Buying land from Indians

"Every history of Rye ... starts with three Greenwich men, Thomas Studwell, John Coe and Peter Disbrow, buying Manursing Island from the Indians in 1660 and starting to farm. A fourth, John Budd, joined them a year later, buying other sections of what was to become Rye ....

[Studwell] was about 60 when he bought the land on Manursing Island, signing with an 'X' on the purchase from the Indians .... With Coe and Disbrow, he acquired more land from the Indians on the mainland and west into what is now Harrison.....

[John Coe's] name on the 1660 purchase from the Native American Shenowell and others is spelled Coo....

Apparently [Peter Disbrow] was in land negotiations with the Indians as early as January of 1660, six months before the purchase of Manursing Island ....

[John] budd appears in Rye in 1661 with a purchase of a large amount of land from the Indians, known thereafter as Budd's Neck .... The deed of purchase from the Indians was later confirmed by a patent....

For more, see Robert Bolton, Jr., 'A History of the County of Westchester' ... and Charles W. Baird, 'History of Rye,' 1871."

Paul Rheingold, "Rye's Founders," The Rye Record, May 21, 2010