Mary Philipse

Mary Philipse (1730–1825) was the middle daughter of Frederick Philipse II, 2nd Lord of Philipsburg Manor of Westchester County, New York. Of Anglo-Dutch extraction, she was a wealthy heiress (although strictly not so, as she had brothers who inherited from their father), possible early love interest of George Washington, and New York City socialite. Married to an ex-British army colonel, her Loyalist sympathies in the American Revolution reshaped her life.

At the age of 22 she inherited one-third of her father's roughly 250 sq mi (650 km²) "Highland Patent", which sprawled from the Hudson Highlands on the west bank of the lower Hudson River to the Connecticut Colony in the east.

In 1758 she married in New York Englishman Roger Morris (January 1727 – September 1794), who had fought extensively in the French and Indian War.^[1]

With Roger's appointment to the Governor's Council of the Province of New York the couple became pillars of the local establishment. A year after their marriage Morris had a large country estate, Mount Morris, built in northern Manhattan between the Hudson and Harlem rivers in what is now Washington Heights.^[2]

The family lived there until 1775. Roger fled to England at the onset of the Revolution. In October 1779, the New York Act of Attainder, or Confiscation Act named landowners who acted injurious to the state, declared them guilty of "overt acts of high treason," and stated they shall "suffer death" without the right of judicial recourse. Only three women were named traitors in the American Revolution, convicted under this New York law of "high treason". Mary (Philipse) Morris was one of them. The United States Constitution later forbade legislative bills of attainder: in federal law under Article I, Section 9, and in state law under Article I, Section 10. In 1779, the government of the Colony of New York seized both Morris' personal property and Mary's inheritances. Mary escaped to England at the close of the war. Despite assurance of restitution in the 1783 Treaty of Paris^[3] no compensation was forthcoming. The family relocated to England.

It was later found that a provision in the couple's prenuptial agreement creating a life trust transferable to their children had protected her Highland Patent inheritance from the 1779 bill of attainder. In 1809 the Morris heirs finally received from John Jacob Astor £20,000 sterling for their rights to the disputed lands.

Mary died in York, England at the age of 96. A monument is erected over her grave at St Saviour's Church there.^[4]