Talk:Borough president

New York County and the birth of the Bronx
I don't think the history of the Bronx's birth is entirely accurate. I haven't yet been able to pin down the details, but the general impression is that the Borough was formed with consolidation in 1897, and thus was one of the Five Boroughs, while the County (which may or may not have had a nominal existence in 1898) was created by the Legislature in 1912, and actually began operating on January 2, 1914. It's also not entirely clear to me if any part of the Bronx was still in Westchester County between 1874 and 1897 while being within the city limits of New York. Please see the extended discussions of these very questions at Talk:The Bronx and Talk:Manhattan. Any further enlightenment would be extremely helpful. —— Shakescene (talk) 08:20, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

In fact, in the very first elections in the consolidated City, The Bronx picked a Borough President (Louis Haffen, a Democrat, as you can see from the lists of Borough Presidents in this article), two Coroners for the Borough, three City Councilmen and three Aldermen (all Democrats). County functions such as Sheriff and elections were covered jointly for the Borough s of Manhattan and the Bronx, as the County of New York. See the first election returns as reported in The New York Times of November 4, 1897, here: DEMOCRATS TAKE ALL; The Tammany Ticket Makes Almost a Clean Sweep of the Greater City. —— Shakescene (talk) 09:17, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

If you can wait a little while, I can give you some information and the first-hand references that may answer your questions.-SSG Cornelius Seon (Retired) (talk) 04:37, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Documented formation of The Bronx
On 1874-01-01, Westchester County, New York was partitioned. The 40 Square Miles that eventually produced the western portion of The Bronx was annexed to New York County. This included the Towns of Morrisania, West Farms , and Kingsbridge.

On 1881-06-08, North Brother Island was Annexed from Queens County, New York to New York County, New York.

On 1884-05-08, Rikers Island was annexed from Queens County to New York County.

In 1894, a nonbinding Referendum was held for adding the East Bronx to the rest of The Bronx. The City of Mount Vernon, New York voted the referendum down by a majority vote, and by one vote by the Town of Westchester. As a result, the Bill of Anexation was voted down until it was perfected by the inclusion of the Town of Westchester in spite of its vote of dissapproval due to its central location in the East Bronx.

On 1895-06-06, Westchester County, New York was partitioned, with the 20 Square Miles that eventually produced the eastern portion of The Bronx, was annexed to New York County. This included part of the Towns of Pelham, Eastchester , all of the Town of Westchester, (The Bronx) , and the Village of Wakefield.

On 1897-05-04, the Five Boroughs of New York City were established, with the same configuration as the Five Counties, except that the Boroughs of Manhattan and The Bronx shared New York County.

The County of The Bronx was partitioned from the County of New York on 1912-04-19, coterminous with the Borough of The Bronx

The Border between The Bronx and the south side of Mount Vernon, New York was adjusted on 1917-05-26 to its current configuration.

The border between The Bronx and Westchester County was redefined with no discernible change on 1950-04-14.

On 1964-04-16, South Brother Island was transferred from Queens to The Bronx, establishing the current configuration of The Bronx.

SSG Cornelius Seon (Retired) (talk) 08:56, 10 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Living in Providence, I don't have handy access to the Laws of New York (are the older laws on line?), but I have been lucky enough to score my own copy of the 1995 Encyclopedia of New York City (a new edition came out this year — 2008), so I'll go through your references when I get a chance. I had used the Encyclopedia, together with The New York Times archives, as my main source, and the Encyclopedia's articles, written by different experts, didn't always seem 100% consistent or conclusive to me. One quibble: it's "The "Borough of the Bronx" but "The County of Bronx". —— Shakescene (talk) 22:03, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

May I suggest that you get the following book. It is the standard one-volume primary source compilation of all the legal references:

"New York Atlas of Historical County Boundaries"; Compiled by Kathryn Ford Thorne; John H. Long, Editor; "A Project of the Dr. William M. Scholl Center for Family and Community History"; The Newberry Library; Simon & Schuster, Publisher; New York; 1993; ISBN 0-13-051962-6.

This boook is part of a series on the States, and it has all of the County information with their References, and a complete set of modern base maps overlayed with the County information, and it completely explains the methodology they used to compile the data. It starts with the original charters of April 10, 1606 from King James I to the two Virginia Companies, and stops with the April 16, 1964 date I used as my last engtry above. It includes all of the data for not only the current 62 Counties, but the data for Cornwall, Dukes, Cumberland, Gloucester, Deale, New Castle, Saint Jones, and Upland Counties as well, and the data for the partition of New York/New Netherland to create Vermont, New England (New Hampshire and Massachusetts), New Jersey, Southeast Pennsylvania (Yes, it settles the issue of The Pennsylvania Dutch vs The Pennsylvania Deutch.), and Delaware, including all the relevant Dutch and Swedish data. It even deals with the issue of the Gregorian Calendar vs the Julian Calendar. It runs 241 Pages, and it masurers 8⅓" X 11", Hard Copy.

As I said, they produced a series, so you might look to see if they have completed one for Rhode Island as well.

Oh, and YES, while it is the Borough of The Bronx, it IS Bronx County, but as a person born and raised in NYC, we tend to use The Bronx for both uses, and treat the two entities as the two sides of the same coin. The same is true of Staten Island/Richmond. it was originally officially the Borough of Richmond and Richmond County, but the confusion that caused over the years resulted in the official Borough name changed by the City Council to Staten Island to match local use.

SSG Cornelius Seon (Retired) (talk) 21:57, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Your question pricked my interest, so I put Laws of New York in Google, and indeed they are On Line. Here is the Link:

| Laws Of New York

SSG Cornelius Seon (Retired) (talk) 22:17, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Once again, being curious, I took some time on the site, and found that it is so complete that it is somewhat clunky. I finally put County Boundaries in the on-site search engine, and got a better list, although it still is lengthy.

SSG Cornelius Seon (Retired) (talk) 22:32, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

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