Note 10. (Page [281].)
It is probable that Colden served with his brigade when it fought in the South in the last part of the war. He was afterwards lost at sea, leaving no heir. He was of a family prominent in New York affairs, both before the Revolution and afterwards, and which was intermarried with other New York families of equal prominence, as may be seen in the “New York Genealogical and Biographical Record,” the “New England Genealogical and Historical Register,” and similar publications. It is probable that Sabine means this Colden when he mentions a Captain Colden, of the First Battalion of New Jersey Volunteers. That he was a major, however, is certain, from the official British Army lists published in Hugh 292 Gaines’s “Universal Register” for the years of the Revolution.
People curious about Harry Peyton’s military record may consult Saffel’s “Lists of American Officers,” Heitman’s “Manual,” and a large work on “Virginia Genealogies,” by H. E. Hayden, published at Wilkes-barre. To the reader who demands a happy ending, it need be no shock to learn that Peyton, having risen to the rank of major, was killed at Charleston, S. C., May 12, 1780. For a love story, it is a happy ending that occurs at the moment when the conquest and the submission are mutual, complete, and demonstrated. A love to be perfect, to have its sweetness unembittered, ought not to be subjected to the wear and tear of prolonged fellowship. So subjected, it may deepen and gain ultimate strength, but it will lose its intoxicating novelty, and become associated with pain as well as with pleasure. We may be sure that the love of Peyton and Elizabeth was to Harry a sweetener of life on many a night encampment, many a hard ride, in the campaign of 1779, and in the spring of 1780, and exalted him the better to meet his death on that day when Charleston fell to the British; and that to Elizabeth, while it receded into further memory, it kept its full beauty during the half century she lived faithful to it. Her sisters were married into the English nobility, gentry, and military, but Elizabeth died in Bath, England, in March, 1828, unmarried. Colonel Philipse had moved with his family to England when the British quitted New York in 1783. Many other Tories did likewise. Some went to England, but more to Canada, 293 the greater part of which was then a wilderness. Many of the Tory officers got commissions in the English army.
No Tory family did more for the King’s cause in America, lost more, or got more in redress, than the De Lancey family, which had been foremost in the administration of royal government in the province of New York. It had great holdings of property in New York City, elsewhere on the island of Manhattan, and in various parts of Westchester County, notably in Westchester Township, where De Lancey’s mills and a fine country mansion were a famous landmark “where gentle Bronx clear winding flows.” The founder of the American family was a French Huguenot of noble descent. The family was represented in the British army and navy before the Revolution. One member of it, a young officer in the navy, at the breaking out of the war, resigned his commission rather than serve against the Colonies, but most of the other De Lancey men were differently minded. Oliver De Lancey, a member of the provincial council, was made a brigadier-general in the royal service, and raised three battalions of loyalists, known as “De Lancey’s Battalions.” Of these battalions, the Tory historian, Judge Jones, says: “Two served in Georgia and the Carolinas from the time the British army landed in Georgia until the final evacuation of Charleston.” One of these, during this period, was commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Stephen De Lancey, the other by Colonel John Harris Cruger. The third battalion, during the whole war, was employed solely in protecting the wood-cutters upon Lloyd’s Neck, 294 Queens County, L. I. This General De Lancey’s son, Oliver De Lancey, Junior, was educated in Europe, took service with the 17th Light Dragoons, was a captain when the Revolution began, a major in 1778, a lieutenant-colonel in 1781, and, on the death of Major André, adjutant-general of the British army in America. Returning to England, he became deputy adjutant-general of England; as a major-general, he was also colonel of the 17th Light Dragoons; was subsequently barrack-master general of the British Empire, lieutenant-general, and finally general. When he died he was nearly at the head of the English army list. This branch of the family became extinct when Sir William Heathcoate De Lancey, the quartermaster-general of Wellington’s army, was killed at Waterloo.
The James De Lancey who commanded the Westchester Light Horse was a nephew of the senior General Oliver De Lancey, and a cousin of the Major Colden of this narrative. His troop was not “a battalion in the brigade of his uncle,” Bolton’s statement that it was so being incorrect; its operations were limited to Westchester County. It raided and fought for the King untiringly, until it was almost entirely killed off, at the end of the war, by the persistent efforts of our troops to extirpate it.
The members of this corps were called “Cowboys” because, in their duty of procuring supplies for the British army, they made free with the farmers’ cattle. Like the other conspicuous Tories, this James De Lancey was attainted by the new State Government, and his property was confiscated. Local historians draw an effective 295 picture of him departing alone from his estate by the Bronx, turning for a last look, from the back of his horse, at the fair mansion and broad lands that were to be his no more, and riding away with a heavy heart. He went, with many shipfuls of Tory emigrants, to Nova Scotia, and became a member of the council of that colony. His uncle went to England and died at his country house, Beverly, Yorkshire, in 1785. I allude to the case of this family, because it was typical of that of a great many families. The Tories of the American Revolution constitute a subject that has yet to be made much of. They were the progenitors of English-speaking Canada.
The act of attainder that deprived the De Lanceys of their estates, deprived Colonel Philipse of his. It was passed by the New York legislature, October 22, 1779. The persons declared guilty of “adherence to the enemies of the State” were attainted, their estates real and personal confiscated, and themselves proscribed, the second section of the act declaring that “each and every one of them who shall at any time hereafter be found in any part of this State, shall be, and are hereby, adjudged and declared guilty of felony, and shall suffer death as in cases of felony, without benefit of clergy.” Acts of similar import were passed in other States. Under this act, Philipse Manor-house was forfeited to the State about a year after the time of our narrative. The commissioners whose duty it was to dispose of confiscated property sold the house and mills, in 1785, to Cornelius P. Lowe. It underwent several transfers, but little change, becoming at length the property of Lemuel Wells, who 296 held it a long time and, dying in 1842, left it to his nephew. The town of Yonkers grew up around it, and on May 1, 1868, purchased it for municipal use. The fewest possible alterations were made in it. These are mainly in the north wing, the part added by the second lord of the manor in 1745. On the first floor, the partition between dining-room and kitchen was removed, and the whole space made into a court-room. On the second floor, the space formerly divided into five bedrooms was transformed into a council-chamber, the garret floor overhead being removed. The new city hall of Yonkers leaves the old manor-house less necessary for public purposes. May the old parlors, where the besilked and bepowdered gentry of the province used to dance the minuet before the change of things, not be given over to baser uses than they have already served.
Allusion has been made, in different chapters of this narrative, to the Hessians who daily patrolled the roads in the vicinity of the manor-house. This duty often fell to Pruschank’s yagers, the troop to which belonged Captain Rowe, whose love story is thus told by Bolton: “Captain Rowe appears to have been in the habit of making a daily tour from Kingsbridge, round by Miles Square. He was on his last tour of military duty, having already resigned his commission for the purpose of marrying the accomplished Elizabeth Fowler, of Harlem, when, passing with a company of light dragoons, he was suddenly fired upon by three Americans of the water guard of Captain Pray’s company, who had ambuscaded themselves in the cedars. The captain fell from his 297 horse, mortally wounded. The yagers instantly made prisoners of the undisciplined water guards, and a messenger was immediately despatched to Mrs. Babcock, then living below, in the parsonage, for a vehicle to remove the wounded officer. The use of her gig and horse was soon obtained, and a neighbor, Anthony Archer, pressed to drive. In this they conveyed the dying man to Colonel Van Cortlandt’s. They appear to have taken the route of Tippett’s Valley, as the party stopped at Frederick Post’s to obtain a drink of water. In the meantime an express had been forwarded to Miss Fowler, his affianced bride, to hasten without delay to the side of her dying lover. On her arrival, accompanied by her mother, the expiring soldier had just strength enough left to articulate a few words, when he sank exhausted with the effort.” The room in which he died is in the well-known mansion in Van Cortlandt Park.
The incident of the horse, related in an early chapter, has a likeness to an adventure that befell one Thomas Leggett early in the Revolutionary war. He lived with his father on a farm near Morrisania, then in Westchester County, and was proud in the possession of a fine young mare. A party of British refugees took this animal, with other property. They had gone two miles with it, when, from behind a stone wall which they were passing, two Continental soldiers rose and fired at them. The man with the mare was shot dead. The animal immediately turned round and ran home, followed by the owner, who had dogged her captors at a distance in the hope of recovering her.