By Vic DiSanto
David Williams was an unlikely hero, a Westchester County farm hand, poor and uneducated, who did the right thing at the right time, and influenced the course of history. Today David and his comrades, John Paulding and Isaac Van Wart, are mostly forgotten at best and incorrectly maligned as highwaymen at worst, but during their lifetime, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamiliton, and Lafayette praised the trio as virtuous patriots.
David’s parents had emigrated from the Netherlands and settled in the Saw Mill River Valley in Westchester County, where they anglicized their Dutch surname Willems to Williams. His father was not wealthy enough to purchase his own land, so he farmed as a tenant on Philipse Manor. David spent his youth on his farmer’s farm until the American Revolution erupted. On July 4, 1775, at the age of twenty, David enlisted in the Continental Army. He soldiered at Fort Ticonderoga before being sent to Canada to participate in the Siege of Fort Saint John and the occupation of Montreal. He then manned a bateau to deliver supplies to Colonel Benedict Arnold’s troops besieging Quebec.
His enlistment ended on January 1, 1776, and he returned to the lower Hudson Valley and volunteered for the New York State militia. He most likely had to remain north of the Croton River because his father’s landlord, Frederick Philipse III, was a staunch loyalist. The Westchester County militia participated in the Battle of Long Island and the Battle of Harlem Heights. David never went into detail about his military service, so we do not know if he was present at those engagements. Muster rolls do indicate that he did volunteer for the State Troop Regiment that fought at the Battle of White Plains in October 1776.
David did a nine-month tour in a State Troop Regiment in 1778, where he was stationed in the neutral ground, a twenty-five mile stretch of land between British forces south of the Bronx and Continental forces north of the Croton River. On one patrol he captured some Tory militia in Tarrytown and on another patrol, he rode on horseback with his company during a three-day snowstorm to raid Tory militia in the Bronx. The weather was severely cold and many of the soldiers were left unfit for duty. David’s feet were frozen, and he it took several months to recuperate.
In the spring of 1779, David moved to South Salem, where he boarded on Joseph Benedict’s farm. The Benedicts were well-known patriots in the area and David had served with Joseph’s son Ambrose and several Benedict cousins earlier in the war at Fort Ticonderoga and in Canada.
During the afternoon of September 22, 1780, six of David’s comrades arrived at the Benedict farm and asked him to join them on a trip to Tarrytown, where they hoped to recover some livestock that recently been stolen by the Tories before they were sold to the British. New York State law encouraged off-duty militia to recover stolen cattle.
This routine patrol turned into a rendezvous with destiny the following day when Williams, Van Wart, and Paulding stopped and searched the British spy, Major John André, dressed in civilian clothing and using an alias, riding south to New York City with intelligence concerning West Point hidden in his stockings. André and Benedict Arnold had been conspiring for over a year to turn over West Point and George Washington to the British. At the time, Washington was traveling to West Point to meet with Arnold.
André tried to bribe the trio for his release, offering them riches they could only dream about, which they refused, instead transporting their prisoner to the Continental Army. The following day, André revealed his identity in a letter to Washington.
The trio of rustic militiamen met with Washington, Hamilton, and were introduced to both the rank and file and the officers of the Continental Army at Tappan. They received a lifetime pension from Congress, a confiscated farm of their choice from New York State, and Washington presented them with the Fidelity Medallion, the first military decoration in United States history. They were lionized in ballads and the play “The Glory of Columbia: Her Yeomanry,” and given honorary commissions in the New York State Militia. The capture of André became a popular topic for artists, and later in life, John Henry Isaac Browere made life masks of the old patriots.
David married Nancy Benedict in 1782. They moved in 1805 to Broome. Williams died in 1831 and was interred at the Livingstonville Cemetery with military honors. In 1876 during the Centennial of the American Revolution his remains were moved to Rensselaerville in Albany County without the permission of his descendants. David had wished to be laid to rest in Schoharie County, and a little over a year later, on July 19, 1877, his remains were again moved to the Old Stone Fort and Nancy was reinterred there. On September 23, 1876, the largest crowd ever assembled in Schoharie at the time—some 10,000 people—witnessed the dedication of New York State’s David Williams monument, at the Old Stone Fort.
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