iiss h
iiook Jil^ki^
PRi;si;xTi;n by
THE BOROUGH TOWN
OF
WESTCHESTER.
AN ADDRESS DELIVERED BY
FORDHAM MORRIS,
on the 28th day of October, 1896,
BEFORE THE
Westchester County Historical Society,
IN THE
COURT HOUSE,
at White Plains, N. Y.
Gift
The Society
18 I 05
Vc
The Borough Town of
Westchester.
a^.O>
By a law passed in 1895, this ancient township
has become a part of New York city.
Curious to relate, it eiiters the city with practi-
cally the same boundaries as were prescribed and
intended in its first patent and charter, 229 years
ago. Its natural characteristics are : tide water or
streams on its boundaries — rolling ridges, with
an altitude at the very highest point not exceeding
200 feet above tide level, placed so as to afford
pleasing prospects across its salt meadows or lower
plateaus, valleys running into each other, afford-
ing convenient sites for streets, railways and drain-
age operations, while its shores recede inland on
gentle grades with estuaries from deep navigable
waters, presenting easy problems for the engineer
and dockbuilder to change it from rural to city
uses.
Its boundaries are East River to the south, the
Bronx River to the west, Eastchester Town to the
north, and Hutchinson's River and Pelham Bay to
the east. It brings nearly ten thousand acres
into the city territory, and adds about ten, thousand
people to its population. This is only an estimate,
2 THE BOnorGTI TOWN OF WESTCHESTER.
as we liave 110 recent census to guide ns, and its
recent growth has been i^henomenal.
The Sinoway was the Indian tribe inhabiting
the region before ics settlement by whites. This
tribe was probably friendl}^ for no record of its
participation in war appears, though some of its in-
land neighbors were hostile. The Indian villages
within the township were t\Yo : one in the Bear
Swamp, near where the Morris Park race track is
situated, the oLher on Castle Hill Neck on the west-
ern side of the outlet of Westchester Creek.
Adri?en Blok, on his voyage of discovery of East
River and Long Island Sound was probably the
first white man who saw their wigwams perched on
tile crown of i'nstle Hill, where the Screven place
now is. Tlie Dutch as early as 1639-40, to extin-
guish the Indian title, had purchased from them,
receiving two deeds of all the lands we now know
to be within the bounds of Westchester County.
From those two deeds and the original discovery of
the water fronts on both the Hudson and Sound
sides of Westchester Count j^ the primal jurisdic-
tion based on discovery as well as purchase gave the
Dutch undoubted govei-n mental and proprietary
authority.
Shortly after the purcliase, one John Throckmor-
ton settled on what we now call Throgg's Neck and
.soon afterwards one Cornell settled on what we
{;all Clason's Point. Both of these settlements were
made by and with the consent of the Dutch au-
thorities. This and the adjoining teri-itory had
been christened by the Dutch A^reedelandt or the
"free land," for on it the W^est India Company
permitted and enc<>ur:iged settlements by the niMuy
refugees from New Miiuhmd. drivr-n nwnx' 1)\" the
THE BOROUGH TOWN OF WESTCHESTER. 3
religious persecutions of that country. The en-
joyment of these privileges was short lived, for the
homes of the settlers were destroyed by the Indian
raid of the Weekquasesgeeks in 1652. They drove
the Cornell's from Clason's Point, Throckmorton
from Throgg's Neck, and foully murdered Ann
Hutchinson, the most distinguished of all the New
England refugees, at her home on the borders of the
township. This fearful calamity, the lack of in-
terest manifested towards the colony by the Hol-
land government, the possibly factitious influences
of the English speaking subjects of tVie company,
who had settled at Oostdorp or tlie East Village, as
Westchester was then called, all tended to render
New Netherland an easy conquest for the English
in 1664, as it is a matter of history that many
other Englisli besides Throckuiorton and Cornell
settled at Oostdorp, without permission from the
Dutch. Petrus Stuyvesant to punish them had also
imprisoned some, and only released them on the
petition of weeping wives and oaths of alle-
gience to the Dutch Company and accepting such
magistrates as Stuyvesant approved. It also ap-
pears, that even a few months before the surrender,
one Thomas Pell from Connecticut, who had pro-
cured an Indian grant, confirmed by Connecticut,
dated 1654, covering all the region within our town-
ship, and much more in Eastchester, prevailed
upon the English settlers at Oostdorp to
transfer their rights to him, and then on the next
day he generously permits tliem " to enjoy the
fullest improvements of tlieir labors."
Hardly was the English order of things es-
tablished when Pel] l)(^gan a suit in the Coui't
of Assi/es (o oust the Cornell heirs from
4 THE BOROUGH TOWN OF WESTCHESTER,
tlieir settlement on Clason's Point, but tiie
Court recognized the early grants and upheld
the articles of capitulation by which every man
was secured in the estate possessed by him at
the time of the surrender. Nicoll, the English com-
mander, acted with fairness and wise deliberation.
The people who had either under the Dutch or
Pell's auspices, settled between Rattlesnake or
Black Dog Brook or west of Hutchinson's River
were permitted to remain.
This settlement was where part of Wakefield,
now also annexed to the city, and Mount Vernon
are situated.
Cornell's grant on the Neck was confirmed as far
east as Barrett's Creek.
The people at Oostdorp were not disturbed
and Pell was kept generally to the east of Hutchin-
son's River.
Having adjusted the disputed grants, in 1667,
Nicoll issued the first patent calling the town
Westchester, describing it within the same bound-
aries it had at it recent dissolution. He appointed
John Quinby, John Ferris, Nicholas Bayley, Wil-
liam Betts and William VV alters on behalf of them-
selves and the other freeholders and inhabitants
patentees of all the lands in the said town not other-
wise disposed of. The political and proprietary
rights secured by this grant created a community
with each freeholder possessing his share in the
land with rights of pasture in the range for cattle,
sheep and hogs, which by the terms of the grant
extended into the woods indefinitely but really only
until some line of an earlier grant was found. Each
one was also entitled to a home lot — which soon
became a fee estate. The home lots were about
THE BOROUGH TOWN OF WESTCHESTER. 5
where the present village now is. The pasture lands
or commons extended at first in every direction,
but were, as the inhabitants increased, gradually
allotted in severalty by the freeholders at town
meetings. Magistrates, subject to the approval of
the Governor, were elected by the people and, thus
he little Republic began.
They were farmers or men with trades
necessary in a rural neighborhood. Nicoll had
changed the name of th province from New
Netherland to New York and naming nearly
all the other settlements after the various titles
which King James, then Duke of York, pos-
sessed, such as York, Albany, etc., to carry out the
analogy called Long Island and Westchester York-
shire. Our town lay in the North Riding of York-
shire.
During the short interregnum of the Dutch recap-
ture in 1673, the inhabitants again swore allegiance
to the Dutch. They delivered up the fiag and the
constables' staves and joined in a respectful sub-
mission. They were granted the rights and privi-
leges of Hollanders and pardoned for their past er-
rors in "coquetting with Pell and the other English."
The terms of the treaty of Breeda, providing that
the Dutch should liave Venezula or Surinam in-
stead of New Netherland, leaves little of interest to
mention about the short Dutch reoccupancy. In
1673, we may say the English colonial period of
Westchester began.
Her people at first attended the courts and as-
semblies held in New York and on Long Island.
Governor Dongan confirmed in 1686 the Nicoll's
patent, but it continued to be the North Riding of
Yorkshire until 1691, when the County of West-
chester was erected, and being then the most con- ,
6 THE BOROUGH TOWN OF WESTCHESTER.
siderable settlement it is a fair deduction that the
town named in 1667, g'dva the name to the County
from which it has just been severed.
In 1696 Grovernor Fletcher erected Westchester
into a Borough town, giving it separate representa-
tion in the General Assembly.
Col. Caleb Heathcote, one of the most distin-
guished of all the men in colonial times, and then
of the Governor's Council, seems to have been one
of the largest land owners and was appointed the
first Mayor. He was also its first Assemblyman.
He, too, at one time, was Mayor of New York, for
honors were easy in those days, and plurality of of-
fices seemed to be the customary thing. Besides
he was a Judge and Colonel of the Militia, and as
in the early days there was no church, he had his
men drilled on a Sunday and ordered the Captain
to read the Scriptures to them as part of the mili-
tary exercises. The Borough continued to have its
representation in the Provincial Assembly, sep-
arate from the other parts of the County down to
the time when Tryon, the last Colonial Governor of
New York, (in 1776), taking refuge on a British ship
in New York Harbor, prorogued the last session of
the Colonial Legislature. The Morrises, Liberals,
or the DeLanceys, Tories, seem to have
been, after Heathcote, tlie representatives for
the Borough, as the Liberal or Fory parties prevail-
ed, for the Morrises were freemen, though not resi-
dents of the Borough, and the DeLanceys at the
West Farms Mills had sticeeeded in rhe female line
to Heathcote, as he left no male heirs to his hold-
ings.
Isaac Wilkins, the owner of Castle Hill, who
had intermarried with the Morrises of Morrisania,
was also the representative just before the Revolu-
THE BOROUGH TOWN OP WESTCHESTER. 7
tion . His family tie with that Revolutionary
stock did not prevent his siding with the King, and
later he became a loyal refugee from the country
and lived for a time in England. Returning after
the Revolution, he retained the homestead on Cas-
tle Hill, took holy orders and became rector of St.
Peter's after the establishment of the new order of
things. History takes no sides but records facts,
and a distant connection cannot now refrain, after
the heated family and political dissensions are end-
ed, to give to good Parson Wilkins' memory
the tribute it merits. Loyal to his King, he sided with
the Phillipses of Yonkers and other Tories, and did
all he could by pen, speech and in open opposition
to Lewis Morris, his brother-in-law, who as a repre-
sentative of New York, signed the Declaration of In-
dependence. But after the War he came back to his
old home, was foremost in helping his former neigh-
bors to reorganize their affairs, taught them not
only higher agriculture, learned by him in England,
but for years as luy reader, and ordained priest, from
the pulpit of Saint Peter's, read the beautiful ser-
vice of the Protestant Episcopal Church, adminis-
tered its sacraments and told the old, old story of
duty to Cxod and duty to neghbors.
To return to a further consideration of the an-
cient Borough: With Heathcote as Mayor, we find
William Barnes, John Stuart, William Willett,
Thomas Baxter, Josiah Stuart and John Bailey
the first Aldermen, and Ismel Honeywell, Robert
Huestis, Samuel Ferris, Daniel Turner and Miles
Oakley, the Assistant Aldermen. It had its sepa-
rate seal. Mayor's Court, Constable, Keeper of the
Mace, and other usual municipal parapharnalia.
Its well kept records show the mode of life
adopted by those rural burghers.
Three mills were in the township, one at the
8 THE BOROUGH TOWN OF WESTCHESTER.
West Farms, on the Bronx, another near the mouth
of Black Do^ Brook and a tide mill and causeway
at the crossing of Westchester Creek, connecting
Throgg's Neck, which is almost an island, with the
mainland. A ferry running to Flushing was es-
tablished at the end of the Throgg's Neck road, not
far from where Thomas Ilavemeyer's Dock now is.
Pelham Bridge was not built until long after the
Revolution, and the driving route to New York
was to Kingsbridge by way of the ford or bridge
at West Farms near the present dam by the ice
house in Bronx Park, or after crossing the Bronx
by a lane on the west side of the Bronx leading to
Morrisania, where Harlem Iliver was crossed by a
scow ferry which landed passengers near the foot
of 125th Street. This Borough existence was re-
cognized as late as the full establishment of the
state government in 1785.
Some have likened this ancient town to those of
New England and Long Island, whilst others, zeal-
ous members of the Episcopal Church, have tried to
make themselves and others believe that the town
was a reproduction of an English parish of the 18th
century such as we read of in the Spectator or the
tales of Fielding and Smollett. They fancy the
Squire in his high backed pew, the parson in his
wig, gown and surplice, telling the congregation its
duty to their Maker and also as to tithes, the Royal
Family, the ilouse of Hanover, and the Protestant
Succession. Neither is a correct similitude. The
officials, though elected, were subject to the Gover-
nor's apjproval, and no rigid rule as to cliurch mem-
bership prevailed as in the New England towns.
The town, not the church wardens and vestry at-
tended to most of the temporalities such as high-
ways and bridges, and tliough tlie vestry levied
THE BOROUGH TOWN OP WESTCHESTER. 9
the cliurch rates, the town built and paid for the
church, and in very late colonial times released its
interest in the church property to
the rector, church wardens and vestry.
Though the Church was sujjported partially by a
tax, the school-master was supported by the Bor-
ough, but until post revolutionary times the poor
were a Parish charge. Though an act for
settling orthodox ministers in the province was
passed shortly after the establishment of the En-
glish Colonial system, (for of course the English was
the orthodox church in colonial times) those sons
of Cromwellian soldiers, Quaker refugees and Inde-
pendents did not at first take kindly to a State
Church, and good Parson Bartow, the first Church
of England minister in the town, did not even wear
or own a surplice. Many of the peoj^le were
gradually won over to mother church, so far as a
student can judge from reading the good minister's
letters to the Society in England, more by his own
loving kindness and self respect rather than any
inherent love those hard-working farmers had for
the Church of England. Besides the Quakers had
established their meeting-house in the town almost
as early as the Church of England edifice was erect-
ed and its graveyard is still to be found adjoining
the Episcopal churchyard, though the Meeting
House and those who were moved by
the Spirit within it, have long since departed.
Across the Bronx a Dutch congregation h^d
also been established at Fordbam. The first
Episcopal Church was not an imposing edifice
though it had an apology for a steeple in the shape
of a cupola which the clergyman in his
letter's to England said looked like a pigeon
house, and though the clergyman was paid
a small stipend, it was added to by re-
10 THE BOROUGH TOWN OF WESTCHESTER.
mittances from the Society for the PropogatioQ of
the Gospel in Foreign parts. The parson more than
earned his salary, for not only did he have the church
in Westchester, but Yonkers and Eastch^ster also
came under his ministration. The church at West-
chester has the distinction of having had as its rector
at the outbreak of the Revolution, the Rev. Samuel
Seabury, afterwards consecrated bishop in Scot-
land, from whom our other bishops in the
Protestant Episcopal Church of the United
States trace apostolic succession, but the
glamour of its ever having been a semi-aristocratic
living in the English sense of the term is founded
on no state of facts which are worthy of credence.
Some documents following the English form were
signed by the Bishop of London and entrusted to
Colonial Governors to enable them to induct the
reverend gentlemen into the parish, wherein early
times they were grudgingly paid and sometimes not
paid at all, and it is a fair statement to make that
from the time of Bartow to Seabury in colonial
times and from Wilkins to the present Dr. Clen-
denin, tithes were unknown. Advowsons^ in the
English sense of the word, did not exist, and the
good example and holy lives of the clergyman them-
selves were the centre and controlling powers, under
God, of old St. Peter's influence, whether it was the
good Bartow acting as a missionary to the souls of
a . flock without a shepherd, or the present reverend
incumbont, who, by his manly actions and fair out-
spoken war on vice and disorder, succet^ded at the
head of its better citizens in purging the town from
political misrule, finally succeeding in obtaining
the legislation vvhich has annexed the Township to
the City of New York.
From a very early period a Court House and
jail for the County had been located at West-
chester. It was burned in 1790. Courts were
THE BOROUGH TOWN OP WESTCHESTER. 11
frequently held there before that time.
The representatioQ of the Borough lu the Board
of Supervisors was continuous down to 1778, but
from that year to 1784, no record of a supervisor
as such appears, as the town was within the debate-
able ground during the Revolution. To the credit
of the Borough, however, it appears that many of its
inhabitants, refugees from their homes, considered
themselves freeholders and inhabitants of the Bor-
ough and appeared at the temporary Court House
on King street, near the Connecticut border and ap-
pointed Thomas Hunt, Abraham Leggett, Israel
Honeywell, John Oakley, Gfilbert Oakley, Daniel
White and John Smith to serve the town on the
County Committee, which gave so much aid during
the Revolution.
The annals of the Borough in Revolutionary times
are worthy our consideration. As you remember
after the battle of Long Island, in the summer of
1776, Washington's army still occupied the north-
ern portion of Manhattan Island. A strong line of
American pickets was posted along the West-
chester County shore of Harlem River stretching
from Kingsbridge to Hell Gate. The plan of Howe,
the British General, was to destroy the American
army on Manhattan Island and then pushing north
and east to obtain a footing in Westchester County
so as to cut oif the line of communication between
New England and New Jersey. With the deep
harlbor of New York and its city as his base of sup-
plies from without ; the roads along and leading to
the Hudson in his possession ; with all Westchester
and Long Island ior foraije,ioood2indi other supplies,
his wedge of veterans could separate the thirteen
colonies and make an easy connection for another
army to advance from Canada. But Washington's
12 THE BOROUGH TOWN OP WESTCHESTER.
prophetic eye forsaw the danger. His raio and
ever elianging army, he knew, could not for long
cope with veterans — short of supplies, arms and
ammunition, pay doubtful, jealousy between colon-
ies, complicated congressional aid, and a population
in the city of New York divided as to the merits
of the controversy, rendered his tenure of Port
Washington on Manhattan Island subject to the
worst of all enemys, treachery in Ills midst. Polit-
ical as well as military considerations required that
he should guard well an interior line of communi-
cation between the colonies. The Hudson and fast-
nesses of the Westchester Hills were chosen as the
citadel from whicli he nevnr swerved during the
long war. Events in our Borough rendered this
masterly strategy possible.
As early as August, 1776, a part of Howe's fleet
made a reconuoisance up East River and Long Is-
land Sound as far as City Island. The landing
party on Pelham Neck, after committing some dep-
redations, weie driven away by Graham's regiment
of Westchester militia. A flank movement on
Washington's left and rear and the hemming in of
the army on Manhattan Island were therefore to be
guarded against, and on September 4th, Washing-
ton and General Heath, who commanded the Ameri-
cans in Westchester, consulted together at Kings-
bridge. Heath formed a chain of videttes along the
East River extending all along shore from Hell Gate
to Throgg's Neck and broke up the roads leading
from ilorrisania and Delancey's Mills to Kings-
bridge, so as to render them impassable for the
British wagons and artillery : trees were felled
and deep pits dug in the roads. But the enemy's
intentions were not plain. Howe had landed
a number of troops at Randall's Island : the con-
tingencies against attacks on Fort Washington,
THE BOROUGH TOWN OF WESTCHESTER. 13
by way of Harlem, Hunt's Point or Tlirogg's
Neck were all to be guarded against.
Several manoeuvers were made by both the
British and Americans during September in the
regions adjacent to but not pertinent to our sub-
ject, but on October 3rd, General Heath, with
Colonel Hand of the Rifles, made a reconnoissance
as far as Throgg's Neck. The causeway at the old
village connecting the main with Throgg's Neck
over Westchester Creek, the Mill Dam of colonial
times, already referred to, seemed to be a strong
stragetic point. The bridges of planks over the
overflow and sluiceway of the tidal mill if removed
would form two gaps for an enemy to cross. A
pile of cord wood arranged parallel with the creek
and on the village side seemed as if it was placed
there by providence to form a breastwork.
Twenty-five of Hand's picked riflemen were placed
behind the woodpile. Should the enemy advance
from Throgg's Neck the planking over the water and
sluiceway was ordered to be taken up and in case
they could not prevent the enemy's advance they
were told to burn the mill and retreat. Further
to the east at the head of Westchester Creek where
the salt meadows intervene between that estuary
and Pelham Bay, about where the Pelham Park-
way now crosses, another force was posted to pre-
vent a crossing over the meadows and the capture
of the road leading to Eastchester. On the 12th
day of October, the British fleet and boats laden
with troops went up the East Eiver and landed at
Throgg's Neck where the present highway ends at
the Havermeyer place. They got as far as
the east end of the causeway. Hand's men
took up the planking on the bridge and opened
14 THE BOROUGH TOWN OF WESTCHESTER,
fire. The unerring aim of American rifles checked
tlie veterans of European battle fields, and, just as
preconceived, the left flank at the head of the
Creek was attacked. But Prescott, with his men,
who had fought at Bnnker Hill, re-inforced the
riflemen at the wood pile and causeway. A three-
pounder cannon served b}'' Bryant also did good
service there, while Graham with his Westchester
regiment, the rest of Col. Hand's regiment and
Jackson's six pounder, held the head of the creek
Night fell and the British bivouacked on the Neck.
Washington visited the line late in the day, encour-
aged his gallant men, whom he found in good spir-
its, and his former doubts became a conviction that
Westchester County was the object of Howe's at-
tack. Earthworks were thrown up by both armies
on each side of the old bridge. Our riflemen and the
British yagers kept up a skirmish fire for the
next two days, and Howe finding our position too
strong to carry with ligb*^ <iroops, advanced his
heavy guns and commenced the erection of a heavy
earthwork on the heights opposite the bridge and
village near where the Presbyterian Church now
stands. While this light line of Americans held
the main part ot Howe's army in check, news was
brought to Washington of the Hessians having
landed at New Rochelle. With a considerable
force of British in his front at Manhattan Island
and the powerful force on his left flank and rear
ready to advance on Kingsbridge and sure to
gain that point finally, a movement ot the main
army was necessary. Six days had intervened
since Howe's lauding at Throgg's Neck. In that
time the masterly retreat up the Albany Post Road
to the Sawmill River and along the west bank of the
Bronx was made towards White Plains and only a
small garrison was left in Port Washington on
THE BOROUGH TOWN OF WESTCHESTER. 15
Manhattan Island. On the 18th, Howe opened fire
with his heavy guns from the earthwork opposite
the village and attacked the meadows, his seeming
objective point the Eastchester and Kingsbridge
roads. For same unaccountable reason his attack
in that direction was not made, though there
was skirmishing and artillery fire, merely as a feint,
for his final object was to form a junction with the
Hessians at New Rochelle, which he accomplished
after a hard fight with Glover and his Marblehead
Regiment on Pelham Neck — but that junction was
also delayed to put his men across Pelham Bay in
boats instead of carrying the Eastchester road and
marching either to New Rochelle or Kingsbridge.
The battle of White Plains and the Hessian con-
quest of Fort Washiiigton is outside the scope of
our paper, but to our Borough belongs the honor of
being the site where Howe's advance was checked
and the retreat to White Plains made possible. It
is hoped that the patriotism of the residents
of the old Borough will before long place a monu-
ment near the old causeway comriiemorative of this
seemingly slight but vastly important battle of
Westchester Creek.
Time will not permit us to tell the numerous tales
of partisan warfare, foraging raids, and romantic
episodes of love and war which our old Borough
witnessed during those stirring times when it was
part of the debatable ground — suffice it to say that
never again did a large force visit it during the
Revolution, and its ancient oaks attest the fact of
its not having suffered as heavily from the ravages
of war as other parts of our county immediately to
the west.
The war was over, a new rule began and our old
Borough, still recognized as such in its proprietary
rights, became part of the Great Republic. lu 1791
16 THE BOROUGH TOWN OF WESTCHESTER.
the town was extended to take in all the southern
part of Westchester County south of Yonkers and
Eastchester between the Hudson and East River.
How West Farms and Morrisania were carried out
the reconstrncted town, and how West Farms
and Morrisania became the 23d and 24th wards of
New'York city, leaving Westchester cut off by city
parks from the rest of the County you all know.
A few words, however, of the ancient towm within
its Borough limits describing it in its lost rural
condition will complete our sketch. The early
maps of Colonial times, the official campaign map
made by Erskine, Washington's geographer, now
in the New York Historical Society, the official
township and county maps on file with the state
engineer, the mid-century map of Sydney and Neff ,
the ancient town and Borough records and deeds at
White Plains, and tales told to us as boy and man
by friends and neighbors, all are the materials on
which we base the mementoes of the social side of
the Borough in post Revolutionary times.
Between the Revolution and our mid-century we
find the Necks occupied by wealthy merchantis who
placed on the breezy shores of the East River their
summer homes, but compelled, as now, by the ex-
acting cares of commercial life to be near the grow-
ing metropolis. The point of Clason's Neck was in
the occupation of Daniel Ludlow, grandfather of
people who, to-day, move in the most re-
spected circles of New York society ; his colonial
mansion is still standing ; his four-in-hand with
relays on the road to New York was the fore-run-
ner of the Tally- Ho, which now toots its way to the
Country Club Old Walter Rutherf urd, a New York
beau of the early century, tells in his letters recentlj'
published, how Abijah Hammond was building a
palace at Westchester, Abijah i^ gone, but tlie
THE BOROUGH TOWN OF WESTCHESTER. 17
house still stands at the end of Throgg's Neck, oc-
cupied in later times by the Whiteheads, Haver-
meyer, the founder of the great sugar house and
Supervisor of the Town, and now by his son
Thomas : grand example of colonial architect-
ure with thick stone walls about the grounds
and an incomparable view of Sound and river, from
whence no doubt Fennimore Cooper, on a visit to
his Delancey relatives in the neighborhood, drew
his type of the residence of Corny Lilliei)age, in
the novel of Satanstoe ; Bayards were also on the
Neck not far from where the Coster house now
stands, and near by later lived General Strong of
our late war, and Silas M. Stillwell, to whom belongs
the honor of abolishing imprisonment for debt,
George Lorillard, one of the three brothers had
built the Spencer house and owned the farms on
which the VanCortlandts, Furmans, another Super-
visor, Edgars, later on the Waterburys, Eobert,
Morris and Lorillard Spencer had or have their
holdings ; Inland, the Ferrises, Leggetts, Honey-
wells, Heustaces, names mentioned in the colonial
patents, still tilled their ancestral acres on the Neck
Road. Philip Livingston, who had married into
the Bayard family, signer of our Second State Con
stitution, had begun his tine residence and planted
there the first Cedar of Lebanon ever brought to
America, under whose shade, many years after-
wards, public-SDirited Peter VanSchaick conceived
the idea of presenting to the town the pretty
Library building now in the village, since amply
endowed by Collis P. Huntington. On Castle Hill
Neck Isaac Wilkins, already mentioned, had bought
the sheep pasture commons and Combined the
care of his congregation at St. Peter's with agri-
culture. He built the house of Castle Hill, after-
wards improved and enlarged by his courtly grand-
son, Gouverneur Morris VVilkins. The Hell Gate
18 THE BOROUGH TOWN OP WESTCHESTER.
pilots then i:>lied their trade at the old farm house
at the end of Prime's Point, now occupied by the
Swiss chalet of Jacob Lorillard, appropriately-
called "All Breeze," and the ancestors of the Adees,
now at Pennyfield on the Bay, then owned their
farms near Williamsbridge, and their large hipped
roof house at the junction of the Williamsbridge
and West Farms Road was long a landmark to
the wayfarer. Further on at the Bronx Mills was
Rose Hill, owned by the Delanceys, heirs of Col.
Heathcote, with its mansion house, stone mill, out-
buildings and ancient pines. Some more Ludlows,
as the century wore on, settled on Classon's Point,
originally Cornell's Neck, now known as Black
Rock, from the huge bowlder we see looming up
amidst the fiat meadows stretching towards East
River and a new bridge and highway called the
turnpike was laid out from the villag:e to West
Farms crossing the Bronx and struck the Coles
road leading to the New Harlem Bridge at Lewis
Morris', oppsite Harlem. The LeRoys, Rappelyeas
and Edgars wishing to get from Pelham to Morris-
ania, about 1835 built the Pelham Bridge, famous
resort for fishermen, and laid out the road across
Dormer's Island passing by Stinnardtown and under
the Spy Oak to the Causeway at Westchester.
Annieswood, the Hunter place, now in Pelham
Park, was built in the fifties and not till af t( r our
late civil war was Pelham avenue laid out across
the meadows where now the Parkway runs . Before
the mid-century, David Lydig and his son Phillip
liad succeeded Delancey at the mills and the Loi'il-
lards, and Bolton with his bleachery,had established
their snuff mills on the Bronx, between West Farms
and Williamsbridge. The Bussings, Briggs and
Corsas held most of the land where Olinville and
Williamsbridge villages are now.
THE BOROUGH TOWN OP WESTCHESTER. 19
On the Eastchester slope, the highest part of the
town, the Givan and Palmer homesteads stood: the
latter home of the charming wife of Captain May,
an artillery hero of our Mexican war. Down by
the meadows lived Thomas Timpson, a retired New
York merchant, while on the Williamsbridge road
Capt. Spencer, a navy officer of the war of 1812,
lived at the corner, whilst where now Morris Park
looms over the landscape, Denton Pearsall, retired
banker and butcher, told of his apprentice days
with one of the Astors, and Abram Hatfield, many
times Supervisor, cracked his jokes and told of his
experiences as a New York Alderman. Further
south was the Mapes farm, and further down on
the Westchester Turnpike, William Watson's Wil-
mont castle stood and still stands — home of many
a merry dance and hearty hospitality, and last,
but not least, in fond reminiscence and still quaint
and old, was the village site of ancient Oostdorp,
much then as it is now, for it was finished long
ago. Charley Sherwood, the druggist, Doctors
Ellis or Naudain, the medical practitioners, Wil-
liam Cooper, school commissioner and butcher ; the
old mill at the causeway, one of the Blizzards, the
miller ; near by the town dock, at which the good
sloop Westchester, Captain Ferris, master, had her
berth, bringing supplies from the city in exchange
for the farmers' produce, for in those days the Har-
lem Railroad was the nearest rail transportation,
and Aleck, blowing his horn, made the rounds with
the stage to take up and set down a few venture-
some passengers who journ'T^yed cityward. Nigh to
the dock, fronting the then open green, stood, and
still stands, the sober-tinted hipped roof store of
that most excellent of men, Sidney B. Bowne, who,
if living to-day, could give Macy, Stern, or even
the great store of Siegel Cooper points in the
variety of his wares. Anything desired was sure
20 THE BOROUGH TOWN OF WESTCHESTER.
to be on hand, and tradition said that even pul-
pits and goose yokes, hand-made in those days,
formed part of his stock in trade. Good old Mr.
Bowne, you were loved and respected by rich
and poor ! the memory of thy kindly "thees" and
"thous," thy pleasant smile and green baize apron
covering thy warm heart as thou dealt out our
Jackson balls and bolivars, is one of our fondest
youthful memories !
The second Episcopal Church edifice, with its
pepper-pot steeple and colonial bell, its high-
backed pews, and good Doctor Jackson in its
doable decked pulpit, was then standing— since,
destroyed by fire. Captain Hawkins occupied the
grounds of the former court house on one side,
while on the other was the orthodox Quaker meet-
ing house and graveyard, and diagonally opposite,
as it should be, was another sober tinted meeting
house of the Hicksite persuasion. Opposite Saint
Peter's the Brothers Harrington maintained their
school for boys, whose grandchildren are still be-
ing taught by the surviving brother at the present
school on the Throgg's Neck hill, and further on
the turnpike were Edward Haight, the Congress-
man, Doctor Ellis and Andrew Findlay, surveyor,
arbitrator, colonel of militia, assenjblyman, and
supervisor of two towns in one session at the divis-
ion of West Farms and Westchester in 1S46 — an
instance never likely to occur again anywhere
else except in Westchester County.
Its history, after the last division of the town,
from the service of Kindlay, in 1846. to that
of Augustus M. Field, the last Supervisor in
1895, her gradual change from a rural
picturesque region to one more utilitarian,
is best told by Shell's new map of Westchester, made
just before its annexation. The Underhills have
given place to the Catholic cemetery on the Neck,
THE BOROUGH TOWN OP WESTCHESTER. 21
the Eastern Boulevard skirts the Country Club
grounds, where erstwhile the Ferrises, Bayards
and Coopers had their homes; the Protectory with
its large domain, and Morris Park with its grand
stand, loom up on the high lands, points in the
landscape where formerly Saint Peter's spire
was the sole landmark to the mariner of Long
Island Sound.
The Parkway connects Bronx and Pelham Parks,
the Lorillard and bleach mills no longer resound
with the hum of machinery, but
" Gentle Bronx still mildly flows
Its verdant banks between,"
and on its shores the tired and worn workers of the
great city find recreation and fresh air in the
People's domain of Bronx Park. The hamlets
of Olinville, Williamsbridge and Wakefield are
larger than the County seat in 1851, and problems
of drainage, sewerage and road-making succeed to
the former cares of an agricultural community.
Everywhere the electric cars encumber or wdll en-
cumber the highways, and the Intercolonial express
on the New Haven branch scares the waterfowl
with its whistle from the green meadows at the
head of the creek.
The old town which gave a name to a
county is dead; its histoiy and traditions alone
survive, but the forms of its worthies still
go trooping past on the panorama of fond recol-
lection. Long since their mortal remains have
been taking a quiet rest in Saint Peter's or the
Quaker graveyards as they slope towards the creek.
The deeds of its early settlers, its martial and for-
ensic heroes, its gallant lads who in a later war
helped to maintain the Union their fathers made
possible at the old causeway, are all examples
22 THE BOROUGH TOWN OF WESTCHESTER.
worthy of imitation, whether our feet rest od city
or suburban soil, and old Saint Peter's rears its
modern spire pointing the way towards the most
beautiful of all cities, to which it is hoped we will
all be finally annexed, and Butler the sexton tolls
the colonial bell, "ringiag out the old and ringing
in the new."
Tlie Eastern State Jouriml,
White Plains, N. Y.
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
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