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The west entrance off North Broadway to Brookside Park -- now Patriots Park -- is shown, ca. 1920, next to the Monument to the Captors of Major André, more commonly known as the Captors' Monument. In the background are the houses once used for private homes and later buildings for a pair of girls' schools on the site from 1911 to 1942. (Westchester County Historical Society, ca. 1920)
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The curtain rises on September 23, 1780 beside André Brook, the boundary between today's Tarrytown and Sleepy Hollow. At the time, the area was part of the so-called Neutral Zone, a buffer of some 30 miles along the east side of the Hudson River Valley between lower Manhattan, home to the British high command, and the Continental Army headquartered north of the Croton River.
It was a lawless zone in which pro-British Loyalist guerrilla operatives roamed and stole cattle and other produce from area farmers to sell to British forces. Militia loosely affiliated with Continental Army forces were arrayed against them.
That's the role area farmers John Paulding, David Williams and Isaac Van Wart were playing at about 9 a.m. on Sept. 23, 1780, lingering near the Albany Post Road (today's Broadway/U.S. 9) close to today's Patriots Park.
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This 1845 lithograph depicts the capture of British Major John André by local Patriots John Paulding, David Williams and Isaac Van Wart on Sept. 23, 1880. (Lithograph by J. Baillie, public domain)
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It was then that British Army Major John André approached Paulding, Williams and Van Wart. André was en route from Stony Point in Rockland County crossing the Hudson via King's Ferry to Cortlandt on the way to meeting his superiors in White Plains. It was part of a plot to capture the Continental Army's West Point stronghold and cut off New England from the other rebellious colonies. André believed the green Hessian military overcoat Paulding wore indicated the men were Tories, or British Loyalists.
André was wearing civilian clothing and carried a pass which Continental Army Major General Benedict Arnold had given him in the wee hours of the 22nd of September during a pair of post-midnight meetings at the shore and at a private home in the Haverstraw area of Rockland County.
The pass identified André as "John Anderson" and gave him safe passage if encountered by Patriot sentries. When André approached the militiamen, he identified himself as a British officer seeking their help. When they told him they were Patriots, he said he'd only told them he was a British officer only because he believed them to be Loyalists. He then showed them his pass from West Point commandant Arnold and reverted to his "John Anderson" alias.
Paulding, Williams and Van Wart didn't buy the story. They searched André and in his boot found six documents from Arnold describing how to circumvent the defenses of West Point. It turns out that Arnold had agreed to surrender West Point to the British for £20,000 (about $5 million today). Only Paulding among the three captors was literate, and when he examined the Arnold documents he realized André was a spy.
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This is a self portrait by Major John André, head of the British Secret Service in America, drawn on Oct. 1, 1880, less than 24 hours before André was hanged as a spy at Tappan, N.Y. The drawing passed into the possession of Yale College after André's death. (Yale University)
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André allegedly offered the militiamen his horse and watch in an attempt to buy his freedom. But Paulding refused André's bribe and took his prize captive to the Continental Army staff in today's Armonk. They sent André across the Hudson River to Tappan where he admitted his true identity to Continental Army officers when confronted with proof of his collaboration with Arnold, who'd already escaped via British warship on the Hudson to Manhattan.
The hanging was controversial, but perhaps inevitable. André was well liked by the officers on both sides in the war. British Commander in Chief General Henry Clinton was willing to free him via exchange, but Washington's only acceptable André trade involved Arnold, who'd escaped to British lines and was a newly minted brigadier general in the British army. Clinton refused the deal.
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This depiction of the hanging of Major John André on Oct. 2, 1780 in Tappan, N.Y., is by British artist Sir William Hamilton and engraved by John Goldar. Despite appeals from the British for a prisoner swap and some American officers for leniency, André was likely resigned to his execution as a spy since he was captured in civilian clothing and under a false name. André did hope however that American Commander in Chief George Washington would grant his request for execution by firing squad as opposed to hanging. (From "The new, comprehensive and complete history of England," 1783, by Edward Barnard, Esq.)
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André accepted his fate, but asked to be executed by firing squad, like a gentleman, vs. hanging, like a common criminal. Washington felt he couldn't make that concession either, since the British had hanged 21-year-old American spy Captain Nathan Hale in similar circumstances in Manhattan just four years earlier. Hanging was the accepted mode of execution for spies in the era.
Paulding, Williams and Van Wart were honored throughout the nascent American nation for their capture of André. Each of the three was awarded a lifetime pension of $200 annually ($3,840 today) and each was given a farm confiscated from Loyalists in the area.
The Continental Congress struck a medal, the Fidelity Medallion, also known as the "André Capture Medal," which it awarded to each of the three men. It remains the oldest decoration of the U.S. military and read "Fidelity" on one side, "Amor Patriae Vincit (Love of Country Conquers)" on the other.
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Pictured is the pass written by Major General Benedict Arnold ordering free passage to British Major John André, traveling under the pseudonym John Anderson. It was presented by André when he was captured at the site of today's Patriots Park in Tarrytown, N.Y. It reads: "Head Quarters Robinsons House, Sept. 22, 1780 ... Permit Mr. John Anderson to pass the Guards to the White Plains, or below, if he Chuses. He being on Public Business by my Direction. (Signed) B Arnold M Genl". Robinsons House refers to Arnold's home in Garrison, N.Y., across the Hudson River from West Point, a house seized from the Loyalist Robinson family during the Revolutionary War. (New York State Archives)
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Scattered efforts were made during the ensuing six decades to memorialize the trio's efforts in a more permanent way, culminating with the formal organization of the Monument Association to the Captors of Major Andre in 1852. It came together when freed former African-American slaves William Taylor and his wife, Mary, donated a small plot of land they owned west of North Broadway near André Brook as the site for a monument, which was dedicated on July 4, 1853, a marble block with a bas-relief plaque depicting André's capture.
James Alexander Hamilton, third son of Founding Father Alexander Hamilton, a member of Washington's staff who met with André several times during his incarceration in Tappan, was in attendance at the dedication of the monument. James Hamilton lived at the nearby Nevis estate on South Broadway in what became Irvington.
Alexander Hamilton famously wrote of André after his execution: “Never perhaps did any man suffer death with more justice, or deserve it less."
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André Brook flows through a pool under one of three stone bridges in Patriots Park. The brook flows west under North Broadway, through Patriots Park, to the Hudson River and marks the border between Tarrytown and Sleepy Hollow. (Wikimedia Commons, Steve Strummer, public domain)
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A more permanent monument was dedicated on the centennial of André's capture in September 1880. The monument was enlarged and a statue of a Minuteman said to be the image of Paulding was erected atop it. The guest of honor was Democrat Samuel Tilden, former New York governor who had been defeated in the 1876 presidential election by Republican Rutherford B. Hayes despite winning the popular vote.
The story of the land around the monument that became Patriots Park in the mid-20th century involved a mansion on a circular drive on an estate owned by E.J. Peters known as "André Brook Lawn " no later than the 1860s. Cornelius Buchanan owned it by 1880 and developer Eugene Jones, who lived in a large house just across North Broadway from the monument, bought the property in 1892 and renamed it Brookside Park. The New York Time wrote about it on Oct. 17, 1892, pointing out how far ahead of its time it was. Jones included power to provide electric lighting and heat to all the park's homes. Jones built eight cottages and a stone gatehouse on the property that he leased to families in 1893. He sold Brookstone Park to Amos Clark in 1896 and Clark continued leasing the houses.
In 1911, Clark leased the property to the Knox School for Girls, a private boarding school established in 1904 in Briarcliff Manor. When the Knox School announced plans to move to a larger campus in Cooperstown, N.Y., the Clark family sold the property in 1919 to Dr. Eugene H. Lehman, the founder of the Highland Manor School for Girls in Manhattan, which by 1923 became the Highland Manor School and Junior College in Tarrytown.
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This 1922 photo shows Highland Manor School for Girls students and staff on horseback at the Broadway entrance of the campus next to the Captors Monument (right). The private home of Tarrytown florist and 36-year Board of Education president Frank Romer Pierson, east of the campus across North Broadway, is pictured at rear. (Alfred Linson Trevillian photo, "Images of America, Tarrytown and Sleepy Hollow," The Historical Society, Inc. Serving Tarrytown and Sleepy Hollow, 1997)
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Highland Manor, whose most famous student was actress Lauren Bacall (Betty Joan Bacall at the time) by at least 1933, in early 1942 purchased the Shadow Lawn estate in West Long Branch, N.J., that had once been used as the Summer White House by President Woodrow Wilson, and moved from Tarrytown in June of that year.
The land was eventually taken over by the village and the Beaux-Arts homes constructed on the property by Jones in 1893 were razed in 1944 and the park name changed to Patriots Park.
Playgrounds, greenscaping, hardscaping and André Brook continue to complement the André legacy and monument around which the park developed.
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This 1914 hand-drawn map shows the Amos Clark property "Brookside Park" and the eight stone cottages built in 1892 that were leased to families until 1912 when Clark leased the buildings to the Knox School for Girls, burned out of its previous home in Briarcliff Manor. The Knox School, which housed some 42 students on the property, moved to Cooperstown, N.Y., in autumn 1920 and was replaced by the Highland Manor School for Girls in 1920. Highland's most famous alumna was Golden Age of cinema movie star Lauren Bacall (under her birth name, Betty Joan Perske. Bacall was her mother's maiden name, which she took after her parents divorced when she was 5). (Westchester County Atlas, 1914 George W. Bromley & Co. map)
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EPILOGUE
Witnesses were awed by Major John André's composure at his execution, noting that the only apparent hiccup came when he saw the gallows and realized he was not being granted his wish to be executed by firing squad like a gentleman, rather than hanged like a common criminal. They noted that he basically handled his execution himself, putting his own handkerchief over his face as a blindfold and, when standing on the back of the wagon from which he would be dropped, put the noose over his head and around his neck, tightening it himself.
His last words reportedly were: "I pray you bear me witness that I met my fate like a brave man."
André was interred in a simple wooden coffin at the site of the gallows in Tappan on which he was hanged. It remained in that grave, unmarked until 1821. He was remembered in London, however. King George III erected a monument in his honor in Westminster Abbey in 1782. In 1821, Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany, the second son of Britain's late King George III, successfully petitioned to have André's remains restored to England.
André's remains were disinterred and brought to London where he was laid to rest next to kings and poets in Westminster Abbey near the monument that bears his name. Pensions were granted by the British government in the unmarried André's name to his mother and sisters shortly after his execution and his younger brother William, also a British officer during the American Revolution, was named a baronet in André's honor.
George Washington, who refused to intervene to save André from the hangman's noose, had kind words for the spy afterwards. "He was more unfortunate than criminal, an accomplished man and a gallant officer,” Washington was to write of André.
Washington's close aide, the Marquis de La Fayette, who was one of the Continental Army generals who convicted André of espionage and sentenced him to death by hanging, reportedly wept as André died.
What became of Benedict Arnold? Despite failing to turn over West Point to the British, Arnold had been informing the British for a long time about secret American troop movements and placements. Arnold received £6,000 (about $1.5 million today) from the British for turning against the Patriot cause and he was commissioned a brigadier general in the British army. He also received an annual pension of £360 ($90,000 toda
The American hero-turned-traitor went on to command a newly created British cavalry and infantry unit called the American Legion against Continental forces in several major actions in Connecticut and Virginia including the burning and plundering of New London, Conn. He moved to London in December 1782 before war's end with his second wife, Margaret "Peggy" Shippen Arnold, 19 years his junior. (Arnold's first wife died in 1775.)
Arnold returned to North America in 1787, entering into business with his sons in St. John, New Brunswick, Canada. The town itself was only two years old, founded to absorb British Loyalists wishing to remain British who fled to Canada after the 1783 Treaty of Paris ended British control of its former American colonies.
Arnold had legal and personal problems dealing with businessmen and the pubic in Canada. An effigy of Arnold was burned outside his house in St. John. He returned to London permanently in 1791 and died at age 60, reportedly of complications from gout, in 1801. Peggy, who some believed made introductions from her friend Major John André to Arnold, died at age 44 in 1804.
Arnold was not a popular figure in England, either. He was shunned by military officials and many political figures.
Arnold had seven sons and one daughter with his two wives, four sons and a daughter with Shippen, his second wife. All seven sons became officers in the British armed forces.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
After the publication of this post, I learned of stories about other militia members possibly being involved in Major André's capture. Here are links to information I uncovered about those reports.
I have also uncovered documentation of the farmland presented to John Paulding, David Williams in recognition of their declining bribe attempts by Major Andre. Each received a grant of 100 acres in Cortlandt -- then called Cortlandts Town -- near Croton from the former Philipsburg Manor lands of Loyalist Frederick Philipse III.
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Captors' Monument in Patriots Park, pictured, features two stone pedestals on which stands a bronze statue of a Minuteman, reputedly in the image of John Paulding, one of the three Tarrytown-area men who captured British spy John André on Sept. 23, 1780. The older, lower, pedestal is of white Sing SIng marble with a recessed panel featuring a bas-relief of André's capture. An historic site sign next to the monument reads: "Here in 1780 three honest militiamen arrested Major John André Adjt-Gen. British Army, disguised, preventing disaster to American cause." (Wikimedia Commons, public domain)
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* Click here for links to dozens of other Gilded Age stories by this author
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