6 Long Islanders who lived through the fight for American independence

Floral-patterned bed curtains that concealed the silver when raiders approached Caleb Smith’s house in Smithtown.

A stoneware jug carried by a 14-year-old boy bringing water to the front lines of the Battle of Brooklyn.

A safe-conduct pass, under the signature of British Gen. William Howe, that enabled a female member of William Floyd’s family to travel from New York City to Huntington.

These are among about 100 artifacts featured in the Long Island Museum's semiquincentennial exhibition, "The Seat of Action: Long Island in the Revolution and Beyond." Collectively, they tell a story of how ordinary Long Islanders lived through eight years of occupation and uncertainty.

While we may recognize some of the names from modern-day parks or parkways, they were all real people — surviving in one of the darkest periods in the history of what are now Nassau and Suffolk counties.

"The unifying story behind this is the part of the story that’s hard to tell in a museum exhibit," said Joshua Ruff, co-executive director of the museum. "It’s about people struggling to live through this experience. That’s what most impressed me. Their endurance."

They endured an occupation that lasted from 1776 to 1783. A source for food and firewood for their troops in New York City, Long Island was of vital importance to the British. Which may explain why Long Island was occupied by the British longer than almost any areas of the 13 Colonies.

"It was devastating," said historian Natalie Naylor, professor emeritus at Hofstra University. "The occupation affected everyone, Loyalists as well as Patriots. The British and Hessians didn’t always distinguish."

Although no major battles were fought in what is now Nassau and Suffolk counties, "Long Island is a low-level war zone throughout the Revolutionary War period," said Peter-Christian Aigner, director of CUNY’s Gotham Center for New York History. "For the people living there, It’s a period of real hardship."

And who were those people? Most Long Islanders who lived through the Revolution left little or no record — particularly women, Blacks and Indigenous people. But here are six individuals who played significant roles through a time that, to paraphrase Thomas Paine, tried men’s souls.

Benjamin Tallmadge (1754-1835)

One of the prized artifacts in the Long Island Museum’s exhibition is a 1783 miniature of Col. Benjamin Tallmadge, the Setauket native who became one of George Washington’s most indispensable officers — "a remarkably dynamic and significant figure" according to Northport historian Richard F. Welch, author of the 2014 Tallmadge biography "General Washington’s Commando: Benjamin Tallmadge in the Revolutionary War."

The son of Setauket’s Presbyterian minister, Tallmadge was educated at Yale and joined the Continental Army at the outbreak of the war. He would go on to fight in major battles and lead successful raids on Long Island, while also coordinating Washington’s espionage activities — most famously, the Setauket-based network known as the Culper Ring, which not only provided the impetus for the popular 2014 AMC series "Turn: Washington’s Spies," but under Tallmadge’s direction, is seen as the precursor of modern intelligence gathering. "It’s the dawn of a civilian espionage network, which will one day lead to a national clandestine service ... the CIA," said Mark Jacobson, historian at the International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C. "Tallmadge was what we’d now call the case officer. The guy who’s running everything."

"Tallmadge creates for the Culpers what John LeCarre would much later introduce as `tradecraft,’ in his novels" said Welch. "A numerical system to identify the agents, invisible ink, noms de plume. All these things that are familiar now."

Although he remained in Connecticut after the war, becoming one of that state’s first congressmen, the Benjamin Tallmadge District of Scouting America's Long Island Council pays homage to this Long Island-born hero of the Revolution.

Austin Roe (1748-1830)

Although the series "Turn" raised the profile of the Culper Ring, one of its most prominent members, Austin Roe, was not a player in the AMC show. And recent research suggests that his primary occupation was as a woodworker (a "joiner," in 18th century parlance), not, as was widely thought, a tavern keeper.

While Roe may have been written out of the script, he shouldn’t be erased from memory. During the course of the war, he galloped frequently, back and forth, 55 miles through enemy territory, from New York City to Setauket. Under the guise of buying supplies for his business, he carried the coded messages that would eventually make their way to Tallmadge and Washington in Connecticut. "He put himself in harm’s way on a regular basis," said Bev Tyler, former president of the Three Village Historical Society.

Despite the TV series and a number of high-profile books, Roe and many of the rank-and-file members of the spy ring remain elusive figures. "We’re talking about shadows," Tyler said. "We don’t know much about the members of the Culper Spy Ring because they didn’t want people to know much about them."

Judge Thomas Jones (1731-1792)

A grandson of the Jones Beach namesake, Jones was a justice of the New York State Supreme Court at the start of the war. He was also, as historian Joseph S. Tiedemann wrote in a 2009 journal article, "an angry writer with an acerbic pen, damning the Presbyterians for starting the war and British incompetence and corruption for losing it."

Jones suffered for his outspoken views: Early in the war, he was imprisoned by the Patriots, and at one point later, was kidnapped out of his Massapequa manse by a raiding party. The judge was force-marched by night across Long Island and held in captivity in Connecticut until a prisoner swap was negotiated. Exhausted, he left for London in 1781, hoping to be granted clemency to return home once peace was restored. Instead, Jones died, an embittered exile.

"By strangers honoured and by strangers mourned," is the epitaph on his memorial in Broxbourne Church in Hertfordshire, England.

Jones left behind a manuscript that, 80 years later, in 1879, was published by the New York Historical society. His "History of New York During the Revolutionary War" is still considered one of the best accounts of the war from a Loyalist point of view.

Stephen Sayre (1736-1818)

Patriot. Provocateur. Rebel. Rake. Spy. Speculator.

At various points in his life, Stephen Sayre was said to have been all those things — and more. Born in Southampton, Sayre was descended from one of the families that had helped establish the settlement a century earlier. Tall and broad-shouldered, his appearance was often commented upon. "He was good looking, and he knew it," said Sarah Kautz, executive director of the Southampton History Museum.

Sayre attended Princeton, served as an officer in the French and Indian War, and then resettled to London, where the charismatic young American became the toast of Georgian society — until 1775, when he was thrown in the Tower of London, accused of plotting to kidnap King George III. The charges were dismissed and Sayre left for Paris, where he worked for Benjamin Franklin and the American delegation to the French court (letters between the two survive in Franklin’s papers). Sayre’s sometimes-unofficial efforts to help win American support in Europe took him as far as St. Petersburg, where he met Catherine the Great (and, it was rumored, attempted to seduce her).

Twice married, hounded by debts and allegations of shady dealings, Sayre eventually retired to his son’s estate in Virginia, where he died in 1818. While he never returned to live in Southampton, he occasionally visited his hometown. There, says Kautz, few cared about his roguish reputation. "He was a rock star, a celebrity. He was like the small-town guy who made it big."

Robert Townsend (1753-1838) and Liss (born circa 1763-died between 1806-1833)

Her name was Elizabeth — "Liss, for short — and at the start of the Revolution, she was an enslaved woman in the Oyster Bay home of the Townsend family (now Raynham Hall Museum).

But until the early 2000s, when Raynham Hall archivist Claire Bellerjeau found her among the papers of the Townsend family, Liss’ very existence, much less her harrowing story, was unknown to historians.

The son of Liss’ enslaver was Robert Townsend, with whom her fate would become entwined: Robert managed the family’s dry goods store in New York City. He also happened to be Agent 723 in the Culper Ring. In his business dealings, Townsend picked up important tidbits of intelligence that were then ferried — via Roe and a network of others — to Tallmadge and Washington in Connecticut.

Back on Long Island, Maj. John Graves Simcoe — commander of an elite Loyalist unit — had made the Townsends' home his winter headquarters. When he and his Queen’s Rangers left Oyster Bay in 1779, Liss went with them. "She was 16," says Bellerjeau. "Think about the agency and the courage she demonstrated, leaving behind her mother and sister and everything she knew." 

Liss had hoped for freedom. Instead, through a complicated series of events, she was eventually sold to a South Carolina slaveholder. Working through contacts in Charleston, Robert Townsend was able to smuggle her back to New York, where she was reunited with her son in 1787.

Although the date of her death is uncertain, Liss lived the rest of her life in Oyster Bay. As did Robert Townsend — even though he never revealed his role as a spy. Questions remain: Was Liss also an operative for the Culper Ring? And what exactly was her relationship to Robert? "When we do the Netflix version, it’ll be a romance," joked Bellerjeau, who chronicles Liss’ story in the 2023 book she co-authored, "Espionage and Enslavement in the Revolution:  The True Story of Robert Townsend and Elizabeth."

"The truth is, we don’t know," Bellerjeau said. "What's known is that, after the war, Robert became involved in the New York Manumission Society, whose efforts led to the emancipation of slavery in New York State. At last, in 1803, Liss legally became a free woman.