There was a time when Rye and Westchester County were “a terrible place to live,” a place where homes were deliberately set on fire, and people were afraid to be on the streets.
That time was during the Revolutionary War, and was detailed to a capacity crowd at the Rye Free Reading Room recently by Jan Kelsey, a Rye resident and president and board chair of the Westchester Historical Society.
Kelsey, a former archivist for the Rye Historical Society, has spent six months researching the years from 1776 to 1783, when Westchester County was known as “neutral ground.”
As part of her research on the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution, Kelsey delved into this era when the northern part of the county was associated with the Continental Army, but New York City was with the British loyalists. That left Rye and Westchester County as “neutral ground,” open to plundering by both sides looking for cattle and supplies.
In his biography of George Washington, writer Washington Irving described the “Neutral Ground” as “extending north and south about 30 miles between British and American lines. A beautiful region of forest-clad hills, fertile valleys and abundant streams, but now almost desolated by the scouring of Cowboys and Skinners.”
Kelsey said the Cowboys were associated with the Loyalists and the Skinners generally associated with the Patriots. But Kelsey noted that there was lots of general plundering, chaos, and shifting alliances as the Neutral Ground was pillaged to supply the opposing armies. During the seven years of the war, she said, “Westchester County lost more homes to deliberate burning than any other county in the 13 colonies.”
Her research was very local. At Rye’s Square House, for example, Dr. Ebenezer Haviland went off to become a surgeon for the Continental Army. That left his wife Tamar Haviland to operate the inn, but she eventually took her children and fled to Wethersfield, Conn. Indeed, the population of the area declined during the war. Kelsey notes that the population of the Neutral Ground in 1756 was approximately 13,200. It grew to 21,700 by 1771 but by 1786, three years after the Revolution, was still at 20,500.
Kelsey related a story of defiance. She said Major John Simcoe, who led a group of Loyalists returning from the burning of Bedford, stopped at a home near Anderson Hill Road and Purchase Street, and demanded a bowl to be able to get water from the well. The housewife, a Patriot, refused, telling him that “people like him who burned people’s homes ought to drink from the brook like cattle on all fours.”
Kelsey was careful in her talk to demonstrate the shades of gray between the Cowboys and the Skinners, noting there was plenty of plundering on both sides. A notorious outlaw was one of Rye’s own, Shubeal Merrit. Born at his family farm off King Street in 1762, he joined a Loyalist unit called Emmerick’s Chasseurs and Dragoons but was soon dismissed. Stories abound about how he lost his hand. The most credible, told by his sister, was that Merrit blew it off himself while using the ramrod of his carbine. But Merrit went on to a life of crime and Kelsey said it is possible that James Fenimore Cooper patterned his murderous Skinner in his novel, “The Spy,” after him.
Kelsey brought the “Neutral Ground” alive by quoting those who wrote about the time.
“Foragers and their informants watched for signs of animals hidden in the woods and cellars of the few surviving farms,” G.R. Vincent wrote. “Farmers kept their barnyard clean, their stables empty, their cattle in secret places far from roads. Winter brought a little relief from the marching feet, the pounding at the door, the thunder of hooves flying over the bridge across the brook and past the house at night (and) the dubious bands of ill-clad ruffians claiming to be militia of one side or the other, eyes everywhere looking for plunder.”
She read the words of the Rev. Timothy Dwight, a chaplain of the Continental Army and later President of Yale University, who wrote:
“They feared everybody whom they saw; and loved nobody…. Their houses in the meantime were in a great measure of desolation. Their furniture was extensively plundered or broken in pieces. The walls, floors and windows were injured both by violence and decay: and were not repaired because they had not the means of repairing them, and because they were exposed to repetition of the same injuries. Their cattle were gone. Their fields were grown with a rank growth of weeds and wild grass. Amid all this appearance of desolation, nothing struck my eye more than the sight of this great road; the passage of New York to Boston. Where I had heretofore seen a continual succession of horses and carriages; and life and bustle lent a sprightness to all environing objects; not a single, solitary traveller was visible from week to week or from month to month…. The very tracks of the carriages were grown over and obliterated.”
The war eventually ended and Tamar Haviland returned to the Square House, though her husband was killed during the conflict. The nation’s first president, George Washington, visted the Square House, referring to it as “Widow Haviland’s clean and decent inn.”
