It Happened Here  -- Spies, Spies and more Spies

   (Part II. The Covert War in the Northern Department, after Burgoyne)

With Burgoyne's defeat, the focus of the war shifted south and both British and American commands reassigned regiments of their "regulars" to the stalemated war around New York City or the active war further south.  For the British and American generals tasked with protecting their home bases, of respectively, Canada, and upstate New York, fear of surprise attack became an increasing concern.  

Memories of the 1775 American  invasion of Canada  which resulted in the capture of Montreal, and a nearly successful attack on Quebec by a mostly New York and New England army were still fresh in the minds of British/Canadian authorities. The announcement of an American/French alliance in February 1778 was further cause for alarm.   Surely the French were looking at overturning the results of the last war, and restoring New France!   These fears were combined with the desire to mobilize  loyalist-leaning individuals to become "friends of government"  to collect and pass along information, and provide "safe house" shelters for spies and couriers.  Coupled with this was the continuing need to recruit loyalists to serve in provincial regiments.  In the years following Burgoyne's defeat, the level of spying and covert activity would actually increase.

From an American perspective, the Indian/Tory raids of 1778-9 on Cherry Valley, Cobleskill, Minisink (the future Port Jervis area), Andrusville, Springfield, and Wyoming, PA  reawakened long held fears of Indian attack, dating back over a century.  The participation of some local Tories, former neighbors, in these raids galvanized Committees of Safety to aggressively monitor their Loyalist-leaning neighbors for any indications of collusion with the enemy.  Counter intelligence activity increased, with local Committees of Safety (often little more than vigilante groups)  arresting, interrogating, and sometimes imprisoning or banishing/harassing  Loyalists and their families from the area.

From the beginning of the war, at the command level, spying -- the gathering of tactical and strategic information had been pretty much a personal and ad-hoc affair with commanders themselves,  (often through a trusted adjutant), sending out and personally debriefing a few trusted spies.   Phillip Schuyler had extensive business contacts in Montreal before the start of the war. He continued to get information from them which he passed on to the Continental Army and New York State authorities, even after he stepped down as the Major General of the Northern Department.  George Washington kept tabs on the British high command through a succession of aides, until he found the right one, to operate his "Culper

Spy Ring." 

As the conflict wore on, and the level of covert actions, and volume of counter intelligence  operations increased, both sides developed more organization.  (Note! We are along way from the OSS, MI-6, CIA or Mossad, here.)  In Canada, Lt. General Frederick Haldimand replaced Sir Guy Carleton in the summer of 1778.  By 1779 the southern fort at St Johns [1] had been strengthened and become the effective departure point for operations into New York.  Haldimand recognized that New York  and Vermont loyalists  would be more effective for covert operations where they would be less likely to stand out than British regulars; they would know the territory and would likely have family and friends from whom they could get assistance. His officers working in British secret service  began to recruit Loyalist for covert assignments. Working through his secretary, Capt. Robert Matthews,  Haldimand approved Justus Sherwood, a  trusted  Loyalist and veteran of the Battles of Bennington and Saratoga,  who had begun working as a secret courier, to oversee his covert operations.   He was joined in 1781 by  Dr. George Smyth of Ft. Edward and Albany who initially  had been a member of the NY Provincial Congress, but became disillusioned and began funneling information to the British.  Under suspicion,  he had been placed under house arrest, twice  and was about to be imprisoned when he was "extracted" by British agents.  Together they would oversee operations, with Sherwood doing more of the tactical and logistical planning and Smyth doing more strategic planning, security and counterintelligence.   In the summer of 1781 a blockhouse was built on the southern end of North Hero Island in Lake Champlain.  Known as the Loyal Blockhouse, from there,  raids and intelligence operations could depart and return without public knowledge [2].

                                                                                                             Rte 156, Altamont

In April 1778 John Jay proposed to the NY Legislature  that state boards be created to regionally counteract the threat of Loyalist plots and recruitment drives in the state. Of the seven boards, the minutes of only the "Albany Board of Commissioners for Detecting and Defeating Conspiracies in the State of New York" has survived.  They show an active board that arrested and examined some 1000 Tories.  The four person board could issue arrest warrants based on the testimony of informants.  With a company of militia at their command, they had the power to arrest, incarcerate and deport individuals . They could release them on bail, subject to good behavior, or require them to report regularly to a board member.  Some were freed on the condition they joined the Continental Army.  Bails could be accessed for from 40 to  5000 pds.  

 Increasingly larger numbers of Tories were imprisoned in Albany, with many locked away in the basement of City Hall, the old Stadt Huis,  Some detainees were brought from other regions.  Like British prisons at the time, conditions were often bad. With many in chains, the jail was overcrowded. With few adequate facilities  for holding them, some detainees were locked away in damp, dark cellars  or shut up in windowless attics that were freezing in the winters and stifling in the summers . 

 As their numbers grew, the pressure from Loyalists who had escaped to Canada grew on the British government to get their incarcerated friends and family members freed.  The war had gone on long enough that prisoner exchanges had become fairly commonplace but the British administration was at a disadvantage, with relatively few exchangeable prisoners.  So added to their tasks of securing secret information,  acting as secret couriers,  recruiting troops under the noses of patriot authorities, Tory "spies" were tasked with the job of kidnapping important Whigs to be used in hostage exchanges

Among over a hundred  spies, informants and secret couriers who operated in upstate NewYork and Canada in the latter part of the war,  three gained public notoriety/fame for their activities.  

When war came Thomas Loveless was a small farmer living on frontier land around Fish Creek in an area between Ballston, Old Saratoga (Schuylerville) and Jessups Landing (Corinth).   In November 1776 he enlisted in the King's Loyal Americans, a battalion organized by the wealthy landowners Ebenezer and Edward Jessups.[3]  Why he supported the Loyalists is uncertain.  Members of his family and perhaps he, himself had volunteered in the provincial forces supporting the British, in the French and Indian War. Certainly, he must have been attracted by the land bounty offered by Jessups for enlisting.  In Burgoyne's Invasion Loveless served as a teamster/bateaux man helping move Burgoyne's massive baggage train south. After Burgoyne's defeat, with most other Loyalist soldiers, he was paroled to Canada, where his family had already fled. For nearly two years he worked with most other loyalist parolees building roads and strengthening defenses in the approaches to Montreal. In the fall of 1779 Thomas Loveless was among the first Loyalist soldiers to be recruited as a guide for covert operations, guiding new recruits in, scouting and working as a courier.  In the fall of 1780 Thomas decided to begin actively recruiting Tory volunteers within NewYork on his covert missions.  By this time, success in recruitment had become a recognized path for advancement.  Typically,  a man who raised a company of 50-60 men could expect to be commissioned Captain of that company; one who recruited 25-30 men could be commissioned a Lieutenant; an Ensign, 12-15 men.  Unlike some of his fellow agents, Loveless was literate and one or two of his reports have survived in the Haldimand papers.  In one, in a mix of personal observations, intelligence from informants and  "news" from other colonies, he reports on a new blockhouse with stockade being built south-west of (Old) Saratoga in Palmerstown,  its size, the number of troops garrisoned in it, and the absence of cannon, as well as news of French ships in harbor in Rhode Island. 

While recruitment efforts were highly valued by Loyalist commanders they dangerously exposed operatives. Before long Thomas Loveless, and  other recruiter-spies  were well-known by reputation,

to both the rebel authorities and public, as well.

Following his commission as an ensign,                                               Rte 4, south of Schuylerville

in September 1781 Loveless' operations became centered around the garrison  posted at (Old) Saratoga. Several robberies were attributed to him and a  group of four conspirators, including a break-in at Phillip Schuyler's summer house, south of (Old) Saratoga.  A central target for Loveless was Col. Cornelius Van Vechten,  commander of the 11th regiment, (Saratoga) Albany Co. Militia.   Justus Sherwood (Loveless' "handler") believed Van Vechten could be "turned".  Loveless' men set up a small camp in a wooded swamp, five miles from  "Do-ve-gat", Van Vechten's home on the site of his old house, that had been occupied by General Burgoyne before and after the battle, and burned when he retreated from there.  According to one tradition Hezakiah Dunham, the captain of the local militia was alerted to the gang's presence by a local boy attempting to buy rum at a local tavern for a group of  'men' encamped in the woods. Captain Dunham and four of his men, hastily assembled,  divided to search the woods in the early predawn hours. The militia captain and two of his party stumbled upon the five spies, as dawn was breaking, assembled around a dying campfire, putting on stockings and shoes, preparing to begin their day.  Silently directing his men, Dunham and his two companions simultaneously jumped from their hiding places as the Captain yelled  "Surrender, or you are all dead men!" (A rather unlikely event of three men armed with single shot muskets taking down five opponents)--but the shock and suddenness of the attack were enough to overawe the Tories and, presumably soon joined by the other militiamen, Dunham was bringing in his captives.

       Rte 29 at Schuylerville Central School, Schuylerville. 

Justus Sherwood, had been concerned that if captured, Loveless might be hanged as a spy. So he drafted his order so that if captured Loveless would be presented as a common Loyalist volunteer, participating in a small military raid,  to be treated as a common prisoner of war.  But it was not to be.  Loveless' reputation preceded him and he had the misfortune to fall into the jurisdiction of Brig. Gen. John Stark.  Stark had developed a hatred for Tories.  At the battle of Bennington, Stark demonstrated that hatred by allowing the defeated British Regulars and Hessians to be marched out in military order while members of Loyalist units had their hands bound like criminals and were tied behind horses so if they failed to 

 keep up, they risked being dragged.

Captured on September 25th,  Loveless was tried, convicted.  He was hanged and buried in a gravel bank near General Schuyler's summer house on October 8th.

                                                                            *****   

[1]. St. Johns is now known by its original French name Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu.

 [2]  The site of Loyal Blockhouse has been on private property for many years, though  in 1912 the Vermont Sons of the American Revolution erected a boulder/plaque at the site.  In the 1950's a blockhouse-style house was erected on it (with aluminum screen door and picture window.

[3]See NYSHMs: It Happened Here. August 31, 2015. "In Sir William's Footsteps:  Part 1,The Jessups"

         

      (Part II continues in two weeks with two more spies and the plot to kidnap General Phillip Schuyler.)  

                                                                                        *****

Marker of the Week  Fortnight (!)--  Jail Limit Markers:  Artifacts of a  Prisoner's                                                                                                (and Court's) Dilemma

In the 1700's and early 1800's the problem of people not paying their debts was addressed by the courts threatening to throw debtors in jail for non-payment.  But what if they couldn't  pay? Locking people up only insured they wouldn't be able to work to pay off their debts, so many New York courts allowed prisoners to work outside of jail during the day, and return to jail at night. However, to avoid problems, they restricted workers they released to areas within the court's and local sheriff's jurisdiction.

                                 Switzer Hill Rd. Fonda

Inscription:This Stone long stood above northeast corner of James & Bloomfield Sts.

To mark the distance prisoners for debt might go from Rome jail to work by day--On the grounds of  Jervis Public Library, Rome.

Next Time-- Part II continues with  "2 more spies and the plot to Kidnap Gen. Schuyler

 

It Happened Here  -- Spies, Spies and more Spies

(Part 1. Spies and the Burgoyne Invasion)

P 

Every war produces spies.  The need to get accurate information about an enemy's capabilities, intentions, movements, strengths and  weaknesses  is paramount to success in war.   Direct observation can provide some of this information, but often to get closer to an enemy it is necessary to apply stealth, subterfuge and deception.  Equally important is the desirability of  planting misinformation to misdirect an enemy.  

George Washington, who according to popular legend declared 'I cannot tell a lie,' relied heavily on spies. He took a personal interest in their recruitment, using them  to monitor the British encamped in New York City, to thwart their attempts to undermine the Continental Currency, to penetrate British defensive strategy around Yorktown, and  to ahead off assassination plots against him, among many other British plans and operations. He also used them to plant misinformation.  Before the battle of Trenton, for example, he used a spy to convince the Hessian commander that the Americans were in no position to attack, lulling him into a false sense of security, so that the commander allowed Christmas celebrations to proceed. When the Americans attacked on December 26, 1776, they confronted a Hessian soldiery hung over and stupefied from a previous day of celebration.

Additionally, civil wars--(and American Revolution was a civil war of deeply divided loyalties)--require both sides develop networks of "intelligence" to distinguish potential friends from foe and to prevent the enemy from  recruiting  and mobilizing citizens.  The American rebels were particularly successful in this, establishing from nearly the beginnings of the rebellion, "Committees of Safety" whose jobs were to not only carry on the basic functions of government, but also identify and keep an eye on people of Loyalist persuasion, stepping in to arrest and imprison anyone who might pose a threat to the rebellion, or attempt to join or enlist others in joining Loyalist forces.

Washington's first attempt at placing spies was a dismal failure. A young Yale graduate, masquerading as an unemployed teacher, looking for work in New York City was promptly picked up and hung as a spy. The whole incident might have escaped historical attention except that a British officer at Nathan Hale's execution noted his defiant last words and commented on it in his diary. Details are sketchy, as are those of many episodes of spying.

On this site, from 1763 to 1874, stood “Mount Pleasant”, the mansion built by James Beekman. It was used as a headquarters by Lord Howe during the Revolutionary War because of its commanding view and here Nathan Hale, American patriot, was imprisoned and tried. On the gallows in an orchard nearby he spoke the famous words “I only regret I have but one life to give for my country.”--plaque, 1st Avenue and 51st St., Manhattan

Silas Towne (aka. Town, Towns), according to his own accounts, had been living along the St. Lawrence River and reporting on local support for the rebellion since the earliest days of the revolution  until he fell under scrutiny of area Loyalists and was confined to his farm for nearly two years.  Escaping, he was tasked by American General Phillip Schuyler to observe British activities along the shore of Lake Ontario.  He was there when a large British force of Loyalist troops and Indians landed on the gravelly shores of a small island at the mouth of the Little Salmon River.  Creeping in the undergrowth up to where Brigidier Barry St. Leger was conferring with his officers,  he heard him detail his plans for a raid on Fort Stanwix (now known as Ft. Schuyler.).  Depending on surprise and swiftness, St. Leger decided heavy siege artillery would not be necessary. Towne successfully slipped away and raced the 50 some miles to the fort.  When St.Leger arrived at Stanwix he found a garrison  hunkered down and prepared for a siege, while he was not--with no heavy siege guns, and allies (his Indians) neither trained for, or constitutionally prepared for the style of grinding European siege warfare. The siege would last just twenty one days before intervening events and a "crazy" reluctant turncoat "spy" would cause it to unravel and the besiegers to turn against themselves.

Silas Towne would come to see his spying activities as the seminal event of his life.  He would settle in Vera Cruz (later called Mexico Point) near the island at the mouth of the Little Salmon River and tell his story over and over. (In fact,  his testimony is virtually the only historical account we have of Towne's spying career!) When he died he asked to be buried on the island .  Sixty years later an obelisk was erected at his grave site, then known as Grave Island.  In 1932 state historical markers were erected. Grave Island had become known as Spy Island.

                                                                                                    Obelisk+ Grave

                                                                                                      Spy Island
                                                                                                                                      Oswego, Co.Rte 40,  Mexico,  NY    

*****

St. Leger's  siege of Ft. Stanwix /Schuyler would set in  motion  a series of actions that would ultimately not only frustrate his efforts to take the fort but would cause the dissolution of his army and prevent him from sweeping down the Mohawk Valley  rallying Loyalist support and linking up with Burgoyne.  And so-called "Spies" would play a critical part.

                                                              Drawing of Ft. Stanwix at Reconstruction, Rome, NY

          Ft.Stanwix/Schuyler reconstruction, Rome N.Y.

 News of the siege caused the Tryon County Militia,  some seven to eight hundred strong, under General Nicholas Herkimer, to march to break the siege. Accompanying them were 60 to 100 Oneida Indians who sided with the Patriots.  St. Leger sent a force of about 500 Indians and Tories to head them off in an ambush.   The battle of Oriskany  was an horrendous day-long bloodbath.    The militiamen managed to hold their position but with terrible losses, some 395 killed.  British losses were around 100, with St. Leger  indigenous allies barring the brunt of the fighting.   This was not  the kind of war the Iroquois were expecting to fight!  First there was the boredom and drudgery of siege warfare; then there was this intense battle where braves had little opportunity to demonstrate audacious bravery to prove their manhood, or to reap trophies in single combat from their defeated foe by taking their enemy's personal possessions and scalps;  then there was the shock of finding themselves having to fight their own Iroquois brethren, the Oneidas,  effectively ending a confederacy that had lasted hundreds of years!  A final shock/insult came when they realized that while they were attacking the Tryon County Militia, forces from the Fort had sallied forth and raided their camp, carrying off all of their food and most of their personal possessions.

The days and weeks that followed were extremely difficult for both sides.   St. Leger's Tories struggled to keep their indigenous allies in the field, and in fact to prevent them from taking out their frustrations on them. (A Tory musket was as valuable as a rebel musket. A Tory scalp was at least some compensation for the anger, privation, and disappointment they felt.)

One of St.Leger's young officers proposed an audacious plan.  He, and a small group of Loyalists would openly travel  down the Mohawk Valley under a flag of truce heading toward Albany, ostensibly to discuss a settlement for ending the siege.  In reality,   his mission would be to gauge Loyalist support in the Valley, recruiting as he went, directing his recruits to   

                                                                                     Marker at Oriskany Battlefield

 join St. Leger.  He hoped this show of support would encourage St. Leger's disaffected native allies to remain with him. But the rebel authorities quickly realized what these "parley negotiators" clandestine objectives were.  Following an evening where Ensign Walter Butler and his associates harangued Loyalist sympathizers at Shoemaker's tavern in the hamlet of Mohawk, they arrested them, charging them with Spying.  A military tribunal condemned  all to be hanged, though Butler would be taken to Albany and later escape.*

                                                                                 W.Main St., cor. of Catherine St. Mohawk, NY  (missing?)

One of the Tories traveling with Butler was a widely known 'odd fellow'  who lived on the edge of  frontier  Mohawk Valley society.  Hon Yost Schuyler. lived  a hand-to-mouth existence, usually residing in valley Indian camps. He  was generally recognized as 'crazy' and 'feeble-minded' but the indigenous people held him in some degree of awe, as he had the ability to throw himself into a kind of a wild babbling trans-like state, they associated  with him being a witch or at least someone in touch with the spirit world.  From a distance of some 250 years it is impossible to suggest a diagnosis of his mental state or even speculate the degree that  these episodes were involuntary or calculated. ( Incredibly, but also not entirely implausibly, given the small number of individuals then living  in colonial New York,  Hon Yost,  was the son  of  a cousin of General Phillip Schuyler, head of the Northern Department, and  his mother, the sister of General Herkimer!)

Following the repulse of the Ft. Stanwix /Schuyler relief expedition, the Patriots were also scrambling to recruit volunteers for another attempt to relieve the fort and to prepare for the defense of the Valley.  General Phillip Schuyler ordered a young charismatic general, Benedict Arnold to raise forces from the farms and hamlets along the Mohawk but Arnold found little support among a population that had already lost nearly 400 of their fittest young men , with more than that still reeling  from their recent bitter pyrrhic victory.  With only about 100 volunteers, Arnold needed to convince St. Leger and his allies that he would be coming down on him with a much larger force.  As Arnold interviewed Butler and his condemned "spies" a plan occurred to him.  With Hon Yost babbling  incoherently in front of him,  Arnold stressed to the young man he would soon be hanged,  a fact highlighted by his mother and brother Nicholas, who had shown up and were present to beg for his life.  But, said Arnold, there was an alternative.  If Hon Yost would go to the Iroquois besieging  Ft.Stanwix/Schuyler,  and tell them he had escaped from the Rebels and convince them that Arnold had recruited a huge army that was soon to overwhelm  them,  and  induce  them to abandon the siege, then he could go free.  To guarantee he did as directed, his brother would be held as a hostage.  (Undoubtedly, Arnold intimated his brother would be hanged in his place if he failed.) 

According to early reporters of this story,  as this plan was unfolded to the 'madman' his babbling  stopped.

He became an engaged listener;  and he offered to enhance the plausibility of  his story by suggesting grazing shots be fired through his clothing and by arranging for cooperative Oneida Indians to enter the Mohawk and Seneca camps with stories supporting his own.  The plan was enacted pretty much as it was conceived.  Han Yost delivered a convincing (probably spell-binding)  performance.  When asked how many soldiers Arnold had, he ecstatically rolled his eyes upward to indicate "as many as there are leaves on the trees" or perhaps  "stars in the heavens!"  While the Tory leadership remained skeptical, for their indigenous allies this was the final straw.  They began to decamp immediately.  Seeing their alliance broken the Loyalists also fled en masse, fearful that if they straggled they would be set upon and scalped by roving bands of their former allies who were furious at them.  (As in fact some stragglers and rebel prisoners, were scalped.).  Hon Yost followed the retreating Tories but then broke for the rebel's Ft.Dayton.

 After  he learned his brother had been released  he disappeared, returning to Iroquois society and would  participate in Indian-Tory raids in 1780. He would live the latter part of his life among the Oneida Iroquois.                             

*****

With the threat of the Burgoyne invasion baring down on the Champlain--Lake George corridor, aimed at Albany, the amount of covert observation and communications undoubtedly greatly increased, though probably much  of this activity never made it into the historical record, or was lost in the greater events of the invasion itself.  The Helderberg escarpment, a wall of cliffs at the edge of the Hudson Valley, however, provided a unique enough environment to cause the spying activity that occurred there to be remembered. Jacob Salisbury a "Tory Spy" reputedly sheltered in a recess in the rocks 

                                                                                Albany  Co. Rte 156, Altamont
and observed  operations of patriot farmers who were providing food for the rebel army growing around Saratoga. He was captured when his tracks were found in the snow and the location of his cave discovered when smoke from a small cooking fire was spotted.

Thatcher Park State Park,  Co.Rte 157

*****

                                 Main St.  Hurley, N..Y.

The next "spy story"should properly be included in a future blog post about spies in the "Middle Department" since it involves activities around the British forces occupying New York City but it also is about communication between General Howe in New York and General Burgoyne during his invasion.

Lt. David Taylor, **a courier for General Howe,  must have breathed a sigh of relief when he saw an encampment outside of New Windsor of scarlet coated soldiers in front of him.

He must have been anticipating  receiving a good meal and a peaceful night's rest before he continued a long 

and hazardous journey through  enemy territory to Burgoyne's camp somewhere north of Albany.  What he got was an arrest and an interrogation!  Lt. Taylor had made the unfortunate mistake of stumbling into an encampment of a company of the Connecticut Governor's Foot Guards.  Connecticut in the colonial era had two capitals, one in Hartford and one in New Haven.  In 1771 the Connecticut Assembly provided the governor  with  the first of four companies  (two foot and two horse) to escort and protect him on his travels between capitals and to protect him during official functions. Their initial uniforms, it was said, were modeled after the British Coldstream Guards with white cross belts, buff facings and scarlet coats!  Benedict Arnold (yes, him again!) had incited Guard members to join the Rebel Army surrounding Boston in 1775 and pressured the Assembly to release the Royal (Gun) Powder stores for their use. Since then they had become part of the State Brigade supporting the Connecticut Line watching the British in New York. 

During his interrogation, the Lieutenant  swallowed a small silver ball, but given an emetic, vomited it up. When he tried to swallow it again he was warned he would be hanged immediately, and the ball cut from his stomach. He surrendered the ball, which was hollow, and sealed with a small threaded plug.  It contained a message on thin silk from Gen. Howe to Gen. Burgoyne.  

A few days before,  a large raiding party had sailed up to Kingston and burned the town with little opposition.  Before that,  Forts Montgomery and  Clinton had been taken, with the militias defending them decisively defeated.   Howe's note announced he was at Fort Montgomery, and airily asserted that  "now there is nothing before us but Gates" (General Horatio Gates had taken over command of northern army from General Schuyler), and he wished Burgoyne success.    

A courts martial  by  officers of the company was ordered.  Lt. Taylor was convicted of spying and sentenced to be hanged.  (The sentence, perhaps unwarranted-- given the severity of the offense,  only acting as a courier, was handed  down by  a jury of Connecticut officers, who had seen their fellow Connecticut officer, Natan Hale. executed a year before.)  The company was on the move to counter the British who had attacked Kingston,  so the sentence was carried out after they arrived in Hurley, adjacent to Kingston. Taylor was confined overnight in a sturdy stone cottage, that became known as "the Old Guard House" and hanged on a nearby apple tree, the next day.  Taylor's body was allowed to hang there two days and the company was paraded before it--a tacit warning to the troops of what might happen if anyone engaged in any covert actions that would aid the enemy!

After Burgoyne's army had been defeated and captured at Saratoga the main focus of the war shifted south.  But the war in the North continued with raids and countermeasures, including a large scale invasion and destruction of Seneca and Cayuga villages deep in Iroquoia, by the Continental army supported by militias in 1779, and multiple raids by Loyalist troops and Indians in 1778, through 1781 throughout the Mohawk Valley and settlements north of Albany.  Tory spying and other covert activities

including secret courier operations, theft, arson and kidnapping  would continue at heightened levels, as would patriot counter intelligence operations, aimed at identifying and imprisoning active tories and deterring tory sympathizers . Part II of "Spies, Spies and More Spies" will continue next time with "The Covert War in the Northern Department, After Burgoyne" 

Marker of the Week  Fortnight (!)-- Crum's Place

George Speck was a successful chef working at Moon's Lake House on Saratoga Lake that catered to the Saratoga vacationing crowd in the later half of the 19th century.  A black man with an American Indian mother, Speck was more than occasionally subject to demeaning treatment by his wealthy white customers.  Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, a frequent patron of the restaurant persistently "forgot" his name, regularly referring to him as "Crum" rather than Speck.  Chef Speck shrugged it off, saying he guessed it was alright, since a crum was bigger than a speck. Another customer (some say it was Vanderbilt) regularly ordered fried potatoes, then regularly complained they were too soft and too thick. Finally,

Speck had had enough.  He took his razor, shaving off extremely thin slices of potato,  frying them HARD, and heavily salting them, to boot!  The "Saratoga Potato Chip" became a hit.  (By the way, a young Anna Mary Robertson (Grandma Moses) spent much her youth thinly slicing potatoes grown on her family's farm in Greenwich for the Saratoga  chip restaurant market,  decades before she ever picked up a paintbrush. --see NYSHMS: It Happened Here  April 14, 2013 ).

*See NYHSMS: It Happened Here posts "The Short Violent Life of Walter Butler" 8/17 and 8/23/15.

**Taylor was a loyalist from Kinderhook serving in the British Army's 9th Regiment.  He might have escaped detection but he also carried incriminating personal letters from some of his fellow officers written to their families in Kinderhook.