Morrisania, however, received in that year a village charter, which " conferred upon the trustees nearly all the powers of a city corporation without the incidental expenses; and this act enabled the town authorities topioneer annexation by proceeding to make such improvements in streets and highways as were demanded by an increasing population flowing in from below the Harlem River." About the same time some new cross streets were indicated in the sections adjacent to the Harlem River, and were numbered in continuation of the streets below the river-- a proceeding significant of the general belief in the early upward expansion of the city. In an article on the history of the annexation movement, Mr. William Cauldwell, one of the fathers of that movement, says: "The first positive move in the legislature toward annexation was in the year 1869, when Mr. Cornelius Corson, then a resident of Mount Vernon, Westchester County, and a close adherent to what was known as the Tweed regime, having prepared a bill providing for

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the annexation of the Towns of Morrisania, West Farms, Westchester, and Mount Vernon to the City of New York, had notice of such proposed bill given by the late Senator Genet. I had the honor at the time of representing, among other localities, the Westchester towns in the State senate, and regarding it as an act of discourtesy that such a move should have been made without consultation, and without the request of my immediate constituents, on the spur of the moment I arose in my place in the senate and gave notice that I would, at some future time, present a ' bill to annex the City of New York to the Town of Morrisania.' This sarcasm hit the nail on the head, and nothing further was heard of the Corson bill; for soon thereafter the adherents <»f the Tweed liing got to quarreling and battering each other's heads, and the combination was utterly destroyed." 1 The earliest definite measure looking to annexation was the action of the legislature at the time of the passage of [ the Y o n k e r s c i t y charter, June 1, 1872, in excluding from the territory of the < !ity of Yonkers all that por- * tion of the old Town of Yonkers lying below i Mount Saint Vincent.