Transcriber’s Note: Period documents are given with their original—and imperfect—spelling, punctuation and grammar.

Grist mill at Fredericksburgh, now Kent, built by Colonel Henry Ludington about the time of the Revolution

COLONEL HENRY LUDINGTON
A Memoir

BY
WILLIS FLETCHER JOHNSON
A.M., L.H.D.

WITH PORTRAITS, VIEWS,
FACSIMILES, ETC.

PRINTED BY HIS GRANDCHILDREN
LAVINIA ELIZABETH LUDINGTON AND
CHARLES HENRY LUDINGTON
NEW YORK
1907

Copyright, 1907, by
Lavinia Elizabeth Ludington and
Charles Henry Ludington

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PREFACE

The part performed by the militia and militia officers in the War of the Revolution does not seem always to have received the historical recognition which it deserves. It was really of great importance, especially in southern New England and the Middle States, at times actually rivaling and often indispensably supplementing that of the regular Continental Army. It will not be invidious to say that of all the militia none was of more importance or rendered more valuable services than those regiments which occupied the disputed border country between the American and British lines, and which guarded the bases of supplies and the routes of communication. There was probably no region in which borderland friction was more severe and intrigues more sinister than that which lay between the British in New York City and the Americans at the Highlands of the Hudson, nor was there a highway of travel and communication more important than that which led from Hartford in Connecticut to Fishkill and West Point in New York.

It is the purpose of the present volume to present the salient features of the public career of a militia colonel who was perhaps most of all concerned in holding that troublous territory for the American cause, in guarding that route of travel and supply, and in serving the government of the State of New York, to whose seat his territorial command was so immediately adjacent. It is intended to be merely a memoir of Henry Ludington, together with such a historical setting as may seem desirable for a just understanding of the circumstances of his life and its varied activities. It makes no pretense of giving a complete genealogy of the Ludington family in America, either before or after his time, but confines itself to his own direct descent and a few of his immediate descendants. The facts of his life, never before compiled, have been gleaned from many sources, including Colonial, Revolutionary and State records, newspaper files, histories and diaries, correspondence, various miscellaneous manuscript collections, and some oral traditions of whose authenticity there is substantial evidence. The most copious and important data have been secured from the manuscript collections of two of Henry Ludington’s descendants, Mr. Lewis S. Patrick, of Marinette, Wisconsin, who has devoted much time and painstaking labor to the work of searching for and securing authentic information of his distinguished ancestor, and Mr. Charles Henry Ludington, of New York, who has received many valuable papers and original documents and records from a descendant of Sibyl Ludington Ogden, Henry Ludington’s first-born child. It is much regretted that among all these data, no portrait of Henry Ludington is in existence, and that therefore none can be given in this book. In addition, the old records of Charlestown and Malden, Massachusetts, and of Branford, East Haven and New Haven, Connecticut, the collections of the Connecticut Historical Society, the early annals of New York, especially in the French and Indian and the Revolutionary wars, and the publications of the New England Genealogical Society, have also been utilized, together with the Papers of Governor George Clinton, Lossing’s “Field Book of the Revolution,” Blake’s and Pelletreau’s histories of Putnam County, Smith’s “History of Dutchess County,” Bolton’s “History of Westchester County,” and other works, credit to which is given in the text of this volume. It is hoped that this brief and simple setting forth of the public services of Henry Ludington during the formative period of our country’s history will prove of sufficient interest to the members of his family and to others to justify the printing of this memoir.

HENRY LUDINGTON
A Memoir

CHAPTER I
GENEALOGICAL

“This family of the Ludingtons,” says Gray in his genealogical work on the nobility and gentry of England, “were of a great estate, of whom there was one took a large travail to the seeing of many countries where Our Saviour wrought His miracles, as is declared by his monument in the College of Worcester, where he is interred.” The immediate reference of the quaint old chronicler was to the Ludingtons of Shrawley and Worcester, and the one member of that family whom he singled out for special mention was Robert Ludington, gentleman, a merchant in the Levantine trade. In the pursuit of business, and also probably for curiosity and pleasure, he traveled extensively in Italy, Greece, Turkey, Egypt and Syria, at a time when such journeyings were more arduous and even perilous than those of to-day in equatorial or polar wildernesses. In accord with the pious custom of the age he also made a pilgrimage to Palestine, and visited the chief places made memorable in Holy Writ. He died at Worcester at the age of 76 years, in 1625, a few years before the first colonists of his name appeared in North America. The exact degree of relationship between him and them is not now ascertainable, but it is supposable that it was close, while there is no reason whatever for doubting that the American Ludingtons were members of that same family “of a great estate,” whether or not they came from the particular branch of it which was identified with Shrawley and Worcester.

For the Ludington family in England antedated Robert Ludington of Worcester by many generations, and was established elsewhere in the Midlands than in Worcestershire. Its chief seat seems to have been in the Eastern Midlands, though its name has long been implanted on all the shires from Lincoln to Worcester, including Rutland, Leicester, Huntingdon, Northampton, and Warwick. There is a credible tradition that in the Third Crusade a Ludington was among the followers of Richard Cœur de Lion, and that afterward, when that adventurous monarch was a prisoner in Austria, he sought to visit him in the guise of a holy palmer, in order to devise with him some plan for his escape. Because of these loyal exploits, we are told, he was invested with a patent of nobility, and with the coat of arms thereafter borne by the Ludington family, to wit (according to Burke’s Heraldry): Pale of six argent and azure on a chief, gules a lion passant and gardant. Crest, a palmer’s staff, erect. Motto, Probum non penitet.

Authentic mention of other Ludingtons, honorable and often distinguished, may be found from time to time in English history, especially in the annals of Tudor and Stuart reigns. In the reign of Henry VIII a Sir John Ludington was a man of mark in the north of England, and his daughter, Elizabeth Ludington, married first an alderman of the City of London, and second, after his death, Sir John Chamberlain. In the sixteenth century, the Rev. Thomas Ludington, M.A., was a Fellow of Christ Church College, Oxford, where his will, dated May 28, 1593, is still preserved. In the next century another clergyman, the Rev. Stephen Ludington, D.D., was married about 1610 to Anne, daughter of Richard Streetfield, at Chiddington, Kent. Afterward he was made prebendary of Langford, Lincoln, on November 15, 1641, and in June, 1674, resigned that place to his son, the Rev. Stephen Ludington, M.A. He was also rector of Carlton Scrope, and archdeacon of Stow, filling the last-named place at the time of his death in 1677. His grave is to be seen in Lincoln Cathedral. His son, mentioned above, was married to Ann Dillingham in Westminster Abbey in 1675.

It will be hereafter observed in this narrative that the family name of Ludington has been variously spelled in this country, as Ludington, Luddington, Ludinton, Ludenton, etc. Some of these variations have appeared also in England, together with the form Lydington, which has not been used here. These same forms have also been applied to the several towns and parishes which bear or have borne the family name, and especially that one parish which is so ancient and which was formerly so closely identified with the Ludingtons that question has risen whether the parish was named for the family or the family derived its name from the parish. This place, at one time called Lydington, was first mentioned in the Domesday Book of William the Conqueror, where it was called Ludington—whence we may properly regard that as the original and correct form of the name. It was then a part of the Bishopric of Lincoln and of the county of Northampton; Rutlandshire, in which the place now is, not having been set off from Northampton until the time of King John. The Bishop of Lincoln had a residential palace there, which was afterward transformed into a charity hospital, and as such is still in existence. In the chapel of the hospital is an ancient folio Bible bearing the inscription “Ludington Hospital Bible,” and containing in manuscript a special prayer for the hospital, which is regularly read as a part of the service. The name of Loddington is borne by parishes in Leicestershire and Northamptonshire, that of Luddington by parishes in Lincolnshire and Warwickshire (the latter near Stratford-on-Avon and intimately associated with Shakespeare), and that of Luddington-in-the-Brook by one which is partly in Northamptonshire and partly in Huntingdonshire; all testifying to the early extent of the Ludington family throughout the Midland counties of England.

The earliest record of a Ludington in America occurs in 1635. On April 6 of that year the ship Hopewell, which had already made several voyages to these shores, sailed from London for Massachusetts Bay, under the command of William Bundock. Her Company of eleven passengers was notable for the youthfulness of all its members, the youngest being twelve and the oldest only twenty-two years of age. Seven of them were young men, or boys, and four were girls. One of the latter, whose age was given as eighteen years, was registered on the ship’s list as “Christiom” Ludington, but other records, in London, show that the name, although very distinctly written in that form, should have been “Christian.” Concerning her origin and her subsequent fate, all records are silent. In John Farmer’s “List of Ancient Names in Boston and Vicinity, 1630-1644,” however, appears the name of “Ch. Luddington”; presumably that of this same young woman. Again, in the Old Granary burying ground in Boston, on Tomb No. 108, there appear the names of Joseph Tilden and C. Ludington; and a plausible conjecture is that Christian Ludington became the wife of Joseph Tilden and that thus they were both buried in the same grave. But this is conjecture and nothing more. So far as ascertained facts are concerned, Christian Ludington makes both her first and her last recorded appearance in that passenger list of the Hopewell.

The next appearance of the name in American annals, however,—passing by the mere undated mention of one Christopher Ludington in connection with the Virginia colony,—places us upon assured ground and marks the foundation of the family in America. William Ludington was born in England—place not known—in 1608, and his wife Ellen—her family name not known—was also born there in 1617. They were married in 1636, and a few years later came to America and settled in the Massachusetts Bay colony, in that part of Charlestown which was afterward set off into the separate town of Malden. The date of their migration hither is not precisely known. Savage’s “Genealogical Register” mentions William Ludington as living in Charlestown in 1642; which is quite correct, though, as Mr. Patrick aptly points out, the date is by no means conclusive as to the time of his first settlement in that place. Indeed, it is certain that he had settled in Charlestown some time before, for in the early records of the colony, under date of May 13, 1640, appears the repeal of a former order forbidding the erection of houses at a distance of more than half a mile from the meeting house, and with the repeal is an order remitting to William Ludington the penalty for having disobeyed the original decree. That restriction of building was, of course, a prudent and probably a necessary one, in the early days of the colony, for keeping the town compact and thus affording to all its inhabitants greater security against Indian attacks. It seems to have been disregarded, however, by the actual building of some houses outside of the prescribed line, and in such violation a heavy penalty was incurred. By 1640 the law became obsolete. Boston had then been founded ten years. The colonies of New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Connecticut had been settled and organized. And three years before the Pequods had been vanquished. It was therefore fitting to rescind the order, and to let the borders of Charlestown be enlarged. We may assume that it was with a realization that this would speedily be done that William Ludington, either at the very beginning of 1640 or previous to that year, built his house on the forbidden ground, and thus incurred the penalty, which, however, was not imposed upon him; and we may further assume that it was this act of his which finally called official attention to the obsolete character of the law and thus brought about its repeal. In the light thus thrown upon him, William Ludington appears as probably a man of considerable standing in the community, and of high general esteem, else his disregard of the law would scarcely have been thus condoned.

Reckoning, then, that William Ludington was settled in his house in the outskirts of Charlestown—on the north side of the Mystic River, in what was later called Malden—before May 13, 1640, the date of his arrival in America must probably be placed as early as 1639, if not even earlier. He remained at Charlestown for a little more than twenty years, and was a considerable landowner and an important member of the community. Many references to him appear in the old colonial records, with some apparent conflicts of date, which are doubtless due to the transition stage through which the calendar was then passing. Most of the civilized world adopted the present Gregorian calendar in the sixteenth century, but it was not until 1751 that Great Britain and the British colonies did so. Consequently during most of our colonial history, including the times of William Ludington, the year began on March 25 instead of January 1, and all dates in the three months of January, February and March (down to the 24th) were credited to a different year from that to which we should now credit them. In many cases historians have endeavored to indicate such dates with accuracy by giving the numbers of both years, thus: March 1, 1660-61. But in many cases this has not been done and only a single year number is given, thus causing much uncertainty and doubt as to which year is meant. There were also other disturbances of chronology, and other differences in the statement of dates, involving other months of the year; especially that of two months’ difference at what is now the end of the year. Thus the birth of William Ludington’s daughter Mary is variously stated to have occurred on December 6, 1642, December 6, 1642-43, February 6, 1643, and February 6, 1642-43. Also the birth and death of his son Matthew are credited, respectively, to October 16, 1657, and November 12, 1657, and to December 16, 1657, and January 12, 1658. There is record of the purchase, on October 10, 1649, of a tract of twenty acres of land at Malden, by William Ludington, described in the deed as a weaver, from Ralph Hall, a pipe-stave maker, and also of the sale of five acres by William Ludington to Joseph Carter, a currier. The deed given by Ralph Hall is entitled “A Sale of Land by Ralph Hall unto William Luddington, both of Charlestowne, the 10th day of the 10th moneth, 1649,” and runs as follows:

Know all men by these presents, That I, Ralph Hall, of Charletowne in New England, Pipe stave maker, for a certaine valluable consideration by mee in hand Received, by which I doe acknowledge myselfe to be fully satisfied, and payed, and contented; Have bargained, sould, given, and granted, and doe by these presents Bargaine, sell, give, and grant unto william Luddington of Charletowne aforesayd, Weaver, Twenty Achors of Land, more or less, scituate, Lying, and Beeing in Maulden, That is to say, fifteen Acres of Land, more or less which I, the sayd Ralph formerly purchased at the hand of Thomas Peirce, of Charltowne, senior, Bounded on the Northwest by the land of Mr. Palgrave, Phisition, on the Northeast by the Lands of John Sybly, on the South Easte by the Lands of James Hubbert, and on the South west by the Land of widdow Coale, And the other five Acres herein mencioned sould to the sayd William, Are five Acres, more, or less, bounded on the southeast by the Land of Widdow Coale aforesaid, on the southwest by Thomas Grover and Thomas Osborne, Northeast by the Ground of Thomas Molton, and Northwest by the forsayde fifeteen Acres: which five acres I formerly purchased of Mr. John Hodges, of Charltowne. To Have and to hould the sayd fifeteen acres, and five Acres of Lands, with all the Appurtenances and priviledges thereoff To Him, the sayd William Luddington his heigres and Assignees for ever: And by mee, the sayd Ralph Hall, and Mary my wife, to bee bargained sould, given, and confirmed unto him, the sayd william, and his heigres and assignes for him, and them peasable and quietly to possess, inioy, and improve to his and their owne proper use and usses for ever, and the same by us by vertue hereoff to bee warrantedtised (sic) mayntained, and defended from any other person or persons hereafter Laying clayme to the same by any former contract or agreement concerning the same: In witness whereof, I, the sayd Ralph Hall with Mary my wife, for our selves, our heires, executors and Administrators, have hereunto sett our hands and seales.

Dated this Tenth day of December 1649.

This is testified before the worshipfull Mr. Richard Bellingham.

On November 30, 1651, William Ludington was mentioned in the will of Henry Sandyes, of Charlestown, as one of the creditors of his estate, and in 1660 he was enrolled as a juror in Malden. Early in the latter year, however, he removed from Malden or Charlestown to the New Haven, Connecticut, colony, and there settled at East Haven, adjoining Branford, on the east side of the Quinnipiac River. Five years before there had been established at that place the first iron works in Connecticut. The raw material used was the rich bog ore which was then found in large quantities in the swamps of North Haven and elsewhere, precisely like that which at a still later date was abundantly found and worked in the swamps of southern New Jersey, where the name of “Furnace” is still borne by more than one village on the site of a long-abandoned foundry. This industry flourished at East Haven until about 1680, when the supply of bog ore was exhausted and the works were closed. Although William Ludington had been a weaver at Malden, he appears to have been interested in these iron works, and indeed probably removed to East Haven for the sake of connecting and identifying himself with them. But his career there was short. On March 27, 1660, evidently soon after his arrival there, he was complainant in a slander suit, and in either the same year or the next year he died, at the East Haven iron works. The manner of his death, whether from sickness or from accident, is unknown. But it evidently produced some impression in the community, since it is the only death specially recorded in the early annals of the place.

The precise date of his death, even the year in which it occurred, is a matter of uncertainty. Mr. Patrick quotes a passage from the East Haven records which says: “In 1662 John Porter obtained a piece of land to set his blacksmith shop upon … and about the same time William Ludington died.” Therefore he concludes that William Ludington died in 1662. But was it 1662 according to the chronology of those times or according to that of our time? Wyman’s records of Charlestown and Malden, which mention William Ludington’s departure thence for East Haven, relate that on October 1, 1661, John White made petition for the appointment of an administrator of William Ludington’s estate in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, and Pope’s “Pioneers of Massachusetts” confirms that record, giving the name of the petitioner as Wayte or Waite, and adding that the inventory of the estate was filed by James Barrat, or Barret, on April 1, 1662. Mr. Patrick has the name Bariat and the date February 1, 1662. Here we have, then, the same discrepancy of exactly two months in statement of date which was noticed in the case of Matthew Ludington’s birth and death. Of course, if the petition for administration of William Ludington’s estate was made on October 1, 1661, his death must have occurred before that date, instead of in 1662 as the East Haven records suggest. The explanation of the apparent conflict of dates is doubtless to be found in the changes of calendar to which reference has been made, one historian giving the date according to the chronology then prevailing and another according to that of the present day. Concerning the date of the probating of his estate at East Haven, however, there is apparently no doubt, since in the records of it the dual year-dates are given. That estate was inventoried and appraised by John Cooper and Matthew Moulthrop, and their inventory, according to Hoadly’s “New Haven Colonial Records,” was filed in court at New Haven on March 3, 1662, according to the chronology of that time, or 1663 according to ours. This interesting document was entitled “An Inventory of ye Estate of William Ludington, late of New Haven, deceased, amounting to £183 and 10s., upon Oath attested yt ye Aprizents was just to the best of their light, by John Cooper, Sen., and Matthew Moulthrop in Court at New Haven, 1662-63.” It ran in detail as follows:

The marke, i. e. of

Again, in the “Records of the Proprietors of New Haven” we find that “At a Court held at New Haven March 3, 1662-3 … an inventory of the Estate of Willm. Luddington deceased whas presented.… The widdow upon oath attested to the fulness of it to the best of her knowledge.… The widdow being asked if her husband made noe will answered that she knew of none for she was not at home when he died.… The matter respecting the childrens portions was deferred till next court & the … widdow with him that shee was to marry & all her children above fourteen years of age was ordered then to appear.…” At this date, therefore, William Ludington’s widow was engaged to be married again, and that engagement was publicly announced. Moreover, she was actually married to her second husband, John Rose, a few weeks later, for on May 5 following, in 1662-63, according to the “Proprietors’ Records,” the court was again in session, and “John Rose who married widdow Ludington was called to know what security he would give for the childrens portions that was not yet of age to receive them.” It is true that in those days the period of mourning before remarriage was sometimes abbreviated, but it is scarcely conceivable that this widow’s marriage took place within a few months of her husband’s death, or sooner than a year thereafter. It may therefore be assumed that William Ludington’s death, at the East Haven iron works, occurred at least as early as March or April, 1661-62.

There is reason to believe that William Ludington was not only a man of note in the East Haven community but that also he was a man of considerable property—more than would be suggested by the item of “house and land 60 lbs.” in the inventory. For the New Haven Land Records show that in 1723 his son, William Ludington, 2nd, sold to Thomas Robinson “part of that tract of land set out to my father, William Luddington, which tract contains 100 acres.” This property was in East Haven, just across the river from Branford.

The children of William and Ellen Ludington were seven in number. The first was Thomas, who was born (probably in England) in 1637. He removed to Newark, New Jersey, in 1666, and became a farmer—since when in 1689 he sold some land with a house and barn at New Haven he described himself in the deed as a husbandman. He was an assessor and a surveyor of highways at Newark, and left children whose descendants are now to be found in the northern part of New Jersey. His oldest child, John, remained at New Haven, married, and had issue, his first-born, James, being a soldier in the French and Indian war and being killed in battle on September 8, 1756. The second child of William and Ellen Ludington was John Ludington, who was born (probably at Charlestown, Massachusetts) in 1640. He was living at East Haven in 1664, and afterward, Mr. Patrick thinks, removed to Vermont. The third child was Mary, of whose birth various dates are given, as already noted. The fourth was Henry Ludington, the date of whose birth is not known, but who was killed in the war with King Philip, at the end of 1675 or beginning of 1676, as appears in the “New Haven Probate Records,” where is found an inventory of the estate of “Henry Luddington late of N. haven slayne in the warre taken & apprised by Mathew Moulthrop & John Potter Janry. 3, 1676.” The fifth child was Hannah, the dates of whose birth and death are unknown. The sixth child was William Ludington, 2nd, who was born about 1655 and died in February, 1737. His first wife was Martha Rose, daughter of his stepfather, John Rose, and his second was Mercy Whitehead. According to Dodd’s “East Haven Register” he was a man of means, of intelligence, of ability, and of important standing in the community. He had two sons and one daughter by his first wife, and two sons and six daughters by his second. His first-born, the son of Martha Rose, was Henry Ludington, who was born in 1679, was a carpenter, married Sarah, daughter of William Collins, on August 20, 1700, had eight sons and four daughters, and died in the summer of 1727—of whom, or of his descendants, we shall presently hear much more. Finally, the seventh child of William and Ellen Ludington was Matthew, who as already related was born at Malden and died in infancy. Despite the removal of Thomas Ludington to Newark, and that of John Ludington (probably) to Vermont, they appear to have retained much interest in the New Haven colony, since in the “Colony Record of Deeds” of Connecticut we find Thomas, John, and William Ludington enumerated among the proprietors of New Haven in 1685, who were, presumably, the above mentioned first, second, and sixth children of William and Ellen Ludington.

Recurring for a moment to the family of William Ludington, 2nd, and passing by for the time his first-born, Henry Ludington, it is to be observed that his second child, Eleanor, married Nathaniel Bailey, of Guilford, Connecticut, and had issue; his third, William Ludington, 3rd, married Anna Hodge, lived at Waterbury and Plymouth, Connecticut, and had issue, his sixth son, Samuel, serving in the French and Indian war, and his grandson, Timothy, son of William 3rd’s first-born, Matthew, also serving in that war and being killed in battle at East Haven in the War of the Revolution; the fourth, Mercy, married Ebenezer Deanes or Dains, of Norwich, Connecticut, and had issue; the fifth, Mary, married John Dawson, of East Haven, and had issue; the sixth, Hannah, married Isaac Penfield, of New Haven, and had issue; the seventh, John, married Elizabeth Potter, and had issue, his son Jude serving in the French and Indian war; the eighth, Eliphalet, married Abigail Collins, and had issue, his third son, Amos, serving in the French and Indian war; the ninth, Elizabeth, died in childhood; the tenth, Dorothy, married Benjamin Mallory and had issue; and the eleventh, Dorcas, married James Way and had issue.

Returning now to Henry Ludington, eldest son of William Ludington, 2nd, who was the sixth child of the original William Ludington, it is to be observed that his first child, Daniel, married first Hannah Payne, and second Susannah Clark, and had issue, his second child, Ezra, serving in the French and Indian war, and his ninth, Collins, in the War of the Revolution; his second, William Ludington, married first Mary Knowles, of Branford, and second Mary Wilkinson, of Branford, and had issue—of whom we shall hereafter hear much more; his third, Sarah, died in childhood; his fourth, Dinah, married Isaac Thorpe; his fifth, Lydia, married Moses Thorpe; his sixth, Nathaniel, married first Mary Chidsey, and second Eunice (Russell) Smith, and had issue; his seventh, Moses, married Eunice Chidsey; his eighth, Aaron, died at sea; his ninth, Elisha, died in infancy; his tenth, also named Elisha, settled in Phillipse Precinct, Dutchess County, New York, married, and had a daughter, Abigail, of whom more hereafter; his eleventh, Sarah, probably died unmarried, though Dodd’s “East Haven Register” says she married Daniel Mead; and his twelfth, Thomas, was drowned, unmarried.

Turning back, once more, to the William Ludington last mentioned, who was the second son of Henry Ludington, we find that he was born at Branford, Connecticut, on September 6, 1702. He married Mary Knowles, of Branford, on November 5, 1730. She died on April 16, 1759, and on April 17, 1760,—just a day after the year of mourning had elapsed!—he married for his second wife Mary Wilkinson, also of Branford. His eight children, all of his first wife, were as follows: First, Submit, who married Stephen Johnson, of Branford; second, Mary; third, Henry, of whom we shall hear more, since he forms the chief subject of this book; fourth, Lydia, who married William (or, according to Dodd, Aaron) Buckley, of Branford; fifth, Samuel; sixth, Rebecca; seventh, Anne; and eighth, Stephen. On the night of Monday, May 20, 1754, part of William Ludington’s house at Branford was destroyed by fire, and his sixth and seventh children, Rebecca and Anne, aged seven and four years, respectively, perished in the flames.

Attention is thus finally centered upon the second Henry Ludington, who was the third child of William Ludington, who was the second child of the first Henry Ludington, who was the first child of the second William Ludington, who was the sixth child of the first William Ludington, who was the founder of the Ludington family in America. The sources of information concerning him and his career, which have been mentioned in the preface to this volume, are varied and numerous rather than copious or comprehensive; but they are sufficient to indicate that he was a man of more than ordinary force of character and of more than average importance and influence in his time and place, and that he is entitled to remembrance and to enrolment among those who contributed materially, and with no little sacrifice of self, to the making of the State of New York and of the United States of America.

CHAPTER II
BEFORE THE REVOLUTION

Henry Ludington, the third child of William and Mary (Knowles) Ludington, was born at Branford, Connecticut, on May 25, 1739. Some records give the date as 1738, but the weight of authority indicates the later year. Branford, originally called Totoket, was a part of the second purchase at New Haven in 1638, but was not successfully settled until two years later, when a dissatisfied company from Wethersfield, headed by William Swayne, secured a grant of it. Together with Milford, Guilford, Stamford, Southold (Long Island), and New Haven, it made up the separate jurisdiction of New Haven, under an ecclesiastical government, until 1665, when all were merged into the greater Colony of Connecticut, Branford being erected into an organized town with representation in the General Court, in 1651. The place won lasting distinction in 1700, when it was the scene of the practical founding of Yale College; ten ministers, who had been named as trustees of “The School of the Church,” each laying upon the table in their meeting-room a number of books, with the words, “I give these books for the founding of a college in this colony.” The next year the college was chartered and was formally opened at Saybrook, and in 1716-17 it was permanently removed to New Haven. At the time of Henry Ludington’s birth, therefore, New Haven had become fully established as the metropolis of that part of the colony, and Branford, which had at first been its peer and rival, had become reconciled to the status of a suburban town. The educational facilities of Branford were similar to those of other colonial towns; to wit, primitive in character and chiefly under church control. To what extent young Ludington availed himself of them does not appear, but so far as may be judged from his letters and other papers in after years he was an indifferent scholar, probably thinking more of action than of study.

Such as his schooling was, however, it was ended at an early date and the school-boy became a man of action when only half-way through his teens. The epoch-making struggle commonly known as the French and Indian War, which was really a part of the Seven Years’ War in Europe, and which secured for the English absolute dominance in North America and transformed the maps of two continents, began when he was fifteen years old, and made a strong appeal to his adventurous and daring disposition; and at an early date, probably in 1755, though the meager records now in existence are not conclusive on that point, he enlisted in those Colonial levies which formed so invaluable an adjunct to the regular British Army in all the campaigns of that war. No complete roster of the Connecticut troops is now in existence, but the “East Haven Register” tells us that many men from East Haven and Branford were enlisted for service with the British Army near the Great Lakes, of whom the greater part were lost through sickness and in battle. In these levies were several members of the Ludington family, beside Henry Ludington. Our genealogical review has already indicated the service in that war of James, Ezra, Timothy, Samuel, Jude, and Amos Ludington, uncles and cousins of Henry Ludington. As some of the Ludingtons had, years before the war, removed from Connecticut to Dutchess County, New York, some members of the family were also among the troops from the latter region. Old records tell that in Captain Richard Rea’s Dutchess County regiment were two young farmers, Comfort Loudinton and Asa Loudinton—obviously meaning Ludington—respectively 19 and 17 years old; the former with brown eyes and dark complexion, the latter with brown eyes and fresh complexion.

Henry Ludington enlisted in Captain Foote’s company of the Second Connecticut Regiment, a notable body of troops which was put forward to bear much of the brunt of the campaign. The regiment was at first commanded by Colonel Elizur Goodrich, and later by Colonel Nathan Whiting, one of the most distinguished Colonial officers of that war. The regiment was assigned to duty under Major-General (afterward Sir) William Johnson, who, with a Colonial army and numerous Indian allies under the famous Mohawk chieftain Hendrick, was moving to meet the French at Lake George. The march from New Haven was made by way of Amenia and Dover, in Dutchess County, New York, to the Hudson River, and thence northward to the “dark and bloody ground” of the North Woods. Young Ludington was of a lively and venturesome disposition and, as family traditions show, had a propensity to practical joking which more than once put him in peril of not undeserved punishment, which, however, he managed to avoid.

It was early in September, 1755, when he was in only his seventeenth year, that the young soldier received his “baptism of fire” in the desperate battle of Lake George, near the little sheet of water afterward known as Bloody Pond because of the hue its water took from the gory drainage of the battlefield. General Johnson, with his Colonial troops and Indian allies, was moving northward. Baron Dieskau, with a French and Indian army, moving southward, embarked at Fort Frederick, Crown Point, came down the lake in a fleet of small boats, and landed at Skenesborough, now Whitehall. On the night of Sunday, September 7, word came to Johnson that the enemy was marching down from Fort Edward to Lake George, and early the next morning plans were made to meet them. It was at first suggested that only a few hundred men be sent forward to hold the enemy in check until the main army could dispose and fortify itself, but Hendrick, the shrewd Mohawk warrior, objected to sending so small a force. “If they are to fight,” he said, “they are too few; if they are to be killed, they are too many.” Accordingly the number was increased to 1,200, comprising and, indeed, led by the Connecticut troops. Colonel Ephraim Williams, a brave and skilful officer, was in command, with Colonel Nathan Whiting, of New Haven, as his chief lieutenant. They came upon the enemy at Rocky Brook, about four miles from Lake George, and found the French and Indians arrayed in the form of a crescent, the horns of which extended for some distance on both sides of the road which there led through a dense forest. The devoted Colonial detachment marched straight at the center of the crescent, and was quickly attacked in front and on both flanks at the same time. Williams and Hendrick were among the first to fall, and their followers were cut down in great numbers. Thereupon Colonel Whiting succeeded to the general command, and perceiving that the Colonials were outnumbered and outflanked, ordered a retreat, which was skilfully conducted, with little further loss. When the army was thus reunited, hasty preparations were made to meet the onslaught of the foe, and at noon the conflict began in deadly earnest. The forces were commanded, respectively, by Johnson and Dieskau in person, until the former was disabled by a wound, when his place was taken by General Lyman, who fulfilled his duties with singular ability and success. After four hours of fighting on the defensive, the English and Colonials leaped over their breastworks and charged the foe with irresistible fury. The French and Indians were routed with great slaughter, and Baron Dieskau himself, badly wounded, was taken prisoner.

Old gun used by Henry Ludington in the French and Indian War. Now owned by Frederick Ludington, son of the late Governor Harrison Ludington, of Wisconsin.

(From sketch made by Miss Alice Ludington, great-great-granddaughter of Henry Ludington.)

Henry Ludington was in the thickest of both parts of this battle, having been in the detachment which was sent forward in advance. He came off unscathed, but he had the heartrending experience of seeing both his uncle and his cousin shot dead at his side. These were probably his uncle Amos Ludington (called Asa in the “East Haven Register,” as already noted), son of Eliphalet Ludington, and his cousin Ezra, son of Daniel Ludington. The uncle fell first, pierced by a French bullet. The cousin sprang to his side and stooped to lift him, and in the act was himself shot, and a few moments later both died. Soon after this battle the term of enlistment of the Connecticut militia expired, but reënlistments were general. According to the French and Indian War Rolls, and the Connecticut Historical Collections as searched by Mr. Patrick, Henry Ludington again enlisted on April 19, 1756, served under Colonel Andrew Ward at Crown Point, and was discharged at the expiration of his term on November 13, 1756. Again, he was in Lieutenant Maltbie’s company, under Colonel Newton, at the time of the “general alarm” for the relief of Fort William Henry, in August, 1757, on which occasion his time of service was only fifteen days. Finally, he was in the campaign of 1759, in the Second Connecticut Regiment, under Colonel Nathan Whiting, being a member of David Baldwin’s Third Company. In this year he enlisted on April 14, and was duly discharged on December 21, 1759. During this memorable period of service the young soldier marched with the British and American troops to Canada, and participated in the crowning triumph at Quebec, on September 13, 1759, and a little later was intrusted with the charge of a company of sixty wounded or invalid soldiers, who were to return to New England. The march was made across country, from Quebec to Boston, in the dead of the very severe winter of 1759-60, and the labors and perils of the journey were sufficient to tax to the utmost the skill and resourcefulness of the youth of only twenty years. For many nights their camp consisted of caves or burrows in the snowdrifts, where they slept on beds of spruce boughs, wrapped in their blankets. Provisions failed, too, and some meals were made of the bark and twigs of birch trees and the berries of the juniper. Through all these hardships young Ludington led his comrades safely to their destination. Then, in the spring of 1760, he proceeded from Boston to Branford, and thus terminated for the time his active military career. In recognition of his services he received from King George II the commission of a lieutenant in the British Colonial Army, which he held until, in the succeeding reign, news came of the enactment of the Stamp Act, when he resigned it. Later, on February 13, 1773, he accepted a captain’s commission from William Tryon, the last British governor of New York, which he held until the beginning of the Revolution. This commission was in the regiment commanded by Beverly Robinson, that eminent British Loyalist who was the intermediary between Sir Henry Clinton and Benedict Arnold. It was at Robinson’s country mansion that much of Arnold’s plotting was done, and it was there, while at dinner, that the traitor received the news of the failure of his treason through the capture of his agent, Major André.

Reduced Fac-simile of the Commission of Henry Ludington as Captain in Col. Beverly Robinson’s Regiment.

From William Tryon last British Governor of the Province of New York.

(Original in possession of Charles H. Ludington, New York City.)

One other incident of Henry Ludington’s service demands passing attention. In one of the returns of his regiment, in connection with the fifteen days’ service in August, 1757, he is recorded as “Deserted.” Generally speaking, no worse blot than that can well be put upon a soldier’s record. But it is quite obvious that in this case it is devoid of its usual serious significance. It is certain that he did not actually desert in the ordinary present meaning of that term. This we know, because there is no record nor intimation of any steps ever being taken to punish him for what would have been regarded as a heinous crime; because soon after that entry against him he was serving with credit in the army and continued so to do; because thereafter he was intrusted with the important march to Boston which has been described; and because, after having honorably completed his service in the army, he received a royal commission as an officer. In those early days, when an army was campaigning in an almost trackless wilderness and warfare was largely of the most irregular description, it was not difficult for a soldier to become detached and practically lost from the rest of his army, and perhaps not be able to rejoin it for some time. Such a mishap might the more easily have befallen an impetuous and adventurous youth such as Henry Ludington was. And of course the record “Deserted” might naturally enough have been put against his name when he failed to respond to roll-call and no explanation of his absence was forthcoming.

In the French and Indian War the Colonial troops were paid for their services by the various Colonial governments, which latter were afterward reimbursed for such expenditures by the British Government. It was, however, with a view to compelling the Colonies to bear the cost of the war, by levying taxes upon them at the will of Parliament, that the British Government entered upon the fatal policy which a few years later cost it the major part of its American possessions. Because of that change of government, no pension system was ever created for the veterans of that war. In 1815, however, near the close of Henry Ludington’s life, such pensions were proposed, and with a view to establishing his eligibility to receive one, in the absence of the authoritative records of the Connecticut troops, he secured from two of his former comrades in arms the following affidavits—here reproduced verbatim et literatim:

State of New York
Putnam County

Jehoidah Wheton, of the town of Carmell in said county, being duly sworn doth depose and say that he is now personally acquainted with Henry Ludington, who lives in the Town of Fredericks in said county and that the deponent has known him for many years past. The deponent knows that the above named Henry Ludington was in the service in the years 1756 and 1757 under the King’s pay, and belonged to the State troops of Connecticut, and that the deponent was personally acquainted with the said Henry Ludington during the service above stated, and the deponent was with him the two campaigns, and further the deponent saith that from certain information which he the deponent knows to be true from the above named Henry Ludington of certain transactions which took place in the year 1759 to me the deponent now told he verrily believes that the said Henry Ludington was in the service that year, and that the deponent places confidence in the truth and veracity of the said Henry Ludington, and the deponent saith that he together with the above named Henry Ludington was under Capt. Foot in Colonel Nathan Whiting’s Ridgement in the service aforesaid; and further this deponent saith not.

X

Jehoidah Wheaton

his mark

Sworn and subscribed the 14th day of September 1815 before me John Phillips, one of the masters in the cort of Chy. in and for sd. State.

I, John Byington, of Redding in Fairfield County and State Connecticut, of lawful age depose and say

that I am well acquainted with Henry Ludington of Fredericks, state of New York, that he enlisted under the King’s proclamation and served with the Connecticut troops in the war with France, three campaigns, in the company of Capt. Foot, under whom I also served; that he rendered the above service between the year 1756 & 1764, and further say not.

John Byington.

State Connecticut, County Fairfield, Ss. Redding the 15th day of September 1815 personally apperd John Byington the above deponent & made oath to the truth of the above deposition.

Lemuel Sanford, Justice Peace.

Both of the foregoing affidavits or depositions are taken from copies of the originals, made by Lewis Ludington, son of Henry Ludington, on September 19, 1815, and now in possession of Lewis Ludington’s son.

We have seen that Henry Ludington, at the age of twenty-one, escorted a company of invalided soldiers from Quebec to Boston in the winter of 1759-60, and thereafter returned to civil life. One of his first acts was to get married, his bride being his cousin, Abigail Ludington, daughter of his father’s younger brother, Elisha Ludington. As already noted, Elisha Ludington upon his marriage had removed from Connecticut to Dutchess County, New York, and had settled in what was known as the Phillipse Patent. The exact date of that migration is not recorded, but it was probably some years before the French and Indian war. As the Connecticut troops on their way to that war marched across Dutchess County, through Dover and Amenia, it is to be presumed that Henry Ludington on that momentous journey called at his uncle’s home, and saw his cousin, afterward to be his wife, who had been born on May 8, 1745, and was at that time consequently a child of about ten years. Whether they met again until his return from Quebec is not surely known, but we may easily imagine the boy soldier’s carrying with him into the northern wilderness an affectionate memory of his little cousin, perhaps the last of his kin to bid him good-by, and also her cherishing a romantic regard for the lad whom she had seen march away with his comrades. At any rate, their marriage followed close upon his return, taking place on May 1, 1760, when he was not yet quite twenty-one and she just under fifteen. Soon afterward the young couple, apparently accompanied by the rest of Henry Ludington’s immediate family, removed to Dutchess County, New York, to be thereafter identified with that historic region.

Old Phillipse Manor House at Carmel, N. Y.

(From sketch made in 1846 by Charles Henry Ludington)

Dutchess County was one of the twelve counties into which the Province of New York was divided on November 1, 1683, the others being Albany, Cornwall (now a part of the State of Maine), Duke’s (now a part of Massachusetts), King’s, New York, Orange, Queen’s, Richmond, Suffolk, Ulster, and Westchester. Dutchess then comprised what is now Putnam County, which was set off as a separate county in 1812 and was named for General Israel Putnam, who was in command of the forces there during much of the Revolutionary War. In 1719 Dutchess County was divided into three wards, known as Northern, Middle, and Southern, each extending from the Hudson River to the Connecticut line. Again, in 1737, these wards were subdivided into seven precincts, called Beekman, Charlotte, Crom Elbow, North, Poughkeepsie, Rhinebeck, and Southeast; and at later dates other precincts, or towns, were formed, to wit: North East in 1746; Amenia in 1762; Pawlings in 1768; and Frederickstown in 1772. Fishkill and Rombout were also constituted in colonial times. Frederickstown, where the Ludingtons settled and with which we have most to do, was a part of the Phillipse Patent, in the Southern Ward of Dutchess County, now Putnam County. It derived its name from Frederick Phillipse, a kinsman of Adolphe Phillipse, the patentee of Phillipse Manor or Patent. It has now been divided and renamed, its old boundaries comprising the present towns of Kent, Carmel, and Patterson, and a part of Southeast, the present village of Patterson occupying the site of the former Fredericksburgh. The name of Kent was taken from the family of that name, of which James Kent, the illustrious jurist and chancellor of the State of New York, was a member. It may be of interest to recall at this point, also, that a certain strip of land at the eastern side of Dutchess County was in dispute between New York and Connecticut. This was known as The Oblong, or the Oblong Patent, from its configuration, and comprised 61,440 acres, in a strip about two miles wide, now forming parts of Dutchess, Putnam, and Westchester counties and including part of the Westchester town of Bedford, and also Quaker Hill, near Pawling, in Dutchess County, which was once suggested as the capital of the State, and which gets its name from having been first settled by Quakers. The dispute over the New York-Connecticut boundary and the consequent ownership of this land arose before 1650, when the Dutch were still owners of New York, or New Netherlands as the latter was then called, and it was continued between the two Colonies when they were both under British rule. The settlement was effected by confirming New York in possession of The Oblong, and granting to Connecticut in return a tract of land on Long Island Sound, eight miles by twelve in extent, which was long called the “Equivalent Land,” and which is now occupied by Greenwich, Stamford, and other towns. The final demarcation of the boundary was not, however, effected until as late as 1880.

CARMEL, PUTNAM COUNTY, NEW YORK.

From a Painting by Jamee M. Hart, 1858.

(In possession of Charles H. Ludington, New York City.)

The precise date of Henry Ludington’s settlement in Dutchess County is not now known. Neither his nor his father’s name appears in the 1762 survey of Lot No. 6 of the Phillipse Patent, and it has been assumed that therefore his arrival there must have been at a later date than that. This reasoning must, however, be challenged on the ground that—as we shall presently see—on March 12, 1763, he was officially recorded as a sub-sheriff of Dutchess County. It is scarcely likely that he would have been appointed to that office immediately upon his arrival in the county, and we must therefore conclude that he settled there at least early in 1762, if not before that year. He made his home on a tract of 229 acres of land in Frederickstown, at the north end of Lot No. 6 of the Phillipse Patent, on the site of what was afterward appropriately, though with awkward etymology, called Ludingtonville. This land he was not able to purchase outright, but leased for many years from owners who clung to the old feudal notions of tenure; but at last, on July 15, 1812, he effected actual purchase and received title deeds from Samuel Gouverneur and his wife. On that property he built the first grist- and saw-mills in that region, there being no others nearer than the “Red Mills” at Lake Mahopac and those built by John Jay on the Cross River, in the town of Bedford, Westchester County—which latter, by the way, remained in continuous operation, with much of the original framework and sheathing, until 1906, when they were destroyed to make room for one of the Croton reservoirs. Ludington’s mills were of course operated by water power, generated by a huge “overshot” wheel, supplied with water conveyed from a neighboring stream in a channel or mill-race made of timber.

Near-by stood the house, which was several times enlarged. The main building was two stories in height, with an attic above. Through the center ran a broad hall, with a stairway broken with a landing and turn. At one side was a parlor and at the other a sitting or living room, and back of each of these was a bedroom. The parlor was wainscoted and ceiled with planks of the fragrant and beautiful red cedar. Beyond the sitting room, at the side of this main building, was the “weaving room,” an apartment unknown to our modern domestic economy, but essential in colonial days. It was a large room, fitted with a hand-loom, and a number of spinning wheels, reels, swifts, and the other paraphernalia for the manufacture of homespun fabrics of different kinds. This room also contained a huge stone fireplace. Beyond it, at the extreme east of the house, was the kitchen, with its great fireplace and brick or stone oven. The house fronted toward the south, and commanded a fine outlook over one of the picturesque landscapes for which that region is famed. Years ago the original house was demolished, and a new one was built on the same site by a grandson, George Ludington. The location was a somewhat isolated one, neighbors being few and not near, and the nearest village, Fredericksburgh, on the present site of Patterson, being some miles distant. The location was, however, important, being on the principal route from Northern Connecticut to the lower Hudson Valley, the road leading from Hartford and New Milford, Connecticut, through Fredericksburgh, past Colonel Ludington’s, to Fishkill and West Point—a circumstance which was of much interest and importance to Colonel Ludington in the Revolution, as we shall see. The population of the county at that time was small and scattered. In 1746, or about the time when Elisha Ludington went thither and Abigail Ludington was born, the census showed a population of 8,806, including 500 negro slaves. By 1749 the numbers had actually diminished to 7,912, of whom only 421 were negroes. In 1756, however, there were 14,148 inhabitants, including 859 negroes, and Dutchess was the most populous county in the colony, excepting Albany, which had 17,424 inhabitants. The county was at that time able to contribute to the army about 2,500 men. It had enjoyed exemption from the Indian wars which had ravaged other parts of the colony, and its situation and natural resources gave it the advantages of varied industries. It had the Hudson River at one side for commerce, it was well watered and wooded, its open fields were exceptionally fertile, it had abundant water-power for mills, and it had—though this was not realized until after the colonial period—much mineral wealth.

Such was the community in which Henry Ludington established himself at the beginning of his manhood and married life, and in which he quickly rose to prominence. The extent of his holdings of land, and the fact of his proprietorship of important mills, made him a leading factor in business affairs, while his bent for public business soon led him into both the civil and the military service. At that time, from 1761 to 1769, James Livingston was sheriff of Dutchess County, and early in 1763 Henry Ludington became one of his lieutenants, as sub-sheriff. The Protestant dynasty in England was so newly established that elaborate oaths of abjuration and fealty were still required of all office-holders, of whatever rank or capacity, and on March 12, 1763, Henry Ludington, as sub-sheriff, took and subscribed to them, as follows:

I, Henry Ludington, Do Solemnly and Sincerely, in the Presence of God, Profess, Testify, and Declare, That I do Believe, that in the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, there is not any Transubstantiation, of the Elements of Bread and Wine, in the Body and Blood of Christ at or after the Consecration Thereof, by any Person whatsoever. And that the Invocation, or Adoration, of the Virgin Mary, or Any other Saint, and the Sacrifice of the Mass, as they are now Used in the Church of Rome, are Superstitious and Idolatrous, and I do Solemnly in the presence of God, Profess, Testify, and Declare, that I make this Declaration, and Every Part thereof, in the plain and Ordinary Sence of the Words read to me, as they are Commonly Understood by English Protestants, Without any Evasion, Equivocation, or Mental Reservation whatsoever, and Without any Dispensation Already Granted to me for this purpose by the Pope, or any other Authority Whatsoever, or Without Thinking that I am Acquitted, before God or Man, or Absolved of this Declaration, or any Part thereof, Although the Pope, or any Person or Persons, or Power Whatsoever, Should Dispence with or Annul the same and Declare that it was Null or Void, from the Beginning.

I, Henry Ludington, do Sincerely Promise & Swear, that I will be faithful and bear true Allegiance to his Majesty King George the Third, and I do Swear that I do from my heart Abhor, Detest, and Abjure, as Impious and Heretical, that Damnable Doctrine and Position, that Princes Excommunicated and Deprived by the Pope, or Any Authority of the See of Rome, May Be Deposed by Their Subjects or any other Whatsoever, and I do Declare that no Foreign Prince, Person, Prelate, State or Potentate hath or ought to have, any Jurisdiction, Power, Superiority, Pre-eminence, or Authority Ecclesiastical or Spiritual, Within this Realm, and I do Truly and Sincerely acknowledge and profess, Testify and Declare, in my conscience before God and the World, That Our Sovereign Lord King George the Third of this Realm, and all other Dominions and Countrys Thereunto Belonging, and I do Solemnly and Sincerely Declare, that I do believe in my conscience that the person pretended to be Prince of Wales During the Life of the Late King James the Second, and since his Decease, Pretending to be and Taking upon himself the Stile and Title of King of England, by the Name of James the Third, or of Scotland by the name of James the Eighth, or Stile and Title of the King of Great Britain, hath not any right or Title whatsoever, to the Crown of this Realm, or any other Dominions Thereunto Belonging, and I do Renounce, Refuse, and Abjure, any Allegiance or Obedience to him, and I do Swear, that I will bear Faith, and True Allegiance to his Majesty King George the Third and him will defend, to the utmost of my Power, against all Traiterous Conspiracies and Attempts Whatsoever, which shall be made Against his Person, Crown or Dignity, and I will do my Utmost Endeavors to Disclose and Make Known to his Majesty and his Successors all Treasons and Traiterous Conspiracies which I shall know to be against him, or any of them, and I faithfully promise to the Utmost of my Power to Support, Maintain and Defend the Successors of the Crown against him the said James and all other Persons Whatsoever, Which Succession by an Act entitled An Act for the further Limitation of the Crown Limited to the Late Princess Sophia, Electress and Dowager of Hanover, and the Heirs of Her Body, being Protestants, and all these things I do plainly and Sincerely Acknowledge and Swear according to the Express words by me spoken and according to the Plain and Common Sence and Understanding of the same Words Without any Equivocation, Mental Evasion, or Sinister Reservation Whatsoever, and I do make this Recognition, Acknowledgement, Abjuration, Renunciation and Promise heartily, Willingly and Truly, upon the True Faith of a Christian. So help me, God!

Thus qualified by the taking of these oaths, Henry Ludington began public services which lasted, in one capacity and another, for more than a generation in the Colony and State of New York. The first entry in his ledger bears date of “May, A.D. 1763,” and runs as follows: “James Livingston Sheriff Dr to Serving county writs (seven in number) the price for serving each writ being from 11s. 9d. to £1—10—9.” There follow, under dates of October, 1763, and May, 1764, entries for serving other writs. Among the names of attorneys in the suits appear those of Cromwell, Livingston, Jones, Snedeker, Ludlow, Snook, and Kent; and among those of parties to suits, etc., are those of Joseph Weeks, Jacob Ellis, Uriah Hill, Jacob Griffen, George Hughson, Ebenezer Bennett, and Joseph Crane. In 1764 first appears the name of Beverly Robinson, as the plaintiff in a suit against one Nathan Birdsall. There is also mention of a suit brought in the name of the “Earl of Starling” as plaintiff before the Supreme Court of the colony—probably William Alexander, or Lord Stirling, the patriot soldier of the Revolution.

At this home in Frederickstown the children of Henry and Abigail Ludington, or all of them but the eldest, were born. These children, with the dates of their births, were as follows, as recorded by Henry Ludington in his Family Register, which was inscribed on a fly-leaf of the ledger already quoted:

• Sibyl, April 5, 1761.
• Rebecca, January 24, 1763.
• Mary, July 31, 1765.
• Archibald, July 5, 1767.
• Henry, March 28, 1769.
• Derick, February 17, 1771.
• Tertullus, Monday night, April 19, 1773.
• Abigail, Monday morning, February 26, 1776.
• Anne, at sunset, March 14, 1778.
• Frederick, June 10, 1782.
• Sophia, May 16, 1784.
• Lewis, June 25, 1786.

Of these it is further recorded in the same register that Sibyl was married to Edward Ogden (the name is elsewhere given as Edmund or Henry Ogden) on October 21, 1784; that Mary was married to David Travis on September 12, 1785; that Archibald was married to Elizabeth ⸺ on September 23, 1790; and that Rebecca was married to Harry Pratt on May 7, 1794.

CHAPTER III
THE BEGINNING OF THE REVOLUTION

In order justly to appreciate the circumstances in which Henry Ludington and his young family found themselves about fifteen years after his return from the French and Indian war, it will be desirable to recall briefly the political and social conditions generally prevailing throughout the Colonies at that time, which were nowhere more marked than in New York City and the rural counties lying just north of it. During the two or three years before the actual declaration of American independence, or secession from England, the people of the Colonies were divided into two parties, the Patriots and the Loyalists or Tories. The latter maintained the right of England to govern the Colonies as she pleased, and regarded even a protest against the maladministration of George III’s ministers as little short of sacrilege. The former were by no means as yet committed to the idea of American separation from the mother country, but they were most resolute in their demand for local self-government, and for government according to the needs of the Colonies rather than the caprices of English ministers. When they first placed the legend “Liberty and Union” upon their colonial flag, and called it the “Grand Union Flag,” they had in mind liberty under the British constitution and continued union with England. Nevertheless, antagonism between the two parties became as bitter as ever it was between Roundhead and Cavalier in Stuart days; and while in some respects Boston and Philadelphia figured more conspicuously in the pre-revolutionary agitation and operations than did New York, there was probably no place in all the Colonies where the people were more evenly and generally divided between the two parties, or where passions rose higher or were more strongly maintained, than in and about the last-named city. No ties of neighborliness, friendship, or even family relationship sufficed to prevent or to quell the animosities which arose over the political interests of the Colonies. Nowhere had the Patriots a more ardent or persuasive leader than young Alexander Hamilton, or the Tories a more uncompromising champion than Rivington, the printer, whose office was at last sacked and gutted by wrathful Patriots. An illuminating side-light is thrown upon the New York state of mind by an item in the New York “Journal” of February 9, 1775, as follows:

A company of gentlemen were dining at a house in New York. One of them used the word Tory several times. His host asked him, “Pray, Mr. ⸺, what is a Tory?” He replied, “A Tory is a thing whose head is in England, and its body in America, and its neck ought to be stretched!”

Nor were these passions by any means confined to the urban but not always urbane community on Manhattan Island. They prevailed with equal force in the rural regions of Westchester and Dutchess counties. During the Revolutionary War that border region, between the British garrison on Manhattan Island and the American strongholds in the Highlands of the Hudson, was the fighting ground of the belligerents, and was also unmercifully harried and ravaged by the irregular succors of both sides, the “Cow Boys” and “Skinners,” and others, celebrated in the unhappy André’s whimsical ballad of “The Cow Chase.” Patriots from Westchester County were foremost among those who wrecked Rivington’s Tory printing shop, and an aggravated sequel to the item just cited from the New York “Journal” is provided in the annals of Dutchess County a little later in the same year. At that time a County Committee, or Committee of Safety—of which we shall presently hear much more—had been formed in that county, for the purpose of holding the Tories in check, and it had forcibly deprived some men of their arms and ammunition. The despoiled Tories made appeal to the Court of Common Pleas for redress, and James Smith, a justice of that court, according to a contemporary narrative, “undertook to sue for and recover the arms taken from the Tories by order of said committee, and actually committed one of the committee who assisted at disarming the Tories; which enraged the people so much that they rose and rescued the prisoner, and poured out their resentment on this villanous retailer of the law.” The “resentment” seems to have been poured out of buckets and pillows, for we are told that Justice Smith and his relative, Coen Smith, were “very handsomely tarred and feathered, for acting in open contempt of the resolves of the County Committee!”

In or near that part of Dutchess County in which Henry Ludington lived a third small but not insignificant factor was involved in the problem. This was provided by the members of the Society of Friends, who were settled at Quaker Hill, near Pawling, in The Oblong. This was the first community in America to abolish negro slavery, in 1775, and on that account it was probably regarded with some suspicion. But worse still was the regard given to it in the strife between Patriots and Tories. There can be little doubt that the sentiments and wishes of the Quakers were largely with the Patriots. Yet their religious principle of non-resistance forbade them to take up arms or to engage in forcible conflict of any kind. They were therefore generally looked upon by the Patriots as Tories, and were on that account sometimes fined and otherwise punished, while on the other hand, the Tories made themselves free to quarter troops upon them and to demand aid of them at will. On the whole, however, they appear to have commanded the respect of the Patriots, for their sincerity, and thus to have been far more leniently dealt with than were the more militant Tories outside the Society of Friends.

Map of Quaker Hill and Vicinity, 1778-80, showing location of Colonel Ludington’s place at Fredericksburgh

The earliest organization of the Patriots in and about New York was a Committee of Vigilance, the chief functions of which were to watch for oppressive acts of the British Government and incite colonial protests against them. This was in 1774 superseded by a Committee of Fifty-One, and it in turn in the same year gave place to a Committee of Inspection, of sixty members. In both of these latter John Jay, who was a neighbor and friend of Henry Ludington, was conspicuous, and it is to be presumed that Henry Ludington himself was either a member of the committees or at least was in active sympathy with their work. In April, 1775, came a crisis and the turning point in the movement for independence. The old Colonial Assembly of New York went out of existence on April 3. Then came the news of the first clash of arms at Lexington and Concord, acting as a spark in a powder-magazine. “Astonished by accounts of acts of hostility in the moment of expectation of terms of reconciliation,” said the lieutenant-governor of New York in his account of the occurrence, “and now filled with distrust, the inhabitants of the city burst through all restraint on the arrival of the intelligence from Boston, and instantly emptied the vessels laden with provisions for that place, and then seized the city arms and in the course of a few days distributed them among the multitude, formed themselves into companies and trained openly in the streets; increased the number and power of the committee before appointed to execute the association of the Continental Congress, convened themselves by beat of the drum for popular resolutions, have taken the keys of the custom house by military force; shut up the port, drawn a small number of cannon into the country; called all parts of the country to a Provincial Convention; chosen twenty delegates for this city, formed an association now signing by all ranks, engaging submission to committees and congresses, in firm union with the rest of the continent, and openly avow a resolution not only to resist the acts of Parliament complained as grievances, but to withhold succors of all kinds from the troops and to repel every species of force, wherever it may be exerted, for enforcing the taxing claims of Parliament at the risk of their lives and fortunes.” This only half coherent but wholly intelligible and graphic narrative tells admirably how the Patriot sentiment of New York startled into life and action. A year later it was forcibly repressed by the British garrison on Manhattan Island, but in the counties at the north it continued dominant and triumphant.

The “association now signing by all ranks” was promptly entered into by Henry Ludington and his neighbors in Dutchess County, as the following transcript, from the MS. collection of Mr. Patrick, shows, the date of the original being April 29, 1775:

A General Association agreed to and subscribed by the Freeholders and Inhabitants of the County of Dutchess:

Persuaded: That the Salvation of the Rights & Liberties of America depends, under God, on the firm Union of its Inhabitants in a Vigorous Prosecution of the Measures necessary for its Safety; and Convinced of the Necessity of preventing the Anarchy & Confusion which attend the Dissolution of the Powers of Government, We, the Freeholders and Inhabitants of the County of Dutchess, being greatly alarmed at the avowed Design of the Ministry to raise a Revenue in America, and shocked by the bloody Scene now acting in the Massachusetts Bay, Do, in the most solemn Manner, Resolve, never to become Slaves; and do associate under all the Ties of Religion, Honour and Love to our Country, to adopt and endeavor to carry into execution, whatever Measures may be recommended by the Continental Congress, or resolved upon by our Provincial Conventions, for the Purpose of preserving our Constitution and opposing the execution of the several arbitrary and oppressive Acts of the British Parliament, until a Reconciliation between Great Britain and America, on Constitutional Principles (which we most ardently desire) can be obtained: And that we will in all things, follow the Advice of our General Committee, respecting the Purposes aforesaid: the Preservation of peace and good Order and the Safety of Individuals, and private property.

• Mathew Paterson
• Joseph Chandler
• Comfort Ludinton
• Ruben Miers
• James Dickinson Junr.
• Isaiah Bennett
• Malcolm Morison
• Alexr. Kidd
• Henry Ludinton
• Elijah Oakley
• William Alkin.
• David Atkins
• Stephen Baxter.

One other signature is illegible. Those of the two Ludingtons are clear and firm.

The new Provincial Congress of New York met in the New York City Hall on May 22, 1775, and remained in session until May 29, its most important act being the adoption of the following resolution:

Resolved, That it be and hereby is recommended to all counties in this colony (who have not already done it) to appoint County Committees and also sub-committees for their respective townships and districts without delay, in order to carry into execution the resolutions of the Continental and this Provincial Congress; And that it is also recommended to every inhabitant of this colony who has neglected to sign the general association to do it with all convenient speed, and for this purpose that the committees in the respective counties do tender the said association to every inhabitant within the several districts in each county; And that the said committees and persons respectfully do return the said associations and the names of those who shall refuse to sign the same to this Congress by the 15th day of June next, or sooner if possible.

This obviously “meant business.” It compelled every inhabitant of the colony to align himself, either with the Patriots or with the Loyalists; with a certainty that if he chose the former, he would be held as a traitor by the British Government, and if he chose the latter, he would be subject to whatever pains and penalties his incensed Patriot neighbors might see fit to impose upon him. Into the work thus recommended by the Congress, Henry Ludington entered with zeal and ardor. He was at the head of the local committee, in Fredericksburgh Precinct, and also a member of the Dutchess County Committee, among his colleagues being John Jay, William Duer, Jacobus Swartwout, and other eminent Patriots.

How vigorously and unsparingly these committees went to work will appear if we anticipate for a moment the chronological record by a year. On a motion offered by John Jay on June 16, 1776, the Provincial Congress of New York declared guilty of treason, with the penalty of death, all persons inhabiting or passing through the colony, or state, as it then began to be called, who should give aid or comfort to the enemy. A week later the Continental Congress adopted a similar resolution. It does not appear that this penalty was ever actually imposed, but the terror of it was held as a powerful measure of restraint over the Tories. Again, at Conner’s tavern, at Fishkill, Dutchess County, on October 8, 1776, there was organized a secret committee “for inquiring into, detecting and defeating conspiracies … against the liberties of America,” with full power to send for persons and papers, call out the militia, and arrest or expel persons regarded as dangerous to the state, apparently without any judicial process. Thereafter numerous parties of suspects were sent in by the various local committees, including men, women, and children. All who consented to sign an oath of allegiance to Congress were dismissed. The others were variously dealt with. Some were exiled from the State, some were imprisoned, and some released on parole, to remain near Fishkill within call and surveillance of the committee. The chairman of this committee was William Duer, and if Henry Ludington was not actually among its members he was certainly one of its most trusted and efficient agents. It continued in existence and action until February 27, 1777, when it was dissolved by the State Convention and was replaced by a Board of Commissioners. Two minutes of the proceedings of this committee will serve the double purpose of showing the character of its activities and the part which Henry Ludington played in executing its decrees. The first is dated only four days after the organization of the committee:

In Committee appointed by a Resolution of the Convention of the State of New York for enquiring into, detecting and defeating all Conspiracies which may be form’d in the said State against the Liberties of America. Fish Kill Octr. 12. 1776.

This Committee taking into Consideration Coll. Ludington’s Letter respecting Thomas Menzes Esqr. received yesterday—

Ordered that Coll. Ludington carry into Execution the former Orders of this Committee respecting Thomas Menzes Esqr. in such manner as to him shall appear most prudent.—

Ordered that the Secretary transmit to Coll. Ludington by Express a Copy of the above Order.

Extract from the Minutes,

A. W. D. Peyster Secry.

Reduced Fac-simile of Letter, from Committee on Conspiracies, to Col. Henry Ludington.

(Original in possession of Charles H. Ludington, New York City)

The second is dated eight days later:

warrant from commite to aprhend sundry persons

In Committee of the Convention of the State of New York appointed for enquiring into, detecting and defeating all Conspiracies which may be form’d in the said State against the Liberties of America. Fish Kill Octr. 20, 1776.

Whereas this Committee did on the 17th inst. resolve that the following persons, Inhabitants of South East and Frederick Precincts in the County of Dutchess, should forthwith be disarm’d apprehended and secured, to witt, Uriah Townsend, Ebenezer Rider, Charles Cullen*, Barns Hatfield, Uriah Wright, Joseph Hitchcock, Eli Crosby, Dr. Daniel Bull*, Charles Theal, and Gilbert Dickeson—⦿

Ordered that Coll. Luddington do forthwith apprehend and bring before this Committee the above mentioned Persons and that he secure the Papers of such whose Names are mark’d with an Asterisk in order that the same be examined by this Committee.—

Ordered that Capt. Clarke detach Leut. Haight with a Party of 15 Men, to repair to Coll. Luddington and to follow such orders as they may receive from him.

Signed by Order of the Committee,

Wm. Duer Chairman.

In the margin of this warrant, which is here copied from the original in the possession of Charles H. Ludington, are these additional names:

⦿ Daniel Babbit Jeremiah Birch Junr. David Nash Samuel Towner William Merrit Thomas Carl* Daniel Brundage Moses Fowler.

The Charles Cullen mentioned in the warrant was a brother-in-law of the distinguished jurist, Chancellor Kent.

Reduced Fac-simile of Order of arrest issued, by Wm. Duer, Chairman of Committee on Conspiracies, of the “Provincial Congress of the State of New York” to Col. Henry Ludington.

(Original paper in possession of Charles H. Ludington, New York City.)

In order to understand clearly the geographical scope of the operations already and hereafter credited to Henry Ludington, the division of that part of Dutchess County into precincts should here be explained, with the aid of a map. The reference is to that southern part of Dutchess County which was afterward set off, as at present, into Putnam County. From 1737 down to March 24, 1772, it was known as the South Precinct. On the latter date it was divided into three longitudinal strips, that along the Hudson being called Phillipse, or Philipsburgh Precinct; that in the central and east central part being called Fredericksburgh Precinct; and the smallest strip at the extreme east, consisting of part of The Oblong hitherto mentioned, being known as South East Precinct. It may be added, in anticipation of the narrative, that on March 17, 1788, these names were changed to Philipstown, Frederickstown, and South East, respectively; that on March 17, 1795, the towns of Carmel and Franklin were formed from Frederickstown, and the remainder of the last named was called Fredericks; that on April 6, 1808, Franklin was changed to Patterson, and on April 15, 1817, Fredericks was changed to Kent. It may further be explained that the Philipsburgh Precinct was subdivided into two nearly equal longitudinal strips, and the one along the Hudson River was again divided laterally into three parts, making four lots in all, which were numbered from 1 to 4, and which in the partition of the original Phillipse Patent were apportioned as follows: No. 1, at the extreme southwest, Susannah Robinson; No. 2, next at the west center, Philip Phillipse; No. 3, at the northwest, Mary Phillipse; and No. 4, the long strip inland from the river, Susannah Robinson. The Fredericksburgh Precinct was likewise divided into three longitudinal strips, and the easternmost of them into three laterally, making five lots in all, numbered from 5 to 9, and these were apportioned as follows: No. 5, the long strip next to No. 4 of Philipsburg, to Mary Phillipse; No. 6, a long strip next to No. 5, to Philip Phillipse; No. 7, a “short lot” at the northeast, to Susannah Robinson; No. 8, a short lot at the east center, to Philip Phillipse; and No. 9, a short lot at the southeast, to Mary Phillipse. When, as we shall presently see, Henry Ludington became colonel commanding a militia regiment, his territorial command included all of these nine lots excepting Nos. 7 and 8. He was thus of all the militia commanders nearest to the seat of government when it was at Fishkill, and was brought much into contact with state officials there.

Map of Philipse patent, showing original divisions

Map showing territory (shaded portion) covered by Colonel Ludington’s regiment

Appreciating the important part which the militia would play in the conflict which was then seen to be impending and inevitable, the Provincial Congress of New York, in session at New York City on August 22, 1775, adopted an elaborate measure for the enlistment, organization and equipment of such troops. Every county, city, manor, town, precinct, and district within the colony was to be divided by a local committee into districts or beats, in such a manner that in each beat might be formed one military company, ordinarily to consist of eighty-three able-bodied men and officers, between the ages of sixteen and fifty—afterward sixty—years. Not less than five nor more than ten such companies were to form a regiment, and the regiments were to be organized into brigades. One brigade was to be formed of the militia of Dutchess and Westchester counties, commanded by a brigadier-general. It was also ordered—

That every man between the ages of 16 and 50 do with all convenient speed furnish himself with a good Musket or firelock & Bayonet Sword or Tomahawk, a Steel Ramrod, Worm, Priming Wire and Brush fitted thereto, a Cartouch Box to contain 23 rounds of cartridges, 12 flints and a knapsack agreeable to the directions of the Continental Congress under forfeiture of five shillings for the want of a musket or firelock and of one shilling for want of a bayonet, sword or tomahawk, cartridgebox, cartridge or bullet. That every man shall at his place of abode be also provided with one pound of powder and three pounds of bullets of proper size to his musket or firelock.

There were numerous additional prescriptions, concerning discipline and drill, the duties and responsibilities of officers, and the penalties to be imposed for non-compliance. In case of any alarm, invasion or insurrection, every man thus enrolled was immediately to repair to headquarters, to wit, the home of his captain, and the captain was to march the company straight to the scene of invasion or insurrection “to oppose the enemy,” at the same time sending word to the regimental or brigade commander. A little later, to wit, on December 20, the Provincial Congress ordered that the militia of Dutchess and Westchester counties should form two separate brigades; whence we may assume that a larger enrolment of militia men was secured in those counties than had at first been expected.

The militia were called out whenever needed, and were kept out as long as they were needed, but they could be taken outside of the colony or state for no more than three months at a time. Sometimes, as Mr. James A. Roberts explains in his work on “New York in the Revolution,” a regiment or half of a regiment would be called out half a dozen times in the course of a year, perhaps for half a dozen days at a time; and again might not be called out once for a whole year. The regiments were commonly designated first by their colonels’ names and next by their counties. Officers and men seem to have served, says Mr. Roberts, in different organizations almost indiscriminately. At one call they were in one and at another they were in another regiment or company. Each colonel had almost unlimited powers in the district to which his regiment belonged, and he was specially required to see that every able-bodied male inhabitant between the ages of sixteen and sixty years was enrolled. Moreover, every such person must serve whenever called upon to do so, under penalty of fine and imprisonment; and if incapacitated, he must contribute toward the cost of securing and equipping another man. Among the rations served to all were tobacco, sugar, and tea, and in addition the colonels and chaplains received liberal allowances of rum. A colonel’s pay was $75 a month, and a private soldier’s pay $6.66 a month; not always in money, but sometimes in state scrip and sometimes in authority to “impress” cattle and goods; for all which things taken receipts were to be given to the owners in the name of the state, so that payment could afterward be made.

This enactment by New York was made in pursuance of an act of the Continental Congress, on July 18, 1775, which “recommended to the inhabitants of all the united English Colonies in North America that all able-bodied, effective men between sixteen and fifty years of age, in each Colony, might form themselves into regular companies of Militia, to consist of one captain, two lieutenants, one ensign, four sergeants, four corporals, one clerk, one drummer, one fifer, and about sixty-eight privates.”

Each company was permitted to elect its own officers; the companies were to be formed into regiments or battalions, officered with a colonel, lieutenant-colonel, two majors, an adjutant or quartermaster. All officers above the rank of captain were to be appointed by the respective Provincial Assemblies, or Conventions, or by the Committees of Safety.

One fourth part of the militia in every county was to consist of minute men, who were ordered “to be ready on the shortest Notice to march to any Place where their Assistance may be required for the Defence of their own or a neighboring Colony.” As the minute men were expected to be called into action before the body of the militia were sufficiently trained, it was recommended “that a more particular and diligent attention be paid to their instruction in military discipline.”

The equipment of these militia companies was at first painfully meager, and their muster-rolls, “spelled by the unlettered Muse,” were such as would drive the modern officer to despair. As an example, the muster-roll of Captain Nathaniel Scribner’s company may be cited, copied verbatim et literatim from an original MS. in the possession of Mr. Charles H. Ludington:

Capt. Scribner’s muster role.

Annexed to the muster roll was the following addendum:

These air men What is gon into the servis

• Leftenant John munrow
• St. Josiah grigrory
• Jacob birdsel
• Jacob ganung
• john Shaw
• Solomon hustice
• parce bolding
• John Vermilya
• Richard Barker
• Daniel grigrory
• Zebulon wright
• Isaac merick
• Eli hopkins
• James mcfarling
• Rhubin finch
• Timothy wood
• Jonathan Semans
• william Virmilya
• Thomas hagson
• Jonathan hopkins
• moses hazen
• Samuel bouton
• Isaac Lounsbury.

In the work of enlisting and organizing these militia levies the most efficient men were naturally those who had already had military experience and command as officers in some of the colonial wars. Henry Ludington was among these. He had had such experience in a noteworthy degree, and to it he added both physical and temperamental aptitude for military labors, and an ardent spirit of patriotism. Leaving the service in 1759 as a lieutenant, he had, as already related, resigned his commission in indignation at the Stamp Act. On February 13, 1773, however, he accepted a commission as captain in Colonel Beverly Robinson’s Dutchess County regiment, and this commission, which was signed by William Tryon, the last British governor of New York, he held until 1775, or possibly 1776, when he cast it aside and entered the “Rebel” or Patriotic service. The militia of Dutchess County was organized, under the law already cited, in the fall of 1775, and on October 17 Petrus Ten Broeck, the colonel of the First or Rhinebeck and Northwest regiment, was commissioned brigadier-general commanding. Of the Second regiment of Dutchess County, Jacobus Swartwout was colonel, and when in time the militia of the county was so increased as to form two brigades, he was, on March 3, 1780, appointed brigadier-general commanding one of them. Swartwout’s commission as colonel was also issued on October 17, 1775, and at the same time Malcolm Morrison was commissioned first major and Henry Ludington was commissioned second major of his regiment. Ludington seems also to have served as captain of the company raised in his home district, and to have been prompt and energetic in his service; for on February 20, 1776, we find Colonel Swartwout in a letter to the Provincial Congress reporting that he was in hourly expectation of Captain Ludington’s appearance at regimental headquarters, together with Captains Woodford from Pawling’s, Clearck from Beekman’s, and Durling from Rombout Precinct. The Congress the next day ordered that all the men thus reported should serve until May 1 of that year, unless sooner discharged.

Soon afterward came Ludington’s first promotion. On March 8, 1776, Malcolm Morrison, the first major of Swartwout’s regiment, addressed to the Provincial Congress of New York this letter:

Gentlemen: Whereas the gentlemen of the Provincial Congress has been pleased to appoint me First Major in Colo. Swartwout’s regiment, and as my situation and business is such, that it is not within my power to serve without doing injustice to myself and creditors, having a considerable interest in my hands to settle, and having a large family to take care of without any person to assist me in settling my affairs, and whereas Major Henry Ludington, appointed in the militia, is prevailed upon to accept the commission sent me, and if agreeable to you, do resign in his favor. He can be recommended by Colo. Swartwout or the Committee of Dutchess County, and I hope you will be prevailed upon to appoint him in my stead, he being a person that has served in the last war and well acquainted in the military service, and, Gentlemen, your compliance will greatly oblige,

Your Very Humble Servant,

Malcolm Morrison.

Mr. Ludington waits for an answer.

N.B. Gentlemen, enclosed you have the commission.

This extraordinarily naïve and unconventional letter was received on March 9, apparently being borne by Major Ludington himself as messenger. It was favorably acted upon, and the next day, March 10, Ludington was made first major of the regiment in Morrison’s place. At this time the companies were not yet filled, and the regiment was small. But recruiting went on rapidly, so that by the first of May, 1776, the regiment was actually too large. Accordingly on May 6 the Committee of Dutchess County took action for the formation of another regiment in that part of the county, as reported in the following letter to the Provincial Congress:

Sir:—It having been represented to the General Committee of this County, that the Southern Regiment of Militia was too large and extensive, containing 12 companies and covering a space of country upwards of 30 miles in length, we have, therefore, not only because in other respects it was expedient, but also in compliance with the Resolution of Congress prohibiting a Regiment to consist of more than 10 Companies, divided it, and instead of one have formed the Militia in that quarter into 2 regiments, together with a list of persons nominated for Field Officers. As this part of our Militia will remain unregimented till the Officers receive their Commissions, we must request that the Commissions be made out as soon as possible and sent to the Committee in Rombout’s Precinct with directions to forward them to the Officers immediately.

I remain, by order of the Committee,

Your very humble servant,

Egbert Benson Chairman.

Reduced Fac-simile of the Commission of Henry Ludington as Colonel.

From the “Provincial Congress for the Colony of New York,” June 1778.

The new regiment, as described in an enclosure in Mr. Benson’s letter, was to consist of all the militia in Phillipse Precinct, and in all of Fredericksburgh Precinct “except the Northern and Middle Short Lots”—at the northeast, as hitherto explained. The field officers nominated were as follows: Colonel, Moses Dusenbury; lieutenant-colonel, Henry Ludington; first major, Reuben Ferris; second major, Joshua Nelson; adjutant, Joshua Myrick; quartermaster, Solomon Hopkins. These nominations were promptly confirmed. A little later Henry Ludington was commissioned colonel of this regiment, to succeed Colonel Dusenbury. The exact date is not now ascertainable, but according to the mutilated remains of the commission, a facsimile of which is given in this volume, it was some time in June, 1776. The commission—his first as colonel—was issued by the Provincial Congress of the Colony of New York, and was one of the last acts of that body, which in that month of June, 1776, went out of existence, and on July 9 following was succeeded by a new Provincial Congress, meeting at White Plains, which the next day, July 10, changed its name to the Convention of the Representatives of the State of New York. With this change of government new commissions were issued to officers, Henry Ludington receiving one as colonel, which is now in the possession of his grandson, Charles H. Ludington. His regiment, the seventh of the Dutchess County militia, was thereafter popularly known and indeed often officially designated as Colonel Ludington’s regiment. Unfortunately its earliest muster-rolls and record of organization have not been preserved, or cannot now be found, but it is known to have consisted of six companies. The minutes of the Council of Appointment do not mention it until May 28, 1778, when it is called Colonel Henry Ludington’s regiment. At this latter date Stephen Ludington was a second lieutenant in Captain Joel Mead’s (1st) company. We may here add that in various rosters of New York troops the following names of members of the Ludington family appear, in addition to Colonel Ludington:

Stephen Ludington, and also Stephen Ludenton (doubtless the same person), private, in Brinckerhoff’s company of Brinckerhoff’s regiment—the second regiment of Dutchess County, Rombout Precinct.

Elisha Luddington, private, of Livingston’s company of Malcolm’s regiment—the first regiment of New York levies in the United States Army. Also, Elisha Luddington, private, in Barnum’s company of Hopkins’s regiment—the sixth regiment of Dutchess County.

William Luddington, private, in Westfall’s company of Wessenfels’s regiment.

Comfort Ludington, private, in Hecock’s company of Field’s regiment—the third regiment of Dutchess County. Also, Comfort Ludington, private, in Mead’s company of Ludington’s regiment—the seventh regiment of Dutchess County. Also, Comfort Luddington, captain of a company of the second regiment of minute men of Dutchess County, commissioned on February 26, 1776.

Early in June, 1776, probably at about the time of Colonel Ludington’s appointment, and a month before the formal declaration of American independence, the Continental Congress called for 13,800 militia from the Colonies, to reënforce the army at New York, in addition to other levies for the army which was to invade Canada. New York’s share of this levy was 3,750, of whom 3,000 were for service at New York and 750 for the expedition to Canada. The latter were naturally selected from the northern counties, while the 3,000 for local service were taken from the counties along the Hudson and around the city of New York. Among the latter were 335 men from Dutchess County, a larger number than was contributed by any other county excepting New York and Albany. The Dutchess County contingent was ordered to be ready to march on June 21.

Reduced Fac-simile of the Commission of Henry Ludington as Colonel.

From the State of New York. May 28, 1778.

(Original in possession of Charles H. Ludington, New York City.)

The local needs of Dutchess County were not, however, to be overlooked. A committee of the New York Congress on June 20 reported that there were many disaffected and dangerous persons in Dutchess and Westchester counties, who greatly disturbed the peace, and who would probably take up arms whenever the enemy should make a descent upon that region, and that the requisitions of troops made by the Continental Congress had left the militia incapable of keeping peace and order “without great inconvenience to themselves and much injury to and neglect of their private property.” It was therefore recommended, and ordered, that 100 men and officers in Dutchess County and 50 in Westchester County be taken into the service of the Provincial Congress “and confined to the Service of those Counties.” The 100 men in Dutchess County were organized in two companies. On July 16 the Provincial Congress, or Convention, was in session at White Plains, and it there ordered that one fourth of the militia of those two counties should be summoned into active service, until the end of the year; each man receiving $20 bounty, and the same pay and subsistence as the Continental soldiers. Among those thus drawn into the service was Colonel Ludington.

The first care of Colonel Ludington on assuming command of his regiment was to fill up its ranks and organize a complete staff of officers. In reporting to the Convention—or Provincial Congress, as he still called it—upon this work, he wrote under date of July 19, 1776, from Fredericksburgh, as follows, this letter being transformed into modern and corrected orthography, and others which follow being thus edited only enough to insure intelligibility:

These may inform Your Honors that I meet with some difficulty in furnishing my quota of men for the present emergency, for want of commissions in the regiment which I have the honor to command. We have a number of officers chosen already that have no commissions, and several more must be chosen in order to have the regiment properly officered. And whereas I have applied to the County Committee for blanks to be filled up, and there are none to be had, therefore I, in conjunction with the committee of this Precinct, would desire that there might be about twenty blank commissions sent up by Mr. Myrick, the bearer hereof. I would further acquaint Your Honors that the regiment is destitute of Majors, and would be glad if Your Honors would appoint two gentlemen to that office and fill up commissions for them. There are two gentlemen that I do, with the advice of the Committee, nominate, viz., Mr. Gee—his Christian name I am not able to tell—of Phillipse Precinct, and Captain Ebenezer Robinson of this Precinct. These gentlemen are doubtless known by several of the members of the honorable House.

From Your Humble Servant,

Henry Ludenton, Colonel.

To the Honorable Provincial Congress.

Reduced Fac-simile of Letter from Abraham Bancker to Col. Henry Ludington.

(Original in possession of Charles H. Luddington, New York City.)

The annals of the New York Convention, under date of July 20, 1776, relate that this letter was received, read, and filed, and that—

On reading the said letter from Colonel Ludenton, of Dutchess County, and considering the state of his Regiment at this critical time,

Resolved, That Commissions be issued to the two gentlemen therein named in said letter, and that 20 other Commissions be signed by the President and countersigned by one of the Secretaries and transmitted to Colonel Ludenton, to be filled up for the Captains and Subalterns of his Regiment when necessary, by the Precinct Committee and himself; that said Precinct Committee and Colonel Ludenton return to this Convention an exact list of the names, rank and dates of the Officers commissioned, which they shall fill up and deliver.

And Resolved, That the sending blank commissions to a Precinct Committee shall not from this instance be drawn into precedent.

In this fashion Colonel Ludington prepared for the stern activities before him. The “critical time” referred to in the resolutions of the Convention was indeed critical. New York was in imminent danger of being occupied by the British, and British warships were likely soon to ascend the Hudson River. John Jay was intrusted with the making of plans for the defense of the Hudson Highlands. On August 1, Jay, Duer, and others, were made a committee to draft a plan for a new government for the State of New York. The battle of Long Island was fought on August 27, and a little later the British were in full possession of New York and its environs. The Convention was driven to Harlem, to Kingsbridge, to Odell’s in Phillipse Manor, to Fishkill, to Poughkeepsie, and to Kingston. On October 20 the battle of Chatterton Hill was fought, at White Plains, in which Colonel Ludington’s regiment was engaged, and in which he himself served as one of Washington’s aides, and thus began his acquaintance with the commander-in-chief. When Washington’s army crossed the Hudson River, however, for the “devil’s dance across the Jerseys,” and the superb turning at bay at Trenton, the New York militia levies remained at home, where indeed they were sorely needed. The Tory element in Westchester and Dutchess counties had from the first been ominously strong. With the British victories in and around New York, and with the American Army in apparently hopeless rout and flight, they were emboldened to open hostility to the Patriot cause. A report to the Convention, or to the Committee of Safety, on September 4, made it appear that in the four counties of Dutchess, Westchester, Orange and Ulster there were only 3,100 armed and trustworthy militia, while there were 2,300 disaffected Tories and 2,300 slaves to be held in order. A month later the situation was much worse, and it was then that there was formed the committee already mentioned, “for inquiring into, detecting and defeating conspiracies against the liberties of America.” The war was now on, in earnest, and “malice domestic, foreign levy,” were both at once to be grappled with by the Patriot soldiers.

CHAPTER IV
THE REVOLUTION

The public services of Henry Ludington during the war for independence were threefold in character. Each of the three parts was of much importance, each was marked with arduous toil and frequent perils, and each was performed to the full extent of his ability. Nor was the sacrifice of personal welfare inconsiderable. We have seen that he was the father of a large family, eight children having been born to him prior to the signing of the Declaration of Independence, and was the leasehold occupant of extensive lands. It was no light thing to absent himself from these. There was before him, moreover, the example of another and senior officer, who, because of family interests and engagements, had resigned his commission. That same commission had been passed on to Henry Ludington, who might with equal grace and reason have declined it or presently resigned it. There is, however, no indication that he ever contemplated such a step. Leaving his lands and home in the charge of his wife and children, the eldest of whom in 1776 was only fifteen, while the youngest was a babe in arms, he gave himself with whole-hearted devotion to whatever tasks his country might require of him.

The distinctively military services of Henry Ludington began at an early date. The first clash of arms after the Declaration of Independence occurred on the shores of New York Bay. The retirement of the American Army, after unsuccessful engagements, from Long Island, and then from Manhattan Island, brought the theater of war closer and closer to Dutchess County, and made the active participation of the militia more imminent. Indeed, even before those operations, the militia was called out to assist in securing the passes of the Hudson Highlands, and thus preventing any communication between the British at New York and those in Canada and the North Woods. The Convention or Legislature of the State, in session at Harlem, on August 8, 1776, adopted the following war measure:

RESOLVED unanimously that Brigadier General Clinton be, and he hereby is, appointed to the Command of all the Levies raised, and to be raised in the Counties of Ulster, Orange and West Chester, agreeable to the Resolutions of this Convention of the sixteenth day of July last.

RESOLVED that General Clinton be informed of this Appointment and directed immediately to send Expresses to the Counties of Ulster, Dutchess, Orange and West Chester, and order them to hasten their Levies and to march them down to the Fort now erected on the North side of Kings Bridge, leaving two hundred men under the Command of a Brave & alert Officer to take possession of and throw up works at the pass of Anthonys Nose.

RESOLVED that General Clinton be requested to order the Troops of Horse belonging to the Counties of Ulster, Orange and West Chester immediately to march to such posts as he may think proper that they should Occupy, in order to watch the motions of the Enemies Ships of war now in Hudsons River.

Extracts from the Minutes.

John McKesson Secry.

When the ships of war had landed an army, and this was moving irresistibly northward, a committee of the Convention, meeting at Fishkill as a Committee of Safety, on October 10, further ordered:

RESOLVED, that the Commanding officer of the militia of Ulster County, do immediately send down 300 men of the Militia of the County of Ulster, to Peekskill well armed and accoutred with three days provisions.

RESOLVED, that the Commanding Officer on the south side of the Mountains or High-Lands in the County of Orange, be directed to order such a number of the militia from that part of the said County which lays on the south side of the High Lands as will be sufficient to Guard their shores, and to appoint a commissioner to supply them with provisions.

And that the Commanding Officer on the north side of the Highlands, in the said County, Order one hundred of the Militia from the north side of the High Lands of the said County to march without Delay to Peekskill taking with them three days provisions.

RESOLVED that Benjamin Haight and Mathew Harper be commissioners to supply them with provisions, and that this Convention will provide means for defraying the Expense.

ORDERED, that the Brigadier Generals of the Counties of Albany, Dutchess, Ulster and Orange, give orders to the several Colonels in their Brigades to hold the one half of their several Regiments in Readiness to march at an hour’s notice with five days provisions.

RESOLVED, that all Ranges raised in the County of Ulster repair immediately to Fishkill and be subject to the direction of the Committee for enquiring into, detecting, and defeating all conspiracies formed in this State against the Liberties of America.

Extract from the Minutes of this Afternoon.

John McKesson, Secr’y.

The turning-point in the campaign which began at Brooklyn occurred on October 28, at White Plains. There, at Chatterton Hill, Washington once more engaged the British, and once more was compelled to retire before them. With the masterly strategy in which he was unrivaled by any soldier of his time, however, instead of falling back upon the defenses of the Hudson Highlands and thus inviting a conflict which might have cost him the possession of that crucial point, he retreated in another direction, south and west, thus drawing the British away from the Highlands and leaving the latter secure. Had the British, instead of pursuing him in that fruitless chase across the Jerseys, only to meet with disaster at Trenton, hurled themselves against the forts at West Point and elsewhere along the Hudson, they might easily have gained control of the Hudson, and thus have effected a junction with their northern forces and have altered the whole story of the war. We may suppose that that is what Washington would have done had he been in Clinton’s place. The British did not do so, but fell into the trap which the wily American had set for them. In the battle at White Plains, however,—which is more to our purpose than the subsequent campaign,—the militia was largely used, and acquitted itself with credit. In an application for a pension made by Joshua Baker of Dutchess County, it was set forth that “On or about the 1st day of August, 1776, he enlisted at a place called Fredericksburgh in the County of Dutchess and State of New York at which place he was residing. That he entered the company commanded by Captain Luddenton in the regiment commanded by Col. Swartwout. That from Fredericksburgh aforesaid he marched with the said company to Peekskill and after a short time from thence to Kingsbridge in the county of Westchester, that he remained at Kingsbridge until the month of October, when they were ordered to White Plains, where he was in the engagement generally known as the battle of White Plains. In this engagement one of the Chaplains named Van Wyck was killed. Soon after the battle of White Plains he marched with the said regiment to New Windsor where he was discharged.” The “Captain Luddenton” mentioned was presumably Comfort Ludington, who, as we have already seen, was an officer of the Dutchess County militia, and the statement of Baker is clear indication that that militia was engaged in the battle of White Plains.

Further evidence to the same effect, directly connecting Henry Ludington with that battle, is found in the affidavit of Elisha Turner, who declared “That in the fall of 1776 he was drafted for three months in Captain Joel Mead’s Company, Lieut. Porter, and Seargents Fisher and Brewsters in Colonel Ludington’s Reg’t New York State troops. That he joined his company and marched to White Plains and then joined his regiment and the Army, that he was present at the battle of White Plains and afterward retired with the army up the river. That he remained with his Regiment and company until his term of three months expired, when he received a verbal discharge from his Colonel and Captain and returned home.” Much other evidence to the same effect might be cited, were it needed, which it is not. There can be no doubt that Henry Ludington with his regiment was engaged at White Plains, and that he, himself, as a representative officer of the Dutchess County levies, was chosen to serve as an aide on the staff of Washington. The commander-in-chief appears to have recognized in Colonel Ludington a man upon whose brain and arm he might with confidence depend. It is a credible tradition that during that battle Washington complimented him upon his soldier-like bearing, and indirectly paid a tribute to his vigilance. A family tradition tells that as the two stood side by side, with the rest of the staff about them, Colonel Ludington noticed the British taking up a new position and placing their artillery, screened behind shrubs and trees, and directed Washington’s attention to the fact, which had been entirely unperceived by the others. “Yes,” said Washington, approvingly, “I have been watching them this long time.”

On November 6, the British began their fatuous movement toward New Jersey, imagining that the American Congress at Philadelphia, rather than the American Army and fortresses along the Hudson, was the strategical objective. The American Council of War unanimously agreed that Washington’s army should thereupon cross into New Jersey, anticipating the British advance, while three thousand troops, including Colonel Ludington’s Dutchess County militia, should be sent to reinforce the defenses of the Highlands. Washington left White Plains on the morning of November 10, and reached Peekskill at sunset of the same day, Colonel Ludington’s regiment presumably accompanying him. After a careful inspection of the works as far up the river as West Point, and after giving directions for the disposition of the troops, on November 12 he passed over into New Jersey, and went his way to the disaster of Fort Washington, and the more than redeeming victory of Trenton. Meanwhile, Colonel Ludington remained at Peekskill, where there presently was a prospect of strenuous work. For having, as they imagined, put Washington to hopeless flight in New Jersey, the British turned a part of their attention to the very thing to which their chief attention should at the outset have been given. Plans were made for an advance up the Hudson, by land and water. West Point was to be avoided by marching up the east shore, where the defenses were not so strong. Such a movement must, of course, be resisted at all hazards. Washington, from his camp on the Delaware, in what Thomas Paine described as “the times that try men’s souls,” was able to spare enough attention from his own pressing extremities to write words of warning and exhortation to Governor Clinton, and in pursuance of his wise counsels the New York Convention, at Fishkill, on December 21, adopted the following resolutions:

WHEREAS, from various Intelligence received of the motions and Designs of the Enemy’s Army, it appears highly probable that they meditate an attack upon the Passes in the Highlands on the East side of Hudson’s River,

AND WHEREAS, the Term of the Enlistment of the militia under the command of Brigadier General George Clinton which is at present stationed to defend the Pass at Peeks Kill expires on the last of this month, and that a great part of the Division commanded by Major General Spencer, which is stationed at North Castle on the 29th inst.

AND WHEREAS, his Excellency Genl. Washington by his Letter of the 15th instant has warmly recommended to this state to exert themselves in procuring temporary supplies of militia ’till the new Levies of the continental army can be brought into the Field,

RESOLVED, that the whole militia of the Counties of Westchester, Dutchess and that part of the County of Albany which lies to the southward of Beeren Island be forthwith marched to North Castle in Westchester County, well equipped with arms and ammunition and furnished with Blankets & six days Provisions & a Pot or Camp Kettle to every six men, except such Persons as the field Officers of the Respective Regiments shall judge cannot be called into service without greatly distressing their families, or who may be actually engaged in the manufacturing of salt Petre, or of shoes and Cloathing for the use of the army.

RESOLVED, that the said militia be allowed continental Pay and Rations, and that such men as cannot furnish themselves with arms shall be supplied from the continental store.

Colonel Ludington and his regiment therefore remained on duty at North Castle until word came of the rout of the British at Trenton and Princeton, and Washington’s triumphant return to the hills of Morristown for the winter. All imminent danger of a British attack upon the Highlands was then past, and the militia was permitted to return home for a time. The respite was brief, however. On January 3, 1777, Nathaniel Sackett was authorized by the Committee of Safety “to employ such detachments of the militia of Dutchess County as are not in actual service, as he may deem expedient, for inquiring into, detecting and defeating all conspiracies which may be found against the liberties of America.” Also, on March 25, the Convention took further action, resulting in the issuance of this order by Governor Clinton:

To Colonel Morris Graham,

Pursuant to a Resolve of the Honorable the Convention of the State of New York, dated the 25th day of March last, impowering & requiring me until the first of August next to call into actual Service all or any Part or proportion of the Militia as well Horse as Foot of the Counties of Ulster, West Chester, Dutchess and Orange, for the Defence of the Posts and Passes of the Highlands, & frustrating the Attempts of the Enemy to make Incursions into this State you are for these Purposes forthwith, to draft by Ballot or other equitable Manner, one hundred & thirty three Men of your Regiment & them compleatly armed & equiped, cause to march, properly Officered, to Fort Independence near Peek’s Kill there to join the Field Officers who shall be appointed to command them. The Companies to consist as nearly as may be of Sixty two Privates & to have a Captain & two Lieutenants.

Given under my Hand at Poughkeepsie this 3d Day of April 1777.

Geo. Clinton, B. Gen.

Colonel Ludington appears at this time not to have been among those called to duty at Peekskill, but to have been left for a few weeks among those “not in actual service” who were to act under Nathaniel Sackett, as already related, for the suppression of conspiracies. The call to duty was not very well responded to by the other officers and men. The militia had been in the field in the early part of the winter longer than they had expected to be, and now, in the spring, they were desirous of remaining at home as much as possible to attend to the season’s work on their farms. This reluctance to respond to the call provoked this action of the Convention, taken at Kingston on April 24:

WHEREAS it appears that a great Part of the militia of Dutchess County have neglected to obey the orders of General Clinton issued in consequence of a resolve of this House, for calling out a part of the militia of the Counties of Ulster, Orange and Dutchess to Garrison the forts and Guard the passes in the Highlands.

RESOLVED that Major Lawrence and Mr. Zephaniah Platt be & they are hereby appointed a Committee to repair forthwith to Dutchess County to enquire into the reasons of such neglect, that they use their utmost endeavours to convince the People of the necessity of exerting themselves at this critical Juncture, and that they make report to this Convention with all convenient Dispatch in order that the most effectual measures may be taken to induce a compliance with the aforesaid Resolve.

RESOLVED that General Clinton be & he hereby is empowered to make such disposition with respect to the officers of the militia under his Command as he shall judge most advansive of the Public Service and where any extra expense shall accrue in consequence of this Resolve which cannot be considered as a Continental Charge this Convention will pay the same.

Extract from the Minutes.

Robt. Benson, Secry.

There was, however, no question concerning the activity and zeal of Colonel Ludington at this time. On April 25, the very day after the adoption of the foregoing resolution by the Convention, a force of two thousand British troops landed at Compo, near Fairfield, Connecticut, under command of General Tryon, the former British governor of New York, under whom Henry Ludington had once held a commission. It marched hastily inland, and on the afternoon of the next day reached Danbury, Connecticut, where there were large stores of provisions, tents, etc., for the American Army, many of which had been sent thither from Peekskill for—as was supposed—greater security. Not only these, but also most of the private houses in the town, were at once set afire, while the soldiers made themselves drunk with looted spirits, and gave themselves up to an unrestrained orgy. It was one of the most brutal and disgraceful performances of British arms in all the war, and was unhesitatingly denounced as such by self-respecting British officers. It does not appear that the raid had any other object than the destruction of Danbury, or the stores at that place, for as soon as the soldiers could be sufficiently sobered up thereafter, a retreat toward the British shipping on the Sound was begun. But on the American side the incident gave occasion for one of the most thrilling and gallant exploits of the war.

It was on Friday afternoon that the landing was made at Compo, and it was on Saturday afternoon that Danbury was burned. Patriot messengers rode at top speed in three directions—toward New Haven to hasten Generals Arnold and Wooster, who were already on their way; to meet General Silliman, to expedite his juncture with the others; and to Fredericksburgh to tell the news to Colonel Ludington, that he might furnish the troops which the generals would need. Railroads, telegraphs and other annihilators of time and space were unknown in those days. But the personal factor, which after all dominates all the problems of this world, was active and effective. At four o’clock Danbury was fired. At eight or nine o’clock that evening a jaded horseman reached Colonel Ludington’s home with the news. We may imagine the fire that flashed through the veteran’s veins at the report of the dastardly act of his former chief. But what to do? His regiment was disbanded, its members scattered at their homes, many at considerable distances. He must stay there, to muster all who came in. The messenger from Danbury could ride no more, and there was no neighbor within call. In this emergency he turned to his daughter Sibyl, who, a few days before, had passed her sixteenth birthday, and bade her to take a horse, ride for the men, and tell them to be at his house by daybreak. One who even now rides from Carmel to Cold Spring will find rugged and dangerous roads, with lonely stretches. Imagination only can picture what it was a century and a quarter ago, on a dark night, with reckless bands of “Cowboys” and “Skinners” abroad in the land. But the child performed her task, clinging to a man’s saddle, and guiding her steed with only a hempen halter, as she rode through the night, bearing the news of the sack of Danbury. There is no extravagance in comparing her ride with that of Paul Revere and its midnight message. Nor was her errand less efficient than his. By daybreak, thanks to her daring, nearly the whole regiment was mustered before her father’s house at Fredericksburgh, and an hour or two later was on the march for vengeance on the raiders. They were a motley company, some without arms, some half dressed, but all filled with a certain berserk rage. That night they reached Redding, and joined Arnold, Wooster and Silliman. The next morning they encountered the British at Ridgefield. They were short of ammunition and were outnumbered by the British three to one. But they practised the same tactics that Paul Revere’s levies at Lexington and Concord found so effective. Their scattering sharpshooter fire from behind trees and fences and stone walls, harassed the British sorely, and made their retreat to their ships at Compo resemble a rout. Nor were instances of individual heroism in conflict lacking. Arnold had his horse shot under him as, almost alone, he furiously charged the enemy, and the gallant Wooster received a wound from which he died a few days later. There were far greater operations in the war than this, but there was scarcely one more expeditious, intrepid and successful. Writing of it to Gouverneur Morris, Alexander Hamilton said: “I congratulate you on the Danbury expedition. The stores destroyed there have been purchased at a pretty high price to the enemy. The spirit of the people on the occasion does them great honor—is a pleasing proof that they have lost nothing of that primitive zeal with which they began the contest, and will be a galling discouragement to the enemy from repeating attempts of the kind.… The people of New York considered the affair in the light of a defeat to the British troops.”

View of highroad and plains from site of Colonel Ludington’s house

It was not long before there was a still more serious menace than the Danbury raid. In June, 1777, there were indications that the British were planning anew to gain possession of the Hudson River, and thus unite their own northern and southern forces while dividing the eastern from the middle and southern colonies. Colonel Ludington and his regiment were therefore summoned to Peekskill, to strengthen the defenses of the Highlands, and it was not without some difficulty that he was enabled to respond to the call. Some of his men had become half mutinous. They had been willing enough to rush to Danbury, but now, in the busy time of the early summer, they objected to leaving their farms when there was no enemy actually in sight. The same trouble was experienced by the other militia commanders. On this occasion the period of service at Peekskill was short. But on July 1, Washington wrote to Clinton that the British were believed to be operating against Ticonderoga and its dependencies; that Howe was preparing to evacuate the Jerseys to coöperate with the northern army, and that there was danger of a sudden attack upon the Highlands and the passes of the Hudson. He urged therefore, in the strongest manner, that all available militia should be called out to strengthen the garrisons at Peekskill and other places on the river. The next day Governor Clinton reported the gist of this letter to the Committee of Safety, adding that in consequence thereof he had “issued Orders to Colonels Brinckerhoff, Ludington, Umphrey & Freeze of Dutchess County to march their Regiments to Peek’s Kill.” But the result was not altogether satisfactory. The men were ready enough for active service; but they demurred at waiting idly in the camp while their farms at home were suffering. On July 9, Clinton, in a quandary, wrote from Fort Montgomery to the president of the Convention:

The Militia which I ordered to this Post & who came in with great Expedition almost to a Man according to Custom begin to be extreamly uneasy. They want to go Home, their Corn is suffering, their Harvest coming on, and they cant see that it is likely there will be any Thing for them to do here suddenly. They have been frequently on the Dunderbergh to look down the River & cant see a single Vessel in it; What shall I do with them?

If I consent to their going Home they will Return when ordered again with great Chearfulness. If I dont, they will go (many of them at least) without Leave. I dont know what to do with them &, therefore, shall not do any Thing, without your Honor’s Directions which I should be glad to have this afternoon.

As a result of this appeal, General Putnam on July 11 issued an order to the effect that, “considering the Busy Season of the Year, & how important it is to the public as well as to themselves that the Militia be at home in their Business at this Time, and not being wanted, Altho’ he cannot say how soon they may be,” the three regiments which first responded to the call, to wit, Ludington’s, Humphrey’s and Brinckerhoff’s, were “dismissed with the General’s thanks for their Alertness and for their good Services, relying upon it that the Zeal & Ardor they have shewn in the great Cause we are engaged in will prompt them to turn out without (sic) the utmost Alacrity on all future Occasions.”

Another occasion was quickly supplied by the British, with their activities at the north and their renewed menace against the Highlands. On June 30, General Howe evacuated New Jersey, moved into Staten Island, and prepared to advance up the Hudson. On July 1, Burgoyne with his army appeared before Ticonderoga, and on July 6, the Americans evacuated that fortress. Washington, then at Morristown, wrote on July 10 to the president of the Continental Congress: “In consequence of the probability that General Howe will push against the Highland passes to cooperate with General Burgoyne, I shall, by the advice of my officers, move the army from hence to-morrow morning towards the North River.” Though delayed somewhat by bad weather, he proceeded to Sufferns, and thence to Galloway’s, in Orange County, New York, where he remained until he ascertained that Howe was not going up the river, but was really making a feint to cover a swift dash upon Philadelphia. Accordingly, on July 23, Washington’s army was set in motion toward the Delaware, leaving the Highlands to their local defenders. The inefficient and half treacherous Gates presently superseded Schuyler in command of the American Army at the north after the disastrous affair at Ticonderoga, and it is probable that Washington doubted his ability to cope with Burgoyne. At any rate, despite what he regarded as Howe’s “unaccountable abandonment” of Burgoyne, Washington regarded the latter’s movements with much apprehension, and frequently warned Clinton at the Highlands to be on his guard against him. On July 31, he urged Clinton to call out the militia to reinforce the garrisons, and Clinton wrote as follows to the Committee of Safety, a letter which throws much light upon the embarrassments from which he suffered:

The Proportion to be furnished by this State is 500 and it shall be my first Business to issue the necessary Orders for march’g them to the respective stations for which they are intended.

I am nevertheless apprehensive that I shall find it extremely difficult to compleat even this small Number. The Continental Pay and Rations being far below the wages given for ordinary Labor the Difference becomes a Tax rendered by personal Service and as the Train Band List from the Exemptions arising from Age Office & other Causes consists chiefly of the Middling & lower Class of People this extraordinary Tax is altogether paid by them.

Add to this that unless a proportionate Number is called out of each County which in most Cases is inexpedient the County affording the most Men is upon the same Principle charged with a Tax to which the other Parts of the Community do not contribute.

These Reasons are so clear as to be generally understood and complained of by the Militia and unless those exercising the Legislative Power of the State shall in their Wisdom devise some Plan in which those Inconveniences will be obviated and the Militia Duty become more equal I am extremely apprehensive that any Orders for calling Detachments to the Field for a limited Time will not hereafter be so duly obeyed as the Nature of Military Command and the good of the service absolutely requires. It wo’d be needless to observe to you, Gentlemen, that tho my Office as Governor gives me the Command of the Militia I am not vested with authority to promise even the ordinary Continental Pay and subsistance to any greater Number of Men than those required of me by his Excellency the Commander in Chief, whose Requisition entitles those who are called into actual Service in Consequence thereof to a Compensation from the Continent at large.

In consequence of this letter of Clinton’s the Committee of Safety the same day ordered that “Continental pay and rations be advanced on behalf of the Continent, to all such Militia as his Excellency the Governor shall think proper to call out.” Colonel Ludington was not included in the summons to the Highlands, but was selected by Clinton for other and, as it proved, actually more active service, in the borderland of Westchester County. Clinton wrote to him as follows, from Kingston, on August 1, 1777:

The Operations of the Enemy ag’t the State to the Northward as well as the exposed Situation of some of the Southern Counties to the Incursions of the Enemy from that Quarter, render it expedient to call into actual Service, a very considerable Proportion of the Militia in the Classing of the different Regiments for these Services your Regiment & Colo. Fields’ with the other Regiments of W. Chester County are to furnish 310 Men, including Non Commissioned Officers & Privates properly officered armed & accoutred, as you’l see by the inclosed Order; and, as you are appointed to take the command of this Detachment, I desire that you will, immediately upon the Receipt hereof, direct and forward to the Commanding Officers of the other Regiments who are to furnish Men towards this Detachm’t, one of the inclosed Resolutions & Orders, and exert yourself in having them raised with all possible Expedition and march them to such Stations in W. Chester County as will tend most to the Protection of the Inhabitants and best conduce to the Public Safety. Taking your Directions occasionally from the Command’g Officer at Peeks Kill.

The Inclosed Resolutions of the Council of Safety subjecting Exempts to a Proportion of the Common Burthen will, I hope, enable you to carry these Orders into Execution with greater Ease, especially as every Other Regt. in the State will furnish an equal if not a greater Number of Men for the Service.

I am &c.

(G. C.)

Colo. Ludington.

The Troops will be allowed Continental Pay & Rations & a Bounty to be raised agreeable to the within Resolve from the Fines levied on the Exempts refusing Service.

A few days later another alarm was caused by the uncertainty which attended the movements of the British fleet, which, after sailing from New York to the capes of the Delaware as if to attack Philadelphia, suddenly put to sea again and disappeared for a time. Washington communicated his observations and suspicions to Clinton, and Clinton, on August 5, countermanded his orders to Ludington in the following letter:

By Dispatches just Rec’d from his Excellency Genl. Washington dated at Chester in Pensylvania 1st Aug’t, I am informed that the Enemy’s Fleet have left the Capes of Delaware & are steering Eastward & his Excellency is fully of Opinion they intend (proceeding) up Hudson’s River. From this Intelligence & the great Preparations making by the Enemy at Kings Bridge for an Expedition, I have not the least Doubt but that their Designs are against this Quarter & by vigorous Exertion they hope to join their two Armies before ours can arrive to oppose them. His Excellency is apprehensive of this also & has requested me to call out all the Militia of this State to oppose the Enemy till he can arrive with his Army. You will, therefore, on receipt hereof with the utmost Expedition march your Regt. to Fort Montgomery compleatly armed and accoutred, leaving the frontier Companies at Home embodied & on Duty to guard ag’t any small Parties of Tories or Indians. I mean to repair to the Fort with all Expedition & take the Command.

Clinton then notified Putnam at Peekskill that he had ordered Ludington’s and also Field’s and Brinckerhoff’s regiments to join him forthwith, and on August 9 reported this action to Washington. But it was one thing to order and another thing to have the order fulfilled. The militia exhibited their former reluctance to go into camp unless the enemy were actually in sight. This applies, however, to the other regiments rather than to Colonel Ludington’s. No complaint of his inactivity or his inability to furnish his quota of men appears. But on August 20, Colonel Humphrey reported that his regiment was unwilling to march northward, meaning, no doubt, to go up the river beyond the Highlands to the aid of Gates against Burgoyne, as there was some desperate talk of doing; and John Jay and Gouverneur Morris reported that Gates’s army could hope for no militia reinforcements excepting from Albany County, and that garrisons should be provided for the Highland forts when the terms of enlistment of the militia should expire. This was the more essential as the regular garrisons had largely been sent north to aid Gates. A little later, on September 4, Colonel Dirck Brinckerhoff wrote from Fishkill to Clinton in answer to some strictures as follows:

Sir,

You Blame me in Your Letter for Disobeying the Orders I first Receiv’d for all the Militia to go to Peekskill, but it was by Consent of General Putnam, that Only part should go, and be Reliev’d by the Same number from time to time in Such Manner as I thought proper, which has Strictly been done.

Agreeable to your Last I have Order’d half the Militia out, but it is allmost impossible to get them to go, on account of the Exempts not going, Aledging this is not a General Alarum; therefore, should be Glad of Some further Regulation in that Respect, and Possitive Orders from you how to act in that affair, I am Sir,

Your Ob’t. Hble. Serv’t

Dirck Brinckerhoff.

To His Excellency George Clinton Esq.

Colonel Ludington, meanwhile, was busy elsewhere, in another department of his public duties, of which we shall speak hereafter. At first commissioned to serve in Westchester County, then ordered to the Highlands, he seems to have been permitted to remain in Westchester and lower Dutchess counties, where some strong hand was sorely needed. But on September 15 came news of the battle of the Brandywine, in which the Stars and Stripes was first unfurled in battle, but in which the Americans were defeated. The news was ominous of the fall of Philadelphia and of the martyrdom of Valley Forge, and it caused some consternation along the Hudson. Clinton at once ordered eleven New York militia regiments to reinforce the Highlands, among them Colonel Ludington’s, which was to proceed at once to Peekskill to serve under General Putnam. For the first time Ludington seems to have had some difficulty in complying with orders, for, on September 29, we find Clinton writing to him, as well as to the other colonels of militia, expressing surprise at the circumstance that, although he had ordered the whole of the regiments to reinforce the garrisons, not more than 300 men of six regiments had responded; and adding a peremptory command that one half of each regiment should go into service immediately for one month, and then be relieved by the other half.

There was indeed cause for these preparations, for the British were at last actually beginning their advance up the Hudson in aid of the hard-pressed Burgoyne, though all too late to save him. At the beginning of October the British fleet appeared in the Hudson, and on October 4 a landing was made at Tarrytown. Of what occurred there, we have two contemporary accounts. One was given in the New York “Journal” of May 11, 1778, by one of the garrison of Fort Montgomery, which, as we shall see, was presently captured by the British. “On Saturday night,” says that narrator, “we had advice that a large number of ships, brigs, armed vessels, &c., had arrived at Tarrytown, where they had landed a considerable body of men, supposed to be about one thousand, and had advanced toward the plains. Colonel Lutlington being posted there with about five hundred militia, they sent in a flag to him requiring him to lay down his arms and surrender himself and men prisoners of war. Whilst he was parleying with the flag they endeavored to surround him, which he perceiving ordered his men to retreat. The British then returned to their shipping, and the next morning we had advice of their being under sail, and coming up as far as King’s Ferry.” The “Colonel Lutlington” referred to was, of course, Henry Ludington. By “the plains” it is to be supposed White Plains was meant, that village being distant from Tarrytown about seven miles.

The second account, much more circumstantial and authoritative, is that of Colonel Ludington himself in his report to General Putnam. He was at that time stationed at Wright’s Mills, between Tarrytown and White Plains, guarding the inhabitants from the depredations of Tory and Indian marauders. He wrote to General Putnam as follows:

Sir. I must acquaint you of my yousage in this place. I find the militia was to join and I have not had the assistance of one man. you must well Remember you ordered Capt Dean and Capt Stephens. Stephens I never have seen. Dean I showed your order and Rote a few days ago Begging him to assist me scouting. I have inclosed his answer to me. You must not depend too much upon my little party, if I am to gard the inhabitants I must be Reinforced speadily or shall be obliged to post my men in some Better place of Security

and am Sir Your obedient Humble Servant

Henry Ludington

3 oclock october 4th 1777
at Rites mills

P. S. I beleive the inhabitants are entirely stript where they go.

Honoured Sir: in haste I am to acquaint you that they came up Last night with 2 frigets and five or six Royale and tenders and about 40 flat Bottommed boats and landed about 3 thousand men under the command of governor Tryon. They immediately took the heights above Tarrytown and from thence kept the Heights until they thought they had got above our party. But Luckily we had got above them and paused at mr Youngses where we thought Best to move towards them where we were in open view of them and found them vastly superior to us in numbers and moved off to Rights mills, Having no asistance more than our Little party belonging to our Regiment. I found on our Retreat before we got back to Youngses they had sent forward a flag, But found that was in view of trapping us as they had flanking parties who we discovered in order to surround us. But after clearing the Regiment I rode Back and met the flag within a quarter of a mile of their main body. The purport of his errand was that governor Tryon Had sent him to acquaint me that if we would give up our arms and submit they would show us mersy or otherways they were determined to take us and strip the contre (country). Sent in answer that as Long as we had a man alive I was determined to oppose them and they might come on as soon as they pleased. We have not lost a man and the last move of the enemy was from Youngses towards the plains.

N. B. the maj. is Gone home on furlow

Henry Ludinton.

Fac-simile of Col. Henry Ludington’s signature.

This report is unquestionably authentic, although the “P. S.” has no address, date nor signature, and is on a separate sheet of paper from the letter and the “N. B.” But it is in Henry Ludington’s handwriting, precisely the same as the signed letter, and is on precisely the same kind of paper. Doubtless, then, the “P. S.” was hurriedly written after the letter, the British attack having occurred between the two writings, and was enclosed with the letter without taking time to sign it in any way. The MSS. were in the possession of the late Douglas Putnam, of Harmar, Ohio, a great-grandson of General Putnam, and were left by him to his daughter, Mrs. Francke H. Bosworth, of New York. It is interesting to observe that it was with his old chief, Tryon, that Ludington had on this occasion to deal again. He estimates the number of the British three times as high as does the other and less authoritative chronicler, and is probably more nearly correct. It may be assumed that the former statement that he had “about five hundred militia” was much exaggerated. His own official report of the day before shows his entire force at Wright’s Mills to have comprised “One Colonel, 1 Lt. Colonel, 5 Captains, 10 Leutennants, no Ensign, no Chaplain, 1 Adjutant, 1 Quartermaster, 1 Surgeon, no Surgeons mate, 19 Sergeants, 9 Drummers and Fifers, 182 present fit for duty, 19 sick present, 3 Sick Absent, 19 on command, 10 on Furlough, Total 233.” With such a mere handful, he certainly acquitted himself most creditably against the vastly superior force of Tryon.

Putnam was at Peekskill for the express purpose of guarding the passage up the river. He had there about 600 regulars and a much larger number of militia. Governor George Clinton was at Fort Montgomery, and his brother James Clinton at Fort Clinton, with combined forces variously reported at from 600 to 1200 men, mostly militia. Putnam had scout boats along the river, and an elaborate system of scouts on land. Yet, says General De Peyster, “the British Clinton … took advantage of a fog, transferred his troops over to the western side of the river, to Stony Point, made a wonderful march across or rather around the Dunderberg Mountain, and carried Forts Clinton and Montgomery by assault, performing the most brilliant British operation during the seven years’ war.” George Clinton suffered heavy losses in troops, and narrowly escaped capture; the State capital, Kingston, was exposed to the enemy’s advance; and Putnam retired to the mountains, sending word to Gates that he must prepare for the worst as he could not prevent the enemy from advancing up the river to the aid of Burgoyne. “The enemy can go to Albany with great expedition and without any opposition.” In the presence of this disaster two things were uncommonly fortunate for the American cause. One was that Gates was not alone in the north, but had Arnold, Schuyler, and Morgan with him to brace him up. The other was that the British did not attempt to go on up to Albany. After garrisoning Fort Montgomery, Sir Henry Clinton returned to New York. On October 15, he sent an expedition, under General Vaughan, up to Kingston, and the next day burned that village, the State government having previously fled to Poughkeepsie. Other ravages, of looting and burning, were committed along the river, to the disgrace of the British arms. But there was some consolation to the stricken patriots in the news that the very day after the burning of Kingston, Burgoyne, beaten by Arnold, Schuyler, and Morgan, surrendered to Gates with all his army.

During the winter of 1777-78 Colonel Ludington was chiefly busied with other features of his public duties, and appeared little in the field. He was a valuable adviser to the State government on military affairs, and, realizing from experience the great difficulty of maintaining a satisfactory militia service in time of actual warfare, urged the formation of another regiment of regulars. On December 18, Governor Clinton referred to this project in a letter to General Putnam. He urged the necessity of strengthening the defenses of the Hudson River, and said that he expected the Committee of Safety at Poughkeepsie in a few days. He would then lay before them the proposal for a new regiment of regulars and added, “I should be glad to have Colo. Ludington’s Plan.” That winter, the winter of Valley Forge, was a hard one in which to raise recruits of any kind, especially in view of the fact that the troops had received no pay for their services for a long time past. Colonel Ludington felt this keenly, and on being asked by Clinton to furnish a certain number of men from his regiment for the new regiment of regulars, he wrote very frankly on the subject:

Honoured Sir, I am under the Disagrable Nesesity of acqainting you, that I find it to Be out of my power to Comply with your Orders in Regard of Raising the Coto (Quota) of men aloted me to Raise out of my Regiment, and that for Sundry Reasons. In the first place, the money Raised in the other Regments By their asesments amounts to one Hundread pounds Bounty to Each Soldier By Reason of the Exempts Being able and among whom are a number of Quakers. But it is not the Case in my Regment, For, By the Best Computation we Can make, we Cannot Raise more than 30 Dolars a man, though I would not Be understood that we have gone through with the asesments and that for this Reason: the act for asesing the Exempts Expresly says that the officers who aseses the Exempts Shall Be Freeholders, and I have not Such an officer in my Regiment. We have met Sundry times in order to try to Raise the men and I yoused my Best Endevours that they Should Be Raised, But I have not an officer that will asist the Exempts. The officers tell me they posatively will not Call their Companies out until they get pay for their Past Servises in order to avoid Service; on that account I have had their pay roles maid up in time and Signed By the general, and Have weighted on the pay master for the money Everry few Days, and yesterday for the Last time, and He then told He had no prospect in geting the money in Sum months. That Being the Case I am Sory I must Tell your Honour that I know not what further measures to take until I have Sum further instructions in Regard of the matter. It is my opinion that we Shall never Raise the men, unles the State asists us in Raising a part of the Bounty and the Soldiers gets their wages for their past Servises. Sir, a few lines from your Honour in Regard of the above, By way of instructions, will mutch oblige your Humble Servant,

Henry Ludinton.