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Fraunces’ Tavern
Return of The Exiles
News of the signing of the provisional treaty reached this country in March, 1783, and the return of peace was celebrated throughout the land in April, but the British army remained in possession of New York City until the latter part of the following November. During this time they were very busy caring for those who had remained loyal to the crown, and now sought and claimed its protection. Thousands came into the city, and it is said that more than twenty-nine thousand loyalists and refugees (including three thousand negroes), left the State of New York for Canada, Nova Scotia and other British possessions, during the year. After the news of peace, there was little restraint on going in or out of New York, and many who had abandoned their homes when the British entered the place, or before, now prepared to return, but found when they came into the city that they could not obtain possession of their own property. While those who had thus abandoned their property in the cause of independence were anxious to return, many of those who had remained loyal to the crown were preparing to leave the city for new homes to be made on land provided by the government; and between these two classes there was no friendly feeling. Few, therefore, ventured to bring in their families, or even remain themselves, until they could obtain the protection of the American army.
General Washington and Sir Guy Carleton met near Tappan in May to arrange matters relative to the withdrawals of British troops in the vicinity of New York. On this occasion Sam Francis came up from the city to provide for the American officers and their British guests, whose bill, says a Philadelphia newspaper, amounted to the modest sum of five hundred pounds. Francis, after serving in the army, had gone back to New York on the news of peace to reclaim his abandoned property. When a dinner was to be served to do honor to the cause of liberty, there was no one among all the Americans who could so well do it as Sam Francis. He was well known to Washington, but whether his aid was sought on this occasion or whether he proffered his services we have no means of knowing. At any rate, we are confident that the thing was well and properly done. It is said that it was through the instrumentality of Francis’s daughter, who was housekeeper at Richmond Hill, the headquarters of General Washington, that the attempt on his life and that of General Putnam, called the Hickey plot, was discovered and frustrated. The house of Francis was one of those which suffered when H. B. M. S. Asia fired on the city in August, 1775.
Freneau thus speaks of it:
“Scarce a broadside was ended ’till another began again—
By Jove! It was nothing but fire away Flannagan!
Some thought him saluting his Sallys and Nancys
’Till he drove a round-shot thro’ the roof of Sam Francis.”