While there is no evidence that he was a man of large wealth, it is abundantly manifest that he was quite comfortably circumstanced in worldly goods. Unquestionably his sole object in emigrating to New Netherland was to acquire and cultivate land, probably under the liberal States-Gengeneral offer to persons of all nations proclaimed by the eral in 1638. He was, therefore, one of the first of the new and more substantial class of men who began to remove hither after the substitution bv the West India Company of a broad and democratic plan of

gS

HISTORY

WESTCHESTER

COUNTY

colonization for the old exclusive scheme of special privileges to the Sailing from Amsterdam in a ship of the company's, with patroons. his wife and family, farmhands and their families, domestic servants, cattle, and miscellaneous goods, he landed on Manhattan Island; and, not caring to purchase one of the company farms there (the whole island having been expressly reserved to the private uses of the West India Company), proceeded to select a tract in the free lands beyond Here, pursuant to the custom peremptorily required by the Harlem. Dutch law, he first extinguished the Indian title, purchasing from and Taekamuck five hundred acres the native chiefs Ranachqua kk lying between the great kill (Harlem River) and the Ahquahung " An old kk Tracing of Broncksland " is still mow the Bronx River). preserved in the office of the secretary of state at Albany, upon which Its site as thus indicated was the house of Jonas Bronck is located. River branch of the New Harlem the of depot present not far from the This dwelling York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad, at Morrisania. is described as of " stone," covered with tiles, and had connected with As the Dutch word for it a barn, tobacco-house, and two barracks. stone fsteenj is always ambiguous unless accompanied by a descriptive prefix, it is uncertain what kind of building stone, whether brick In view of the or the native rock of the country, was used by Bronck. generally provident character of the man, it is a reasonable supposition that he brought a supply of brick with him from Holland; and thus that the first house erected in the county was made of that respectable material.