To these names may be added An-drew Corsa of Fordham (who is yet living) but who in con-sequence of his youth, only acted upon two or three import-ant occasions, during the latter years of the war. The three, of whose numerous exploits I propose to describe a few, and of whose lives and characters, I shall give a very concise sketch, are Cornelius Oakley of Whiteplains, John Odell of Greenburgh and Abraham Dyckman of Kingsbridge. The ancestors of the first of these were among the early settlers of the Borough Town of Westchester. Cornelius Oakley was born on the 15th of January in the year 1757, at Whiteplains, to which place his father had removed two or three years previously. Some time in the spring of 1776, when it had become evident that a struggle with the forces of the mother-country was at hand, he and his brother Isaac enrolled themselves at Whiteplains, in a volunteer company composed of ardent young whigs of their own age, belonging to that part of the Country. They took this measure without the knowledge of their father, who had attached himself to the Society of Quakers, and consequently heard of it with extreme disapprobation. In obedience to his positive com-mands, they withdrew unwillingly from their engagement, and took but little part in the first campaign. John Odell was born near Croton River upon the Manor of Courtland, on the 25th of October 1756. His paternal ances-tor William Odell emigrated from England along with some of the early colonists of Rye, where he at first settled, but subse-quently, about the year 1680, removed to the Manor of Ford-ham, and married a daughter of one of the Dutch inhabitants. Similar alliances were sought by most of his children and descendants, by which means, when our guide's father settled,