Long Island Archives - Journal of the American Revolution

The War Years (1775-1783) Posted on April 2, 2024April 1, 2024

A Smart Engagement: A Whaleboat Fight off Stamford, Connecticut, June 24, 1778

Very early on a hot summer’s day in 1778, Moses Mather, Jr., son and namesake of the Patriot minister of Middlesex Parish (today’s Darien), Connecticut, was seventeen years old and sitting in a whaleboat just offshore.[1] Only two years before, whaleboats rarely had been seen in western Long Island Sound. But as enemies on both […]

by Selden West

The War Years (1775-1783) Posted on November 21, 2023January 16, 2024

Quartering British Forces on Long Island

Substantial numbers of British and Hessian troops needed to be housed in New York City and across Long Island during the years of the British occupation from 1776 to 1783. An American report to General Washington in January 1779 estimated the number of British and allied troops stationed on Long Island at approximately 3,380 exclusive […]

by David M. Griffin

The War Years (1775-1783) Posted on April 22, 2020April 21, 2020

Outbreak! New York, 1779

“The number of sick increasing every day, in all the different Camps of the army,” wrote Capt. John Peebles in his diary on September 5, 1779.[1] Encamped on Manhattan Island eight miles north of the city of New York, at the time rural farmland, the army was beginning to suffer from the consequences of an […]

by Don N. Hagist

The War Years (1775-1783) Posted on February 20, 2020February 19, 2020

Plight of the Loyalist Refugees of Lloyd’s Neck, Long Island

Queens County of Long Island, New York, had an overwhelming Loyalist population throughout the Revolutionary War period. After the war many Loyalists remained on the island and assimilated into the local population. It is estimated that a large majority of Long Islanders who were loyal and stayed in the United States after the war lost […]

by David M. Griffin

The War Years (1775-1783) Posted on March 25, 2019March 20, 2019

Terror in the Ramapos

While there were many Revolutionary-era outlaws, Claudius Smith and the Cowboys of the Ramapos stand apart. Their story has long been exaggerated and romanticized through local legends, but the true account of their actions is far more violent. Smith and his band—comprised of his children, outlaws, deserters, Native Americans, and local Tories—terrorized the Whigs of […]

by Charles Dewey

The War Years (1775-1783) Posted on March 4, 2019March 4, 2019

Donald McCraw of the 42nd Regiment Wields his Broadsword

In March and April of 1780, there was a string of home invasions and robberies around the villages of Jamaica and Flushing on Long Island, New York. The farming region had been a British army garrison since the autumn of 1776, and was teeming with residents, soldiers, sailors, prisoners of war, refugees, and an assortment […]

by Don N. Hagist

The War Years (1775-1783) Posted on July 18, 2018July 19, 2018

Maintaining Normalcy in British-Occupied Brookhaven, Eastern Long Island, New York

In August 1776, the Crown’s disciplined forces easily displaced the unprepared Continental resistance in the Battle of Long Island, also known as the Battle of Brooklyn. It was a decisive British victory, and the surviving Patriots retreated westward across the East River and onto York Island. By September, the British army firmly occupied Long Island […]

by Matthew M. Montelione

The War Years (1775-1783) Posted on June 26, 2018June 22, 2018

Richard Augustus Wyvill: A British Officer’s Journal as the War Winds Down

The 38th Regiment of Foot disembarked in Boston in the summer of 1774, and spent the next nine years in America involved in some of the war’s most storied campaigns. There was considerable turnover of personnel during those years; the regiment had, nominally, thirty-five officers at any given time, but a total of eighty-eight men […]

by Don N. Hagist

The War Years (1775-1783) Posted on May 21, 2018May 23, 2018

Patriots Against Loyalists on Eastern Long Island, 1775–1776

In 1775, within weeks of the violent clashes at Lexington and Concord, Patriots throughout the colonies established Committees of Observation to thwart Loyalists from assisting the anticipated British war effort. In the township of Brookhaven in Suffolk County on eastern Long Island, New York, the Committee of Observation was spearheaded by William Floyd, a wealthy […]

by Matthew M. Montelione

The War Years (1775-1783) Posted on January 31, 2018January 30, 2018

Oatmeal for the Foxhounds: Tarleton in Jericho

After the fall of New York in 1776 Long Island became occupied territory for combined British and Loyalist forces during the remaining years of the Revolutionary War. The island became an important supply resource for the British army in New York City and a defensive front line to the American forces in New England. The […]

by David M. Griffin

The War Years (1775-1783) Posted on November 17, 2015August 28, 2016

Washington Plays Hardball with the Howes

Summering on Long Island in 1776 was no vacation for Gen. George Washington. As commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, he was attempting to build defenses and ready his raw soldiers to directly confront the best warriors of the British Empire. It was July 1776, and on paper Washington was dividing his fifteen thousand troops into […]

by John L. Smith, Jr.

The War Years (1775-1783) Posted on November 12, 2014August 28, 2016

The Spartans of Long Island

According to some local sources, “Long island was the Thermopylae of the Revolution and the Pennsylvania Germans were its Spartans.”[1] While laden with hyperbole and bias, this is the claim made about the Northampton County Flying Camp battalion under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Peter Kichline.[2] Kichline’s battalion, made up of four companies—two of which […]

by Thomas Verenna

The War Years (1775-1783) Posted on May 19, 2014August 28, 2016

Abraham Woodhull: The Spy Named Samuel Culper

Abraham Woodhull, spy for General George Washington, nearly got himself hanged on one of his first missions. It was in October 1778, when Woodhull toured British-held New York City and its environs, observing Crown military activities. At one point he neared an encampment of Loyalist soldiers commanded by General William Tryon. Woodhull was probably preparing […]

by Michael Schellhammer

The War Years (1775-1783) Posted on October 24, 2013August 28, 2016

The Long Shot of September 1776

In September 1776[1] there occurred an incident of long distance marksmanship, or luck, that deserves a close look. The eyewitness, Private Joseph Plumb Martin[2] of the Continental Army, describes the scene. Martin was on the east shore of Manhattan Island marching north with the East River on his right. He wrote that: “…here I saw […]

by Hugh T. Harrington

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