"The General expressly forbids any person or soldier belonging to the army to set fire to any house or barn, on any pretense, Avithout The burning of the court someof "general fromnight order the special ahouse was therefore done in defiance of the 5th officer." during The cula recent stringent prohibition by the commander-in-chief. prits were a band of Massachusetts troops led by Major Jonathan Williams Austin, and, besides destroying the court house, they burnt the Presbyterian Church and several private dwellings at White For this deed Austin was court-martialed, dismissed from Plains. the service, and turned over to the State convention for further punishment. Bythe direction of that body he was put in jail at KingsFortunately the county records did ton, but managed to escape. not' perish in the flames, having been removed to a place of security before the occupation of White Plains by the two armies. This instance of the incidental outrages inflicted upon the people of our county as a result of the military operations in the campaign of 1770 might be enlarged upon by the introduction of local details innumeraof destruction, devastation, violence, and plun.hu- almost pubble. The materials for such local chronicles obtainable from lished sources and from family records are so abundant that very minutiae hardly many of our pages might be filled with them ; but such dimension s. It belong to a general narrative history of moderate for ns persecutio individual of cases the in as is sufficient to say that, ess mercilessn and activity with d perpetrate were they political belief, by both sides-- with the important distinction, however, that while the offenses committed by the American soldiers were the acts of individuals or small detachments in defiance of very strict army regulations the crimes of the invading troops were wholly unrestrained , and if indeed they were not tacitly licensed.