On January 25, 1755, the Philipses Sold a Tract of Land in Middlesex
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
On January 25, 1755, the Philipses sold a tract of land in Middlesex County on the Delaware, then called the South River, and a tract of meadow- land to one John Bissett for 475 pounds. In January of 1758, a slight crimp occurred in this euphoric situation. Mary Philipse, up to that time a spinster, although she had been wooed but not won by George Washington, married Roger Morris. There was an elaborate wedding ceremony at Philipse Manor. The bridal couple stood under a crimson canopy adorned with the family crest, a lion issuing from a coronet. According to legend, an Indian wrapped in a bright red blanket suddenly appeared at the ceremony and said, "Your possessions shall pass from you when the Eagle shall despoil the lion.” Then he vanished. Whether or not this happened the forces that precipitated the American Revolution were beginning to coalesce; the American eagle with the lion in mind was beginning to sharpen its talons. Meanwhile the Philipses went on disposing of their holdings in New Jersey at very good prices. On September 22, 1760, they sold 375 acres in Middlesex County for 700 pounds and the same day they sold another 150 acres in the same county for 300 pounds. On May 25, 1762, in the second year of George III, as the deed notes, they disposed of 170 acres of land in Middlesex, 120 acres in Monmouth, 300 acres in Essex, and 500 acres on the Passaic for 750 pounds. This deed is affirmed by William, Earl of Stirling who, pursuant to custom, merely signed himself "Stirling”. Thus in the space of ten years, the Philipses disposed of about 1800 acres for some 2625 pounds—a 500 per cent accretion of their original investment. And these 1800 acres represented only a minuscule part of their Jersey holdings. Whether they were able to retain their remaining holdings through and after the Revolution, I have not ascertained. New Jersey early took action to confiscate and sell the holdings of Tories who fled the State and. though the Philipses never lived there, one must assume their lands in the Garden State were forfeited as were their lands in New York. That and many other facts remain to be dug out of the old records—and it isn’t easy. The first Frederick Philipse spelled his name in many ways. When he declared his loyalty to England, after the British had supplanted the Dutch, he spelled it Filipzen. When he made his will, he spelled it Flypsen. When George Lockhart sold him the salt meadows in Piermont, the deed was listed as to Frederick Phillips alias Flypson, which seems a little unfriendly. Finally he appears in some of the old documents as Flipse. There are enough variations to give a researcher fits. I would like to close on a note that will give comfort to the women’s libbers in the audience. In all of the deeds of sale involving Susanna Philipse, wife of Beverly Robinson, and Mary Philipse after she married Roger Morris, it is carefully set forth in the precise 18th century script that the ladies were interrogated by an official "out of the presence of their husbands” and affirmed that they were selling the properties freely and without "threat, fear or com pulsion” from their husbands. Over 200 years ago some pioneer feminist must have gotten that requirement written into the law. (The above was given as a talk at Mercy College last fall) 12.