[Frederic Shonnard & W.W. Spooner (1900)] ings in Westchester County at all comparable to Van der Donck's DR. ADRIAN VAN DER DONCK 113 were acquired. He was the only Dutch gentleman— for Bronck be-longed strictly to the burgher class— throughout the forty-one years of Dutch rule who, under the Charter of Freedoms and Exemptions, an instrument framed expressly to create a landed aristocracy in America, formally sought to establish a fief in this county, it is noticeable, however, that most of the estate which he owned passed before many years— although not until the Dutch period was ended— into the hands of one of his fellow-countrymen, Frederick Philipse, in whose family it continued for a century. Moreover, almost the entire Hudson shore of Westchester County was originally acquired and tenaciously held by Dutch, and not by English, private proprietors. The tract of Nepperhaem, or Colen Donck, was devised by Van der Donck, in his will, to his widow. This lady subsequently married I high O'Xeale, of Patuxent, Md., and resided with her husband in that province. Apparently, nothing whatever was done by O'Xeale and his wife in the way of continuing the improvements begun by Van der Donck; and, for all that we know to the contrary, the estate remained in a wholly wild and neglected condition for some ten years, lint in 1666 the O'Xeales, desiring to more perfectly establish their