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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.

Five manuscripts, one map, and four books formerly belonging to various members of the Van Cortlandt family: New York (Colony) Laws, Statutes, etc. Lawes Establish'd by the Authority of his Majesties Letters Patents.. By virtue of a Commission from.. James Duke of Yorke.. 1664. This first set of laws for New York, commonly known as the "Duke's Laws" were promulgated by Governor Richard Nicolls, after a meeting with representatives in Hempstead, Long Island, on March 1, 1664. Bound with this code are nine additions most of which are "Orders made at the Generall Court of Assizes held in New York" 1664-1672. The texts are written in several different hands and signed variously by Richard Nicolls (1624-1672), first governor of New York, 1664-1668; Matthias Nicolls (1630?-1687), Richard's brother and secretary to the province during the period covered; and Francis Lovelace (1618?-1675?), brother of the poet Richard Lovelace and governor of New York, 1668-1673. Written copies of this code were prepared for all the towns on Long Island. Of these copies only four are apparently extant, including this one and one in the New York Historical Society.