White Plains, which had been the county seat since 1759, ceased to be adapted for that purpose, partly because of the burning of the court house on the night of the 5th of November, 1776, and partly because of the exposed situation of the village between the lines of the two armies. Upon the destruction of the court house the village of Bedford was made the seat of the county meeting-house of Bedgovernment, and it was in the Presbyterian under the provisions of ford that the first county court organized the constitution of 1777 held its sessions. That building, in its turn, was burned by the British officer Tarleton, when he made his raid on Poundridge and Bedford, July 2, 1779. Thereupon the courts transferred their sittings to the meeting-house in Upper Salem, where the church at Bedford havthey continued until 1785. In that year, ing been rebuilt, it was ordered that the courts should resume their sessions at Bedford. By an act of the legislature passed May 1, 1786, the sum of £1,800 was appropriated for the erection of two new court houses, one at White Plains and the other at Bedford, under the superintendence of Stephen Ward, Ebenezer Lockwood, Jonathan G. Tompkins, Ebenezer Purdy, Thomas Thomas, Richard Hatfield, and Richard Sackett, Jr. These two structures were completed in 1787, and thenceforward until 1868 Bedford shared with White The second White Plains the honor of being a "half shire" town.

GENERAL

COUNTY

HISTORY

Plains court house of 1787 1 occupied the same site as the first, oil Broadway, and continued in use until 1857, when the present fine building on Railroad Avenue was finished. The Bedford court house, also erected in 1787, is still in existence, being now used as a town hall. After the Revolution the board of supervisors, which had had but a meager membership during the war, resumed at once its character of a representative body of all the organized communities of the county.