The Jumel House
This house was built in 1758 by Captain (afterwards Colonel) Roger Morris of the British army, who had been an aide of General Braddock. Morris married a daughter of Colonel Philipse. The Philipse estate embraced a great part of the present Westchester and Putnam counties. The manor hall erected about 1745 (the oldest part probably about 1682) now constitutes the City Hall of Yonkers.[44] In that house, on July 3, 1730, was born Mary Philipse, and in the drawing-room on Sunday afternoon, January 15, 1758, she was married to Captain Morris by the Rev. Henry Barclay, rector of Trinity, and his assistant, Mr. Auchmuty.
A paper on “The Romance of the Hudson,” by Benson J. Lossing, published in Harper’s Magazine for April, 1876, gives the following account of the wedding: “The leading families of the province and the British forces in America had representatives there. The marriage was solemnized under a crimson canopy emblazoned with the golden crest of the family.... The bridesmaids were Miss Barclay, Miss Van Cortlandt, and Miss De Lancey. The groomsmen were Mr. Heathcote, Captain Kennedy, and Mr. Watts. Acting Governor De Lancey (son-in-law to Colonel Heathcote, lord of the manor of Scarsdale) assisted at the ceremony. The brothers of the bride ... gave away the bride.... Her dowry in her own right was a large domain, plate, jewelry, and money. A grand feast followed the nuptial ceremony, and late on that brilliant moonlit night most of the guests departed.
“While they were feasting a tall Indian, closely wrapped in a scarlet blanket, appeared at the door of the banquet hall, and with measured words said: ‘Your possessions shall pass from you when the eagle shall despoil the lion of his mane.’ He as suddenly disappeared.... The bride pondered the ominous words for years ... and when, because they were royalists in action, the magnificent domain of the Philipses was confiscated by the Americans at the close of the Revolution, the prophecy and its fulfillment were manifested.”[45]
While in New York in 1756 Washington stayed at the house of his friend, Beverly Robinson, who had married a sister of Miss Philipse, and there is no doubt that her charms made a deep impression upon him, but there is no evidence that she refused him.
Manor Hall, Yonkers, 1682