[Frederic Shonnard & W.W. Spooner (1900)] During the ten years the total population increased 32,284, of which increase 22,401 was in the Towns of West Farms (including West-chester), Yonkers, Eastchester, and Greenburgh — that is, in the localities brought within a comparatively short and inexpensive rail-way ride of New York. In former times, before railways existed, the local gains in population had invariably been without special refer-ence to nearness to New York. A journey to the business sections of the city, even from Morrisania or Fordham, then involved a ride by carriage or stage of protracted duration; and thus for persons having daily business in New York, regular residence in any section of West-chester Comity was out of the question. Indeed, the tendency had steadily been toward a much larger growth in such remote towns as Sing Sing and Peekskill than in the nearby communities. Now, however, there was a reversal of this ancient order of things, and although Sing Sing and Peekskill, as well as New Rochelle, live, and all other places through which the railway lines passed, made respectable advances, the principal gains were in the section from which New York could be reached in the briefest time and at the minimum of expense, indicating the immigration of a large class of former New York residents. This fact is quite as strikingly evidenced by the nearly stationary condition of the exclusively agricultural townships of the northern portions of the county — such as Lewis boro, North Castle, North Salem.