Especially during the Colonial period, there was no Village, at the County-seat or elsewhere, within the County, which contained a population sufficiently numerous to supply the neighboring farmers, nor even its own inhabitants, with the current news of the day ; z nor was there any settlement, within the County, which possessed sufficient influence to lead the fashions of the wives and daughters of those farmers. There was not, therefore, nor could there have been, any central coterie or clique, with lofty pretentions and extended ambition, to prompt the County, in what should be said or done by its inhabitants, in support of or in opposition to any proposition, whether moral, or ecclesiastical, or political ; nor was there any influence, in any one or in any number, sufficient to associate and organize those farmers, for any purpose whatever. Every one was dependent on his own resources and on his roadside or fireside chats with his neighbors, for whatever information he acquired concerning the passing events of that eventful period; he was dependent, mainly, on his own intelligence and his own intellectual powers, for whatever opinions he entertained, on any subject; and, except on some extraordinary occasions, he was

1 A personal examination of the Records of the County, preserved in the office of the Clerk of the County, at the White Plains, has revealed, to us, the significant fact that, although the Becords of CwU Actions in the Court of Common Pleas, the Becords of Boads, and other similar Becords, from a very early period, have been carefully made in hooks provided for the purpose (in one instance, if in no more, one volume, by being reversed, has been made to serve for two distinct lines of Becords) and as carefully preserved, the EecordB of Criminal Actions, in any and all the Courts, within the County, were not thus made in books, until long after the time of which we write -- until long, very long, after the close of the peaceful and prosperous and happy period of the Colonial era -- when the greater number and more important character of the Criminal Actions -- until then too insignificant, in number and character, to entitle them to such a distinction, among the County Records -- warranted, the first time, the employment of books in which to keep the Becords of them.