Historic Rivertowns

Captain George Hurlbut and the Action at Tarrytown, July 15, 1781

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Westchester County history in Tarrytown — French Sergeant’s guard of the Soissonnais Regiment defending the American supplies at Tarrytown.

December 20, 2020

By Erik Weiselberg, Ph.D.–

Our installments so far have featured native sons and daughters of Westchester County, but during the war Americans and Europeans from all over came to Westchester. This installment features Captain George Hurlbut, a native of Connecticut who demonstrated tremendous bravery defending military supplies during an encounter with British naval forces that has come to be called, “The Action at Tarrytown.” The legacy of Captain Hurlbut’s heroism is affixed on an easily overlooked memorial that now stands in front of the Tarrytown Village Hall and two Westchester Rivertowns – Dobbs Ferry and Tarrytown – were linked by Hurlbut’s actions.

Note to Readers: For further information on the Action at Tarrytown, view the video recording of Revolutionary Tarrytown: Traitors and Spies, Patriots and Allies, British boats and Hessian Ghosts!

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On the evening of Sunday, July 15, 1781, the sound of cannon and musket fire rang through the air, alarming the combined French and American camp that stretched across most of present-day Greenburgh. At Dobbs Ferry, Captain George Hurlbut and Colonel Sheldon’s 2^nd Continental Dragoons sprang into action. A native of New London, Connecticut, Captain Hurlbut was described by nineteenth-century historian R. B. Coutant of Tarrytown as, “a young man of good presence, more than ordinary intelligence, quick to think and act; in brief, a typical New England youth with New England spirit back of him.” At age nineteen George Hurlbut fought at the Battle of Bunker Hill and later became a Captain in George Washington’s “Life Guards,” or 2^nd Continental Dragoons, under command of Colonel Elisha Sheldon of Lyme, Connecticut. Captain Hurlbut was about to play an important role in a little-known but significant encounter called “The Action at Tarrytown.” This was the first combined combat operation of the French and American allied armies in the Revolutionary War.

On the night of July 15, 1781, five American river sloops carrying four eighteen-pound cannons, flour and other supplies from West Point and the Hudson Highlands had just arrived in the Tappan Zee. Tarrytown, with its harbor and the Martling-Requa Dock, afforded a site upriver from the British naval presence from which to supply the over 10,000 soldiers of the French and American armies that had been encamped at the Philipsburgh Encampment since early July. That evening, a small fleet of British ships consisting of two sloops of war, two tenders, and one galley, came up the Hudson River with the intention of intercepting the American supply ships and destroying the stores. The British ships, with a fair wind and tide, moved quickly up the river, passing fortified American positions at Dobbs Ferry after sunset. The previous night, July 14, the British took a vessel of a “Captain Dobbs,” William Dobbs of Fishkill, laden with 1,000 rations of bread for the French Army, some clothing intended for Sheldon’s regiment, and some passengers.

As soon as the American sloops in the Tappan Zee discovered the British enemy, they headed for the shore at Tarrytown, but three or four of the vessels ran aground one hundred yards from the dock. As the Americans frantically unloaded the transports, the British ships dropped anchor and began a heavy cannonade, and under cover of this barrage they sent two gunboats and four barges to destroy the American sloops and carry off the supplies. The only troops at Tarrytown were a sergeant’s guard of twelve French infantry soldiers from the Soissonnais Regiment, but they kept up such a lively and effective fire, they prevented the British gunboats from landing.

Alerted to the situation, Col. Sheldon at Dobbs Ferry immediately sent his mounted dragoons, including Capt. George Hurlbut’s company, to Tarrytown about 7 miles to the north. Sheldon’s men dismounted and assisted with the retrieval of the supplies from the boats. Capt. Hurlbut and twelve men of Sheldon’s dragoons took a position on board one of the sloops to protect the valuable stores from the approaching British gunboats. Armed only with the swords and pistols of cavalry soldiers, Capt. Hurlbut kept his men concealed until the enemy were alongside, at which point he ordered them to fire. In response the British fired back, killing one of his men. Now surrounded, Capt. Hurlbut ordered his men to jump overboard and make for the shore.

The British immediately boarded the grounded sloops and set them on fire, but the heavy musket volleys kept up by Sheldon’s dragoons and the French sergeant’s guard on the shore forced the British to retreat before they could take or damage the supplies. The fire on the sloops, however, threatened to destroy the supplies onboard, so several men watching from shore jumped into the river and swam toward the burning sloop, including Captain Hurlbut, Captain-Lieutenant John Miles of the 2^nd Continental Artillery, and Quartermaster Lieutenant Joseph Shaylor of the 4^thConnecticut Infantry. When they reached the burning sloop, they extinguished the fire, thus saving the vessels and most of the cargo. The British ships remained in the river for the next several days before French and American artillery fire from Tarrytown and Dobbs Ferry compelled them to leave. While Capt. Hurlbut had been in the water, however, he received a wound from a musket ball through the thigh.

It is possible that Capt. George Hurlbut remained in Tarrytown as he recovered from his wounds. According to local lore, General Washington visited a sick officer several times at the Van Tassel Inn, later called the Jacob Mott House, an establishment run by John Van Tassel that stood along the Albany Post Road (Broadway) in Tarrytown (at the corner of today’s Hamilton Place and the site of the Landmark Condominium). Although Capt. Hurlbut was perhaps more wounded than “sick,” it is possible that he recovered at the house and was visited by General Washington, who was then stationed during the Philipsburgh Encampment at his headquarters in what he called “Dobbs Ferry,” at the Appleby House (in today’s Ardsley, the current site of the WFAS radio station).

Apparently, Capt. George Hurlbut recovered from his wound but either the lingering effects of it or some new malady caused him unbearable suffering and put his health in mortal jeopardy. Capt. Hurlbut explained to General George Washington in a letter on March 26, 1783, “The wound which I received almost two years ago is at length healed, but the disagreeable symptoms with which I have been afflicted during the winter past forbid me to expect a return of health.” One account claims that Capt. Hurlbut, having recovered and resumed his command, re-opened the wound when he fell from his horse. Another account claims that he was taken to the military hospital at West Point the day after the action and recovered, but that he contracted a disease from a camp prostitute. Whatever the cause of his lingering malady, after months of suffering Capt. Hurlbut requested permission to return home to New London, Connecticut, “to wait a decision of my fate.”

By mid-April of 1783, Washington arranged for Capt. Hurlbut to travel by sea (his wound or illness prevented him from travelling by land) to his home, but he survived only until May 8. A simple tombstone over his grave at New London, Connecticut bears the epitaph, “The dust of CAPTAIN GEORGE HURLBUT, who died May 8, 1783, in the 28th year of his age, in consequence of a wound he received in the service of his country. Here lies a youth of valor, Known and tried, Who in his country’s cause, Fought, bled, and died.”

The misery of the Hurlbut family extended far beyond the war years, however. On November 12, 1788, George Hurlbut’s sister, Anna Welsh, a widow of Captain Jonathan Welsh, asked George Washington for the compensation she felt was due to Hurlbut by virtue of the resolution passed by the Continental Congress on September 16, 1776, which provided bounty lands for officers and soldiers who enlisted for the duration of the war, or were discharged by Congress, or to family members of officers slain by the enemy. As a captain, Hurlbut would have been entitled to a land grant of 300 acres. But the paymaster of Sheldon’s Dragoons initially rejected the application, claiming that Hurlbut had died before the close of the war. Anna Welsh complained that Hurlburt, “having suffer[e]d the excruciating pain beyond the power of Language to express,” it was only right that he receive, “so Small a recompence for a life spent & lost in the service of I am sorry to say an ungratefull Country.” After many unsuccessful attempts, in 1834 an Act of Congress allowed his estate five years’ full pay for his service as a captain of dragoons.

When the depot plaza at the Tarrytown riverfront was being redone in 1899, civic-minded residents intended to honor the bravery of Captain George Hurlbut at the site of the action. On July 15, 1899, a bronze tablet was placed in the Tarrytown railroad station, a location that would have been roughly the location of the Action at Tarrytown at a time before landfill extended the shoreline to its present extent.

The special significance of the Action at Tarrytown has several layers. It was the first example of French American military cooperation in combat. As French officer Abbé Robin pointed out, “This first feat of the French arms in America gave the English some idea of what they were to expect from the united efforts of a whole corps.” In addition, the Action at Tarrytown and the presence of the combined French and American armies in Westchester, just outside British-held New York City, forced British General Cornwallis to divert his attention from his southern campaign, and even to gather his troops into one, for him, unfortunate location on the Yorktown, Virginia peninsula. He planned the concentration of his army here for possible embarkation to New York, but instead they were trapped and defeated by the French and American armies on October 19, 1781.

For his courage during the Action at Tarrytown on July 15, 1781, General Washington praised the “gallant behavior and spirited exertions” of Capt. George Hurlbut and the other officers, “in extinguishing the flames of the vessels which had been set on fire by the enemy and preserving the whole of the ordnance and stores from destruction,” acts which “entitle them to the most distinguished notice and applause.”

Bronze Tablet Memorial to The Action at Tarrytown and Capt. George Hurlbut, 1899, outside Tarrytown Village Hall. Photo by Erik Weiselberg.

After successfully placing the Revolutionary Soldiers’ Monument at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in 1894, R. B. Coutant of Tarrytown led a campaign to honor Capt. George Hurlbut, whom he felt was overshadowed by the attention given to John Paulding in the village. The tablet was originally placed on the wall of the Tarrytown train station, the approximate site of the Action at Tarrytown, a location that would have been under water in the days before the shoreline was filled in. Coutant and friends raised money by subscription for the bronze tablet, which was dedicated on July 15, 1899, on the 118th anniversary of the event. Attendees included descendants of Revolutionary War-era families such as the Requas, Sees, Pauldings, Buckhouts, Ferrises, Hamiltons and others. The tablet was moved to its present location when Tarrytown’s new village hall opened in 2009.

Detail of the 1899 bronze tablet, showing the 2^nd Continental Light Dragoons, or Sheldon’s Dragoons, in which Capt. George Hurlbut commanded a company, rushing from their post at Dobbs Ferry to Tarrytown to defend American supply sloops under attack from British ships.

French Sergeant’s guard of the Soissonnais Regiment defending the American supplies at Tarrytown. David R.Wagner, “SOISSONNAIS REGIMENT, JULY 16, 1781,” Hudson River Valley Institute, Dr. Frank P. Bumpus Collection.

On the night of July 15, 1781, a twelve-man sergeant’s guard of the Soissonais Regiment stationed at Tarrytown fired upon British ships seeking to capture or destroy supplies onboard American supply ships. The French guard was part of the combined French and American armies numbering over 10,000 men that camped across lower Westchester for several weeks in the summer of 1781. Their constant heavy musket fire held the British off long enough for Sheldon’s dragoons, including Capt. Hurlbut, and others to arrive and save the supplies. The Action at Tarrytown was the first combat operation of the combined French and American armies.

Erik Weiselberg, Ph.D. is the Principal Historian of Revolutionary Westchester 250, Village Historian of Irvington, and NYS DAR Outstanding Teacher of American History

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