Mount Vernon (US cities)

Mount Vernon 1 City (1990 pop. 16,988), seat of Jefferson co., SE Ill.; settled 1819, inc. 1872. It is a trade, rail, and industrial center in a farm and coal region. Tools, tires, transformers, coal-mining equipment, and neon signs are manufactured, and there is diversified agriculture. Nearby is a state game farm.

2 City (1990 pop. 67,153), Westchester co., SE N.Y., between the Bronx and Hutchinson rivers and adjacent to the Bronx; settled 1664, inc. 1892. Although primarily a residential suburb of New York City, it has manufactures that include pharmaceuticals and electronic components. Mount Vernon is also notable for being a city with an African-American majority in a predominantly white county. John Peter Zenger was arrested there for libel in 1733. The city itself was not founded until 1851, when a cooperative group bought the land and built a planned community. St. Paul's Church (c.1761), a national historic site, is there.

3 City (1990 pop. 14,550), seat of Knox co., central Ohio, on the Kokosing River; laid out 1805, inc. as a city 1880. It has livestock and dairy farms and manufactures diesel engines, steel, turbines, and glass.

Mount Vernon, Australia, USA USA: sixteen cities have this name, some after the home of George Washington^†. His estate in Virginia was originally called Little Hunting Creek Plantation. It was renamed in 1743 by Lawrence Washington, elder half brother of George, after the British Admiral Edward Vernon (1723–94) under whom he had served in the Caribbean. George Washington inherited it in 1751.