72. Letters, Woodhull to Tallmadge, August 6, 1780 (enclosing map); Washington to Tallmadge, August 11, 1780.
73. Tallmadge, Memoir, p. 34.
74. Letter, Woodhull to Tallmadge, November 28, 1780.
75. Letter, Woodhull to Tallmadge, September 5, 1780.
76. Letter, Woodhull to Tallmadge, October 26, 1780.
77. Letter, Woodhull to Tallmadge, November 28, 1780, in which Woodhull states that he spoke to Brewster about the hay “some time ago.”
78. Letters, Brewster to Tallmadge, November 6, 1780; Tallmadge to Washington, November 7, 1780; Mather, Refugees of 1776, p. 233; Tallmadge, Memoir, pp. 39–40.
79. Letter, Washington to Tallmadge, November 11, 1780.
80. Letter, Brewster to Tallmadge, November 13, 1780. Brewster also noted that “I took a prize a coming across today. A fine large boat from New Haven, which had been to carry passengers over. We run up long side of them and made them believe we came from Lloyd’s Neck [i.e., that they were Tories].… We got two thirds across the Sound before they found out their mistake and I got them safe under guard.”
81. Royal Gazette, December 2, 1780, printed in C. S. Crary (ed.), The price of loyalty: Tory writings from the Revolutionary era (New York, 1973), p. 171.
82. The lengthiest description of the Fort St. George raid may be found in Tallmadge, Memoir, pp. 39–42. Thomas Tredwell Jackson’s account is printed in Pennypacker, George Washington’s spies, pp. 192–94. Tallmadge’s letter to Washington narrating the story of November 25, 1780, differs in a few small details from his later account in the Memoir.
83. Letter, Washington to Tallmadge, November 28, 1780.
84. Letter, Woodhull to Tallmadge, November 28, 1780.
85. Letter, Woodhull to Tallmadge, January 14, 1781.
86. Letters, Arnold to Tallmadge, October 25, 1780; Tallmadge to Washington, January 28, 1781.
Chapter Nine: The Wilderness of Mirrors
1. Quoted in L. Sabine, Biographical sketches of Loyalists of the American Revolution (Boston, 2 vols., 2nd ed., 1864), I, p. 367.
2. On the British system, see R. Kaplan, “The hidden war: British intelligence operations during the American Revolution,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., XLVII (1990), p. 131; for the daily intelligence reports, see E. F. De Lancey (ed.), “Sir Henry Clinton’s original secret record of private daily intelligence,” printed serially in Magazine of American History, X–XII (October 1883–August 1884), and which contains every single piece of documentation between January and July 1781.
3. The observer, as one might expect, was Thomas Jones, the acerbic Loyalist judge, in (ed. E. F. De Lancey) History of New York during the Revolutionary War, and of the leading events in the other colonies at that period (New York, 2 vols., 1879), I, pp. 183–84.
4. Letter, Parsons to Arnold, August 28, 1780.
5. See memorandum, “Mr. Heron’s information at a conversation in New York” (and Smith’s note at the end), Robertson to Lord Germain, September 4, 1781, in B. F. Stevens, Facsimiles of manuscripts in European archives relating to America, 1773–1783. With descriptions, editorial notes, collations, references and translations (London, 25 vols., 1889–98), VII, no. 733; William Smith (ed. W. H. W. Sabine), Historical memoirs from 16 March 1763 to 12 November 1783 of William Smith, historian of the province of New York; member of the governor’s council, and last chief justice of that province under the Crown; chief justice of Quebec (New York, 3 vols., in 2, rep. 1969–71), III, entry for September 4, 1780. A copy may also be found in E. B. O’Callaghan et al. (eds.), Documents relative to the colonial history of the state of New York; procured in Holland, England and France (Albany, 15 vols., 1856–87), VIII, pp. 804–8, which differs in parts from the original draft.
6. On this subject, see S. Conway, “To subdue America: British army officers and the conduct of the Revolutionary War,” William and Mary Quarterly, XLIII (1986), 3, pp. 381–407; and his “British army officers and the American War for Independence,” William and Mary Quarterly, XLI (1984), 2, pp. 265–76.
7. The most complete biographical sketch of Heron is in W. E. Grumman, The Revolutionary soldiers of Redding, Connecticut, and the record of their services (Hartford, 1904), esp. p. 189.
8. For his comment, see Grumman, Revolutionary soldiers, p. 193; for his dress, C. S. Hall, Life and letters of Samuel Holden Parsons: Major-general in the Continental army and chief judge of the Northwestern Territory, 1737–1789 (Binghamton, N. Y., 1905), p. 421.
9. Letter, Parsons to Washington, April 6, 1782.
10. Letter, “Hiram” to British Intelligence, February 4, 1781, in De Lancey (ed.), “Private daily intelligence,” Magazine of American History, X, pp. 410–17
11. Letter, Washington to Parsons, February 22, 1781. Parsons subsequently confirmed to Washington that he had given Heron “assurances of generous pay for his time and services, and if he finds out the plan [by the Tories], and is detected and has to fly, he is to have one hundred dollars a year for life.” Letter, Parsons to Washington, March 14, 1781.
12. Letter, Parsons to Washington, March 14, 1781. See also letter, Washington to Parsons, March 23, 1781.
13. Memorandum of interview, March 11, in De Lancey (ed.), “Private daily intelligence,” Magazine of American History, X, p. 503.
14. Letter, Heron to De Lancey, March 11, 1781, quoted in C. Van Doren, Secret history of the American Revolution (New York, 1941), p. 396.
15. Letter, Parsons to Washington, April 6, 1782.
16. Letter, Heron to British Intelligence, April 24, 1781, in De Lancey (ed.), “Private daily intelligence,” Magazine of American History, XI, pp. 62–64.
17. Letter, Heron to De Lancey, April 26, 1781, quoted in Van Doren, Secret history, p. 387.
18. As pointed out by Hall, Life and letters, pp. 433–34.
19. Memorandum “of a conversation with Hiram,” April 25, 1781, in De Lancey (ed.), “Private daily intelligence,” Magazine of American History, XI, pp. 64–65.
20. Letter from Heron to De Lancey, June 17, 1781, in De Lancey (ed.), “Private daily intelligence,” Magazine of American History, XI, pp. 254–57.
21. “Questions by Major De Lancey to Hiram with his answers,” June 20, 1781, in De Lancey (ed.), “Private Daily Intelligence,” Magazine of American History, XI, pp. 347–51.
22. For this section, see letter, Hiram to De Lancey, July 15, 1781 (enclosing the letter from Parsons to Heron, July 8, 1781), in De Lancey (ed.), “Private daily intelligence,” Magazine of American History, XII, pp. 163–67; Hall, Life and letters, pp. 452–54, for a copy of Parsons’s letter to Mumford; Van Doren, Secret history, p. 399.
23. G. B. Loring, A vindication of General Samuel Holden Parsons against the charge of treasonable correspondence during the Revolutionary War (Salem, 1888), p. 29; Van Doren, Secret history, p. 399.
24. Letters, Woodhull to Tallmadge, January 14, 1781; February 8, 1781.
25. Letter, Woodhull to Tallmadge, February 8, 1781.
26. Letter, Woodhull to Tallmadge, March 18, 1781.
27. Letter, Woodhull to Tallmadge, April 23, 1781.
28. Letter, Tallmadge to Washington, April 25, 1781.
29. Letter, Tallmadge to Washington, April 6, 1781.
30. On Colonel Upham, see L. Sabine, Biographical sketches of Loyalists in the American Revolution (Boston, 2 vols., 2nd ed., 1864), II, pp. 372–73. See also letter, Upham to General Riediesel, June 30, 1781, in De Lancey (ed.), “Private daily intelligence,” Magazine of American History, XI, p. 439.
31. Letter, Upham to Governor Franklin, July 13, 1781, which can be found in full at the useful website, The On-Line Institute for Advanced Loyalist Studies, at http://www.royalprovincial.com/history/battles/aslrep4.shtml.
32. Letter, Tallmadge to Washington, April 6, 1781.
33. Letter, Washington to Tallmadge, April 8, 1781.
34. Letter, Woodhull to Tallmadge, April 23, 1781.
35. Letter, Tallmadg
e to Washington, April 20, 1781.
36. Letter, Tallmadge to Washington, April 24, 1780.
37. Letter, Colonel J. Upham to Governor Franklin, September 13, 1781, printed in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register, X (1856), p. 127. Upham’s letter was printed in the New York Gazette of September 24, 1781.
38. Letter, Washington to Tallmadge, April 30, 1781.
39. Letter, Woodhull to Tallmadge, May 8, 1781.
40. Letter, Woodhull to Tallmadge, May 19, 1781.
41. Letter, Tallmadge to Woodhull, May 12, 1781.
42. J. Bakeless, Turncoats, traitors, and heroes: Espionage in the American Revolution (New York, 1959), pp. 181, 357.
43. Letter, Tallmadge to Washington, May 29, 1781.
44. Letter, Tallmadge to Washington, August 18, 1782. This George Smith—whose identity was tracked down in 1959 by Virginia Eckels Malone, a columnist at the Smithtown News—was based in Nissequogue, a village about four and a half miles west of Setauket. Corey Ford’s novel, A peculiar service: A narrative of espionage in and around New York during the American Revolution (Boston, 1965), mentions this fact briefly on p. 322, but I have not been able to find the original article. Whoever Smith was, he played a very small role, for a short amount of time, in the Culper Ring, and was used by Tallmadge just a couple of times.
45. Little else is known of Ruggles. What there is may be found in Mather, Refugees of 1776, p. 1093.
46. Memorandum, June 8, 1781, printed in De Lancey (ed.), “Private daily intelligence,” Magazine of American History, XI, pp. 247–50. Hathaway’s description of Simsbury Mines and his escape is contained in the notes accompanying the document. On “Clarke,” see Mather, Refugees of 1776, Appendix H, No. 35, p. 1067.
47. See letter, Woodhull to Tallmadge, June 5, 1779, previously quoted.
48. Letter, Woodhull to Tallmadge, June 4, 1781.
49. Letter, Woodhull to Tallmadge, June 27, 1781.
50. See letter, Rochambeau to Washington, June 20, 1781, which encloses a Woodhull letter to Tallmadge that the latter had passed on to him.
51. See “Marriage licenses issued by the state of New York,” at http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~rbillard/ny_marriage_licenses.htm.
52. Letter, Woodhull to Washington, May 5, 1782.
53. Letter, William Feilding to the Earl of Denbigh, August 10, 1782, printed in J. Rhodehamel (ed.), The American Revolution: Writings from the War of Independence (New York, 2001), pp. 769–70.
54. Letter, Tallmadge to Washington, April 27, 1782.
55. Letter, Woodhull to Tallmadge, July 5, 1782.
56. Letter, Washington to Greene, August 6, 1782.
57. Letter, Washington to Tallmadge, August 10, 1782.
58. Letter, Woodhull to Tallmadge, February 21, 1783.
59. Letter by Colonel Beverley Robinson, March 1, 1781, in De Lancey (ed.), “Private daily intelligence,” Magazine of American History, X, p. 502 and note.
60. Letter, Marks to Major De Lancey, June 29, 1781, in De Lancey (ed.), “Private daily intelligence,” Magazine of American History, XI, p. 440.
61. Letter, Upham to Governor Franklin, July 13, 1781, which can be found in full at http://www.royalprovincial.com/history/battles/aslrep4.shtml.
62. Letter by Mr. Shoemaker, February 27, 1781, in De Lancey (ed.), “Private daily intelligence,” Magazine of American History, X, p. 500.
63. B. Tallmadge, Memoir of Col. Benjamin Tallmadge (New York, 1858; rep. 1968), pp. 50–51.
64. See the accounts in E. N. Danenberg, Naval history of the Fairfield County men in the Revolution (Fairfield, Conn., 1977), p. 53; B. G. Loescher, Washington’s eyes: The Continental Light Dragoons (Fort Collins, Colo., 1977), pp. 58–60.
65. Letter, Washington to Tallmadge, December 26, 1782.
66. Letter, Washington to Tallmadge, December 10, 1782. On the pension, see New-York Historical Society’s Miscellaneous Manuscripts, under “Caleb Brewster,” where there is a letter dated December 2, 1822, noting that he is entitled to a pension “on account of wounds and disabilities received or occurred in the services of the United States during the Revolutionary war.”
67. On Washington’s total, see the Final report of the [Senate] select committee to study governmental operations with respect to the intelligence activities of the United States, Book VI, April 1976, p. 12.
68. F. T. Reuter, “ ‘Petty Spy’ or effective diplomat: The role of George Beckwith,” Journal of the Early Republic, X (1990), 4, p. 473.
69. Invoice, Woodhull to Tallmadge, July 5, 1783.
70. Letter, Woodhull to Tallmadge, July 5, 1783.
71. Letter, Tallmadge to Washington, August 16, 1783.
72. Letter, Washington to Tallmadge, September 11, 1783.
73. Tallmadge, Memoir, pp. 61–62.
74. This section is based on R. Ernst, “A Tory-eye view of the evacuation of New York,” New York History, LXIV (1983), 4, pp. 377–94.
75. Tallmadge, Memoir, pp. 61–62, 65.
76. This section based on G. J. A. O’Toole, Honorable treachery: A history of intelligence, espionage, and covert action from the American Revolution to the CIA (New York, 1991), pp. 69–81; Reuter, “ ‘Petty Spy’ or effective diplomat,” Journal of the Early Republic, pp. 471–92; Final report of the [Senate] select committee to study governmental operations, pp. 15–17.
Epilogue: “Lord, Now Lettest Thou Thy Servants Depart in Peace”
1. E. N. Danenberg, Naval history of the Fairfield County men in the Revolution (Fairfield, Conn., 1977), p. 54; C. S. Hall, Benjamin Tallmadge: Revolutionary soldier and American statesman (New York, 1943), p. 88; B. Tallmadge, Memoir of Col. Benjamin Tallmadge (New York, 1858; rep. 1968), p. 66.
2. Letter, Sackett to Washington, May 23, 1789, in D. Twohig (ed.), The papers of George Washington: Presidential series (Charlottesville, Va., 1987), II, pp. 376–77 and note.
3. See Spangler, “Memoir of Major John Clark,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, XX (1986), pp. 77–86.
4. J. R. Cuneo, Robert Rogers of the Rangers (Oxford University Press, 1959), pp. 274–75.
5. Letter, Parsons to Washington, April 6, 1782.
6. Grumman, The Revolutionary soldiers of Redding, p. 193.
7. See E. F. De Lancey (ed.), “Sir Henry Clinton’s original secret record of private daily intelligence,” printed serially in Magazine of American History, X–XII (October 1883–August 1884).
8. See H. Macy, Jr.’s definitive investigative series, “Robert Townsend, Jr., of New York City,” The New York Genealogical and Biographical Record, CXXVI (1995), pp. 25–34, 108–12, 192–98. I disagree slightly with Macy, to whom I’m indebted for bringing this research to my attention, in believing that it could quite easily have been William who was Robert Junior’s father. See also a small collection of photographs in the Raynham Hall Museum of notes by Peter Townsend, which say that he first met Robert Junior in 1837–38, and was “discouraged at his conduct (he being dissipated in many ways).” Though Robert had seen little of his son (adopted or otherwise), it was in anticipation of receiving five hundred dollars that Junior contacted Peter. At their meeting, Junior complained of Robert’s “indifference to him (unjustly, I think, for my uncle had expended nearly one half his mind in trying in early life to make his reputed [italics added] son a person of respectability) and mentioning at the same time his own mother’s coincidence in the female sentiments as to my Uncle William’s attractions—her ability to judge arose from being house keeper for the 3 young men. I could not refrain from the remark that I believe my Uncle Robert thought that he might as well have owed his paternity to his brother William as to himself (and what he had just said of his mother’s preference rather confirmed the suspicion). The subject was never again renewed between us.” There seems to be some confusion whether the author of this note was Peter or Solomon (Macy says the latter). See also the scrapbook of Solomon Townsend, F89.11.8, at Raynham Hall Museum.<
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9. Inventory of Robert Townsend’s “Goods, Chattels and Credits,” May 26, 1838, FX 88.30.22.2, at Raynham Hall Museum. M. Pennypacker, General Washington’s spies on Long Island and in New York (New York, 2 vols., 1939, 1948), II, pp. 4–5, reprints Townsend’s will.
10. H. Hastings and H. H. Noble (eds.), Military minutes of the Council of Appointment of the state of New York, 1783–1821 (Albany, 4 vols., 1901–02), I, pp. 84, 120.
11. See http://www.3villagecsd.k12.ny.us/Elementary/minnesauke/3villagehist/RoeTavern.htm. It is today a private house; Pennypacker, George Washington’s spies, pp. 60–61n. For Hawkins, see http://www.3villagecsd.k12.ny.us/Elementary/minnesauke/3villagehist/Hawkins-Mount%20House.htm.
12. Pennypacker, George Washington’s spies, p. 16n.
13. Address given by William Brewster Minuse, president of the Three Village Historical Society, at Caleb Brewster’s grave in Fairfield, Connecticut, on August 9, 1976, in MS no. 33, Folder I:H, in the Brewster Papers, kept at the Fairfield Historical Society, and see also Karen Seeskas’s article in the Black Rock News. The clipping is in the Brewster Papers.
14. Pennypacker, George Washington’s spies, p. 3.
15. See Hall, Tallmadge, Chapter XX, pp. 263–84.
16. Letter from Tallmadge, January 29, 1835, in the Benjamin Tallmadge Collection, Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library.
17. See Hall, Tallmadge, p. 231.
18. Annals of Congress, House of Representatives, 14th Congress, 2nd Session, January 13, 1817, cols. 474–75. This may be found online, thanks to the Library of Congress’s amazing electronic resources, at http://memory.loc.gov.
Original Sources
George Washington Papers. Library of Congress.
Thomas Jefferson Papers. Library of Congress.
Benjamin Tallmadge Papers. Princeton University Library.
Townsend Family Papers. New-York Historical Society.
Washington's Spies Page 41