Collections : [Rare Book & Manuscript Library]

Letters written by Rev. Wilkins and his wife to members of their family. Most of the letters are dated from "West Chester" (New York) and addressed to his daughter, Mrs. Sarah Burns, and her husband, Dr. Burns, at Borden Town, N.J. and later at Philadelphia, Pa. They deal with family and personal affairs, daily life, clerical activities, travel, and paternal advice.

The collection contains documents about land holdings in and around Yonkers and Westchester and Dutchess Counties, New York owned by the wealthy Philipse, Gouverneur, Verplanck, Livingston, and other allied families. Included are grants, patents, deeds, indentures, transfers, wills, leases, accounts, maps, and records of civil and chancery court actions. These records not only chronicle legal actions, riots and uprisings of the European colonial settlers related to land disputes against these wealthy colonial settler families, but also record their interactions with the true landowners the Wappinger Confederacy.