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The Indian village here was Alipconck, "the place of elms." Like all this region the place is full of the romance which Irving created, and of stirring incidents of Colonial and Revolutionary days. Chief among these are the remains of the Philipse domain, the capture of André and the legend of Sleepy Hollow, into which the old Dutch Church has been woven.
That he was an open admirer of Miss Philipse is an historical fact; that he sought her hand, but was refused, is traditional, and not very probable.
Military duties called him back almost immediately to Winchester; but he feared, should he leave the matter in suspense, some more enterprising rival might supplant him during his absence, as in the case of Miss Philipse, at New York. He improved, therefore, his brief opportunity to the utmost.
The Dutch called their settlement Younkers, Younckers, Jonkers or Yonkers, derived from Jonkheer, a common name for the male heir of a Dutch family. The old Philipse manor house, now Yonkers's City Hall, was erected about 1682, the present front being added in 1745. In its palmy days it is said to have sheltered a retinue of thirty white and twenty colored servants.
Here was born Mary Philipse, July 3, 1730, the heroine of Cooper's "Spy," and the girl who is said to have refused Washington. In January, 1758, she married Col. Roger Morris.
This is the Morris house, where Mary Philipse lived after she became the wife of Roger Morris; where Washington had his headquarters; where Madame Jumel lived, and where she married Aaron Burr. To the one who strolls in the footsteps of littérateurs of a bygone day, it is, more than all, the house where Halleck visited, and where he wrote Marco Bozzaris.
The little old Dutch church is believed to be the oldest church edifice now standing in the State. It was built in 1699 by Frederick Philipse. Irving says of it: "The sequestered situation of this church seems always to have made it a favorite haunt of troubled spirits.
George was twenty-five, he was on his way to Boston, and was entertained at the Philipse house, the Plaza not having then been built. Mary was twenty, pink and lissome. She played the harpsichord. Immediately after supper George, finding himself alone in the parlor with the girl, proposed. He was an opportunist. The lady pleaded for time, which the Father of his Country declined to give.
Roger Morris of the British army after the old French war, his wife being Mary Philipse, of Philipse Manor, a former sweetheart of Washington. During Washington's sojourn in New York in 1776 it became his headquarters. There was talk of cholera in the city. Madame Jumel resolved upon taking a carriage tour in the country.
The name Frederick Philipse was originally written Vreedryk, or Vrederyck, Felypsen, the former meaning "rich in peace," indicating, we presume, the difference between his peaceful occupation of breaking into the new wilderness and that of his ancestors in Bohemia who, being persecuted for their religious opinions, fled to Holland, from whence Frederick emigrated to New Amsterdam, some time before 1653, becoming a successful merchant, and later a patroon.
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