URING the first fifteen or so years after the beginning of the colonization of New Xetherland there was no attempt at settlement north of the Harlem River, so far as can be de^^ termined from the records that have come down to us. The earliest recorded occupation of Westchester land by an actual white settler dates from about 1639. At that period at least one man of note and substance, Jonas Bronck, laid out a farm and erected a dwelling above the Harlem. That he had predecessors in that section is extremely improbable. The entire Westchester peninsula at that time was a wilderness, inaccessible from Manhattan Island, except by boat.1 The colony proper, as inaugurated by the few families of Walloons, who came over in 1G23, and as subsequently enlarged by gradual additions, was at the far southern end of Manhattan Island, where a fort was built for the general security, and where alone existed facilities for trade and social intercourse. To this spot and its immediate vicinity settlement was necessarily confined for some years; and though by degrees certain enterprising persons took up 'lands considerably farther north, steadily pushing on to the Harlem, it is most unlikely that that stream was crossed for purposes of habitation by any unremembered adventurer before the time of Bronck. exCertainly any earlier migration into a region utterly uninhabited with cept by Indians, and separated by water from all communication the established settlements, would have been an event of some importance, which hardly could have escaped mention. We may therefore with reasonable safety assume that Bronck, the first white resident in Westchester County of whom history leaves any trace, was i That is. not conveniently or for practical purposes accessible otherwise. At Kingsbridge, the place of divide between Spuyten Duyvil Creek and the Harlem River-known in the earliest times as "the fording place "-Tenturosome persons would occasionally ford the and stream.