Fauconnier Patent

The first ten, granted between 1685 and 1697, covered almost all of Hudson River shoreline in the original county, with three - Rombouts, the Great Nine Partners, and Philipse Patents - extending significantly inland.

Some time in or before 1695 Henry Pawling applied for a royal land patent on what was believed to have been a 6000-acre lot bordering on the east bank of the Hudson River in the north of today's Hyde Park, New York.

In 1704, a group of five men referred to as Jacob Regnier & Company, which included Peter Fauconnier, petitioned Sir Edward Hyde, Lord Cornbury and Governor of the Province of New York, for the extra land.

A patent for a tract that extended from the Hudson River east to the Crum Elbow Creek (which includes much of today's town of Hyde Park) was granted on April 18, 1705.

Upon division into lots by the partners Fauconnier received a valuable stretch of river-front property which would later be known as the Vanderbilt Estate.

By then a leading local physician and first president of the New York Medical Society, the enterprising Bard went on to reconstitute the original tract by purchasing parcels of land that had been previously sold by Fauconnier.

His son, Samuel, then 22 and a medical student in Edinburgh, was eager to assist him inlaying out the grounds and offered to have a plan drawn in Scotland.

Unlike his successors at Hyde Park, Dr. John Bard seemed to have little interest in the scenic qualities of the Hudson River and instead viewed it solely as a means of transporting goods and supplies.