Nash, both residents of Morrisania ; and among painters, Albert Bierstadt, the famous landscape painter, who lived within the corporate limits of Tarrytown, and whose residence was destroyed by fire ; Francis W. Edmonds, Edward W. Nichols, Tait, Gustave M. Arnolt, the young German painter of animals, and Samuel Fanshaw and Robert Hite, both of them eminent painters on ivory. Robert Walter Weir, the distinguished painter, who succeeded C. R. Leslie as instructor in drawing at West Point, was born at New Rochelle on June 18, 1808.

The earliest of the Westchester County literati was Adrian Van der Donck, a graduate of the University of Leyden, who was appointed by the patroon of Rensselaerwick sheriff' of his colony, and came to New Netherland in 1642. In 1648 he was granted a tract of land at Yonkers. In the deed he was spoken of as Yonker Van der Donck, Yonker being the usual title of gentleman. His name appears among the signers of a tract, published at the Hague in 1650, describing the New Netherland. It has been translated by Mr. Henry C. Murphy for the New York Historical Society, and published by them, and also by James Lenox, of New York. Owing to its attacks on the government of Kieft and Stuyvesant, Van der Donck was denied access to the colonial records during the preparation of his " Description of New Netherland," which has been translated and occupies one hundred and six pages of the "New York Historical Society's Collections," 1841. It describes the rural products, animals and inhabitants of the colony. The date of the first edition is unknown. The second was published at Amsterdam, in 1656, by Ebert Nieuwenhof, who introduced the work with a poetical preface.