THE TOWN 



OF 



KTOB.TH OASTLE. 



The township of North Castle is situated six miles North of White 

 Plains, thirty-six' from New York, and one hundred and twenty-nine from 

 Albany — bounded North by New Castle and Bedford, East by Pound- 

 ridge, South-easterdly by the State of Connecticut and the town of Har- 

 rison, and West by Mount Pleasant. The tradition is that the town 

 acquired its present name from an Indian palisaded fort or castle that 

 once stood near the residence of Benjamin A. Birdsall a short dis- 

 tance south from the village of Armonk. By the Indians it was emphat- 

 ically styled " Wampus's Land," while that portion of the town situated 

 east of the Byram River was called by the first white settlers the "White 

 Fields,"— a name derived from the white Balsam, (Gnaphalium Margaret- 

 accum of Linnaeus.) The whole town (including New Castle) is fre- 

 quently denominated in the colonial records, the " Liberty of North 

 Castle." The present township was organized on the 7 th of March, 

 1788." 



From the general tenor of the Indian grant made to Nathaniel Tur- 

 ner of Quinnepeac (New Haven) in 1640, we infer, that the greater part 

 of the lands originally belonged to the Indian sachems, Ponus and Was- 

 cussue. At this early period, however, the Indians were in the habit of 

 making repeated and almost unlimited grants of land into the " wilder- 

 ness," as they termed the interior of the country. Thus, we have Shana- 

 sockwell's grant to the people of Rye in 1660, which extended twelve 

 miles north of the Sound ; also the same year, the Indian sale to John 

 Richbell, of Mamaroneck, running twenty miles north of the Sound. In 

 1695 the lands west of the Byram appear to have belonged to the Sachems 

 — Wampus, Cornelius, Coharnitt, and others • while the territory west of 



a Laws of New York. New Castle was set off from North Castle in 1791. 



