No quorum was obtained, however, until the 18th. The delegates from Westchester County were Colonel Pierre Van Cortlandt, Colonel Lewis Graham, Colonel Gilbert Drake, Major Ebenezer Lockwood, Gouverneur Morris, William Paulding, Jonathan G. Tompkins, Samuel Ilavilaml, and Peter Fleming. The third provincial congress was the last of the series to sit in the City of New York, where its sessions came to an abrupt end on the 30th of June, the enemy's long-expected fleet having arrived the day before in the bay. Among the members of this congress were John Jay. James Duane, John Alsop, Philip Livingston, and Francis Lewis, who also were representatives from New York City in the continental congress then sitting at Philadelphia.

HISTORY

WESTCHESTER

COUNTY

Although the career of the third congress of the Province of New York was exceedingly brief, its transactions were highly interesting. The reader will observe that its existence coincided with the period of the final deliberations of the continental congress on the subject of independence -- a period during which also culminated the startling transformation of the struggle with Great Britain from a principally wordy character, with but a slight physical aspect, into a grim and gigantic war. On the day when this congress suddenly dispersed there were riding in the Lower Bay the advance vessels of a fleet of one hundred and thirty sail -- ships-of-the-line, frigates, tenders, and transports -- which bore an invading army of thirty-three thousand men, all of them experienced in the business of lighting and magnificently equipped. The representatives of the patriotic people of New York, in legislative body assembled at this critical time, could not have failed to be occupied with the most grave and emergent public business, some of it very naturally reflecting the powerful popular passions of the day. One of the first acts of the congress was the appointment of a committee "to consider of the ways and means to prevent the dangers to which this colony is exposed by its intestine enemies." Although the committee was headed by one of the principal conservatives of the province, John Also]), who soon afterward resigned his seat in the continental congress on account of the Declaration of Independence, it brought in a report recommending stringent measure's against suspected persons.