On the latter day, [Tucsdai/, Ma;/ 23, 177-'),] those Deputies who were then }>resent assembled at the Exchange, " the Deputies of a majority of the Counties " having appeared; and a "Provincial Congress for the " Colony of New-York " was organized by the election of Peter Van Brugh Livingston -- one of the most violent of the former " Committee of Corres()ondence," a brother of the Lord of the Manor of Livingston, and a brother-in-law and partner in business of that Earl of Stirling, so called, who figured so largely in the military history of the War of the Revolution -- to be its President ; and John McKesson and Robert Benson, the latter a brother of that Egbert Benson whose extraordinary election as a Deputy from Duchess-county to the earlier Provincial Convention, has been already noticed, were elected to be ils Secretiiries.-' Although the doings of that body are less generally known than those of the Continental Congress, the purposes of this work will not require any further reference to them, than to such portions as relate ])articularly, to Westchester-county or to those who were within that County, and to such other portions thereof as, in tlieir effects, affected that County or its inhabitants, during the period of the War of the Revolution.

As has been already stated, the local Committee for Westchester-county was created on the eighth ol'May, 1775, ninety members having been miraculously created out of the material of which twenty-three were actually comjiosed ; and (iilbert Drake was made its Chairman.^ Micah Towiisend, subseiiuently holding other offices of Iioihu', in both Westchester and Cumberland-counties, was made the Secretary of that Committee ; ^ and its doings, as far as they were