On The 20th of August the Indians attacked and drove down to Kingsbridge a force of the enemy under LieutenantColonel Emmerick. During the next few days they continued in the lower part of the Town of Yonkers. Here, on August 31, they were surrounded and surprised by the Queen's Rangers under Simcoe, the Chasseurs under Emmerick, de Lancey's 2d battalion, and the Legion Dragoons under Lieutenant-Colonel Tarleton. Forty of their number, including their chief and his son, were killed or desperately wounded. Tins slaughter was one of the most considerable resulting from any single encounter on Westchester soil during the Revolution. An extended account of the affair, from which the various notices in Bolton's and Scharf's Histories are mainly drawn, may be found in Simcoe's Journal. Not many other events of local importance happened in Westchester County during the year 1778. The principal ones were the burning of Ward's house at Tuckahoe, and the " Babcock's House Affair " in Yonkers. Ward's house, which stood on the site of the residence of the late Judge Gilford, was the property of Judge Stephen Ward, a very prominent and respected citizen of the Town of Eastchester. He was one of the leaders of the patriot party in our county before the war, sat in the assembly in 1778 and in the State senate from 1780 to 1783, and was appointed county judge in 1784. His home, on the Tuckahoe Road, was the post for a detachment of Revolutionary troops dependent upon the " lines" above, and as such it was attacked several times. Upon one occasion the American force stationed in and around it was attacked by a strong British expedition under Captain Campbell. The American commander was ready to surrender, when an unlucky shot was fired from one of the windows, and Captain Campbell fell dead.