en, enclosed with a hedge and some every handsome
trees. Venerable oaks and broken ground covered with wild
shrubs surround me, giving a natural beauty to the spot
which is truly enchanting. A lovely variety of birds
serenade me morning and evening, rejoicing in their liberty
and security."

The historian, Mary L. Booth, commenting on the above, says:

"This rural picture of a point near where Charlton now
crosses Varick Street naturally strikes the prosaic mind
familiar with the locality at the present day as a trick of
the imagination. But truth is stranger, and not infrequently
more interesting, than fiction."

And now go back to the beginning.

A very large section of this part of the island was held under the
grant of the Colonial Government, by the Episcopal Church of the city
of New York--later to be known more succinctly as Trinity Church
Parish. St. John's,--not built at that time, of course--is part of the
same property. This particular portion (Richmond Hill), as we may
gather from the enthusiastic accounts of those who had seen it, must
have been peculiarly desirable. At any rate, it appealed most strongly
to one Major Abraham Mortier, at one time commissary of the English
army, and a man of a good deal of personal wealth and position.

In 1760, Major Mortier acquired from the Church Corporation a big
tract including the especial hill of his desires and, upon it, high
above the green valleys and the silver pond, he proceeded to put a
good part of his considerable fortune into building a house and laying
out grounds which should be a triumph among country estates.

That he was a personage of importance goes without saying, for His
Majesty's forces had right of way in those days, in all things social
as well as governmental. He proceeded to entertain largely, as soon as
he had his home ready for it, and so it was that at that time Richmond
Hill established its deathless reputation for hospitality.

Mortier did not buy the property outright but got it on a very long
lease. Though his first name sounds Hebraic and his last Gallic, he
was, we may take it, a thoroughly British soul, for he called it
Richmond Hill to remind him of England. The people of New York used to
gossip excitedly over the small fortune he spent on those grounds, the
house was the most pretentious that the neighbourhood had boasted up
to that time. Of course the Warren place was much f