Suffice it to say, Thomas Dean was at the battle of Stony Brook, and in other perilous conflicts in that school of arms which taught the infant America afterward to assert and maintain her rights against the exactions and unequal taxation of the people whose battles they had fought, and whose fame they had helped to elevate. Mr. Thomas Dean returned after the peace which transferred the Canadas and provinces to the British crown, and resumed the pursuits of agriculture in a portion of what was called " Philipse Manor," in the present town of Mount Pleasant,--rearing his family by the sweat of his brow in that peaceful pursuit.

Thomas Dean was appointed to the important office of Town Clerk of this Manor in 1766, as the following quaint notice copied from the old record testifies :

April ye 1st, J766.

Then ye inhabitants of Philipsburg met together to make town laws for that year, and they chose me for their Town Clerk. Thomas Dean.

It is in character like ealigrapby, with a good strong bold signature. And then how his New Fingland thought and earl)- education stands out in its concise expression, and in his reference to the Town Laws to be enacted. No reference to the Manor whatever, but the autonomy and independence of the New England town was in his thought as he penned those lines. Several pages of the old book appear in his hand writing, and although unfortunately the directly succeeding years are missing from the old record, he was doubtless the Town Clerk of the Manor for quite a period.