[Frederic Shonnard & W.W. Spooner (1900)] styled " The West Farms," a name descriptive of its local relation to Westchester, by whose citizens it was opened up and upon whose government it depended. Between the West Farms patent and the lands of the Morrises, at the southwest, lay a strip whose owner-ship was long in controversy, and which hence was called " the de-batable ground." The foundations of the great Morris estate were begun about 16 <U, when Captain Richard Morris, an English merchant from Barbadoes, purchased, in behalf of himself and his brother Lewis, from Samuel Edsall the old Bronxland tract. This was the identical land, con-sisting of some five hundred acres, which about 1639 was granted by the Dutch West India Company to Jonas Bronck, the first known settler in Westchester County. After Bronck's death, it was owned by his widow and her second husband, the noted Arendt van Curler (or Corlaer), from whom it passed through several proprietors to Samuel Edsall, a beaver-maker in New Amsterdam. Edsall's pur-chase was made on the 22d day of October, 1664, almost immedi-ately after the conquest of New Netherland by the English; and he promptly took out a patent for it from Governor Nicolls.