[J. Thomas Scharf (1886)] confirm the unvarying tradition that the bell was cast to order, and so must have been ordered before 1685. In his historical discourse delivered in 1X66, the Rev. Abel T. Stewart (afterwards Dr. Stewart i, for fourteen years pastor of the church, »vho had made himself familiar with all its history and traditions, said: "The bell that still rings out so shrill was cast according to order in Holland in 1685." Bolton says, in the new edition of his history, volume i. page 527: "The bell of this church was cast to order in Holland and presented by Frederick Philipse."1 This is the one uniform statement. But how could it have been " cast according to order in 1685," unless the building of the church had either been com-menced or had been contemplated at or before that date? It is incredible that the bell should have been cast "according to order in 1685," and that the church should never have been built until fourteen years afterwards, in 1699. As Frederick Philipse re-ceived from the King his royal grant to buy and to hold land from the Indians in 1680, it would have given him a period of five years in which to prepare the way for the building of the church. It is a ques-tion, however, whether he did not have a foothold in the place, as many other settlors certainly had, living or trading among the Indians a good while before tin date of his actual purchase under the grant of the King. Washington Irving gave as the date of the erection of " Wol fort's Roost," 1656.