The Neutral Ground in 1778

Westchester County during the American Revolution was under terrible constraints. As Washington retreated through Westchester in the autumn of 1776, with General Howe in plodding pursuit, the area patrolled by the 1^st Westchester militia was trampled, dismantled, looted, burned and despoiled by both American and crown forces. When the lines around New York City stabilized the Westchester region was caught between the lines. British pickets defending the city reached into the Bronx and Yonkers; American lines defending the Hudson Highlands reached down towards Peekskill and Tarrytown. The region between these lines was known as the “Neutral Ground” –a phrase given to areas under similar conditions in New Jersey and on the littoral of Long Island Sound. By the winter of 1776 -1777 the Neutral Ground of Westchester was a scene of desolation as both sides skirmished and foraged for supplies. The 1^st Westchester militia covered a large area that was on the fringe of British occupation to the south and within the American lines to the north.

            In 1778 Katherine Farnham Hay of Newburyport, Massachusetts traveled through the Westchester Neutral Ground under a flag of truce (a “White Handkerchief, Sew’d upon a Stick”) in order to join her husband, a British merchant sea captain, in occupied New York City. Her descriptions of the areas that were home to the 1^st and 2^nd Westchester militias, given in two letters and a brief journal, are revealing. Passing through the Connecticut towns of Lebanon, Wethersfield, New Haven, Fairfield and Stamford Mrs. Hay encountered “fine Cultivated, Fertile Country” of “very pretty Towns” with “every View…agreeable”. Despite almost three years of war the Connecticut families she met were “very agreable” and provided “very good beds” and “entertain’d us, Genteelly, Civilly, & Polite”. Despite “the bad roads” Mrs. Hay was “really Charm’d with Connecticut” proclaiming it “the Garden of America”. A similar view reached her eyes as she passed through northern Manhattan well within the safety of British lines. Here she had “a most Beautifull View” of “Elegant Country Seats” along the Hudson and East Rivers. Like rebel Connecticut, British Manhattan was “a Fertile Country” and the sight of New York City was “delightfull” though not untouched by war: Mrs. Hay’s British guide kept her entertained on the trip by “shewing…the Forts…on the way”.

            Mrs. Hay’s journey through the Neutral Ground was very different. Her first stop was White Plains which she described as “all distroy’d” and “a dreary Wilderness”, the result of the battle in October of 1776 during which the city was burnt by Massachusetts troops. Mrs. Hay spent the night not in a private house, but in “the Guard House” a busy military outpost where in one room “a Tory is taken & brought here a prisoner” while “in the Next apartment a poor soldier groaning with his thigh broke to pieces”.  Unlike the carefully tended farms of Connecticut and Manhattan in Westchester “most of the inhabitants have left” Those who remained were not infrequently “robbed of everything he possessed” as Robert Bolton wrote in his 1848 History of Westchester; those with connections amongst the British garrison sent their furniture and carriages “to Town” as Mrs. Hay explained. While meals in Connecticut and Manhattan mentioned, they are not described; the particular attention paid to the foods she was served in the Neutral Ground and the context in which she described them reflect her discomfort with the fare. At a home a mile from Kingsbridge the homeowner could provide “nothing but Gammon & eggs” and at a “publick House” near the Van Cortland estate in Yonkers, Mrs. Hay was offered “some Bohea tea…Sugar Near the Colour of Mollasses…some fried Bacon & Eggs & Broil’d Mutton”. The setting and service likewise horrified the traveler who recoiled at the tea being “Boil’d in a porridge pot & laded out” with “pewter Spoons the Colour of led” all served on a “large Square pine table” in a room with “as much Dirt as you cou’d well Wade thro”. Where the better provisions could be found is suggested by her narrative. As her journey approached the British lines, Mrs. Hay came under the protective watch of Lt. Col. Andrea Emmerick and was a guest of the Delancey and the Van Cortland families. Emmerick and Lt. Col. James Delancey officered corps of loyalist refugees infamous for their plundering. Unlike the spartan fare found in the common homes along her journey through the Neutral Ground, Mrs. Hay was provided by Emmerick’s light horsemen with “a fine joint of Mutton & 2 Bottles of Wine”on one occasion and “green tea Loaf Sugar White Wine & everything to make it agreeable” on another. One cannot help wonder from whom these had been looted.

            Mrs. Hay felt considerable fear in her travels through Westchester; none of which is apparent in her entries from Connecticut. Traveling through the war-torn county, Mrs. Hay feared they “might have been taken” by, it would seem, the marauding irregulars known as Skinners. Being amongst regular troops did little to ease her anxiety. Passing from the American lines to the British Mrs. Hay felt she was “in the Midst of an Army almost” for the scenes before her eyes made it “seem as if I was in a Camp”.  Along the way she was “Stopt by a Hessian regiment & with great difficulty cou’d make him understand my Business” and was forced “to convince the World I was not a Spy, for they are very Suspicious of Ladies”. When brought before the British General Sir John Vaughan she was “receiv’d…in a very rough Manner” as the general thundered that “he wou’d have no Damn’d Smuggling work” and “if the Damn’d Rebels wanted to get Intelligence it should not be by Ladies”.

            After many trials Katherine Hay was taken in by friends of her seafaring husband in New York City. I think it appropriate to end with a final quote from our correspondent: “I assure you it is not a trifle to get to Newyork”

Katherine Farnham Hay. The Journal of the “Rebel Lady”: Katherine Farnham Hay’s Account of her Trip to New York City, 1778. Ondine E. LeBlanc, ed. Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Third Series, Vol. 109 (1997) 102-122.