patroonships

Updated: May 6, 2025

Yet, under the general control of the West India Company, municipal institutions were established at Manhattan, and in the form of the patroonships feudal powers were granted to large landholders along the Hudson and Long Island Sound; and in both these cases the models were drawn in large part from the home land.

Edward Potts Cheyney - American Nation: a history — Volume 1: European Background of American History, 1300-1600

Many of the common people, who had never before owned a foot of land, now began to be discontented with the town lots which had fallen to their shares; others who had snug farms and tobacco plantations found they had not sufficient elbow-room, and began to question the rights of the Indians to the vast regions they pretended to hold while the good Oloffe indulged in magnificent dreams of foreign conquest and great patroonships in the wilderness.

Washington Irving - Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete