Search -
The battle of Harlem Heights, September 16, 1776
The battle of Harlem Heights September 16 1776 Author:Henry Phelps Johnston Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Ill POSITION OP THE TWO AKMIES, SEPTEMBER 16TH COLONEL KNOWLTON AND HIS RANGERS. "YTTITH the foregoing review of the earlier ' ' events of this campaign... more » we reach the 16th of September, when the Battle of Harlem Heights occurred. A brief chapter on the position of the two armies on the morning of the action will assist us in following the details. It is important, first, to ascertain where the British were encamped on the evening of the 15th. We left them at dusk along the Bloomingdale cross road — in what is now Central Park, on the line of Ninety- first to Ninety-sixth Street. Sir William Howe reports that, "the position the king's army took, on the 15th in the evening, was with the right to Horen's Hook, and the left at the North River near to Bloomingdale." It is this left which we must fix accurately. " Near to Bloomingdale " might be too indefinite for our purposes, did not other references fully explain Howe's meaning. On the maps of the period " Bloomingdale " is marked by name at a point near the house of Charles Apthorpe, which stood, until pulled down in 1891, just below the cross road or south of Ninety-first Street a little west of NinthAvenue. That section was known generally as Bloomingdale, but the Apthorpe mansion, the Striker place, just above on the Hudson, and the cross road gave it some centrality. Adjutant-General Kemble is more definite. He says: " The advance of our army marched to the Black Horse, and across from thence by Apthorpe's House to North River and had very near cut off Mr. Putnam's retreat, who brought off the Rebel rear guard from New York, most of whom and their troops in general got off by the North River road." Captain Hutcheson confirms him in his letter of September 24th, 1776, with the statement that " our advanced post is at t...« less