of Westchester, not previously purchased. The meeting of the appraisers was ... fixed and notified for the 23rd of Oct. 1837, at the house of John Bashfbrd, in the village of Yonkers." 14. J. B. Jervis' monthly report to the Water Commissioners, Document No. 14, June 30, 1837, p.ll2. 15. Letter to John B. Jenis from his brother William, Yonkers, April 16, 1838, John B. Jervis Papers, Box #23, Jervis Public Library, Rome, NY. 16. Letter to J.B. Jervis from H.T. Anthony, Tarrytown, February 29, 1838, John B. Jen/is Papers, Jervis Public Library, Rome, NY. 17. Letter to J.B. Jervis from H.T. Anthony, Tarrytown, February 20, 1838. John B. Jervis Papers, Jervis Public Library, Rome, NY. 18. Kerby A. Miller, Emigrants and Exiles: Ireland and the Irish Exodus to North America (New York, Oxford University Press, 1985), p.238. 19. Nye, Society and Culture in America. p,205. 20. Document No. SS, Semi-Annual Report of the Water Commissioners, July 1-Decemher 10, 1837, Jan, 1838, p.355, 21. Carl Russell Fish, Rise of the Common Man, 1830-iO, p.ll3. 22. Letter to Lewis G. Clark from Washington Irving, Greenburgh, March 17, 1840. Library, Historic Hudson Valley, Tarrytown. 23. Greenburgh Register. Vol IX, no. 46, May 17, 1889 "Looking Back." The first annual report of the Westchester County Temperance Society showed that the Mt. Pleasant and Greenburgh Society, formed September 1829, had 146 members with Van Brugh Livingston, President, and Oscar Irving, Secretary. Livingston was active in the founding of Greenburgh's (South) Presbyterian Church in 1825, but by 1833 his strong devotion to the idea of temperance led him to withdraw from its communion over the issue of a tavern-keeper being elected Deacon of the church. Instead, he joined with neighbors Washington Irving and James A. Hamilton among others, and organized Zion Episcopal Church. Zion church was standing by 1834. where it stands today, near the corner of Cedar and Main Streets in Dobbs Ferry, literally adjacent to the Old Croton Aqueduct. Irving and Hamilton, as well as Van Brugh Livingston, were landholders whose properties were "taken" by appraisal, for the Aqueduct. In a disciplinary temperament parallel to that of the Temperance leaders, a rather severe Chief Engineer Douglass acted the disciplinarian with his engineering corps of sun/eyors and rodmen, by forbidding them to play cards in their quarters in the evenings. Several quit the works, rather than be molded to Douglass' demanding code. 24. Document No. 14, Semi-Annual Report of the Water Commissioners, January-June, 1837, p.95. 25. Letter to J.B. Jervis from E. French, Sing Sing, April 25, 1838. John B. Jen/is Papers, Jervis Public Library, Rome, NY. 26. Document No. 5, Semi-Annual Report of the Water Commissioners, January-June 30, 1838, p.57. 27. letter to J. B. Jervis from Horatio Allen, Sing Sing, April 10, 1838, John B. Jervis Papers, Jervis Public Library, Rome, NY. 28. Hone, April, 1840, The Diary of Philip Hone, 1828-18}!, ed. Allan Nevins, NY 1936). 29. Dobbs Ferry's first Catholic family — ^Joseph Lawlor and his father— are thought to have participated in the first mass read in the village, in a lime shed on Gould's pier on the Hudson. In 1847-48 mass was read "once every two months in Mr. Lawlor's house," according to the "History of the Parish of the Sacred Heart, Dobbs Ferry, NY and Local Facts Prior to Formation of This Pahsh; 1837- 1933," archives/pamphlet collection, Dobbs Ferry Historical Society. Father Ryan said his first Yonkers mass in September, 1847; in 1850 he established a mis- sion in Beekmantown, "where he offered the first mass in the Cedar St. home of Patrick Fitzpatrick." (Buxton, History of the Tarrytowns, p.252) St. Augustine's Roman Catholic Church was organized in 1850 to serve the Irish Catholic commu- nity in Sing Sing. 30. Document No. 45, Report of the Committee on Fire and Water, March 4, 1835. 31. Document No. 12, Semi-Annual Report of the Water Commissioners for January-June, 1843, July 8, 1843. figure 39: The Aqueduct and Surrounding Neighborhoods, Yonkers. c. 1890s, contemporary print from original glass plate negative The Hudson River Museum of Westchester Panetta The building of the Croton Aqueduct is usually incorporated into the history of New York City where it is treated as a benchmark in the growth of the City's population or a chapter in the development of municipal services. The design and construction of the Aqueduct is also noted as one of the remarkable technical accomplishments of 19th-century engineering. The Croton Aqueduct is usually thus described as an example of an innovative technology and as a response to the needs of an expanding urban population.^ This urban-centered view of the history of the Aqueduct has neglected its impact on Westchester County. The construction of the Croton Aqueduct, independent of the service it provided New York, was a turning point in the history of