1779: Claudius Smith, Cowboy of the Ramapos

ExecutedToday.com ^ | January 22, 2020 | Headsman

[CheshireTheCat]

Claudius Smith, a feared Tory guerrilla during the American, was hanged in Goshen, N.Y., on this date in 1779.

“The Cowboy of the Ramapos” for his penchant for livestock-rustling in the Ramapo Mountains, Smith headlined a gang of pro-British criminals/partisans operating out of Monroe, N.Y., near the New Jersey border — a zone of dirty irregular warfare.

Quite a lot of legends apparently proliferated about this guy, including in his own time: one wanted poster described him as seven feet tall.

If you were a British loyalist in his neighborhood you might have figured him along the lines of an Anglo hajduk — the Balkan freebooters who straddled the line between social bandit and hero insurgent. To a Patriot, he was little better than a brigand, and not satisfied with riding off cattle and horses ventured also to invade farm houses for plunder. After one of his band’s deadly raids, Orange County Whigs complained to New York Gov. George Clinton, “we have not thought ourselves secure for a long time. We live so scattered that they can come in the dead of night to any one family & do what they please.”

So unsettled were the wartime frontiers that Gov. Clinton was notably unable to satisfy their petition for quite some time, and Smith’s raids, sometimes working in concert with the pro-British Mohawk commander Joseph Brant, continued to frighten those scattered revolutionists...

[ETL]

[faucetman]

Claudius Smith’s wife is an ancestor of mine.

[faucetman]

Correction: “WAS”

[ETL]

Claudius Smith’s wife was an ancestor of mine.

Well then, sorry. You gotta hang too.

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Claudius as a guerrilla leader

During the Revolutionary War, Claudius, along with several members of his family, including three of his four sons (William, Richard, and James), allegedly terrorized the New York countryside in an area formerly known as Smith’s Clove (presently Monroe), Orange County, New York, where David Smith and his family had moved about 1741 from Brookhaven.

Accounts differ on Claudius Smith’s size and stature. A 1762 French and Indian War muster roll lists him as 5’9”. However, a 1778 wanted poster for his arrest claims he stood nearly an unbelievable seven feet tall.[citation needed]

All accounts agree that Claudius was a Loyalist and took part in Tory raids alongside the Mohawk Indian Chief, Joseph Brant.[citation needed] Claudius was also aided in his anti-Whig activities by Fletcher Mathews, brother of David Mathews, the Loyalist Mayor of New York during the Revolution.[1] ...”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claudius_Smith

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:)