Manners and Customs in Colonial Days 103 



As already stated, the occupation of the inhabitants was 

 farming. Several travellers through the county in later co- 

 lonial days have left their impressions of what they observed, 

 and state that even in the large villages each resident had 

 his farm of several acres, so that neighbors were not very 

 close ones. Nor was it necessary that they should be; for the 

 Indian had been brought into subjection, and had, by 1750, 

 retired to the wilder regions of the Highlands, where, at Lake 

 Osceola, he had his last village before dying away forever as 

 a race. Single families or members of the aboriginal owners 

 of the soil might be found occasionally scattered through the 

 county, supporting themselves by hunting and fishing, or 

 by making brooms and baskets. Even the mechanics, the 

 carpenters, the masons, the painters, the blacksmiths, were 

 farmers in a small way in addition to their trades. The 

 tavern-keeper and the store-keeper also had their farms ad- 

 joining their tavern or store. 



There was no manufacturing worthy of the name ; some hats 

 were made of the skin of the beaver, which could be found 

 in nearly all the streams. Manufacturing did not begin until 

 the days immediately preceding the Revolution, when the 



about 1856. The Westchester Co. Gazette, an organ for the Old and New 

 Villages [of Morrisania], was first published at West Farms in 1849 by 

 John T. Cogswell, but was removed to Mott Haven on August 5, 1850. 

 A Democratic paper, the Westchester Co. Journal, was issued by James 

 Stillman in 1853; and the Westchester Times was published by Dubois B. 

 Frisbee in 1864. There are now published in the Borough two daily 

 papers, the Bronx Borough Record and Times, Republican, and the North 

 Side News, Democratic. The weekly edition of the first began in 1864 

 and the daily in March, 1902; the latter was first published as a weekly 

 in 1897, and as a daily in October, 1901. The following weekly papers 

 are also published: the Union at Melrose (Democratic, 1869); the Globe 

 (Republican), the Sentinel (Independent), the Independent (Democratic), 

 all in Westchester Village; the Bulletin (Independent) in the Twenty- 

 third Ward; the German- American (Democratic) at Wakefield, and the 

 Bronx Home News, (Independent, January, 1907.) 



