Mary Philipse

Mary "Polly" 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 "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. 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.