Colonel Henry Ludington: A Memoir

by Willis Fletcher Johnson

Fredericksburgh and the neighborhood were frequently traversed by officers and bodies of troops, especially in making the journey from Hartford and New Haven to Fishkill. Washington himself often made that journey, and was a familiar guest at Colonel Ludington’s house. On one occasion Washington and Rochambeau, on their way from Hartford to Fishkill, called there for dinner.

In the journal of Captain William Beatty, of the Maryland Line, the following entry occurs under date of Sunday, September 20, 1778:

“We marched about four miles past Fredericksburgh, where we lay until the 22nd, on which day our division marched about 12 miles towards Fishkill. At this place we lay until the 28th, when we marched to Fishkills.” It seems probable that on this march the troops, presumably under Baron De Kalb, passed by Colonel Ludington’s house, and were halted there for the two days mentioned. If so, their stopping there and paying in scrip for the food supplied by the Ludingtons form the basis of the tradition in the Ludington family, that at one time Colonel Ludington received so much depreciated currency from the soldiers that he scarcely knew what to do with it, and finally stored it under the floor boards of his house for safe keeping. Mrs. Ludington collected it from the soldiers in her apron, and got her apron running over full. Long afterward Colonel Ludington burned a trunkful of the stuff, as worthless litter.

The Ludington house, standing, as before mentioned, on the great highway from Hartford to the Hudson, was often resorted to by travelers as an inn, and while the British held New York City, the greater part of all travel between New England and the other colonies passed that way. William Ellery, of Massachusetts, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, traveled that road and stopped at Colonel Ludington’s in the fall of 1777, on his way from his home at Dighton, Massachusetts, to York, Pennsylvania, to attend the session of the First Continental Congress. He was accompanied by the Hon. Francis Dana and his servant, whom he calls, in his whimsical diary, respectively Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, while to himself he gives the title of Pill Garlick. Under date of “Road to Danbury, Nov. 5th,” he records:

We intended when we reached Litchfield to have gone to Peekskill, and there crossed the North River, but when we got to Danbury we were dissuaded from it by the Person at whose house we breakfasted, who told us that there were Tories and Horse stealers on that road. This account occasioned us to take the Fishkill road. Accordingly we set off, baited at the foot of Quaker Hill, about 7 miles from Danbury, and reached Colonel Ludington’s 8 miles from the foregoing stage at night. Here mens meminisse horret! We were told by our landlady the Col. was gone to New Windsor, that there was a guard on the road between Fishkill and Peekskill, that one of the guard had been killed, about 6 miles off, and that a man not long before had been shot at on the road to Fishkill not more than three miles from their house and that a guard had been placed there for some time past, and had been dismissed only three days. We were now in a doleful pickle, not a male in the house but Don Quixote and his man Sancho and poor Pill Garlick, and no lodging for the first and last but in a lower room without any shutters to the windows or locks to the doors. What was to be done? What could be done? In the first place we fortified our Stomachs with Beefsteak and Grogg and then went to work to fortify ourselves against an attack. The Knight of the woeful countenance asked whether there were any guns in the house. Two were produced, one of them in good order. Nails were fixed over the windows, the Guns placed in a corner of the room, a pistol under each of our pillows, and the Hanger against the bedpost, thus accoutered and prepared at all points our heroes went to bed. Whether the valiant Knight slept a wink or not, Pill Garlick cannot say, for he was so overcome with fatigue, and his animal spirits were so solaced with the beef and the grogg, that every trace of fear was utterly erased from his imagination and he slept soundly from evening till morning, save that at midnight, as he fancieth, he was waked by his companion, with this interesting Question, delivered with a tremulous voice, “What noise is that?” He listened and soon discovered that the noise was occasioned by some rats gnawing the head of a bread cask. After satisfying the Knight about the noise, he took his second and finishing nap.

Again, in Colonel Israel Angell’s diary, cited by Mr. Patrick, we find:

29th Nov, 1779. This morning after breakfast I got my horses Shodd, Crost the North River over to fishkill. Went on for Danbury, Col Greene and Mr. Griffen. Greene went for Springfield so we parted about six miles from fishkill, but Still could get nothing for our horses, till riding ten or twelve miles, there Dind and fed our horses, then went to Colo Luttentons Tavern among the Mountains 21 miles from fishkills there put up for the night. One of Col. Livingston’s Officers came to this Tavern in the Evening on his way home on a furlough.

Nov. 30th, 1779. Left my lodgings this morning after breakfast went on for Danbury.

It is probable, indeed, that for a time Washington himself made Colonel Ludington’s house his headquarters. In the late summer and fall of 1778 he had his army in that region, and made his own headquarters at Fredericksburgh, as related by Irving and Lossing. He wrote, under date of Fredericksburgh on September 12 and 23, describing the disposition of his army, “the second line, with Lord Sterling, in the vicinity of Fredericksburgh.” He was there with the exception of a week from September 12 to the end of November. Part of the time his headquarters were at the house of John Kane—also spelled Kain and Keane. This house stood on the site since occupied by the house of Mr. Charles H. Roberts, at Pawling, and was a large house, connected by a stone-walled passageway with another large stone building, the ground floor of which was used as a store and the upper story for dwelling purposes. The land was a part of Beverly Robinson’s estate. Kane, of whom mention has already been made in Colonel Ludington’s correspondence, was a Tory and was particularly obnoxious to the patriots. Under the law of October, 1779, his estate was confiscated, and he, a dignified and venerable magistrate, was tied to the tail of a cart and drummed out of town.