Home / Westchester County Histories
📖 Westchester County Histories
Comprehensive histories of the county and Town of Cortlandt
1,488Passages
2Source Documents
Sources
| Source | Passages | Words | Link |
|---|---|---|---|
| J. Thomas Scharf (1886) | 916 | 173,521 | Original → |
| Frederic Shonnard & W.W. Spooner (1900) | 572 | 106,421 | Original → |
Passages
Frederic Shonnard & W.W. Spooner (1900)
[Frederic Shonnard & W.W. Spooner (1900)] The first village election of Sing Sing was hold on the first Tues-day of May, 1813, when " seven discreet freeholders " were elected trustees. Their names are not preserved, all the early records of the vill…
Frederic Shonnard & W.W. Spooner (1900)
[Frederic Shonnard & W.W. Spooner (1900)] ing power to grist and other mills; but in this grant also it was stipulated that the free navigation of the river should be preserved through a suitable opening. Under the provisions of the act of 1795 and s…
Frederic Shonnard & W.W. Spooner (1900)
[Frederic Shonnard & W.W. Spooner (1900)] But no stops were taken at that time, or indeed until eleven years later, to carry the provisions of the measure into effect. The loss of population by the county during the War of 1812 was speedily recovered…
Frederic Shonnard & W.W. Spooner (1900)
[Frederic Shonnard & W.W. Spooner (1900)] The principal event in Westchester County of the decade 1820-30 was the building of the State penitentiary at Sing Sing. By an act passed March 7, 1824, the construction of a new State prison was authorized i…
Frederic Shonnard & W.W. Spooner (1900)
[Frederic Shonnard & W.W. Spooner (1900)] These cells are seven feet in depth, seven in height, and forty-two inches wide, which gives but one hundred and seventy-one cubic feet of space for each con-vict." The institution was long officially known a…
Frederic Shonnard & W.W. Spooner (1900)
[Frederic Shonnard & W.W. Spooner (1900)] Isaac Coutant was the first keeper of the almshouse, receiving a salary of $300 per annum. The institution has always since been maintained at the original location. The village of IVekskill, whose incorporat…
Frederic Shonnard & W.W. Spooner (1900)
[Frederic Shonnard & W.W. Spooner (1900)] A visitor to the present village in 1781 described it as con-sisting of some twenty houses, quite close together. This considera-ble growth in population of the Town of Cortlandt, as evidenced by the census r…
Frederic Shonnard & W.W. Spooner (1900)
[Frederic Shonnard & W.W. Spooner (1900)] hangs in the court house at White Plains. He was the father of i he very eminent Hon. John Jay of our own times (horn June 2.'*., 1817; died May 5, 1894), to whom he left the Bedford estate. Neither the figur…
Frederic Shonnard & W.W. Spooner (1900)
[Frederic Shonnard & W.W. Spooner (1900)] capital. Meantime the New York and Albany Company found itself unable to carry out the provisions of its charter, and in 1838 sur-rendered its rights in AVestchester County to the New York and Harlem Company,…
Frederic Shonnard & W.W. Spooner (1900)
[Frederic Shonnard & W.W. Spooner (1900)] from the south side of the Harlem River Bridge to Williams's Bridge was $38,475 per mile, and from Williams's Bridge to White Plains $11,277 per mile. It is noteworthy that the tirst telegraph line through We…
Frederic Shonnard & W.W. Spooner (1900)
[Frederic Shonnard & W.W. Spooner (1900)] Edward Wegmann (published in 1896), in which all the details of the earlier makeshift systems and schemes, and of the construction of both the old and the new aqueducts and the Bronx River conduit, with their…
Frederic Shonnard & W.W. Spooner (1900)
[Frederic Shonnard & W.W. Spooner (1900)] After the Revolution frequent at-tention was given to the water problem, but it was not until 1798 that the necessity of ultimately solving the question by resorting to the streams of Westchester County was f…
Frederic Shonnard & W.W. Spooner (1900)
[Frederic Shonnard & W.W. Spooner (1900)] to the legislature for authority to borrow |2,000,000, the sum es-timated as necessary to accomplish the object resolved upon. But the legislature discreetly declined to sanction the raising of such an amount…
Frederic Shonnard & W.W. Spooner (1900)
[Frederic Shonnard & W.W. Spooner (1900)] The public mind shrank from such a tremendous and seemingly fantastic pro-ceeding as the construction of an aqueduct from the far distant Croton; whereas the Bronx, running straight down into the Harlem River…
Frederic Shonnard & W.W. Spooner (1900)
[Frederic Shonnard & W.W. Spooner (1900)] This supply can be aug-mented by constructing reservoirs, and we have seen... that one reservoir could be constructed which would supply more than 7,000,000 of gallons per day within a few miles of Pine's Bri…
Frederic Shonnard & W.W. Spooner (1900)
[Frederic Shonnard & W.W. Spooner (1900)] They marked out a route from Macomb's Dam to the Bronx River, which they declared to be the proper one for the long desired supply, and added: "The Croton cannot be brought in by this route, and cannot ever b…
Frederic Shonnard & W.W. Spooner (1900)
[Frederic Shonnard & W.W. Spooner (1900)] rat ^ii& ' i:sap;|# A If..t. 4m--^-" THE GREAT FIRE OF 1835 (NEW YORK CITY). mitted his report in the November following. " Major Douglass ad-hered unfalteringly to the conviction that the Croton, and the Cro…
Frederic Shonnard & W.W. Spooner (1900)
[Frederic Shonnard & W.W. Spooner (1900)] The ponds and lakes de-lineated on the map, and spoken of in a former part of this report, are among the number of these springs; many of them three or four hundred acres in extent, and one as large as a thou…
Frederic Shonnard & W.W. Spooner (1900)
[Frederic Shonnard & W.W. Spooner (1900)] At its next session (May 2, 1834) the legislature passed an aei authorizing the reappointment of water commissioners, ami direct-ing the commissioners to adopt a definite plan " for procuring such supply of w…
Frederic Shonnard & W.W. Spooner (1900)
[Frederic Shonnard & W.W. Spooner (1900)] The commissioners selected Major Douglass as their chief engineer, and on the 6th of July, 1835, that gentleman, with fifteen assistants, took the field for preliminary work in our county. Their first care wa…
Frederic Shonnard & W.W. Spooner (1900)
[Frederic Shonnard & W.W. Spooner (1900)] On the 26th of April, 1837, bids were opened " for furnish-ing the materials and completing the construction of twenty-three sections of the Croton Aqueduct, including the dam in the Croton, the aqueduct brid…
Frederic Shonnard & W.W. Spooner (1900)
[Frederic Shonnard & W.W. Spooner (1900)] Harlem River, that misplaced, misshapen, ridiculous stream — a mere spew of Ilellgate, — worthless for navigation, a hindrance to com-merce, and now found unqualified to generate the required volume of power.…
Frederic Shonnard & W.W. Spooner (1900)
[Frederic Shonnard & W.W. Spooner (1900)] land-owners held a meeting at Christopher Walton's store, at Ford-ham Corners, and appointed a committee to memorialize the legis-lature against the proposed low bridge, and also to ascertain the best method …
Frederic Shonnard & W.W. Spooner (1900)
[Frederic Shonnard & W.W. Spooner (1900)] a public navigable river. It was a public nuisance to obstruct the navigation thereof without authority of law." At the time of this famous expedition the water commissioners had already officially adopted th…
Frederic Shonnard & W.W. Spooner (1900)
[Frederic Shonnard & W.W. Spooner (1900)] ( >n the 3d of May, 1839, the legisla-ture passed the following law: The water commissioners shall construct an aqueduct over the Harlem River with arches and piers; the arches in the channel of said river sh…
Frederic Shonnard & W.W. Spooner (1900)
[Frederic Shonnard & W.W. Spooner (1900)] prised in the earthen embankment gave way, and the whole country below was flooded. Three bridges — Tompkins's Bridge, the bridge at the Wire Mill, and Quaker's Bridge — were swept away, and several mills and…
Frederic Shonnard & W.W. Spooner (1900)
[Frederic Shonnard & W.W. Spooner (1900)] The quantity of water at first transmitted through the aqueduct did not exceed 12,000,000 gal-lons daily. The aqueduct was constructed to afford a maximum dis-charge of 72,000,000 United States gallons every …
Frederic Shonnard & W.W. Spooner (1900)
[Frederic Shonnard & W.W. Spooner (1900)] No new village incor-poration was effected after that of Peekskill until 1853, when Mount Vernon was organized. It is a curious fact that our large City of Yonkers, which now is unapproached by any other muni…
Frederic Shonnard & W.W. Spooner (1900)
[Frederic Shonnard & W.W. Spooner (1900)] have arrived in our general narra-tive, Yonkers, destined to a posi-tion of unquestioned supremacy among the municipalities ofWest-chester County, was just prepar-ing to emerge from a primitive condition of a…
Frederic Shonnard & W.W. Spooner (1900)
[Frederic Shonnard & W.W. Spooner (1900)] Thereupon John Henry, one of the chief members of the syndicate, acquired substantially the whole of the Point, and proceeded to organize the brick-making industry which has since become so extensive at Verpl…