133. November 8. Abigail Park. "My maternal grand mother's name was Mary Lyon, wife of Israel Lyon. She resided two miles South (on the Post Road) of Bedford Village, and was burnt out on Sunday morning soon after day light on the 11th of July, 1779. My mother went up on the next day, but my grand mother had then removed to Ridgebury in Connecticut. During all the Revolutionary war, my parents lived in Rye or Harrison, and I state these facts and incidents as I have often heard them from my father and mother whose memories were unusually good. My father was intelligent and had been Schoolmaster in Rye. Colonel Simcoe, who always understood, commanded the detachment which destroyed Bedford. The soldiers were the Leather Caps (Queen's Rangers). They retired soon after firing

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the village, and burnt the principal farm houses of whigs along the Post Road to White Plains. My father and mother then lived in Harrison near the Four Corners formed by the White Plains and Saw Pitt road and Purchase Street. My mother heard of the destruction only on the day it happened and went up to Bedford next morning. Simcoe on his return the same day halted before our door, and being thirsty asked my mother for a bowl that he might drink from the well, but she refused, saying, "Good for nothing cruel fellows like you who go about burning people's houses ought to drink like cattle out of the brook upon all fours. Away with you!" &c. She rated him so severely that he lost his temper and seeing my father in the house and learning his relationship he ordered