“For attempting to Carry Intillegence to the Enemy”

As I quoted back here, on 12 Oct 1776 the New London committee of correspondence detected two women trying to carry secret letters into British-occupied New York.

Due to the quirks of weekly newspaper publication, the first report of the arrest of those women didn’t appear in New London’s newspaper but on 17 October in the Independent Chronicle of Boston:

Last Saturday two Women were apprehended at New-London and properly secured, for attempting to convey a Number of Letters to the Commanders of the Foreign and British Mercenaries there, containing a very particular Account of the Situation of this and the adjacent Towns, with their present state of Defence.—

Some of them were wrote by a certain John Hill, now a Prisoner in this Town.

A week later, the Independent Chronicle updated its readers:

Last Tuesday, the Wife and Daughter of one John Hill, mentioned in our last to have been apprehended at New-London, for attempting to convey Intelligence to the Enemy at New-York, were brought to this Town, and committed to safe Custody.

That meant the Boston jail. As I said yesterday, I suspect the older woman was named Elizabeth Hill, and the younger might have been John Hill’s daughter by a previous marriage.

In his 1858 History of Eastern Vermont, Benjamin H. Hall stated:

Hill, on the 4th of June [1776], petitioned for his release, alleging as reasons the dying condition of his wife, and the starving state of his mother and daughter.

Hall presumed that request was granted because “it is well known that cruelty was not a characteristic of the conduct of the Americans in the war of the revolution.” 

In fact, Hill’s wife and daughter remained in custody for months.

TOMORROW: A look inside the jail.