose name it bears. He was a captain in the British army, and in that year married the lovely Mary Philipse, for whose hand Washington is said to have been an unsuccessful suitor. A lively fancy may be I)ermitted to call up his emotions when, in September, 1776, as commander-in-chief of the American army, he made the residence of the woman who had rejected him his headquarters, or when, in July, 1790, as President of the LTnited States, he revisited it, she and her husband being attainted fugitives from the home which the new governnu^nt had confiscated. The wealthy Frenchman, Stephen .Jumel, bought it, and his wife adorned it with an exquisite taste and lavish hand.