enate during the early months of 1777.
At the time of the British occupation the interior was burnt but the
walls were left standing. The building is now the property of the state
and is used as a colonial museum. The present Court House, built in
1818, stands on the site of the old Court House, where New York's first
governor, George Clinton, was inaugurated, and in which Chief Justice
John Jay held the first term of the N.Y. Supreme Court in Sept. 1777.

John Jay (1745-1829), son of Peter Jay, a successful N.Y.
merchant, had a notable career. He was Chairman of the Commission
which drafted the N.Y. State Constitution in 1777. In the same
year he was made Chief Justice of the State. In negotiating peace
with Great Britain (1783) he acted with Benjamin Franklin, John
Adams, Jefferson and Henry Laurens, and he is credited with
having been influential in obtaining favorable terms for the
former colonies. In 1789 Washington appointed him chief justice
of the U.S. Supreme Court, in which capacity he served for six
years. In the meantime, 1794, he negotiated the famous Jay Treaty
with Great Britain, which averted a dangerous crisis in the
relations between the two countries, and settled such questions
as the withdrawal of British troops from the northwestern
frontier, compensation for the seizure of American vessels
during the Franco-British war of 1793, and the refusal of the
British up to that time to enter into a commercial treaty with
the U.S. From 1795 to 1798 he served as Governor of N.Y. Daniel
Webster said: "When the spotless ermine of the judicial robe fell
on John Jay, it touched nothing less spotless than itself."

Less than a mile beyond Rhinecliff we pass "Ferncliff," the beautiful
country-place of Vincent Astor, son of the late John Jacob Astor III,
who lost his life in the "Titanic" disaster. The large white building on
a hill nearby is the Astor squash court.

John Jacob Astor III (1864-1912) was the son of William B. Astor
II. The latter was the son of William B. Astor (1792-1875), known
as "the landlord of New York," because of his extensive real
estate holdings in New York City. He was the son of the founder
of the Astor fortune, John Jacob Astor (1763-1828). The latter
was born near Heidelberg, Germany, worked for a time in London,
came to N.Y.C. and took up fur trading, in which he amassed an
en