Incident at Peekskill Bridge

The following article was researched and written by Charles Nagy, a life member of the Van Cortlandtville Historical Society, and originally published in the June 2004 edition of the society’s newsletter, The Historical Key. The time element in the first paragraph has been updated.

It was 232 years ago this month that Hessian Capt. Johann Ewald, following orders issued by British Commander-in-Chief Sir Henry Clinton, carefully strode across the planks of the damaged “Peekskill Bridge” with a band of 40 jagers, undoubtedly under the eagle eyes of American sharpshooters atop nearby Gallows Hill. Ewald would note in his remarkably detailed diary almost immediately afterward that, upon crossing this bridge, “the mountains which lay beyond were so steep … the enemy was out of sight.”

An observer today can easily confirm what Ewald saw on June 3, 1779, by standing on the north side of the bridge over Peekskill Hollow Brook and looking up at the steep heights.

This little-known incident occurred on the northern fringes of Van Cortlandtville during the third and final invasion of the Hudson Highlands by forces representing British King George III.  The Peekskill Bridge, on present-day Gallows Hill Road three-tenths of a mile north of Oregon Road at the southern foot of O’Dell’s/Bald/Gallows Hill, was a critical choke point leading into the Highlands along the Post Road to Albany during the Revolutionary War.   

Clinton ordered Ewald and his green-and-brown-clad German marksmen into action that day “to drive away” the Americans on top of the hill who were “kill(ing) and wound(ing) several (British) men by good shooting.”  Dividing his light infantry into four groups of 10 men each, Ewald advanced up the hill. His easternmost troops found a footpath and surprised the Patriot riflemen from the rear, forcing the entire American party to withdraw. In the process, “an adjutant of (Patriot) General (Alexander) McDougall was killed.”

Ewald and his men then proceeded north up the Post Road to Continental Village and, finding not “a living soul in the place,” torched its barracks, the second incendiary incursion of the war into that military encampment/depot. American skirmishers would harass the Hessians, wounding one, as they withdrew to their original position south of the bridge. 

The rediscovery of Ewald’s diary after World War II, and its subsequent translation from German to English and publication in 1979, has given historians a glimpse at previously unknown slices of history. Indeed, historian Stuyvesant Fish, while addressing the Putnam County Historical Society in 1921, observed that “in March 1777, the British attacked ... Peekskill, which then centered about what is now known as (Van) Cortlandtville” and that, on Oct. 9, 1777, the British “destroyed the American works at Continental Village.”  Fish, not being aware of Ewald’s unpublished diary, went on to say that the aforementioned raid was the last time “Continental Village was … molested by (forces representing) the British.”

Today, thanks to Johann Ewald, a forgotten piece of local history has been brought to light again.