OK, I’ll admit I cheated the title a little bit. The fact is, both General Charles Lee, who was part of George Washington’s inner circle, and General Henry Clinton, who was a British general, did arrive in New York City on the same day.
The odds are pretty low that, despite how small New York City is compared to today, they actually encountered one another on this day.
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The capture and ultimate disposition of the HMS Blue Mountain Valley and her crew was, in the bigger scheme of things, a relatively minor event in the American Revolution, however it did suddenly bring both New Jersey and New York into more active participation in the war.
And even though the Blue Mountain Valley was beset by storms that they couldn’t possibly control, the fact that the ship was so easily captured despite the protections they’d put in place so far became a major point of debate back in England. It led to a policy prohibiting the use of transport ships to America unless they had a Naval escort.
A policy like that is pretty good for keeping the ship and cargo losses down, but it wreaks havoc on the Naval resources. So this event was a win in the short run for the Americans, but it was a long-run win as well because of the way it inconvenienced the British over the next several years.
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We weren’t even a nation yet and Congress had already commissioned the Richard Montgomery Memorial. And while the memorial itself was completed rather quickly by the commissioned artist, the war interfered with its transport and it took nearly ten years to find all the pieces.
(Dirty Secret: they never found all of them; the urn at top center was a reproduction.)
Montgomery was generally known to be a good general even if his death was practically inevitable, given the circumstances. But that didn’t stop people from turning him into a martyr for the cause of Independence.
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PS. Trinity Church’s website has a page dedicated to the monument, which aided my research for this episode. There’s a huge, fascinating segment dedicated to the 2011 restoration process for this memorial.
There are many letters between George Washington and Connecticut Governor Jonathan Trumbull. Presumably something as simple as proximity to another leader was attractive to both of them, especially in an age where letters took several days to go a hundred miles.
We have to presume that the two men had very reliable people transporting these letters, given how much detail is in this one regarding Washington’s guesses about British troop movements and exactly what he was going to do about it. It’s certainly been the case before that correspondence has been intercepted by the British in the past, and the Postal Service hadn’t been up and running for very long by that point.
At any rate, Washington was correct in that the British were taking a hard look at New York City (still mostly just the southern tip of Manhattan, mind you) and the palisades along the Hudson River, which was still called the North River then. Where he was likely incorrect was in the timing of that move, which may have resulted in a little complacency.
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It’s noted that Brooklyn is the place where Jeromus Johnson was born, but to be more specific, Johnson was born in a neighborhood called Wallabout, which still exists but Johnson wouldn’t recognize it today. Wallabout got its name from the adjacent Wallabout Bay, which has been mostly filled in and is now occupied by the Brooklyn Navy Yard. “Wallabout” is a corruption of a French phrase meaning “bend in the harbor”.
For all that, you rarely hear the name Wallabout anymore; the village has been largely absorbed by Fort Greene, Bedford-Stuyvesant and Clinton Hill.
How do I know all this? I used to work a few blocks from there.
Another personal connection: the town to which Johnson retired is Goshen, NY, in Orange County. My oldest daughter used to go to school up that way, and to avoid traffic I’d often visit her by driving a state highway that passed right through Goshen. It’s a lovely, rustic-looking village (at least it was ten years ago), and that area is a nice, relaxing drive.
But what about Jeromus Johnson? Go listen to Mike.
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First off: let me apologize for not tutoring Mike in the correct pronunciation of “Iroquois.” I’d make him record that part again but he’s at a podcasting conference and away from his studio. (It only looks like a French word, Mike; it’s not pronounced like one.)
Of course, I grew up in New York so those tribes were kind of beaten into us during Social Studies classes.
At any rate, we’ve talked in the past about efforts to get the various tribes in upstate New York to join the war effort, but the problem that the Patriots bumped into was that their “family argument” metaphor was taken too well, and the Native American tribes decided that this was exactly the case, and opted to stay out.
All of them, but one in particular. Tune in and find out which.
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For those of you new to this podcast (or those who haven’t been paying attention), I grew up on Long Island, and have lived or worked pretty much from one end of the map in today’s cover art to the other at one time or another.
For instance, my childhood home is just about where the Long Island portion of the map ends at the top right.
I did my undergrad work approximately where the “H” appears just above Hempstead. I got my graduate degree at a school along that road between Oyster Bay and Huntington.
So when a story like this pops up, it’s a lot of fun for me to research and record, because I learn so much.
One of the names I expected to see in my research didn’t turn up, however. That would be the Denton family, which was located in modern-day New Hyde Park. They were also quite influential in the development of the Hempstead area, but that was in the 1600s. By the 1770s they were a revered name but not especially influential.
The Denton home, a mansion for its time, still stands today. It was empty for several years when I was a young adult, then it became a restaurant for a bit. The McDonald’s Corporation purchased the property, intending to knock it down and build a new restaurant there, but a local historical society intervened and got the building historic status. After a couple of years of negotiation, McDonald’s renovated the building so that it retains its colonial-era charm. If you’re ever in the area, check it out. It’s one of the coolest McDonald’s restaurants you’ll ever see, inside and out.
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Fraunces Tavern is an historic landmark and the oldest and most historic bar in New York City.
That’s what it says on their website, so.
At various points in its history, Fraunces Tavern served as a headquarters for George Washington, a venue for peace negotiations with the British, and housing federal offices in the Early Republic.
The building is still open to the public (there’s a museum there that’s open on weekends), though reservations are recommended if you want to eat in the restaurant. It’s a little on the pricey side but then again it’s not way out of line for New York City.
Here’s the dirty secret: the building has fallen victim to fires a couple of times and been rebuilt, plus the top two floors were added in the late 1800s. So it’s not 100% clear that the building looks the way it did when George Washington was getting his drink on. But swing by anyway, you’ll have some fun.
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Philip Schuyler served as a delegate from New York to the Continental Congress until June 1775 when he was appointed a major general to the Continental Army. We’ll hear more about him as we start to delve into the Invasion of Quebec later this year.
Schuyler was on his way to Saratoga, NY when he got word that the tribes of the Six Nations—the Mohawks, Oneidas, Tusscaroras, Onondagas, Cayugas, and the Senekas (spelled that way then)—had taken Congress up on its offer of a summit and were on their way to Albany. What’s more, he was needed for the summit.
What happened next came as a surprise to…well, nobody, really. But at least everyone knew where everyone else stood. And if that was the locals’ attitude, it wasn’t their fault; the Speech to the Six Nations laid out their argument for them.
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“Schuyler” is one of those names in New York history that pops up quite frequently, partly because they were a prominent family. But it’s also one of those names that you may suddenly realize you’ve heard many times. “Schermerhorn” is another one (no kidding).
So is “Burr,” for that matter, as in Aaron and family. Several Burrs are buried very close to the Long Island town where I grew up. I have childhood memories of passing a cemetery in Smithtown and seeing BURR on a few of the tombstones. It wasn’t until later that I learned it was the same family.
As far as the Schuylers, they were originally from the Albany area but after his father died he was raised in the New Rochelle area. Most of his military experience derived from fighting on the side of the British in the French and Indian War. Later in his life he lived on his estate in Saratoga, just north of Albany. He spent some time as a member of Congress and is also known for being Alexander Hamilton’s father-in-law.
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