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Here the Van Cortlandt family found a safe asylum when the manor house on the Croton was no longer tenable. In March, 1777, General McDougal posted his advance guard here when the British took possession of Peekskill.
The general does not wish you ever to carry it from your quarters. Your most obedient servant, RICHARD PLATT, Aid-de-camp. FROM GENERAL McDOUGALL. Headquarters, Peekskill, January 15th, 1779. Your favours of the 11th and 12th, with their enclosures, came duly to hand. I am much mortified that Captain Brown should have merited your putting him in an arrest.
I am called off to court, and therefore, for this time, adieu. Peekskill, January 26th, 1779. Captain Wiley, of Learned's brigade, will hand you this. He brings with him forty men, I believe as good as any in the army. 'Tis the general's intention that Nixon's, Paterson's, and the late Learned's brigades, shall each furnish a party of sixty.
Misfortune of any kind aroused common interest and sympathy. A helping hand of neighborliness was always extended to those in trouble or distress. Peekskill was a happy community and presented conditions of life and living of common interest, endeavor, and sympathy not possible in these days of restless crowds and fierce competition.
Lafayette did his part thus. His troops, twelve hundred light infantry, the best soldiers in the world, he said at the end of the summer, had left Peekskill for a short expedition only. They had no supplies for a summer campaign, and seemed likely to desert him.
Some asked for volunteers and some for universal service and some for neither. The National Guard was a bone of contention, and when the hour struck it was the only bone there was. In June Jim Dyckman went to the officers' school of application at Peekskill for a week to get a smattering of tuition under Regular Army instructors.
The militia were mustered, and a few Continental troops that were here on their way to Peekskill prepared to receive them; but their number was so inconsiderable, and that of the enemy so large, with a formidable train of artillery, I had no hope of the place being saved. "I had, upon the first alarm, ordered all the stores in my charge to be packed up, ready for removal at a minute's warning.
On October 5, 1777, Sir Henry Clinton landed three thousand men on Verplanck's Point, apparently for the purpose of attacking Peekskill, but really with intent to deceive General Putnam, who was in command of the town, and for once this Connecticut Yankee was fooled into doing just what the enemy wished, for he drew his troops back to the hills and did not know until too late that the English forces, under cover of a friendly fog, had been ferried across to the west shore for the purpose of attacking Fort Montgomery.
Your most obedient servant, FROM MAJOR PLATT, AID TO GENERAL McDOUGALL. Peekskill, January 14th, 1779. The general has received yours, and directs me to inform you that such assistance will be granted as is necessary for the protection of the country and your honour. He desires that no expedition be set on foot till you hear further from him.
Between three and four thousand men embarked at New York and landed on the 5th of October at Verplanck's Point on the east side of the Hudson, a short distance below Peekskill, upon which Putnam retired to the heights in his rear.
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