aspects or ill relation to its later developments, was unquestionably the foundation of the Village -- now the prosperous and handsome City -- of Mount Vernon. Unlike any other considerable community of Westchester County, Mount Vernon owes its very existence to the railroad. Yonkers, Tarrytown, Sing Sing, Peekskill. New Kochelle, Mamaroneck, Rye, and Port Chester, with White Plains, Bedford, and various other villages scattered through the central and northern parts of the county, existed before the period of railways, and doubtless would have enjoyed respectable growth if no railway had ever been built. Rut Mount Vernon had no such prior existence. In 1850 there was not even an elementary settlement on the site of the present city. Its very name belongs as strictly to the latter half of the nineteenth century as does the name of Irvington. Larchmont, or any other hamlet exclusively conceived and erected, within the memory of men still living, on the foundations of extemporized enterprise. Although the Township of Eastchester, at least at its southern extremity, was one of the earliest settled localities of the county, no village of any noticeable pretensions or expectations had been established within its limits until Mount Vernon sprang into being. The hamlet of Eastchester, at the head of sloop navigation where Hutchinson's River or Eastchester Creek empties into Eastchester Ray. has associations as an organized community scarcely less venerable than those of Westchester Milage. In 1850 some live hundred people were living there and in that vicinity. The total population of the township in the same year was 1,709. There was also a settlement of some size at Tuckahoe, resulting from the opening of marble quarries there about 1823. and Tuckahoe was consequently one of the original stations of the Harlem Railroad. In 1850 there was organized in New York City an association called the " New York Industrial Home Association No. 1," composed mostly of tradesmen, employees, and other persons of small means.