On the 6th of August, 1784, Morgan Lewis purchased eighty acres of land in Brooklyn, bounded by the Gowanus Road, and the road leading from Brooklyn to Flatbush. It was a portion of the estate belonging to John Rapelje, which became forfeited by his allegiance to the Tories, and was sold by the commissioners appointed to sell the property of all who adhered to the Crown. Francis Lewis, the hero and patriot, spent his last days in comparative poverty; but his heart was cheered by the fact that he had given his fortune to his country, and spent his life in her service. On the 30th of December, 1803, at the ripe age of ninety years, having witnessed the inauguration of three Presidents, all of whom were his warm and personal friends, his life-work closed. II DUTCH NOMENCLATURE In a letter written from Holland to the Brooklyn "Eagle," Henry C. Murphy gave an interesting explanation of the chief characteristics of Dutch nomenclature. In the course of this letter Mr. Murphy said:-- "In order to show what difficulties the peculiar system adopted in this country (Holland), and continued by the settlers in our own home, throw in the way of tracing genealogies, it is to be observed that the first of these, in point of time, was the patronymic, as it is called, by which a child took, besides his own baptismal name, that of his father, with the addition of _zoon_, or _sen_, meaning son. To illustrate this: if a child were baptized Hendrick, and the baptismal name of his father were Jan, the child would be called Hendrick Jansen. His son, if baptized Tunis, would be called Tunis Hendricksen; and the son of the latter might be Willem, and would have the name Willem Tunisen. And so we might have the succeeding generations called successively Garret Willemsen, Marten Garretsen, Adrien Martensen, and so on, through the whole of the calendar of Christian names; or, as more frequently happened, there would be repetition, in the second, third, or fourth generation, of the name of the first; and thus, as these names were common to the whole people, there were in every community different lineages of identically the same name. This custom, which had prevailed in Holland for centuries, was in full vogue at the time of the settlement of New Netherland. In writing the termination _sen_, it was frequently contracted into _se_, or _z_, or _s_. Thus the name of William Barretsen, who commanded in the first three Arctic voyages of exploration, in 1594, 1595, and 1596, is given in the old accounts of those voyages, Barretsen, Barentse, Barentz, Barents; sometimes in one way, sometimes in another, indifferently. Or, to give an example nearer home, both of the patronymic custom and of the contraction of the name, the father of Garret Martense, the founder of a family of that name in Flatbush, was Martin Adriense, and his father was Adriæ Ryerse, who came from Amsterdam. The inconveniences of this practice,