During the nine years which intervened between his death and the end of too unthe Dutch regime, the general condition of the province wasdirection satisfactory tojustifv any similar ambitious endeavor in the of extensive land ownership above the Harlem. The Indians were still restless and inclined to harass individual settlers. Indeed, in 1655, the year of Van der Donck's death, a general massacre of settlers'by the Indians occurred, and the people in the outlying localities again crowded into Fort Amsterdam for protection. It was not until after the beginning of the English government that private land holdings in Westchester County at all comparable to Van der Donck's

DR. ADRIAN

VAN DER

DONCK

were acquired. He was the only Dutch gentleman-- for Bronck belonged strictly to the burgher class-- throughout the forty-one years of Dutch rule who, under the Charter of Freedoms and Exemptions, an instrument framed expressly to create a landed aristocracy in America, formally sought to establish a fief in this county, it is noticeable, however, that most of the estate which he owned passed before many years-- although not until the Dutch period was ended-- into the hands of one of his fellow-countrymen, Frederick Philipse, in whose family it continued for a century. Moreover, almost the entire Hudson shore of Westchester County was originally acquired and tenaciously held by Dutch, and not by English, private proprietors. The tract of Nepperhaem, or Colen Donck, was devised by Van der Donck, in his will, to his widow. This lady subsequently married I high O'Xeale, of Patuxent, Md., and resided with her husband in that province. Apparently, nothing whatever was done by O'Xeale and his wife in the way of continuing the improvements begun by Van der Donck; and, for all that we know to the contrary, the estate remained in a wholly wild and neglected condition for some ten years, lint in 1666 the O'Xeales, desiring to more perfectly establish their legal title, with a view to realizing from the lands, obtained from the Indians who had originally sold the tract to Van der Donck formal acknowledgment of such sale, and also of their having received from him full satisfaction; and thereupon a new and confirmatory patent for Nepperhaem was issued by Governor Nicolls.