Making a journey in a direct line through some shrub oaks and a field of tangled buckwheat, I visited and sketched the old tavern, now the property of Mr. Isham, of New York, where many of the stirring scenes of the Revolution occurred. There American and British officers were alternately quartered, from 1776 until the close of the war, and in that house the corpse of Mr. Caldwell was laid while a wagon was procured to convey it to the town. In front of it is a flat shore, overflowed at high tide, across which was a substantial eauseway about seventy-five rods in length, with a wharf at the end. Here was, the landing-plaee of troops passing and repassing to and from Staten Island, closely contiguous; and from this wharf extended the bridge of boats over whieh the British retreated after the battle of Springfield. There Washington embarked in the barge prepared to convey him to New April 24, 1789 York, to be inaugurated the first President of the United States, and in the old tavern he breakfasted that morning.
When the British fleet appeared off Sandy Hook with the troops of General Howe, in June, 1776, great alarm spread through New Jersey; for, as the Americans then had military occupation of New York city, it was supposed the enemy would land on the Jersey coast. Governor Livingston, at the head of the New Jersey militia, established his camp at Elizabethtown Point, and caused a fortification to be constructed by digging ditches and throwing up breast-works, whieh extended from the old to the new Point, and on which a few cannons were mounted. These works were never of any material use, and hardly a vestige of them remains.
From the Point several water expeditions were fitted out, for the narrow and tortuous channel, and low, marshy shore protected the place from the visits of large vessels of war. One of these expeditions was under the eommand of Elias Dayton and William Alexander. The latter is better known in our history as Lord Stirling, and was Governor Shirley's military secretary at Albany twenty years before. Informed that a British transport and provision ship was on the coast, the Committee of Safety at Elizabethtown ordered four armed boats to attempt its capture. They came in sight of the vessel about forty miles from Sandy Hook. The men in the boats were all concealed under hatches, except two in each, unarm-
* This view is looking eastward. In the distance, on the right, is seen a vessel, at the entrance of Newark Bay, and the land beyond is the high ground intervening between it and Jersey City. In one of the rooms of the old tavern is a Franklin stove, which has probably been a tenant there ever since it came from the foundery. I gave a sketch of it, not only because it is a relic of the time, but because it doubtless shows the form of the stove as invented by Dr. Franklin in 1742,* before an "improvement" was made. On its front, in raised letters, are the words "Ross and Bird's Hibernia Foundry, 1782." Ross had a foundery at Elizabethtown in 1774, as appears by the inscription upon the dinner-bell of Sir William Johnson, now in the belfry of the old Caughnawaga Church at Fonda. See note, page 233.