XIV INTRODUCTION. 



The subjoined account of the County, in 1780. is taken from Dr. 

 Thacher's Military Journal : — 



"The couutry which we lately traversed, about fifty miles iu extent, is called 

 "Neuteal Ground;" but the miserable inhabitants who remain are not much 

 favored with the privileges which their neutrality ought to secure to them. 

 They are continually exposed to the ravages and insults of an infamous banditti, 

 composed of royal refugees and tories. The country is rich and fertile ; and the 

 farms appear to have been advantageously cultivated, but it now has the marks 

 of a country in ruins. A large proportion of the proprietors having abandoned 

 their farms, the few that remain find it impossible to harvest the produce. The 

 meadows and pastures are covered with grass of a summer's growth, and thousands 

 of bushels of apples and other fruit are rotting in the orchards. We brought off 

 about two hundred loads of hay and grain ; and ten times the amount might 

 have been procured, had teams enough been provided. Those of the inhabitants 

 of the neutral ground who were tories, have joined their friends in New York ; 

 and the Whigs have retired into the interior of our country. Some of each side 

 have taken up arms, and become the most cruel and deadly foes. There are 

 within the British lines banditti, consisting of lawless villians, who devote them- 

 selves to the most cruel pillage and robbery among the defenceless inhabitants 

 between the lines; many of them they carry off to New York, after plundering 

 their houses and farms. These shameless marauders have received the names of 

 Cowboys and Skinners. By their atrocious deeds, they have become a scourge 

 and terror to the people. Numerous instances have been related of these miscre- 

 ants subjecting defenceless persons to cruel tortures, to compel them to deliver 

 up their money, or to disclose the places where it has been secreted. It is not 

 uncommon for them to hang a man by the neck till apparently dead, then restore 

 him, and repeat the experiment, and leave him for dead. One of these unhappy 

 persons informed me, that when suffering this cruel treatment, the last sensation 

 which he recollects, when suspended by the neck, was a flashing heat over him 

 like that which would be occasioned by boiling water poured over his body ; he 

 was, however, cut down ; and how long he remained on the ground insensible, 

 he knows not. A peaceable, unresisting Quaker, of considerable respectability, 

 by 'the name of Quincy, was visited by several of these vile ruffians: they first 

 demanded his money, and after it was delivered they suspected he had more 

 concealed, and inflicted on him the most savage cruelties in order to extort it 

 from him. They began with what they call scorching, covering his naked body 

 with hot ashes, and repeating the application till the skin was covered with 

 blisters; after this they resorted to the halter, and hung the poor man on a tree 

 by his neck, then took him down, and repeated it a second, and even a third time, 

 and finally left him almost lifeless. "« 



Westchester County under the late constitution formed the Second 

 Senatorial, and Assembly Districts ; under the present, she constitutes 

 the Seventh Senatorial with Rockland, and is divided into two Assembly 

 Districts. 



a Thacher's Military Journal, 232. 



