Though friends proposed the raising of a fund that would care for Mrs. Hamilton and the children, it does not seem that there was any relief until 1816, when Congress gave to Mrs. Hamilton back pay amounting to ten thousand dollars.
After The Grange was sold to pay debts, its career was checkered. Some years ago it was moved to the east side of Convent Avenue, and it then became the schoolhouse of St. Luke's Episcopal Church.
Photo by Ph. B. Wallace
VAN CORTLANDT HOUSE, NEW YORK CITY
XXII
THE VAN CORTLANDT HOUSE, NEW YORK CITY
AT THE EDGE OF THE MANHATTAN "NEUTRAL GROUND"
In 1699 Jacobus Van Cortlandt bought the first fifty acres of the ground now included in Van Cortlandt Park, New York City, and for one hundred and ninety years the property remained in the Van Cortlandt family. Until fifty-three years before the first of the Van Cortlandts acquired it, the Indians were the undisputed possessors of the plot.
Adriæn Van der Donck, the first settler to acquire title, lived until his death in the bouwerie or farmhouse, which he built on the shore of a brook. When Jacobus Van Cortlandt built his bouwerie by the side of the same brook, he dammed the water to make a mill-pond, which is to-day the beautiful Van Cortlandt lake. There he built a grist mill which remained in use until 1889. Early visitors to the lake delighted to study the ancient structure to which, during the Revolution, both British and patriot soldiers resorted with their grain. The mill was struck by lightning and destroyed in 1901.