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York, appeared before Cary Ludlow, surrogate of the city, and declared that they were
well acquainted with the handwriting of John Andre\ formerly Capt. of the 26th
Regiment, and since Adjutant General, deceased, and they believed that the before-written
instrument, purporting to be his last will and testament, was his own and proper hand-
writing. Their declaration is signed by the Surrogate.1
The original will cannot now be found in the New York Surrogate's
office.2
For forty years the grave on " Andre Hill" remained undisturbed.
Soldiers of the Revolution, who dwelt in Tappan, and peaceful citizens who had
witnessed the death of its inmate, oft told the story to the generation born after
the second war with Great Britain. No spot in the county, indeed in the State,
was better known or more accurately identified.8 In 1820, the head and footstones
of Captain Partridge's visit had disappeared, and but a heap of stones and a peach
tree planted by the hands of a sympathizing woman, marked the spot. In 1821,
at the instance of Mr. James Buchanan, British Consul at New York, the Duke of
York—Queen Victoria's uncle, and Commander of the British Army—asked
permission of Governor De Witt Clinton to remove the remains to England.
This being granted4 a British man-of-war, commanded by Captain Paul, conveyed
the Consul and a small party of friends up the Hudson to Dobbs' Ferry, on
August 10, 1821. It was a significant fact, that no British armed vessel had been
in those waters since the close of the Revolution (nor has any such been there
since). At Dobbs' Ferry the party disembarked and proceeded to Tappan by way
of Sneeden's landing, opposite the Ferry, and were met by Rev. John Demarest,
of Tappan, owner of the land where was the grave. Mr. Buchanan's account
says:
We proceeded up a narrow lane to the opening into the field, which led to an
elevated spot6 on the hill, commanding a view of the surrounding country for miles.
General Washington's headquarters was fully in view. The field was cultivated, but
1 N. E. Genealogical and Antiquarian Register, Vol. vi. (January, 1852). Collateral descendants of Andre1 are
(1809) living in Bngland. I have just read a letter from Mr. John Lewis Andr£, the grandson of his uncle
and executor, who resides at Horsham, Surrey. Andre's sisters lived for many years at No. 23 Circus,
Bath, Bngland, where Louisa Katharine died, on Christmas Day, 1835, eighty-one years old, and Mary
Hannah, on March 3, 1845, at ninety-three (of the third sister, Ann Marguerite, I have no details). The
two were buried at Bathhampton, near Bath.
Notes and Queries (London), January 15, 1870, says that Andr6, while a prisoner at Albany (?), painted the
portraits of his parents, and that this painting is in the possession of the family of Major General Cuyler,
of TJitenhage, Cape Colony—that General Cuyler's father (?) had been Mayor of Albany. This cannot be
verified.
2 Mr. John Schuyler, the former Secretary of the New York Society of the Cincinnati, makes a singular error in
saying the_ will was filed at Tappan. (History of the Society, New York, 1886.) I have copied the will
from Lossing.
* It was reserved for an anonymous writer of 1890, in compiling a railroad guide, to gravely assure the public
that " contrary to the general belief, Andre was not hanged, but shot" (!)—and for the Rev. S. Reynolds
Hole (Canon Hole), of England, to repeat the blunder in 1898. As the latter writer visited the United
States in 1803, his error is the more remarkable. Such assertions are fairly entitled to Mr. Boffin's
characterization of '' scarers in print."
4 When it is considered that the war of 1812 had ended only six years before, and that its memories, with those
of 1776, and of the kidnapping of our seamen and their cruel treatment in Dartmoor Prison, culminating
in the "Dartmoor Massacre," were fresh in the minds of our people, I think this consent was mag-
nanimous. 6 Captain Partridge says, page 83.
Greenburgh Public Library, The Land and People of Greenburgh
