The barbarities which were officially inflicted on individuals and families, in many instances only for ah opinion extorted by their persecutors, without an overt act or the inclination to commit one, as those barbarities have been officially recorded, were perfectly shocking ; and some of those which were inflicted on residents of Westchester-county, under the guidance of such notable Westchester-county men as John Jay and Gouverneur Morris, will find places in other parts of this narrative.

| Pennsylvania, as its Secretary. 2 The history of its doings, generally, is known to every intelligent person, and need not be repeated, unless in such instances as particularly related to Westchester-county or to those who were within the bounds of that County, during the period of the War of the Revolution.

On Monday, the twenty-second of May, 1775, a number of those who had been designated as Deputies from the several Counties of the Colony, assembled at the Exchange, in the City of New York, for the purpose of forming a Provincial Congress ; but, because they conceived there was not a sufficient number of , Deputies present, they adjourned until the following ! day, without having attempted to organize. On the .latter day, [Tuesday, May 23, 1775,] those Deputies who were then present assembled at the Exchange, " the Deputies of a majority of the Counties " having appeared ; and a " Provincial Congress for the "Colony of New -York " was organized by the election ' of Peter Van Brugh Livingston -- one of the most ' violentof the former " Committee of Correspondence,'' a brother of the Lord of the Manor of Livingston, and a brother-in-law and partner in business of that . Earl of Stirling, so called, who figured so largely in the military history of the War of the Revolution -- to be its President ; and John McKesson and Robert Benson, the latter a brother of that Egbert Benson whose extraordinary election as a Deputy from Duchess-county to the earlier Provincial Convention, has been already noticed, were elected to be its Secretaries. 3 Although the doings of that body are less generally known than those of the Continental Congress, the purposes of this work will not require any further reference to them, than to such portions as relate particularly, to Westchester-county or to those who were within that County, and to such other portions thereof as, in their effects, affected that County or its inhabitants, during the period of the War of the Revolution.