No pretensions were made, in the official report of the Meeting or elsewhere, that the attendance was large: on the contrary, it is very probable that not more than two dozens were present. Whatever the number may have been, it assumed to be the representative of all who were, then, within the County, of every condition in life ; and, in the name and in behalf of all those who then lived therein, whether present or absent, it appointed " a Committee " of ninety persons, for the said County," and de-

1 It will be noticed that the proposed assembly was, in this Circular Letter, called a "Provincial Congress," not a " Convention," as the last was named.

- The re-print of this Circular Letter, in the text, is made from a carefully-made copy of one of the originals, which has been preserved amon^ Associations in the Historical Majiuscrijjls relating to the War of the Revolution, in the Secretary of State's Office, at Albany, Volume XXX., Page 182.

termined that any twenty of them, "should be "impowered to act for the said County; " and it also determined to send a Deputation to the proposed Provincial Congress, referring to the new-appointed Committee of the County, the nomination of those who should be members of that Deputation.

There were only twenty-three of the ninety who had been named for the Committee, present and acting on the subject which had been referred to it; but it was not slow in nominating, " to represent the said "County in Provincial Convention," Gouverneur Morris, Doctor Robert Graham, Colonel Lewis Graham, and Colonel James Van Cortlandt, all of them from the Borough Town of Westchester ; Stephen Ward and Joseph Drake, from Eastchester ; Major Philip Van Cortlandt, of the Manor of Cortlandt ; Colonel James Holmes, of Bedford ; John Thomas, Junior, of Rye ; David Dayton, of North Castle ; and William Paulding, of ; and, undoubtedly, with equal promptness, the Meeting confirmed the nominations, by electing the eleven nominees to seats in the proposed Congress of the Colony.