[31] Ward's, we have seen, was the first regiment stationed on Long Island. It was there from February 24th until about the end of March. The N.Y. Packet of February 29th, 1776, says: "Saturday last Col. Ward's regiment arrived here from Connecticut, and embarked in boats and landed on Nassau [Long] Island." Lee gave orders that a Pennsylvania battalion, supposed to be on its way to New York, should encamp from the Wallabout to Gowanus, but no Pennsylvania troops are included in Stirling's return, and certainly none were on Long Island until Hand's riflemen came from Boston. It is probable that Colonel Chas. Webb's Connecticut Continentals relieved Ward, as Captain Hale writes that it had been there three weeks, sometime before May 20th. Greene's brigade were the next troops to cross over.
[32] Force, Fourth Series, vol. v., p. 811.
[33] MS. letter from Colonel Silliman to his wife, in possession of Mrs. O.P. Hubbard, New York City.
[34] General Orders, April 16th, 1776: ... "Colonel Prescott's Regiment is to encamp on Governour's Island as soon as the weather clears. They are to give every assistance in their power to the works erecting thereon."...
[35] "Monday night 1000 Continental troops stationed here went over and took possession of Governor's Island and began to fortify it; the same night a regiment went over to Red Hook and fortified that place likewise." New York Packet, April 11, 1776.
[36] General Orders, April 25th, 1776: "The encampment of the Third Brigade to be marked out in like manner, upon Long Island, on Saturday morning. The chief engineers, with the quartermasters, etc., from each regiment, to assist the quartermaster-general in that service. As soon as the general has approved of the encampments marked out, the troops will be ordered to encamp...."
[37] Consult map accompanying this work, entitled "[Plan of the Battle of Long Island, and of the Brooklyn Defences in 1776];" also the note in regard to it under the title "[Maps]," in [Part II.]
[38] "Memoirs of the Long Island Historical Society," vol. ii., p. 494. "Battle of Long Island." By Thomas W. Field.
[39] As the British demolished all the Brooklyn works very soon after their capture, it would be difficult to fix the exact site of some of them, but for data which have been preserved. That they were destroyed is certain. Baurmeister, the Hessian major, states that Howe directed the Hessian division to level the "Brocklands-Leinen," but recalled the order when General De Heister represented that "this could not be done by soldiers without compensation, especially as it would be the work of four weeks." According to tradition, the inhabitants levelled them by Howe's orders. General Robertson testified in 1779 that "there were no vestiges of the lines soon after they were taken." Cornwallis on the same occasion said that, being detached to Newtown after the battle, he had "no opportunity of going to Brooklyn till the lines were nearly demolished." But with the assistance of Lieutenant Ratzer's accurate topographical map of New York and Brooklyn of 1766-7, the Hessian map published in vol. ii. of the Society's Memoirs, the plan of the lines thrown up in the 1812 war, and other documents, the forts of 1776 can readily be located. Ratzer's map shows all the elevations where works would naturally be put; and the Hessian map, which is a reduction of Ratzer's, adds the works. The accuracy of the latter, which heretofore could not be proved, is now established by the fact that the position of the forts corresponds to the location assigned them relatively in Greene's orders. There can be little doubt that this map was made from actual surveys soon after the battle, and that the shape as well as the site of the works and lines is preserved in it. Another guide is the 1812 line as marked out by Lieutenant Gadsden, of the Engineer Corps. A copy of the original plan of this line, furnished by the War Department, shows a close correspondence with the Hessian draft. The same points are fortified in each case. Fort "Fireman" of 1812 occupies the site, or very nearly the site, of Fort Box; Fort "Masonic," that of Fort Greene; Redoubt "Cummings," that of the Oblong Redoubt; and "Fort Greene," that of Fort Putnam. The site of the "redoubt on the left" was inclosed, in 1812, in the outer intrenchment which was carried around the brow of the hill. Although the British obliterated all marks of the Brooklyn defences of 1776, we thus find nature and the records enabling us to re-establish them to-day.
[40] MS. letter of General Greene to Colonel Pickering, August 24, 1779, in possession of Prof. Geo. Washington Greene, East Greenwich, L.I.