It contains a Methodist church, several stores, a post-office, a grist mill, a needle manufactory, and twelve or fifteen dwelling houses. The neighborhood of this beautiful spot abounds with the most romantic scenery. It is now about one hundred and twenty-eight years since the first families settled in this place. They appear to have met with great discouragements, and to have endured severe trials, for they were in the midst of a wilderness, and constantly exposed to Indian depredations. The Rev. Robert Jenney, minister of Rye, writing to the Propagation Society in 1722, thus alludes to the place. " I have lately been to a setllement in the woods, where 1 had good success, having baptized a whole family, parents and children ."i* This evidently refers

-* Formerjy called North Castle. ^ Rep. of Propagation Soc,

COUNTY OF WESTCHESTER. 369

to the present village, for in 1728 the Rev. T. Wetniore, his suecessor informs the same society, ihat "at North Castle, a new settlement in the luoods, there are more than forty families most of which are uhbaptized, and that he preaches there every fiftli Sunday.''^

Prior to the Revolution. North Caslle formed one of the precincts or districts of Rye parish, which accounts for the parochial clergy officiating here at this early period. In 1725, North Castle contributed towards the minister's rate and poor of the parish, £2. 9. 0, The same year Mr, Dwight was school-master at North Castle with a salary of £10 a year. At a vestry meetinj^, held March the 1st, 1730, for the parish of Rye, it was ordered, that " whereas the vestrymen of the district of North Casth have neglected to make up their parish rate last year and this year, though often requested thereto, ordered therefore by ye vestry and justices, that the North Castle vestrymen^ for ye last year and this year do appear at Rye at Francis Doughty's, on the 16lh of this month at noon, in order to make their rates without any farther delay, or ordered to be presented immediately, and that the clerk do send forthwith a copy of this order to said North Castle vestrymen.''^ The Rev.