Philipse Manor Hall State Historic Site

06/23/2026

Coming up Saturday, July 4, 2026! Celebrate Independence Day at Philipse Manor Hall State Historic Site (29 Warburton Ave. Yonkers, NY) with live music, games, and an opportunity to dunk King George III! 12:00 PM - 5:00 PM, admission is free!

Then stay downtown for supper and fireworks on the Yonkers Waterfront.

The City of Yonkers Yonkers Downtown/Waterfront BID

06/22/2026

, June 22, 1776, David Mathews, the last colonial mayor of New York City, was arrested for “being engaged in a Conspiracy against the Authority of the Congress and the Liberties of America.”

Troops led by Colonel James Mitchell Varnum arrived at Mathews’ Flatbush estate at 1:00 a.m. on June 22nd to arrest him and search the house for evidence.

The “Conspiracy” mentioned in the warrant was actually a plot to assassinate George Washington. Although his culpability is not certain, Mathews was sent from his estate in Flatbush to Litchfield, Connecticut, where he was kept in prison. He wrote from prison that Patriot officials "know it [the charge of conspiracy] is false as hell is false."

Later paroled, he and several other Loyalists managed to escape, and Mathews returned to British-held Manhattan in November of 1776.

Patriot Major Seymour actually placed a runaway ad in the “Connecticut Journal,” offering a $50 reward for Mathews who was “charged with high crimes against the American States,” and who had “basely and perfidiously deserted.” The ad also describes him as “well made, about 6 feet high, short brown hair, about 39 years old, and has a very plausible way of deceiving people.”

Mathews continued as official mayor in New York, albeit with few responsibilities, given the British Army’s takeover of the city. His 25,000 acre estate on Long Island and two Manhattan homes were included in the 1779 New York Act of Attainder, which banished him from the state. He evacuated with the British to Nova Scotia in November of 1783.

He was a divisive figure in New York and later Canadian politics. New York Loyalist William Smith described him as “profligate, abandoned, and dissipated, indigent, extravagant, and voluptuous as himself.” Another Loyalist, Peter Dubois, accused him of corruption, including taking a cut of military raids on the countryside and even lying about supporting the Poor House.

In Canada, he moved to Cape Breton and became its attorney general and a member of the Executive Council. He quickly made enemies and tried to get the colony’s governor removed. Ultimately successful, he was later appointed administrator of the colony, until he was in turn removed and investigated in 1789. The investigation was inconclusive, and Mathews died in 1800 at the age of 61.

Image: Detail of map of Brooklyn depicting Flatbush, 1770. Library of Congress.

06/21/2026

On Saturday, July 4, 2026, King George III will be at Philipse Manor Hall State Historic Site. Will you dare to dunk him?

Join us from 12 pm to 5 pm for live music, games, movies, and yes, a dunk tank for King George, as we celebrate Independence Day. Stay downtown afterwards to watch the Yonkers Waterfront fireworks!

06/20/2026

📣 Last call! Join us this Sunday for our Yonkers Black History Walking Tour!

📅Sunday, June 21, 2026
🕒1:00 PM - 3:30 PM
📍Philipse Manor Hall State Historic Site (29 Warburton Ave. Yonkers, NY)

👣 This 2.5 miles, 2.5 hour tour explores the deep history of African-descended people in Yonkers, from the 1680s to the present. Tickets are $10/person, pay at the door, and include museum admission. Call 914-965-4027 or email [email protected] to register.

The weather is going to be GORGEOUS, so it's a perfect day for an urban hike. !

06/20/2026

On Monday we hosted NY State Parks & Historic Sites Commissioner Kathy Moser, NYS Senate Majority Leader , and Taconic Region Commissioner Linda Tarrant-Reid for a special tour of Philipse Manor Hall! The Commissioner spent this past week visiting all of the sites across the state connected to the Revolutionary War. We are grateful to the Commissioner and the Senator for their support of historic sites across the state.

If you want to plan your Revolutionary summer road trips, including some places in your backyard, visit https://parks.ny.gov/history/rev-war

06/20/2026

06/20/2026

, June 20, 1776, Mary Philipse Morris left her home, Mount Morris, and fled to Philipse Manor Hall in Yonkers. Anti-Loyalist sentiment in New York City had been brewing since August, 1775, and the Patriots had taken over early in 1776. General George Washington returned from Boston and had begun to fortify the city. Residents who were “disaffected of the American cause” were arrested and brought to trial. It was time to leave.

Mary and Roger Morris had been preparing for this for the past year. Fearing arrest as a Loyalist, Morris, a former British officer, fled to England in 1775 but wrote numerous letters to his wife. As early as September 1775, he counseled Mary “that whatever Mony you may want, that you take it up . . . by mortgaging either the house in Town . . . or any part of our Estate you may think proper.”

In December 1775, he suggested moving the furniture, books and papers from the house in lower Manhattan, lamenting: “American affairs wear so gloomy an aspect that I dread to think of them.” Speculating on a future in an independent America, he longed to simply live in their “Log House” (in the Highlands); “it would then be a Palace for us!”

Mary had also been preparing. She collected the Highland Patent rents. In August of 1775, the HMS "Asia" had fired shots through the roof of her house on Stone Street, so she moved north to Mount Morris, but by 1776, even that became untenable. On June 20, she packed up the children and servants and headed to Philipse Manor Hall in Yonkers.

In July, the British arrived in New York harbor. In August Mary's brother Frederick Philipse III was arrested for Loyalism, and by September George Washington was using Mount Morris as his headquarters as he lost Manhattan to the British. That same month, a fire swept through lower Manhattan, destroying Mary's house on Stone Street. The war had forced her to move twice already. Now, all Mary could do was stay at Philipse Manor Hall and wait.

Images:
1. Portrait of Mrs. Roger Morris (Mary Philipse) by John Copley, 1771. Winterthur Collections.
2. Col. Roger Morris' House by George Hayward, 1854. Morris-Jumel Mansion.

06/19/2026

We'll be there to talk about the Revolutionary history of the lower Hudson River!

The next Toast 250 is a cruise! …and we’ll be there! Get your tickets and join the fun! Ticket link: https://tinyurl.com/rev250cruise Revolutionary Westchester 250 Drama From The Past Philipse Manor Hall State Historic Site

06/19/2026

Happy ! As we celebrate the end of slavery in the United States that occurred in 1865, it’s important to remember that enslaved people and their allies had been fighting for freedom in various ways since the institution of slavery was established in North America over two centuries prior. Here’s what that looked like in the 17th century colony of New Netherland, among some of the first African people enslaved in North

On February 25th, 1644, eleven enslaved men successfully petitioned the Council of New Netherland for their freedom and the freedom of their wives. Their names were Paulo Angola, Manuel Groot, Cleyn Manuel, Manuel de Gerrit de Reux, Simon Congo, Anthony Portugues, Gracia d’Angola, Pieter Santome, Jan Francisco, Little Anthony, and Jan Fort Orange.

They had been some of the first enslaved people in New Netherland, who had arrived in 1627. According to these men, the Dutch West India Company had told them that their enslavement was to be temporary and that they were promised freedom after their term of service was finished; after nearly two decades, they were successful in holding the company to that promise.

But their newfound “freedom” wasn’t fully free. The status that New Netherland Director Willem Kieft ascribed to these individuals was later known as Half-Freedom, a form of conditional freedom unique to New Netherland.
Half-Free individuals were required to make an annual payment to the Dutch West India Company, consisting of crops grown and livestock raised on tracts of land designated to them north of New Amsterdam. They were also still obligated to provide labor to the Dutch West India Company whenever requested (though this was “on condition of receiving fair wages from the Company”). If the individuals failed to meet these requirements, the company would re-enslave them.
Kieft’s manumission listed the names of the men it freed, but not the names of their wives. Thus the women’s freedom depended on their marriage status; if they were suddenly widowed, they might be re-enslaved.

Finally, the manumission specifically stated that the children of these families were not granted freedom. Not only was this true for “many children” these couples already had, but those “yet to be born” were also to “remain bound and obligated to serve the [Company] as slaves.”

It’s important to remember that Director Kieft’s decision to grant Half-Freedom to these families was not for their benefit as much as it played a part in his military and economic strategies for New Netherlands as a whole. Freeing this aging contingent of enslaved workers meant that they now had to provide for themselves in terms of food, clothing, and medical care, thereby reducing costs for the Company. Around this time Kieft also began granting tracts of farmland to Black men and women but chose a specific area for them North of New Amsterdam. This meant the Black settlers would provide a human buffer zone between the Dutch settlement and the Lenape Native Americans, with whom Kieft had recently begun a deadly war. In this way Kieft was seeing to the interests of the New Netherland colony- always on the backs of and at the expense of Black men and women.

📷 Manumission of Manuel de Gerrit and 10 other Negroes, February 25th, 1644, via New York State Archives

06/19/2026

To commemorate today, we're offering a FREE lecture on the history of Black landowners in early 19th century Westchester County, today at 2:00 PM! Available in-person and online.

You can also visit our exhibits and learn about the history of slavery in the north, resistance to enslavement, the importance of Pinkster, the impact of the Revolutionary War on communities of color, and the gradual abolition of slavery in New York.

Can't visit in-person? Watch the lecture online, or visit our website, philipsemanorhall.com to learn more about Black history in early New York on our virtual wing and history blog. You can also catch up on past lectures on Black history on our YouTube channel. We'll drop some links in the comments!