Spies of the Revolution in Connecticut

Criticks, 2017

Of Spies and Patriots Plenbrook Haight's Inn, 2022

During the American Revolution, Haight's Tavern, called "Plenbrook" served a strategic purpose to the Continental Army and General George Washington. Captain Samuel Haight of the Westchester Militia, Third Regiment (Land Bounty Rights) operated the tavern, which General George Washington frequented. It was men from Captain Haight's Regiment who captured British Spy Major John Andre and exposed the treachery of Benedict Arnold. Historians and genealogists will find the information found in this research paper useful in understanding the inter-connections between prominent families of Westchester County during the American Revolution. With the upcoming celebration RW250 in New York, this research will shed light on Haight's Tavern, located in Somers, Westchester, New York and the building in which it was located remains in commercial use to this day.

This paper documents the routes and encampments of Burgoyne's Convention Army in Connecticut in November, 1778 during its march from Massachusetts to Virginia. It provides historical background for the Convention troops, identifying confusion and false assumptions in the secondary source record concerning the movement of certain groups of prisoners taken before the Convention and those surrendered in Burgoyne's capitulation in October 1777. It examines evidence for the number of Convention troops that passed through Connecticut in 1778, their unit composition, and order of march. It also records details about the Continental soldiers and militia troops that comprised their military escorts. It provides evidence for the route of march of each of the six divisions of the Convention Army through Connecticut based on documentation from historical maps, contemporary primary sources (including English translations of German journal entries,) and local records. The research confirms that Convention Troops entered Connecticut at Enfield and exited at Sharon, but reveals that not every division camped in the same place as its predecessors and that two divisions proceeded through Salisbury to Sharon while the other four took a different route that bypassed the village of Salisbury. It identifies another potential route for at least some of the German troops escorted by Poor's Brigade from Norfolk to New Milford. The paper provides documentation for each known place of encampment, assessing the quality of the available evidence to pinpoint likely areas for further archaeological research.

2020

American espionage willing to sacrifice his life for the growing colonial sentiment against a daunting global empire vindicates this. Yet, behind Hale's success as an operative on British-controlled Long Island, lies a narrative buried under the glorified heroism of warfare. Was his skill an exception to most early American spies? How did Commander-in-Chief George Washington protect the successors to Hale's work? Why was espionage so vital to the Patriot military strategy? Although the first American spy met a sorrow end, his sacrifice brought a 2 learning experience for the Continental army's use of espionage; his work ignited a military interest in espionage that presupposed the first colonial spy networks. Despite early American Revolutionary War spies being inexperienced, inept, and counterproductive, their limited success in acquiring invaluable intelligence still induced a political desire for the Continental Army to improve professional espionage networks into a military weapon vital to overcome British imperial forces.

Connecticut History

Connecticut's rich multi-cultural heritage is reflected and informed by its archaeological sites. The state contains thousands of prehistoric, historic, industrial, and maritime archaeological sites created by the ancestors of its various ethnic residents. Many are thousands of years old. Archaeology sites may provide insights on fascinating and important stories about Connecticut that often are not found in local history books. Domestic, commercial, and industrial archaeology sites provide clues to the diverse lifestyles of Connecticut’s residents through time, their community relationships and events, and the cultural changes that modified those lifestyles and connections. This article addresses some significant post-colonial archaeology sites in chronological order under subheads correlated to the state social studies curriculum at the time of publication.

2012

Even from the preface of Spying in America: Espionage from the Revolutionary War to the Dawn of the Cold War, Michael J. Sulick hints that this may not be a standard historical monograph. Sulick comes to history not as a trained historian but rather after a 28-year career at the C.I.A. Unlike most histories, his book was "reviewed by the C.I.A. to prevent the disclosure of classified information." (xii) And, in contrast to the trend toward more narrow historical studies, this book covers 180 years of American history in roughly 275 pages. Easy to read and useful for educators, Spying in America is based mostly on secondary sources. The book is broken into five parts and organized chronologically. Sulick includes sections titled The Revolutionary War, The Civil War, Espionage during the World Wars, The Golden Age of Soviet Espionage-the 1930s and 1940s, and the Atomic Bomb Spies. There is a balance problem in the organization of the text that does not detract much from readability but does raise questions. One wonders why parts vary so much in length. The book is best as prosopography or collective biography, replete with biographical tidbits that will engage any reader. For example, Sulick writes about the Confederate spy Thomas Conrad, who "played a significant role in establishing the 'Doctor's Line,' an organized system of couriers, often physicians ostensibly on house calls, who relayed intelligence to Richmond like runners passing batons in a marathon." (97) In considering so many biographies of spies, the author argues that motivations for

This compilation, as it now stands, is meant give readers a basic framework for knowledge of the activities of the Connecticut regiments from summer 1777, through the Philadelphia Campaign and Valley Forge winter, the ensuing June 1778 Monmouth Campaign, and subsequent events ending in January 1779 just after a mutiny of troops from Brig. Gen. Jedediah Huntington’s Connecticut Brigade in their winter camp at Redding in their home state. Several soldiers help to tell the tale. Surgeon’s Mate Jonathan Todd was with the 7th Connecticut Regiment for only one year, but during his brief term of service wrote a remarkable series of letters, providing invaluable insights on events of 1777, major and minor. Capt. Paul Brigham, 4th Connecticut, nicely supplements Todd’s account with his several diaries, covering the period from late May 1777 to early September 1778. And Brig. Gen. Samuel Parsons contributes his accounts of activities during the 1778-1779 autumn and winter. Gaps in the narrative may be filled in by a reading of 8th Connecticut soldier Joseph Plumb Martin’s memoir, published under the title Private Yankee Doodle. Portions are quoted below, but Martin’s charming and candid account is too lengthy to do justice to here, and required reading for anyone interested in the life and times of a Revolutionary common soldier or the Continental Army. We will begin with the makeup of the two brigades containing Connecticut regiments that served with Gen. George Washington’s army during the autumn Philadelphia campaign and 1777-78 Valley Forge cantonment. October 1777 to July 1778 Maj. Gen. Alexander McDougall’s Division Brig. Gen. James Varnum's Brigade 4th Connecticut Col. John Durkee (Capt. Paul Brigham) 8th Connecticut Col. John Chandler (Pvt. Joseph Martin) 1st Rhode Island Col. Christopher Greene 2nd Rhode Island Col. Israel Angell Brig. Gen. Jedediah Huntington's Brigade 1st Connecticut Lt. Col. Samuel Prentiss 2nd Connecticut Col. Charles Webb (until March 1778) 5th Connecticut Col. Philip Bradley 7th Connecticut Col. Heman Swift (Surg. Mate Jonathan Todd)

James Fenimore Cooper’s The Spy: A Tale of the Neutral Ground , is the first recognized espionage novel. The author had no similar works to rely on and instead took examples from other genres, mainly the historical romances of Sir Walter Scott. The novel is set during the American Revolution and the spy is Harvey Birch, an ordinary man following dangerous paths against the background of revolutionary events in New York State. Since the novel takes place during the war, Cooper deals with espionage in strictly military terms. The present article examines the historical background of The Spy and the role Cooper’s novel played in the development of the espionage genre.

Conradiana 48.1, 2016

Reviewing the extensive bibliography on the case, the present paper corroborates David Nicoll’s thesis in The Greenwich Mystery! (1897) that the terrorist outrage constituted a false flag attack designed to discredit the anarchist movement and justify changes to Britain’s asylum laws. The paper also finds that the Nicoll pamphlet, rather than private communication with an “omniscient friend,” represents the primary source of The Secret Agent (1906), furnishing Conrad with details about the plot, the various parties involved, and even the explosive device used. On the other hand, although Conrad would have been suspicious of the official narrative promoted by the press following the attack, professional reasons led him to emulate the London dailies to the extent of presenting the Greenwich bombing in a sensationalist and xenophobic light in The Secret Agent. Moreover, it is argued that Conrad’s precarious position as a Polish émigré and asylum-seeker in Britain prompted him not only to psychologize many of the crucial political issues arising from the incident, but also to downplay domestic complicity in the terrorist plot in favor of foreign involvement from far-away “Crim-Tartary.” We conclude that the false flag paradigm which Conrad, following Nicoll, uses to account for the terrorist attack nicknamed “Bourdin’s Folly” implies that resistance is itself hijacked by those forces that have vested interests in sustaining a “bad world for poor people.”