1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Mamaroneck

MAMARONECK, a township of Westchester county, New York, U.S.A., on Long Island Sound, about 20 m. N.E. of New York City and a short distance N.E. of New Rochelle. Pop. (1890), 2385; (1900) 3849; (1905) 5655; (1910) 5602. Mamaroneck is served by the New York, New Haven & Hartford railway. The township includes the village of Larchmont (pop. in 1910, 1958), incorporated in 1891, and part of the village of Mamaroneck (pop. in 1910, including the part in Rye township, 5699), incorporated in 1895. Larchmont is the headquarters of the Larchmont Yacht Club. The site of Mamaroneck township was bought in 1660 from the Indians by John Richbell, an Englishman, who obtained an English patent to the tract in 1668. The first settlement was made by relatives of his on the site of Mamaroneck village in 1676, and the township was erected in 1788. On the 28th of August 1776, near Mamaroneck, a force of American militiamen under Capt. John Flood attacked a body of Loyalist recruits under William Lounsbury, killing the latter and taking several prisoners. Soon afterwards Mamaroneck was occupied by the Queen’s Rangers under Colonel Robert Rogers. On the night of the 21st of October an attempt of a force of Americans under Colonel John Haslet to surprise the Rangers failed, and the Americans, after a hand-to-hand fight, withdrew with 36 prisoners. Mamaroneck was the home of John Peter DeLancey (1753–1828), a Loyalist soldier in the War of Independence, and was the birthplace of his son William Heathcote DeLancey (1797–1865), a well-known Protestant Episcopal clergyman, provost of the University of Pennsylvania in 1827–1832 and bishop of western New York from 1839 until his death. James Fenimore Cooper, the novelist, married (1811) a daughter of John Peter DeLancey; lived in Mamaroneck for several years, and here wrote his first novel, Precaution, and planned The Spy.