In 1810 the population of Westchester County was just about double that attained in 1790. During the half century there had been an average growth every ten years of slightly more than 1,000. The original character of the population had not yet been materially modified. Men engaged in active daily business in New York had not become regular inhabitants, although there was an increasing tendency to build country residences in which to spend portions of 1 French's

" Gazetteer of the

State

of New

York " (1SG0), p. G97.

HISTORY

WESTCHESTER

COUNTY

the year or to lead lives of retirement after the termination of eminent or otherwise successful careers. The most distinguished citizen of our county during- the period whose history has been traced in the present chapter was unquestionably the noble statesman, John Jay. His death in 1829 at his home in Bedford, where he spent the last twenty-eight years of his life, has already been noticed. Another of the great Revolutionary fathers, Gouverneur Morris, retired to his ancestral estate in this county in the fullness of his honors and fame, and was buried in our soil. Throughout the Revolution Gouverneur Morris was a resident of Philadelphia, serving the government for a portion of the time as a member of congress, and later as assistant superintendent of the finances. His mother meantime had continued to live at Morrisania, where Gouverneur visited her at the conclusion of the war, after an absence of seven years. By purchasing the rights of his brother, General Staats Long Morris, of the British army, he became possessed of all the Morrisania estate east of Mill Brook. He did not, however, abandon his residence in Philadelphia, and in 1787 he was elected a delegate from Pennsylvania to the federal constitutional convention. He spent the next ten years in Europe, and during the most violent period of the French Revolution was the American minister at Paris.