406 The Story of The Bronx 



Unionport occupies the head of the neck lying between West- 

 chester and Pugsley creeks. 



In the town records of Westchester, we find under date of 

 May 6, 1729, regulations for the government of the "sheep 

 pasture" which had been granted to the town by the charter 

 of February 28, 1721. The freeholders of the town were 

 entitled to free pasturage for twenty-five sheep for each in- 

 dividual; "a cow in lieu of five sheep, a horse, mare, or an ox; 

 in lieu of a sheep, a calf; in lieu of two sheep, a yearling" — 

 all of which is reminiscent of the problems we used to solve in 

 our childhood's days, which we used to think rather "crazy" 

 and made up for the special purpose of further addling our 

 poor understandings. In respect, then, to a common pastur- 

 age, the settlers of Westchester were not behind their New 

 England relatives; nor had they departed from the ways of 

 their Anglo-Saxon forbears in old England. The "sheep 

 pasture," or "Commons," as it was later called, embraced 

 about four hundred acres on the west side of Westchester 

 Creek, together with a fenced-in piece of an acre and a half 

 on vStony Brook, where the owners were in the habit of folding 

 and washing their sheep. 



In 1825, the trustees of the town sold the Commons, as 

 undivided lands belonging to the town, to Martin Wilkins, Esq. 

 They then passed through several hands, including those of 

 his grandson, Gouverneur Morris Wilkins, who paid $300,000 

 for them. He sold them, in 1851, to a building association, 

 that established here the village of Unionport; which, in the 

 earlier days of the electric cars, was a favorite resort on Sun- 

 days and holidays. The Industrial Home Association Number 

 Two filed its map of Unionport at White Plains August 23, 

 1854. Included in this plot was also the Lowerre farm, which 

 Wilkins had bought for $25,000. He resold it in September, 



