He married Lucy, widow of Francis Brewster, of New Haven, and died at Fairfield without issue in or about the month of September, 1669. He left property, real and personal, valued at £1,294 14s. 4d., all of which was bequeathed to his nephew, John Pell, of England, who became the second lord of the manor. For some six years following Pell's acquisition of Westchester in 1654, there were, so far as can be ascertained, no other notable land' purchases or settlements within our borders. Van der Donck's patent of the " Yonkers Land," inherited by his widow, continued in force; but the time had not yet arrived for its sub-division and systematic settlement. The New Haven Colony's purchase from Ponus and other Indians in 1640, confirmed to the people of Stamford in 1655, which covered the Town of Bedford and other portions of Westchester

County, also continued as a mere nominal holding, no efforts beingmade to develop it. No new grants of any mentionable importance were made by the Dutch after that to Van der Donck, and while individual Dutch farmers were gradually penetrating beyond the Harlem, they founded no towns or comprehensive settlements of which record survives.

HISTORY

WESTCHESTER

COUNTY

But with the decade commencing in 1660 a general movement of land purchasers and settlers began, which, steadily continuing and increasing, brought nearly all the principal eastern and southern sections under occupation within a comparatively brief period. The earliest of these new purchasers were Peter Disbrow, John Coe, and Thomas Stedwell (or Stud well), all of Greenwich, Conn., who in L660 and the succeeding years bought from the Indians districts now embraced in the Towns of Rye and Harrison. Associated with them in some of their later purchases was a fourth man, John Rudd;1 but the original transactions were conducted by the three.