In 1780, five years from the start of the
Revolutionary War, the settlements that would later become the Tarrytowns were in the middle of
Neutral Ground, the 30-mile–wide (48 km) no man's land between British forces occupying New York City (at the time, what is today
Lower Manhattan) and the
Continental Army north of the
Croton River. Gangs of armed bandits roamed the lightly populated area, raiding farms in a search for livestock and other goods they could sell to the warring armies. Those with
Loyalist sympathies were called Cow-boys; their counterparts who sold to the
Patriots were known as Skinners.
[1] On the morning of September 24 that year, three young men—
John Paulding,
Isaac Van Wart and
David Williams—set themselves up along the road through Tarrytown, approximately 200 yards (180 m) east of where the Captors' Monument is now. They were part of a group of eight Skinners, hoping to ambush a party of Cow-boys. A rider approached them, and they raised their guns to stop him. It was Major
John André of the British Army, returning from a clandestine visit to
West Point, where he had been negotiating the terms of a surrender with General
Benedict Arnold of the Continental Army.
[1]
Paulding, who had recently escaped from British custody, wore a
Hessian coat he had taken in the process, which led André to assume, in the ensuing conversation, that the three were Cow-boys who could thus aid him in continuing on to New York. When informed of his mistake, he produced a pass signed by Arnold. The three searched him and found papers in his boots, not only his correspondence with Arnold but diagrams of the defenses at West Point. Paulding, the only literate member of the trio, read them and realized quickly that André was a spy. Williams asked André what money he could pay them, but Paulding quickly ended any talk of a payoff, swearing that not even 10,000
guineas would be enough.
[1]
After André was turned over to the Continental command at
North Castle, he was taken across the Hudson to
Tappan where he was held prisoner. After being convicted of espionage at a military trial in the the
DeWint House (today a
National Historic Landmark), he was hanged by order of
George Washington, who had attended the trial. Had André successfully conveyed the information Arnold had given him to New York, the British could have managed to secure the Hudson and cut
New England off from the other rebellious colonies, resolving the stalemate of the time in their favor and drastically changing the outcome of the war.
[1]