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Thursday, August 30, 2018

How Extensive Did Thomas Pell Believe His Land Acquisition from Local Wiechquaeskecks To Be?


For nearly 150 years, Pelham lore held that Thomas Pell's land purchase from local Natives on June 27, 1654 (old style Julian Calendar) involved 9,166 acres.  During the late 1980s, Pelham Town Historian Susan Swanson reviewed primary sources and demonstrated that Pelham lore was flatly wrong.  Pell's purchase involved up to roughly 50,000 acres of land in today's Bronx and lower Westchester County.  What lands, however, did Pell believe he acquired from local Wiechquaeskecks?

The agreement Pell signed with local Natives that day provides some evidence of the lands Pell believed he bought in 1654.  It describes the lands as follows:

"a piece of land Bounded by ye Sea to ye South wth yt Tract off land Called by ye English Longe Island; to ye west & west & by South wth ye bay & River & River Diawockinge Acqueonunge (Chemaqūanaock to ye East) wth all ye Islands yt are in ye salt water to ye South South East & South West Against yt Tract off Land wch is Beffore expresd."

In his history of the Town of Pelham published in 1946, Lockwood Barr described the bounds of the purchase in modern terms, stating:

"This treaty [sic] conveyed to Thomas Pell the lands east of Hutchinson River to Mamaroneck, including City Island, Hunter's Island, Travers Island and all the others, large and small, bordering the Shore. On the mainland, the tract included Pells Point, all the Pelhams, and New Rochelle. West of the River it included the Town of East Chester, part of Mt. Vernon, and a portion of the Bronx."

Source:  Barr, Lockwood Anderson, A Brief, But Most Complete & True Account of the Settlement of the Ancient Town of Pelham Westchester County, State of New York Known One Time Well & Favourably as the Lordshipp & Manour of Pelham Also The Story of the Three Modern Villages Called The Pelhams, pp. 12-13 (The Dietz Press, Inc. 1946).

A variety of conveyances of portions of the property by Thomas Pell (and by his legatee nephew and nephew's wife, John and Rachel Pell) as well as lawsuits over disputed boundaries of the land Pell purchased shed fascinating light on the extent of the lands that Pell believed he purchased from the Natives and demonstrates that Pell understood his purchase to encompass lands explicitly claimed by the Dutch on which the Dutch previously had planted settlers in 1643 and, perhaps, earlier.  

Pell clearly believed his purchase to extend from Long Island Sound (while including numerous islands off the shores of the mainland) westward to the Bronx River.  Clearly he also understood it to extend southwest of Eastchester Bay to encompass not only today's Throgg's Neck but also the entire mainland from Throgg's Neck to the Bronx River and extending all the way to the mouth of the Bronx River where it enters Long Island Sound (including Cornell's Neck, an area now known as Clason Point in the Bronx).  To the north, Pell clearly believed his land holdings extended into portions of today's Mamaroneck on the coast and even as far as an area slightly beyond the northwestern tip of today's City of New Rochelle.

This, indeed, was a vast swath of land nearly six times the size of the 9,166 acres of land that most historians claim Pell purchased.  See, e.g., Bolton, Jr., Robert, A History of the County of Westchester from its First Settlement to the Present Time, Vol. I, p. 513 (NY, NY: Alexander S. Gould, 1848) (noting that Pell's purchase "originally embraced nine thousand one hundred and sixty-six acres"). 

What evidence do have that Pell understood his purchase to be that large?  First, by November 14, 1654, only months after his purchase, Pell planted a group of English settlers in a settlement that became known as "West Chester" by the English and "Oostdorp" by the Dutch.  Indeed, it appears that on November 14, 1654 (old style; Julian calendar), Thomas Pell entered into some form of agreement selling the portion of his lands that became the little settlement of West Chester to the English settlers.  Before the settlers paid (or completed payment) for the lands, there arose "some troubles which hindered the underwriters possession". That trouble, of course, was the intervention of Dutch authorities who arrested and imprisoned many of the settlers claiming that they had settled on land owned by the Dutch. Ten years later, Pell seems to have "settled" this longstanding matter by obtaining written confirmation from the inhabitants of the Town of West Chester that he remained the owner of the land because they (or their predecessors) had not paid Pell for the land. At the same time, Pell affirmed in writing that the inhabitants could continue to "enjoy the present improvements of Their labors, Their home Lotts, and planting grounds with what meadowes were in times past laid out to each man's particular". In short, he affirmed that he would not evict them from the land.  For more, see Mon., Nov. 06, 2006:  The Source of Confusion Over the Date Thomas Pell Acquired the Lands That Became the Manor of Pelham

Next, on June 24, 1664, Thomas Pell sold lands between the Hutchinson River and the Bronx River to Phillip Pinckney and James Eustis from Fairfield, Connecticut who, in turn, arranged for ten Puritan families to come by boat in August of that year to settle on a portion of the land previously occupied by Anne Hutchinson before her murder by local Natives in 1643.  Those lands included today's Town of Eastchester, City of Mount Vernon, and portions of the Bronx.

Two years later, in 1666, Pell became embroiled in a significant lawsuit with Charles Bridges and Sarah Cornell Bridges disputing ownership of Cornell's Neck.  The map immediately below illustrates the location of Cornell's and its relationship to Pelham Neck, the settlement of Westchester, and Throgg's Neck. 


Map Showing Location of Cornell's Neck and its Relation to the
Settlement of Westchester, Throggs Neck, and Pelham Neck.
Source:  Cornell, John, Genealogy of the Cornell Family Being
R. I., Opposite p. 21 (NY, NY:  Press of T. A. Wright, 1902).
NOTE: Click on Image to Enlarge.

Pell claimed ownership of the region including Cornell's Neck and argued, essentially, that the claims of Charles Bridges and Sarah Cornell Bridges to the land derived from a chain of title that began with an award of the land by Dutch Colonial authorities which, according to Pell, had no ownership of, or right and title to, the land.  Eventually the court rejected the positions taken by Pell.

Next, only two weeks before Thomas Pell died in late September, 1669, John Richbell of Mamaroneck started a lawsuit against him claiming that he "Doe unjustly detaine & keep from him a certain parcell of meadowe Ground lyeing & being neare unto or upon one of ye three necks of Land at Momoronock."  Pell claimed these lands as part of his original purchase.  Richbell also claimed the lands.

The death of Thomas Pell two weeks after John Richbell first demanded a hearing on the matter before the Court of Assizes seems to have brought the matter to a halt for quite some time.  In the interim, Thomas Pell's nephew, John Pell, became the principal legatee under Thomas Pell's will and succeeded to his estate including his large land interests.

Eventually, Francis Lovelace, Governor of the Province of New York, stepped into the matter and appointed a group of Commissioners to make recommendations regarding resolution of the dispute.  The Commissioners could not agree on a resolution. Interestingly, however, they reported to Governor that they had discovered a tree in the disputed meadow "markt on ye East side with J. R. [John Richbell] & on the West with T. P. [Thomas Pell]" from which, if a line were drawn from the tree directly toward Long Island Sound, would divide the meadow exactly in half.  Though the Commissioners did not resolve the dispute, Governor Lovelace ordered Pell and Richbell to consider the report and attempt to resolve the matter before a trial would be conducted.  On January 25, 1671/72, the men reportedly settled the matter and "agreed upon [the land] to bee divided equally between them, both Meadow & Vpland, quanity & quality alike."  Consequently, a portion of the lands originally claimed by Thomas Pell were confirmed as the property of John Richbell due to his purchase from "Cakoe," a local Native who sold the land to Richbell and likely was the "Cockho" who was among the local Natives who signed the Pell Deed in 1654.  See Tue., Oct. 24, 2006:  Thomas Pell's and John Pell's Land Dispute with John Richbell in the Late 1660s and Early 1670s.

Two decades after Thomas Pell's death, on September 20, 1689, Pell's principal legatee and nephew, John Pell, and John Pell's wife (Rachel) conveyed to Jacob Leisler of New York City 6,100 acres of land that had formed portions of the northeastern part of Thomas Pell's original land acquisition in 1654.  See Fri., Apr. 06, 2007:  The Deed Reflecting John Pell's Sale of the Lands that Became New Rochelle.  

Finally, of course, in 1895, New York City annexed a large part of the Town of Pelham including Pelham Bay Park, City Island, and other islands nearby.  All of these lands likewise were part of Pell's original purchase.  Out of roughly 50,000 acres that Pell believed comprised his original purchase from local Natives, only slightly less than 1,570 acres of remain within the boundaries of today's Town of Pelham.

During the 1980s, then Town Historian Sue Swanson reviewed material and crafted a map that serves as a powerful visual aid to understand the magnitude of the lands that Thomas Pell believed he bought from local Wichquaeskecks in 1654.  An image of the map appears immediately below.



Map of Pell's Purchase from the Indians and Pelham Today
by Susan Swanson, Former Town Historian of the Town of
Pelham.  NOTE:  Click on Image to Enlarge.

Another such map sheds similar light on the monumental scope of Pell's original purchase.  Although the map does not purport to depict the entire area acquired by Pell, it is an early map that helps understand the size of the purchase.  It is a map prepared in 1708 in connection with efforts begun in 1704 to have John Drake, Henry Fowler, Joseph Drake, Edmund Ward and Jeremiah Fowler act on behalf of the freeholders of the town of Eastchester in connection with procuring a patent for local lands as they sought to clarify a land dispute with the settlement of Westchester.  The map was entitled "A Draft of the Lands in Controversy Between the Inhabitants of East Chester Joynd with William Pear Tree & Surveyed & Laid Down 1st August - Graham Lell."  An image of a later copy of the map appears immediately below.


"A Draft of the Lands In Controversy Between the Inhabitants of
Westchester & the Inhabitants of East Chester Joynd with William
Pear Tree & Surveyed & Laid Down 1st August - Graham Lell" prepared
by Colonel William Peartree in 1708. NOTE:  Click on Image to Enlarge.


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