By the will of Cornelius Steenwyck and his wife, Margareta, t drawn November 20, 1684, they devised the manor without any reservations to "the Nether Dutch Beformod Congregation within the City of New York." By that congregation it was preserved intact (its lands being leased to various persons) until 1755, when an act was passed permitting the minister, elders, and deacons of the church to sell COKNELIUS STEENWYCK. the lands. and lord of the manor, is referred to patentee John Archer, the in the will of the Steenwycks as "the late John Archer," andthetheredate fore must have died some time before November 20, 1684, Bolton) from quote (we which that document bears. " It is said that he suddenly expired in his coach while journeying from his manorial residence to New York City, and was interred on Tetard Hill.'' He was a contentious man, being involved in many legal disputes with his tenants and neighboring land owners. Upon one occasion the mayor's court in New York, acting upon a complaint from the people of Fordham that he had undertaken to govern them by "rigour and force," and had "been at several times the occasion of -Teat troubles betwixt the inhabitants of the said town," ad-

FORDHAM

MANOR

monished him k* to behave himself for the future civilly and quietly, as he will answer for the same at his peril." He held the office of sheriff of New York City. His sou, John, inherited what was left of his property. To quote again from Bolton, it is said that three hundred acres upon which stood the old manorial residence were, through the liberality of Mrs. Steenwyck (who survived her husband), exempted from the bequest to the Dutch Church, and continued in the possession of the Archers. At all events, members of the family continued to reside upon their ancestral lands, and in the eighteenth century Benjamin Archer, a direct descendant of the first John, owned in fee a considerable section of the old manor.