tates no longer passed unimpaired from generation to generation,
surviving as a distinct entity throughout all changes. They perforce
were partitioned among all the children; and through the vicissitudes of
subsequent years, passed bit by bit into many hands. Altered laws caused
a gradual disintegration in the case of individual holdings, but brought
no change in instances of corporate ownership. The Trinity Corporation
of New York City, for example, has held on to the vast estate which it
was given before the Revolution except such parts as it voluntarily has
sold.

DISINTEGRATION OF THE GREAT ESTATES.

The individual magnate, however, had no choice. He could no longer
entail his estates. Thus, estates which were very large before the
Revolution, and which were regarded with astonishment, ceased to exist.
The landed interests, however, remained paramount for several decades
after the Revolution by reason of the acceleration which long possession
and its profits had given them. Washington's fortune, amounting at his
death, to $530,000, was one of the largest in the country and consisted
mainly of land. He owned 9,744 acres, valued at $10 an acre, on the Ohio
River in Virginia, 3,075 acres, worth $200,000, on the Great Kenawa, and
also land elsewhere in Virginia and in Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York,
Kentucky, the City of Washington and other places.[28] About half a
century later it was only by persistent gatherings of public
contributions that his very home was saved to the nation, so had his
estate become divided and run down. After a long career, Benjamin
Franklin acquired what was considered a large fortune. But it did not
come from manufacture or invention, which he did so much to encourage,
but from land. His estate in 1788, two years before his death, was
estimated to be worth $150,000, mostly in land.[29] By the opening
decades of the nineteenth century few of the great estates in New York
remained. One of the last of the patroons was Stephen Van Rensselaer,
who died at the age of 75 on Jan. 26, 1839, leaving ten children. Up to
this time the manor had devolved upon the eldest son. Although it had
been diminished somewhat by various cessions, it was still of great
extent. The property was divided among the ten children, and, according
to Schuyler, "In less than fifty years after his death, the seven
hundred thousand acres originally in the manor were in the hands of
strangers."[30]

Long before old Van Re