COUNTY OF WESTCHESTER. 361

NEWCASTLE.

This township is situated ten miles north of the village of White Plains, and distant one hundred and twenty-one miles from Albany ; bounded north by Cortlandt, Yorktown and Somers, east by Bedford, south by North Castle, and west by Ossin-in^r and Mount Pleasant. New Castle was taken from the older town of North Castle, and set off as a separate or distinct township, on the 18th of March, 1791. By the Indians it was called Shappequa, probably a corruption of the Algonquin term, Chapacoiir, which signifies "a vegetable root.''^ The name still survives in the Shappequa hills. The chief proprietor of these lands in 1696 was the Indian sachem Wampus, whose principal residence is said to have been situated near the pond of that name, in the south-west part of the town. On the south side of Kirby's pond, (at New Castle corner,) the Indians had their wigwams and a burying ground. Their tools are occasionally found ill the adjoining fidds..b v. ;■ . '. ,

In 1660 John Richbell, of Mamaroneck; purchased of the Indians, (who claimed to be lords of the soil,) a large tract of land extending twenty miles north of the Sound. This grant comprised the entire township of New Castle.

The next proprietor was Colonel Caleb Heathcote who obtained of Mrs. Anne Richbell, a patent right to purchase lands ''which are already included in her husband's sale of 1660." Upon the 12ih of October, 1696, his Excellency Benjamin Fletcher, Captain General and Governor of his Majesty's Province of New York, &c., did grant unto Caleb Heathcote, Esc^.,