The Van Cortlandt family was an influential political dynasty from the seventeenth-century Dutch origins of New York through its period as an English colony, then after it became a state, and into the nineteenth century. It rose to great prominence with the award of a Royal Charter to Van Cortlandt Manor, an 86,000-acre (35,000 ha) tract in today's Westchester County sprawling from the Hudson River to the Connecticut state line granted as a Patent to Stephanus Van Cortlandt in 1697 by King William III.

Frederick Philipse, first Lord of the Manor of Philipseborough and patriarch of the Philipse family, was a Dutch immigrant to North America of Bohemian heritage. A merchant, he arrived in America as early as 1653. In 1662, he married Margaret Hardenbrook de Vries, a wealthy and driven widow. Together, and variously in league with slavers, pirates, and other undesirables alongside the prominent and respectable, the couple amassed a fortune.