ii4 The Story of The Bronx 



troops to the Continental army, but also furnished more 

 loyalists, or Tories, both active and passive, than any other 

 province or state. 



The general mass of the population, though steady, intelli- 

 gent, industrious, and not illiterate, did not concern themselves 

 greatly with the political affairs of the decade between 1764 

 and 1774, in which New England took so prominent a part. 

 They looked upon their eastern neighbors as wild stirrers-up 

 of strife, whose ability and progressiveness they were ready 

 and willing to acknowledge, but for whom they felt and 

 expressed a certain sneering and loft}- contempt, and often dis- 

 like. r The fact that a man was a Yankee was sufficient to 

 excuse his vagaries of dress, action, or speech. We do not 

 find, therefore, that any Committee of Correspondence or 

 society of the Sons of Liberty existed within the county. This 

 feeling of apathy was more pronounced in the southern 

 part of the county, that is, within the Borough, than in the 

 more northerly sections, as White Plains, Bedford, Rye, and 

 Mamaroneck, whose original settlers were nearly all from 

 Connecticut. 



The most thickly settled portion of the Borough was the 

 section lying contiguous to the Sound: Westchester, West 

 Farms, Throgg's Neck, and Eastchester. Here the prepon- 

 derating influence was that of the De Lancey family; and as 

 they were, almost to a man, loyalists, this portion of the 



1 " It is my will and desire that my son Gouverneur Morris may have the 

 best education that is to be had in England or America. But my express 

 will and directions are, that he be never sent for that purpose to the Colony 

 of Connecticut, lest he should imbibe in his youth that low craft and 

 cunning, so incident to the people of that Country, which is so inter- 

 woven with their constitution that all their art cannot disguise it from the 

 world, though many of them, under the sanctified garb of religion, have 

 endeavored to impose themselves upon the world as honest men." — From 

 the will of Lewis Morris, Junior, of Morrisania, November 19, 1760. 



