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Those Despicable Deadbeats

Before the British get the boot, they run up a tab by `buying' booty from Long Islanders

By George DeWan | Staff Writer

Lt. Col. Banastre Tarleton brought his Loyalist British Legion into Smithtown on a foraging expedition in November, 1778. He left town a few days later, despised and reviled as an arrogant and ruthless interloper. Also, a cheapskate.

Chief among those who spat on Tarleton's memory was tavern-keeper Epenetus Smith, who was left with an unpaid bill for £250 6s 11d (250 pounds, six shillings, 11 pence). Not only did Tarleton and his men drink Smith's rum, eat his food and sleep in his beds, they rode away with 40 gallons of rum, 42 sheep, five beef cattle, 16 turkeys, three geese, one hog, 40 bushels of Indian corn and a host of other items. They even took two petticoats and one silk handkerchief. And not a penny did they pay.

This was typical of how the British and Loyalist regiments treated the residents of Long Island, especially those in Suffolk County, where Patriot sentiment was strongest. It is true that the British sometimes paid for what they took, but often they did not.

What the British left behind was a paper trail of IOUs. Nowhere is this better documented than in a remarkably well-preserved 222-year-old account book kept by the innkeeper Epenetus Smith -- known as 'Netus to his friends -- a great-grandson of Richard (Bull) Smith, the founder of Smithtown. The account book has been preserved by the Smithtown Historical Society. Smith wrote boldly on the first page:

The following is an account of ye articles with which his Majesties Army has been supplied from time to time by ye Inhabitants of SmithTown on Long Island; & for which they have received no reward at all. And however large this amount may seem, certainly know it falls greatly short of ye real value, with which his Majesties Officers & Army has been supplied from time to time.

Some of the handwriting is hard to read, but the accounts by 53 claimants, sworn to before a judge, total more than 4,000 British pounds. Smith was by far the major creditor, with IOUs totalling 577 pounds.

But Smith was not the only object of Tarleton and his men. In a theft that seems to have cemented Tarleton's reputation as one of the vilest Britishers ever to have passed through Smithtown, they took 6,396 feet of board from the Presbyterian Church, valued at 127 pounds, 18 shillings four pence. In a wryly sarcastic bit of understatement, the judge who witnessed the oaths of debt, Gilbert Smith, wrote after this entry: ``This is a fact too well known to want any attestation.''

In Smithtown, the 24-year-old Tarleton was just getting warmed up, for he later would become a merciless cavalryman with a notorious reputation. In 1780, he earned the nickname ``Bloody Tarleton'' after allowing his troops to butcher men who had already surrendered at Waxhaws, S.C. Born of wealthy Liverpool parents, Tarleton was of below-average height, red-haired and muscular, and he gained a reputation as a brilliant tactician, but at any cost. ``As a man, he was cold-hearted, vindictive and utterly ruthless,'' wrote historian Christopher Ward. ``He wrote his name in letters of blood all across the history of the war in the South.''

Both before and after Tarleton, 'Netus Smith's tavern was known far and wide for the quality of its food and drink and its overall hospitality. So it is no surprise to see some of the best-known names among the occupying British and Loyalist officers in Smith's book. Among them was Gen. William Tryon, who spent a good part of August, 1777, moving about Suffolk County, forcing residents to take an oath of loyalty to King George III. On Aug. 1 and Aug. 3, he ran up a bill for 27 pounds, 9 shillings sixpence for pasturing 40 oxen, the use of horses, and carrying away a ton of hay and three bushels of oats.

In addition to running the tavern, Smith was a member of the town board for four decades, then supervisor for two terms and town clerk for seven terms. Smith, who was born in 1723, was a rabid Patriot, and, despite his age, he enlisted as a ``minuteman'' on April 7, 1776. Although never paid for his losses during the Revolutionary War, he remained an innkeeper until he died in 1803.

Another well-documented example of non-payment is right next door in Huntington. In the Appendix to Volume Three of the ``Huntington Town Records,'' compiled in 1887, there is a 48-page list that is introduced: ``A True Copy of Receipts Signed by Officers of The British Army &c. [etc.] as followeth not paid.'' The British took horses and hay, sheep, oxen, cattle, oats, Indian corn and wood, all for the use of his majesty's troops.

Many years later -- 1976 to be precise -- the flamboyant Huntington Town historian, the late Rufus Langhans, came up with a novel way to dramatize the Bicentennial. Dressed in white knee-length breeches, immaculate white hose, ruffled shirt, green fringed hunting jacket and black tricorn hat, he flew to London to present a bill for $15,000 to the British chancellor of the exchequer to cover 200-year-old unpaid debts incurred by British troops quartered in Huntington during the Revolution.

Langhans claimed to have found British IOUs totaling 7,132 pounds in a town vault, and he converted the amount to 1976 dollars. In fact, the total was 7,249 pounds, 9 shillings sixpence, and Langhans didn't discover it at all: It was first documented in a book published in the 1820s by the early Long Island historian from Huntington, Silas Wood, who lived through the Revolution as a young boy.

In 1976, not surprisingly, the chancellor rejected Huntington's demand. But then, a few weeks later, in a gesture of amicability notably absent two centuries earlier, two high school students from Huntingdon, England, presented the Town of Huntington with a token payment of three pounds, all in coins in a small, red drawstring bag. The payment was accepted and the town withdrew the claim.

At 1976 exchange rates, the payment amounted to $6.72.