NJ History Nerd-Nerdette Luncheon, The 76 House, Tappan, NY, 12Dec-23

Nerd/Nerdette Luncheon at The 76 House, Tappan, NY, ...on Tuesday, December 12, 2023, 12:30-2:30PM....The Bogertmans, Breurs, Dyksens, Links

CONTEXT

John Breur made plans for “our second annual Nerd Board Meeting” at the historic 76 House, which we again so thoroughly enjoyed.  Good food and good conversation with good friends.  We missed Jim and Ruth Aupperlee as well as Probie Mark Yost and his  wife.  

Wilma and I left abit after 10:00am and planned a 1.5 hour ride to arrive, but we got there quite early, say 11:30 or thereabouts. 

The deWint House, Washington's HQ 1780 and 1783

Wilma and I drove past the 76 House, just down the street maybe ¼ mile to the deWint house where Washington had his HQ in 1783.  We walked around the deWint house taking pictures of the plaques.  The small carriage house was open so we walked through the museum, taking pictures of the artifacts and portraits. 

from the Internet...

Built in 1700, the stone and brick house was owned by Patriot Johannes DeWint during the Revolution and is the oldest surviving building in Rockland County. Commander in Chief George Washington was a guest in the south parlor twice in 1780, as well as in 1783. While there in the fall of 1780, he signed the death warrant of British Major John Andre, who was involved with Benedict Arnold in the plot to surrender West Point to the enemy. During his stay in 1783, Washington entertained British General Sir Guy Carleton to negotiate the vanquished army’s evacuation of New York City. Today, the house’s two first-floor rooms have been restored and furnished to reflect the period of Washington’s occupancy. An adjacent 19th-century carriage house contains displays of artifacts uncovered at the site during archaeological digs, as well as items related to Washington, André, and Arnold.

Click here for a link to review the National Park Service application and read within (or below) the history of the home..... chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://npgallery.nps.gov/pdfhost/docs/NRHP/Text/66000568.pdf

DESCRIBE THE PRESENT AND ORIGINAL (IF KNOWN) PHYSICAL APPEARANCE The DeWint House was built by Danuel DeClark in Tappan, New York in 1700. This date is set in brick numbers, over a foot high, in the west side of the house. The house is one and a half stories tall, with a steeply-pitched, shake-covered roof and wide eaves. The rectangular structure measures approximately 23' wide and 47' in side length. The north, east, and west walls are constructed of rubble stone masonry for the height of the first story. The entire west wall and the north and south walls above the first story are built of brick in alternating rows of headers and stretchers. The house has a central hallway and stair which runs the width of the house, dividing each floor into two rooms. The simple doorway on the front (west) facade is flanked by two 14 light casement windows on either side. The door on the rear (east) facade is flanked by one window on a side. Directly above these windows are a pair of dormers, which also have 14 light casement windows. There is a third door, in the west corner of the north end of the house. This door formerly opened into a one- story kitchen addition which was removed between 1850 and 1856. It was within this small apartment that the DeWint family resided during Washington's stays. There is one other window, similar to the rest, which is located at the second story level in the south end. Located diagonally above this window is a peephole which has been bricked in. The house has two internal gable end brick chimneys and a root cellar which can be entered only at the south end of the house. The interior of the house, which is maintained in a 1780 appearance, has a kitchen on the north, with a brick floor, and in the south end, the room which was used by Washington as his headquarters. This room has a wooden floor, an ornate, Delft-tiled fireplace, and the table upon which Andre's death warrant was signed. There is also a trapdoor in this room which opens into the root cellar and a former escape tunnel. A simple stair case leads to the second floor which has two rooms, both used as bedrooms. The pegged and whitewashed beams are exposed here. Two skylights were cut into the west slope of the roof at the second floor level, to provide the necessary heat to keep the house dry. The interior walls are of stone, plastered over. The only other feature which dates from the historic period is the original well, to the west of the house, which is still operative. The DeWint House is maintained as a Masonic shrine on a 12 acre tract of land. The grounds are kept landscaped, and the only other structure is the former carriage house, now the Masonic museum and caretaker's residence. Built circa 1800, the two and a half story, white clapboard and brick structure housed the stables on the lower floor, carriages on the upper floor and hay in the loft.

STATEMENT OF SIGNIFICANCE The DeWint House, in Tappan, New York sheltered General George Washington upon several occasions during the last years of the American Revolution. Washington's most notable stay was that of September 28 to October 7, 1780, during the trial and execution of Major John Andre, the British spy, which were held in Tappan. Built in 1700, in the style of New York Dutch architecture, the one-and-a-half story house with its steep-pitched roof and overhanging eaves was visited by the American commander-in-chief on three other times. Located at the intersection of Oak Tree Road and Livingston Avenue, the DeWint House has been restored and is maintained as a Masonic memorial to George Washington. HISTORY About eighty years before Andre1 s capture, Danuel DeClark built what is now called the DeWint House. A sometime brewer, justice of the peace, and captain of the militia in what was then part of Orange County, DeClark erected in 1700 a one-story stone and brick house, which had a central doorway in both the east and west fronts. The house possessed two notable exterior features: a very steeply pitched roof and the year "1700" in nearly two-foot high brick numbers in the wall of the west front. A one-story kitchen stood at the north end of the building. By 1746, Rem Remson, of Brooklyn, owned the building. He sold it in the same year to Johannes DeWint, a native of St. Thomas Island in the West Indies. As he still owned the house when . Washington^ appeared-,' it has become known as the DeWint, rather than the DeClark house. \ Washington accepted th6 hospitality of the DeWint family at four different times in i the closing years of the Revolution. He first resided there between August 8-24, 1780, I His third .yj. si t4Joccur.red over May 4-8, 1783, when he met and conferred with Lieutenant General ^ir Guy Carletdn in order to discuss the British evacuation of New York City ' and the exchange of prisoners. That conference resulted in some agreement, but left , much unsettled. Washington's last sojourn in the DeWint house occurred between November 11-14, 1783, when a snowstorm forced him to halt in Tappan while on his 'way from Hackensack, New Jersey, to West Point.

None of the preceding lodgings in the DeWint House has attracted as much attention as has Washington's second visit between September 28 and October 7, 1780. It was then that Andre suffered the usual fate of spies. Andre and Major General Benedict Arnold almost successfully arranged the British commander at West Point on August 3, 1780, had been in correspondence with the British commander-in-chief, Sr. Henry Clinton, since May 1779- On the night of September 21, 1780, Clinton's Adjutant General, Andre", landed from the Vulture in the Hudson River, then undoubtedly met and conferred with Arnold, and sought to return to New York during the night of the 22. He was apprehended on the morning of the 23rd and taken to West Point on September 26, and from there was shortly transferred to Tappan and imprisoned in a tavern. The latter still stands, but is greatly changed from the time of Andre's incarceration. Washington, shocked by what he termed""Treason of the blackest dye...," considered Andre a spy from his capture until his death. He did not regard him as "a common prisoner of War" and instructed that he be"...most closely and narrowly watched" in ordering Andre to be brought to West Point from Tarrytown on September 25- On September 29, the day after the commander-in-chief had arrived at the DeWint house, Washington ordered that a board of fourteen general officers should consider AndrVs case. The following excerpt from Washington's orders of September 29 to the Board of General Officers underscores his own attitude apropos of Andre. Major Andre, Adjutant General to the British army will be brought before you for your examination. He came within our lines in the night on an inter- view with Major General Arnold, and in an assumed character; and was taken within our lines, in a disguised habit, with a pass under a feigned name and with the enclosed papers concealed upon him.3 The board, headed by Major General Nathanael Greene, met at the Dutch church (demolished in 1836) in Tappan on September 29. It took the generals, to whom the spy admitted that he had not landed on September 21 under a flag of truce, little time to find the British soldier guilty of spying. Consequently, the board recommended his excution.

Washington accepted the board's findings and confirmed the sentence. Because of the strenuous efforts by the British to save Andre, Washington postponed the young man's demise. But on October 1, Washington refused to act upon Andre's request that he be shot rather than hanged, which was the customary fate of spies. The execution occurred on October 2. During it the American commander labored in the DeWint House. He was considering major military problems, matters that ...were vastly greater questions in his mind, most surely, than that of the just fate of an attractive young spy who had come within the American lines to bargain with a traiter.

Additional Pictures from the deWint Museum:

Lunch at The 76 House...

This corner table was President Richard Nixon's favorite. 
President Jimmy Carter and Associated Press CEO ?Lowe were guests as well. 

We headed to the Tavern around 12:15 or so, meeting John and Karen just pulling into the lot.  We were sure glad John made reservations when we saw the CT Peter Pan passenger bus in the lot.

We toasted Jim Aupperlee and Ruth.  Link and Bogertman discussed the probationary period of Breur, Dyksen and Yost, possibly 5 years or other such discipline.  Possibly a History IQ Quiz.

We greeted Judy, the Hostess we met last year and she said Owner Rob Norden was available to give us some more information about the Tavern again. We had four questions:

1.     Where did Andre stay while a prisoner at the Tavern? (Rob said he stayed literally in the room where our dining table was located, which was the rear, outside of the Tavern and said from his room here he could see the gallows being built? (Bill is unsure of this since history accounts said he went pale when he first saw the gallows upon being taken to his execution site.)

2.     Confirm Hamilton stayed upstairs? Yes, Alexnder Hamilton stayed upstairs for almost 2 years)

3.     President Richard Nixon’s table corner? Yes the corner table was Nixon’s favorite.  President Jimmy Carter also ate there along with his good friend, AP President Lowe.

4.    Major John Andre’s toe? Rob recounted his story of Major John Andre’s casket maker’s mistake causing his toe to be removed and placed in a small wooden casket.  As part of the War of 1812’s negotiations, Andre’s remains to be dug up and reinterred in Westminster Abby, London, England.  The tiny casket was actually placed in the Tavern on a fireplace mantle by the County Historical Society member, which took Rob by surprise.  It was then taken back by the keeper of the toe, who was a hoarder and it has since never been located. (I don’t believe it). Even Rob noted “the questionable provenance.

 

After lunch I took pictures of many of the Tavern’s artifacts, paintings, maps, charts and portraits.

General Henry Knox

General John Glover

Colonel Alexander Hamilton

"You Sir, Are A Spy."

NOTE:

1. Yes, Washington had dinner here on occasion, although his HQ was at the deWint house just down the road.  His personal chef at the deWint House was Samuel Fraunces, the NYC Tavern owner.

2. The long, horizontal bar post was where patrons tied their horses.  It was located on the outside of the tavern and was mounted at the bar during an old renovation.

We ate delicious food (fish and chips, meatloaf, chicken pot pie, pot roast).  Gary was able to use his $25 gift certificate from last year’s “double tap tip” mistake.  We also discussed possible 2024 visits including (Link-Newburgh, NY -Washington HQ,  Bill-Stoney Point Battlefield, Breur-nuthin, Dyksen-nuthin.)  Weak, pathetic responses from the newbie probies caused consternation and great disappointment for Link and Bogertman. However, we still, all thoroughly enjoyed our time together.