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. This exclusion was clearly with a view to reserving the section ^v't'v^ thus cut off for subseSAINT JOHN S COLLEGE, FORDHAM. quent incorporation in the City of New York. On December 1(5, 1872, a further step in the same direction was taken by the erection of the excised strip into a new ''town" called Kingsbridge. Meantime the annexation enterprise had been fairly launched. In the autumn of 1872 some of the principal property-owners of Morrisania and West Farms held conferences, which resulted in the preparation of an annexation bill by Samuel E. Lyon, a well-known lawyer. The bill was introduced in the assembly early in 1873 by William Herring, representative from the 1st district of Westchester County.