Colonel De Lancey furnished us with a permit to return with our flag ; we rode ten miles, and took lodgings in a private house. Here we were informed that six of our men, having taken from the refugees thirty head of cattle, were overtaken by forty of De Lancey's corps and were all killed but one, and the cattle retaken. In the morning breakfasted with a friendly Quaker family, in whose house was one of our men who had been wounded, when four others were killed; we dressed his wounds, which were numerous and dangerous. In another house, we saw four dead bodies, mangled in a most inhuman manner by the refugees, and among them, one groaning under five wounds on his head, two of them quite through the skull bone with a broadsword. This man was capable of giving us an account of the murder of his four companions. They surrendered and begged for life, but their entreaties were disregarded, and the swords of their cruel foes were plunged into their bodies so long as signs of life remained. We found many friends to our cause, who reside on their farms between the lines of the two armies, whose situation is truly deplorable, being continually exposed to the ravages of the tories, horse thieves, and cow boys, who rob and plunder them without mercy, and the personal abuse and punishments which they inflict is almost incredible.""

» Thacher's Mil. Journal. 248, 9.

COUNTY OF WESTCHESTER. 389

Shrub Oak is a small village, in the northern part of the town, containing a Methodist church, a post-office, and about fifteen dwellings. The Methodist society of this place was first incorporated upon the 22d of September, 1840; Newman Lounsherry, Benjamin Curry, Solomon Requa, Thomas Curry, jr., and Jonathan Danow, trustees."'^ The church, which was erected in 1839, is a very neat wooden structure.