colonial mantels in most
of the rooms. The main part of the house was built in 1825 by Mrs. Henry
Hoyle, formerly Mrs. Major Henry Ten Eyck Schuyler, of Troy, N.Y., under
the following circumstances:

As Sarah Visscher she had inherited a large fortune from her grand-uncle
Lieutenant-General Garret Fisher (Visscher), a Loyalist officer of Sir
Adolphus Oughton's regiment, the 55th, which was present at the taking
of Montreal, and who died at Manchester Square, London, in 1808, after a
distinguished career. This fortune arrived at the beginning of the war
of 1812, just before the death of her first husband Major Schuyler,
nephew of General Philip Schuyler, and descendant of the well-known
colonial military family of that name. He left three daughters and a
son. They possessed other very valuable property in Troy, including a
handsome farm and mansion at the South end, shown in old pictures of the
city, on which about a fourth of Troy was afterwards built. In 1816,
Henry Hoyle, who was a Lancashire man, married her for her fortune,
which he soon found belonged to the children by strict law. He
therefore, making great pretensions of fatherly kindness, and religion,
set himself to defeat their title. By falsifying the facts, he managed
to obtain a snap judgment against their guardian in favor of himself,
but feeling his tenure insecure, sold the mansion and farm in Troy, and
persuaded his wife to move to the property in Lacolle, just on the
frontier line. It was only after his death in 1849, that the widow and
orphans discovered his fraud, and that he had obtained the placing of
the entire property in his own name in order to possess it. There
followed a furious family quarrel between the Schuyler and Hoyle heirs,
in which the old lady took the side of the former, and in fact sued her
Hoyle sons to right the injury. At her death in 1851, she refused to be
buried beside Hoyle and stipulated in her will that she be taken back to
Troy and interred with her first husband, and that the burial lot be
surrounded with stone posts, each carrying the name "_Schuyler_". Henry
Hoyle had previously possessed from 1816, the actual land on which the
Manorhouse is built. After their arrival in 1825, he employed the
fortune of which he had thus obtained control, and regarding which he
represented himself to his wife as only acting for her, in adding to
this land and in many investments along a wide range of the border
counties. Her suit est