Personages

Lookout Place, the British Garrison at Richmondtowne, Staten Island

Lookout Place or Fort Hill was a Revolutionary War British garrison, or earthen mound-fortress at the top of LaTourette Hill in Historic Richmondtown, Staten Island, New York. The redoubt was constructed in 1776 by British Regulars during the occupation of Richmond County. General William Howe planned his successful capture of New York City while encamped on the Island, along with 30,000 British and Hessian soldiers joining after the arrival of his brother Admiral Richard Howe. The fort overlooked the Old Mill Road, Fresh Kills St. Andrews Church and the town of Richmond, then referred to as Cuckoldstown, in the valley just below LaTourette Hill.

The hilltop was widely denuded of trees by the British during the war, allowing the soldiers to have unobstructed views of Lower New York Bay and the Arthur Kill. Extensive archeological digs have taken place at the turn of the last century, revealing all manner of British accuetrament, from remnants of weaponry to soldier coat buttons, shoe buckles and pottery fragments.

Robert Rogers created a new unit while encamped at Richmondtown called The Queen's Rangers named after Charlotte, wife of King George III. It grew to 937 officers and men organized into eleven companies of about thirty men each and an additional five troops of cavalry.

Rogers did not prove successful in this command and he left the unit on January 29, 1777.  On October 15, 1777, John Graves Simcoe was given command. He turned the Queen's Rangers into one of the most successful British regiments in the war.

The Narrows

The British Army on Staten Island, August 1776

Commander in Chief, 

 General the Honourable Sir William Howe, 
K. B.
 Second in Command,Lieutenant-General Henry Clinton

Third in Command, Right Honorable Lieutenant-General Earl Percy 

1st Brigade. Major-General Pigot; 4th Regiment, Major James Ogilvie; 15th
Regiment, Lieutenant-Colonel Bird; 27th Regiment, Lieutenant-Colonel J. Maxwell;
45th Regiment, Major Saxton.
2d Brigade. Brigadier-General Agnew; 5th Regiment, Lieutenant-Colonel Wolcot;
28th Regiment, Lieutenant-Colonel Rob. Prescott; 35th Regiment, Lieutenant-Colonel
Robert Carr; 49th Regiment, Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Henry Calder, Bart.
3d Brigade. Major-General Jones; 10th Regiment, Major Vatass; 37th Regiment,
Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Ambercromby; 38th Regiment, Lieutenant-Colonel Wm.
Butler; 52d Regiment, Lieutenant-Colonel Mungo Campbell.
4th Brigade. Major-General James Grant; 17th Regiment, Lieutenant-Colonel
Mawhood; 40th Regiment, Lieutenant-Colonel James Grant; 46th Regiment,
Lieutenant-Colonel Enoch Markham; 55th Regiment, Captain Luke.
5th Brigade. Brigadier-General Smith; 23d Regiment, Lieutenant-Colonel J.
Campbell; 43d Regiment, Lieutenant-Colonel George Clarke; 14th Regiment,
Lieutenant Colonel Alvred Clarke; 63d Regiment, Major Francis Sill.
6th Brigade. Brigadier-General Gou. Robertson; 23d Regiment, Lieutenant-Colonel
Benj. Bernard; 44th Regiment, Major Feury Hope; 57th Regiment, Lieutenant John
Campbell; 64th Regiment, Major Hugh McLeroch.
7th Brigade. Brigadier-General Wm. Erskine, quartermaster general; 17th Light
Dragoons, Lieutenant-Colonel Birch; 71st Highlanders, 1st Battalion, Major John
MacDowell; 2d Battalion, Major Norman Lamont.
Brigade of Guards. Major-General Matthew; Light Infantry Brigade, Brigadier-
General Honorable Alexander Leslie; 1st Battalion Light Infantry, Major Thomas
Musgrave; 2d Battalion Light Infantry, Major Straubenzie; 3d Battalion Light
Infantry, Major Honorable John Maitland; 4th Battalion Light Infantry, Major John
Johnson.
Reserve. Right Honorable Lieutenant-General Earl of Cornwallis; Brigadier-General the Honorable John Vaughan; 33d Regiment, Lieutenant-Colonel Webster; 42d Regiment
(Royal Highland), Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Stirling; 1st Battalion Grenadiers,
Lieutenant-Colonel Honorable Henry Monckton; 2d Battalion Grenadiers, Lieutenant-
Colonel William Meadows; 3d Battalion Grenadiers, Major Thomas Marsh; 4th Highland
Grenadiers, Major Charles Stewart; Royal Artillery and Engineers, Brigadier-General Cleveland.

Fountain House and a Flirtatious Loyalist

This house stood across from The Black Horse Tavern during the American Revolution. It was demolished in 1937. A flirtatious young Loyalist resided here with her father, Major Thomas Moncrieffe in the summer of 1776. She was introduced to General Howe and his staff, and was frequently seen cavorting with the best men on the General's staff.

The General Howe Map of Staten Island, 1776

The resulting map of Staten Island was ordered by General Howe shortly after the British landed at Staten Island in July of 1776. According to the Staten Island Historian, the map was found in the Duke of Northumberland's collection in England, and is claimed to have been surveyed without any surveying instruments; hence the inaccurate shape of the Island. It also shows a conflict as to where General Howe's headquarters were located. The Howe map marks the Bancker house, located near the Decker Ferry in Port Richmond as his headquarters. Legend has it that General Howe was staying at the Rose & Crowne at Newe Dorpe. He may have been using both the Bancker residence and the Tavern at different intervals during his stay on Staten Island. The Taylor and Skinner map, another British map commissioned in 1783 is an extremely accurate depiction of the Island! I have yet to see this map, as it is in the U.K. archives.

A British box sextant (pictured below), late 18th century.

This was used on shore by military and naval officers busily engaged in surveying the colony of British Columbia. Light, portable and easier to transport, it was one of essential the tools for Colonial expansion and mapping. Like a nautical sextant, the box sextant measures angles, but it is smaller, enclosed version placed inside a cylindrical box. Its graduated arc is at half degrees from 0° to 120°. The readings on its vernier were read to single minutes using a magnifying glass. The small removable telescope was used to take long sights, but ordinary observations were usually made through a peephole in the glass. The top (lid) of the cylindrical brass box has been removed to show the knobs that work the sextant. The large knob operates a pinion that engages the toothed, circular segment inside the sextant that mounts the index glass and index arm. The smaller knobs are adjusting screws to eliminate index error and adjust the horizon glass.

Old Mill Road in Summer

A large swath of the Greenbelt that has been unaccessible to hikers, naturists and birdwatchers will finally have a bikeway and hiking trail through this densely forested area which is the Lauterette Woods. Richmond Creek and the marshland bird life will finally be viewable from the trail. It will be completed by 2009. See Nick's pictures of the history of Old Mill Road 100 years ago and Old Mill Road today. Actually it is more densely forested now than it has been for the past 200 years (most of the Island was cleared for farming, lumber trade and firewood in the 18th Century.

The Black Horse Tavern, Richmond, NY

Morris's Memorial History of Staten Island, New York By Ira K. Morris: "
British Troops were billeted in the Black Horse Tavern (left, drawing @ 1800) during the American Revolution. The picture at right is dated @ 1906. It has been since been demolished.


The Rose and Crown, Richmond, NY Morris's Memorial History of Staten Island,
New York By Ira K. Morris:

General The Honourable Sir William Howe read the Declaration of Independence to his troops while billeted in this farm-house. It was demolished in 1854. All that remains is a marker on a stone at the corner of New Dorp Lane and Richmond Road.

Lookout Place, the British Garrison on Staten Island

Lookout Place or Fort Hill was a Revolutionary War British garrison, or earthen mound-fortress at the top of LaTourette Hill in Historic Richmondtown, Staten Island, New York. The redoubt was constructed in 1776 by British Regulars during the occupation of Richmond County. General William Howe planned his successful capture of New York City while encamped on the Island, along with 30,000 British and Hessian soldiers joining after the arrival of his brother Admiral Richard Howe. The fort overlooked the Old Mill Road, Fresh Kills St. Andrews Church and the town of Richmond, then referred to as Cuckoldstown, in the valley just below LaTourette Hill.

The hilltop was widely denuded of trees by the British during the war, allowing the soldiers to have unobstructed views of Lower New York Bay and the Arthur Kill. Extensive archeological digs have taken place at the turn of the last century, revealing all manner of British accuetrament, from remnants of weaponry to soldier coat buttons, shoe buckles and pottery fragments.

Robert Rogers created a new unit while encamped at Richmondtown called The Queen's Rangers named after Charlotte, wife of King George III.

British Revolutionary War Fort on Staten Island

From British War Fort

Closter Raid

The IV Battalion New Jersey Volunteers were garrisoned on Staten Island for most of the War, but made frequent forays and raids into nearby towns in New Jersey. These photos are from a reenactment of the Raid on Closter, New Jersey, a rebel stronghold!

Bound Brook, NJ May 2009

I participated in my first reenactment as a Loyalist soldier (an American-born colonist who supported the Crown!) with the IV Battalion NJ Volunteers at Bound Brook, New Jersey. The Regimental coat, waistcoat, shirt and trousers were all borrowed thanks to Todd and Sue Braisted.

Eventually, I will have my own custom-made uniform that will fit me like a glove! I basically learned some drilling, marching and I fired my first musket!

Take a look at my photos and let me know what you think!

Peace Conference Sept 2009 Photo Set 2

Peace Conference Sept 2009 Photo Set 1

An added feature this year at the 1776 Peace Conference Reenactment was actors portraying Admiral Howe, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and Edward Rutledge, seated at a dining table on the lawn of the house arguing over the details of the ill-fated peace agreement. They were ferried over in a row boat from Perth Amboy (see pictures below).

General Skinner's Headquarters

The house sits on a bluff on Staten Island and overlooks the Kill Van Kull and a series of boatyards along the shore, a few blocks west of Snug Harbor Cultural Center. Buses, trucks, and cars rumble by on Richmond Terrace below, and travelers have no inkling that the future King William IV of England was a guest in that house during the American Revolution. Few even suspect that Staten Island was occupied territory for the entire course of that war for national independence. As a young Naval officer in the war, the Duke of Clarence, later King William IV, was a guest at the Cruser-Pelton House. Major John Andre also spent time there. The soldier, poet, spy was hanged for conspiring with Benedict Arnold only a week after writing his last will and testament on Staten Island. The Cruser-Pelton House, as it is known locally, or Kreuzer-Pelton, as the New York City Landmarks Commission spells it, served as the commanding headquarters of Brigadier General Cortlandt Skinner’s brigade of American Loyalists beginning in 1777. The Island had already been occupied for a year by then and the house used by British army engineers, along with a second Cruser house nearby. The house is marked on a military map drawn by the engineers during the British occupation, as well as on one drawn by French engineers for the Americans. The Revolution saw a great shift in population between the area of Elizabeth Town, New Jersey and Staten Island, as loyalists fled New Jersey for nearby Staten Island and patriots went in the other direction. The North Shore of Staten Island, occupied by the British, and the area opposite in New Jersey, occupied by the Americans, was known as “the Lines,” meaning the enemy lines. Skinner had already raised six battalions of New Jersey Volunteers by 1777 when he took up personal headquarters in the Cruser-Pelton House. From the house, Skinner planned raids into New Jersey and defended against raids from the rebels in New Jersey. His main responsibility was intelligence gathering for the secret service and he seems to have been good at his job. The house commands the high ground and any approach along the north shore by American forces from New Jersey would have been spotted from there. Skinner had advance knowledge of every rebel raid except one. He narrowly escaped capture in August 1777 when rebels invaded the North Shore from Elizabeth Point and marched to the county seat at Richmond Town, where they took Skinner’s subalterns, Col. Barton and Lt. Col. Lawrence, and some 30 other prisoners. On one of many raids conducted by Lord Sterling, who led 2000 soldiers across the Kill in 1779, Skinner was ready for them and after a short, but furious battle in Port Richmond, in which the Dutch Church was burned, the Americans were driven back.
There is a local tradition of another skirmish being fought at Cruser Cove itself just below the Cruser-Pelton House. Skinner himself was supposed to have been wounded at this encounter. The house is composed of three parts: a fieldstone cottage on the west built in 1722 by Cornelius Van Santvoord, minister of the Port Richmond Dutch Reformed Church; a larger, steep-roofed rough-cut stone central section built around 1770 by Cornelius Cruser, a farmer, landowner, and son of the Voorlezer of the Dutch church; and a two-story brick extension added in 1836 for Daniel Pelton, an abolitionist, who moved there from Manhattan. When Daniel Pelton built the brick extension, it replaced an earlier east wing similar to the original stone cottage.

Rev. Cornelius Van Santvoord was the son-in-law of John Staats, who was the son of the original holder of the royal land patent granted in 1677, Pieter Jansen Staats, known as Peter Johnson. The next patent west was granted in 1677 to Gerrit Croesen (later Cruser), Peter Johnson’s brother-in-law. A farm on the Croesen Patent belonged to the Dutch Voorlezer, Hendrick Cruser, who was the patentee’s son and Cornelius Cruser’s father. In 1751, Cornelius Cruser bought the farm next door to his father’s farm and the property included the Van Santvoord house. Islanders had no choice in the matter of giving up their homes to the conquerors and it is questionable that Cornelius Cruser was a loyalist, since his son Abraham was a major on the American side. But Cornelius’s son John Cruser married Mary Tooker, daughter of a New Jersey loyalist, Jacob Tooker, who lived on Staten Island in the war years and then went into exile in Nova Scotia. John Cruser and Mary Tooker did not go into exile with her family and inherited the farm on his father’s death in 1786. Mary Tooker Cruser’s mother’s family included the notorious Col. Cornelius Hatfield and his gang of Tory irregulars who terrorized his hometown, Elizabeth, New Jersey from the Staten Island base. Hatfield hung a New Jersey man at Bergen Point in full view of the Cruser-Pelton house. Skinner, who could have looked out his window and watched the execution across the narrow Kill Van Kull, had directed Hatfield to do as he wished with the man. Hatfield was later tried for murder in Elizabeth Town, but was acquitted and went to Nova Scotia.
In 1832, the Cornelius Cruser properties on Staten Island were divided in a partition action, including the house and farm on Richmond Terrace. Daniel Pelton bought the house in 1835. His son, Daniel Pelton, Jr., was a noted poet at the turn of the 20th century. A daughter, Mary Ann, married General Alfred Napoleon Duffie of the Union Army, who was later United States Consul to Spain. The Duffies lived part of their married life in the house. In the 19th century, the Cruser-Pelton House was an antique among Victorian mansions and cottages occupied by well to do New Englanders.

The house is located in Livingston, which was something of an abolitionist stronghold in the day. Near neighbors and social acquaintances of Pelton were abolitionists Francis George Shaw, father of Robert Gould Shaw, who commanded black troops in the Civil War, George William Curtis, and Sydney Howard Gay. Daniel Pelton’s reputation as an abolitionist, along with a trap door leading to an underground space the family called “the dungeon,” led to the tradition that the house was used in the Underground Railroad before the Civil War. The Cruser-Pelton House is a private residence not open to the public.