HISTORY

WESTCHESTER

COUNTY

money on an enormous scale. It was best that he should be rid of it at once with no greater sacrifice than that incurred in the brief Long Island campaign and the mainly defensive movements that followed it. lie was thereby released from a most perilous situation and enabled to withdraw his army into the interior, where it could recruit its strength, improve its discipline, and grasp opportunities as they should be presented in a struggle for liberty which everyone knew must be protracted and could succeed only through endurance. The first encounter of the Revolution on the soil of Westchester County occurred on the 2Sth of August in the vicinity of Mamaroneck between a party of Loyalist recruits led by one William Lounsbury and an American force commanded by Captain John Flood, which was sent in pursuit of them. According to the records of the State convention for the 29th of August, 1776, " Mr. Tompkins came into convention ami informed that Mr. Lounsbury was come into Westchester County with a commission from General Howe to raise rangers; and that a party of the militia went in pursuit of him, and were under the necessity of killing him, as he would not surrender; another was wounded, and four were taken prisoners-- all his recruits." The prisoners were Jacob Schureman, Bloomer Xeilson (wounded), Joseph Turner, and Samuel Haines. Lounsbury had been on board the - Phoenix " in the North River, and his enlisting orEach of his recruits was to receive £3. ders were found on his person. On Manhattan Island Washington was still undisputed master, and the British, without any precipitancy but with great thoroughness, proceeded to bring him to another reckoning there. Although the ileet made no attempt to dispose itself around the island for days with Howe's land forces until several purposes of co-operation Island, two of the warships, with a brig, had after the battle of Long on the very day of that battle taken a station above Throgg's Neck.