Philipse Patent

The Philipse Patent was a British royal patent for a large tract of land on the east bank of the Hudson River about 50 miles north of New York City. It was purchased in 1697 by Adolphus Philipse, a wealthy landowner of Dutch descent in the Province of New York, and in time became today's Putnam County.

Philipse bought the roughly 250 sq mi (650 km²) tract from two Dutch traders who had purchased it from "Wiccopee chiefs" of the Wappinger native American people. The parcel received a land patent from the British Crown on 13 August 1702.^[1]

Originally known as the Highland Patent, it spanned from the Hudson to the then Connecticut Colony along today's northern Westchester County border.

In 1731 it was incorporated into Dutchess County, and divided in 1754 among three Philipse heirs. It remained in the Loyalist Philipse family until seized in 1779 during the Revolution. The Commissioners of Forfeiture of the Revolutionary Province of New York auctioned it in parcels, without compensation to its prior owners. In spite of a provision requiring restitution in the 1783 Treaty of Paris, it never was made. In 1812, the southern part of Dutchess County, including all of what had been the Phillipse Patent, was spun off into a newly created Putnam County.