Historic Pelham

Archive of the Historic Pelham Web Site.
Home Page of the Historic Pelham Blog.
Order a Copy of "Thomas Pell and the Legend of the Pell Treaty Oak."

During the 1870s and 1880s, many local communities in our region without well-developed police departments relied on so-called "vigilance committees" to assist public authorities with maintaining law and order. Many of these vigilance committees in Westchester County, though not all, began as temperance organizations. Some evolved into broader vigilance committees devoted to controlling crime and improving their local communities. Some remained only as temperance committees.

The Town of Pelham had at least three, and perhaps four, vigilance committees: one or two on City Island, one in Pelham Manor on the mainland, and another in Pelhamville on the mainland. City Island clearly had a vigilance committee focused on temperance known as "The Law and Order Association of Pelham." It appears that there was a second vigilance committee on City Island known as the "Law and Order Society of City Island." (Care should be taken, however, until further research can clarify whether the references to two different City Island vigilance committees were merely imprecise references to the same organization.) Pelham Manor had the Pelham Manor Protective Club. The records of that "Club" still exist and are held in the collections of the Westchester County Historical Society. Pelhamville had the "Pelhamville Improvement Association." That organization was Pelhamville's answer to the Pelham Manor Protective Club.

I have written about these vigilance committees on a number of occasions. At the end of today's Historic Pelham article is an extensive listing of such previous articles with links. Today's article provides more on the history of the "Law and Order Society of City Island."

There is evidence that the various vigilance committees within the Town of Pelham cooperated with each other. The records of the Pelham Manor Protective Club reflect that on February 11, 1882, the Executive Committee of the club met with four members of the "Law and Order Society of City Island." The four were Jerome Bell, Samuel Billar, William McAllister, and "J. Bell." The City Island representatives, who said their organization included seventy voting members, presented a slate of proposed candidates for elected Town positions with care given to proposing candidates from City Island, Pelham Manor, and Pelhamville. According to the minutes of the meeting which record the various candidates proposed by the "Law and Order Society of City Island," Mr. Hambrecht Q. French of the Pelham Manor Protective Club:

"moved that the committee of the P. M. P. Club, accept the names presented by the committee of the Law and Order Society of City Island, they to send us names to fill up the balance of the ticket. Carried.

Mr. Reynolds moved that the committee of the P. M. P. Club, send to the Committee of the Law and Order Society of City Island the names we would like to have nominated for officers. Carried." Source: Records of the Pelham Manor Protective Club 1881-1891, p. 15 (Feb. 2, 1882) (Leather-bound volume in the collections of the Westchester County Historical Society).

A further meeting regarding the looming 1882 spring elections was held between the Executive Committee of the Pelham Manor Protective Club and representatives of the "Law and Order Society of City Island" was held on February 25, 1882. See id., p. 17.

Similarly, on April 1, 1882, members of the Executive Committee of the Pelham Manor Protective Club received a committee from the "Law and Order Society of City Island" to determine "if we could not stop the residents of Hart's Island from voting in the town of Pelham." See id., p. 20. For many years during the 1880s, Pelham Manor was concerned about allegations of voting fraud involving residents of Hart Island in the Town of Pelham. See Thu., Mar. 12, 2015: Pelham Democrats Purportedly Stole the Supervisor Election in 1886 by Importing Paupers from Hart Island to Vote (outlining allegations of fraud in 1886, four years later).

Virtually no records exist of any of these Pelham vigilance committees with the exception of the Pelham Manor Protective Club. Only time will tell if further research may shed additional light on these local government precursors to village and ward government for the various sections of the Town of Pelham in the nineteenth century.