Amsterdam, owning a tract along Broadway where now is Cortlandt St. The son was the first mayor of New York born in America; this was Stephanus Van Cortlandt. He advanced large sums of money to the government, and as compensation obtained, in 1697, a Royal charter for "Lordship and Manor of Cortlandt." The present building is thought to have been started by Gov. Thos. Dongan, about 1683, as a hunting lodge, an ideal situation on the bank of the Kitchawar, as the Croton River was then known, protected alike from the north and east winds.

Irving says of the family at the time of the Revolutionary War:—

"Two members of this old and honorable family were conspicuous patriots throughout the Revolution. Pierre Van Cortlandt, the father, at this time about fifty-six years of age, was a member of the first Provincial Congress, and President of the Committee of Public Safety. Governor Tryon had visited him in his old manor house at the mouth of the Croton, in 1774, and made him offers of royal favors, honors, grants of land, etc., if he would abandon the popular cause. His offers were nobly rejected. The Van Cortlandt family suffered in consequence, being at one time obliged to abandon their manorial residence; but the head remained true to the cause, and subsequently filled the office of Lieutenant-Governor with great dignity."

The history of the house records other interesting events besides those of war: From its high veranda the great Whitefield preached to crowds who were seated on benches on the lawn. The memory of this time has been kept green by a small brass plate, recording the fact, which is attached to a post of the veranda.

The whole air of the place is so homelike and comfortable that the traveler could easily pass it by never dreaming that the career of this vine-clad nest is one that many a more pretentious dwelling would be proud to own to.

The old Van Cortlandt family cemetery is situated on a hill west of the house and west of the road. Here lie the remains of that Mrs. Beekman whose distrust of Joshua Smith prevented him from securing a disguise for André. Along the southern foot of this hill lies the Haunted Hollow.

For-years "the walking sachems of Teller's Point" held nightly councils here, the ghosts of departed Indians, whose last resting place on this Point was disturbed by the white man's plough and spade, but their clay has long since been burned into bricks and their shades have scattered in all directions; some of them no doubt looking down on us to-day from Manhattan's lofty skyscrapers.

An Indian castle or fort defended Teller's or Croton Point from up-river tribes, and it was here that old Chief Croton died while defending the firesides of his people, he being the last warrior to go down before the invaders. But though dead he yet walked, much to the inconvenience of belated travelers, more especially those who, having passed a friendly evening with hospitable neighbors, found it somewhat difficult to lay a straight course for home. However, nothing has been heard of his ghostship of late, and it may be that the materialistic spirit of the present age, which does not know a ghost when it sees one, has sent him off to some more happy haunting ground.

As the road winds up and over the western slope of Hessian Hill, just north of Croton Landing, three panoramas follow each other in rapid succession, all strikingly beautiful. The first two are different views of Teller's or Croton Point, with Hook Mountain and the Palisades in the distance, that Teller's Point from whose banks Colonel Livingston bombarded the Vulture, thereby leading to the capture of André, by this one action saving, possibly, the collapse of the War for Independence. From a further spur of the same hill comes into view the broad expanse of Haverstraw Bay with its background of jagged hills known as Clove Mountain and High Tor, under whose shadow Arnold and André met.ARNOLD-ANDRÉ MEETING. Elson's concise and graphic description of this event is worth quoting as it stands: "On a dark night in September, 1780, Benedict Arnold lay crouching beneath the trees on the bank of the Hudson a few miles below Stony Point, just outside the American lines. Presently the plash of oars from the dark, silent river broke the stillness, and a little boat bearing four men came to the shore. Two were ignorant oarsmen, who knew not what they did, the third was the steersman, one Joshua Smith, who lived in the neighborhood, while the fourth was a young and handsome man who concealed beneath his great overcoat the brilliant uniform of a British officer. The young man, Major John André, adjutant-general of the British army, was put ashore, and he and Arnold, who had long been secret correspondents, spent the night in the dense darkness beneath the trees. Here the plot to place West Point into British hands was consummated, and at the coming of dawn André did not return, as at first intended, to the English sloop of war, the Vulture, which was lying in the river waiting for him, but accompanied Arnold to the house of Smith, the steersman, a few miles away. Arnold returned to West Point, and André waited his opportunity to reach the Vulture; but shore batteries began firing on her, and Smith refused to venture out in his little boat."