but it was composed of men of notorious poverty and meanness, 1 by no means representative men of the yeomanry of Westchester-county ; " many of them " were, " destitute of " arms " 2 and, therefore, useless for soldiers ; and it appears that, as such characters were apt to be, they were recklessly destructive of the private property of those who were richer than they, not sparing, even, the property of those who had endeavored to make them more than ordinarily comfortable. 3 The Lieutenant-colonel of the Regiment, who was, also, a Deputy from Westchestercounty in the Provincial Congress, complained to that body that the Regiment "lodged in an uncom- " fortable manner for the want of Cribs for its beds ; " and he insisted that it was " necessary that a car- " penter be sent to make Cribs for their beds; " and a carpenter was accordingly sent to Hoern's Hook, for the purpose of making " Cribs " for the greater comfort of Westchester-couuty's " patriotic " Minutemen. 4

It does not appear how long that particular Regiment remained in the service of the Continent; but it was evidently mustered in for only a short term of service ; and that, at the expiration of that brief term, it was discharged and mustered out, disappearing, for ever, from the field of military service.

On the nineteenth of January, 1776, the Continental Congress ordered four Battalions to be raised for the defence of the Colony of New York ; 5 and, on the twenty-sixth of the same month, the experiment of starting the work of enlistment, for those four Battalions, by jobbing out the Offices which would be required, amorig the several Counties, with invitations for estimates of the numbers of men who could "be "speedily raised and armed," in the respective Counties, by that proffered bait of Offices, was the first action which was taken by the revolutionary authorities, in New York, on that important subject. 6