Biography
Frederick Philipse was a self-made man who emigrated from the Friesland area of the Netherlands to Flatbush, New Netherland, on Long Island, and began his career by selling iron nails then rose to become an owner of taverns. When he first purchased land on the mainland, which later became Westchester County, New York, he enticed friends from New Amsterdam and Long Island to move with him with the promise of free land and limited taxes.
After swearing allegiance to the English and later being granted his manorship from them, he began construction of the Old Dutch Church of Sleepy Hollow. Although this project had financing, work likely progressed slowly and was completed in 1685. Philipse held 52,000 acres (210 km²) of land along the Hudson River, where he built, among other structures, a simple residence in Yonkers, New York. Later it was expanded by his descendents into a full-fledged mansion, Philipse Manor. The neighborhood of Kingsbridge, Bronx, is named for his bridge over the Harlem River.
In 1685 Philipse imported about 50 slaves directly from Angola on his own ship. He was on the Governor's executive council from 1691 to 1698, when he was banned from government office by the British governor, Lord Bellomont, for conducting a slave trade into New York.
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“In how few words, for instance, the Greeks would have told the story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sentence of our classical dictionary.... We moderns, on the other hand, collect only the raw materials of biography and history, “memoirs to serve for a history,” which is but materials to serve for a mythology.”
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