[Frederic Shonnard & W.W. Spooner (1900)] The second of the two strips on the Hudson which always remained independent of the Van Cortlandt estate was a three-hundred-acre parcel front-ing on the inner and upper part of Peekskill Bay, which was deeded, on April 25, 1685, to Jacobus DeKay " for the value of four hun-dred guilders, seawant," and which ultimately became the property of John Krankhyte (ancestor of the Cronkhites). Upon this strip is the Peekskill State Camp of Military Instruction. The area of the Van Cortlandt estate in Westchester County, omit-ting the two Peekskill strips just noticed, was 86,203 acres, and, adding that of the tract on the opposite side of the Hudson, aggre-gated 87,713 acres. Van Cortlandt, as a man of large business con-cerns and important official interests in New York, continued to live in the city, or at least to spend most of his time there, notwith-standing his extensive landed acquisitions and his ultimate design of procuring for them manorial dignity. But it was probably as early as 1683 that the historic mansion of the family at the mouth of the Croton River, which is still standing in a good state of preser-vation, had its beginning. This house was originally intended as a trading place and a fort, and was built with very thick stoue walls, pierced with loopholes for musketry, all of which have been filled in save one, iu what is now the sitting-room, which is preserved as a memento of olden times and of the antiquity of the dwelling.