Very interesting. I’m going to watch the Netflix series on this spy ring. Maybe my ancestor was a spy, sure sounds like it. The British were full of drink and food and were playing cards when the messenger arrived.
Yeah, that message was probably on it’s way to the colonial army before the British finished playing cards. :p)
Turn is about the Culper spy ring, so named by Washington for Culpeper county, Va which Washington surveyed as a young man.
The members of the Culper ring were everyday people who had access to information through their everyday lives.
One was the owner of a loyalist paper prominent in New York.
Another was the writer for the society section of that newspaper. Both men had access to high ranking loyalists and British officers.
Anna Strong would hang her laundry in a certain manner to let her contact know when a message was dropped and at which pre-arranged drop site it would be found.
The Culper ring
https://www.mountvernon.org/george-washington/the-revolutionary-war/spying-and-espionage/american-spies-of-the-revolution/
Washington was the consummate spy master.
He set about creating an intelligence organization that was on the cutting edge of spycraft of the day.
Knowing that invisible ink was visible when heat was applied, held over a lit candle, Washington drafted James Jay (brother of John Jay) to develop an invisible ink that only became visible when a chemical re-agent was applied (think the secret msgs on the Declaration of Independence in the movie National Treasure).
The colonial intelligence service designed ever evolving codes that the British never seemed to catch up to.
After the war one British intelligence officer stated “Washington did not really outfight the British. He simply out-spied us.”
The spies were so vital to the Independence cause that their names were kept secret long after the war.
Washington the spymaster
https://www.mountvernon.org/george-washington/the-revolutionary-war/spying-and-espionage/george-washington-spymaster/