Cornelia Van Cortlandt, daughter of Lieutenant-Governor Pierre Van Cortlandt, occupied the Van Cortlandt Manor House with her husband, Gerard Beekman, during the Revolutionary days although, afterwards, they settled in the old Beekman homestead at North Tarrytown. She was a typical Van Cortlandt girl, as British officers and Tories ascertained to their discomfiture when they sought to annoy and terrify her. She was mistress when the Arnold treason was discovered. The confusion or uncertainty of facts with regard to the story of Andre and Arnold have caused many versions of it to be written. One aspect which none of them contradict, however, reflects with credit upon the Croton-on-Hudson patriots. The British warship Vulture anchored above Teller's (now Croton) Point, in plain view of this little hamlet. While the warship awaited Andre's arrival from New York (he had come to Dobbs Ferry by horse and was being rowed up the Hudson to the ship), a barge load of sailors from the Vulture rowed over to the Croton shore to reconnoitre,

1Miss Anne Stevenson Van Cortlandt died on June 5, 1940 in her ninetythird year.

Courtesy of Mr. Arthur E. Roberts

The Pierre Van Cortlandt Public School, Croton-on-Hudson Its erection was completed this year in-time for the opening of the school season in September.

to ascertain whether it was in the hands of the Whigs or the Tories. On that eventful September day in 1780, two Croton men, Moses Sherwood and John Peterson (the latter a colored man who had served in General Van Cortlandt's Westchester militia) , were making cider on the land now known as Orchard Hill and about where the Edward Howard Griggs residence stands. Although the Croton countryside was not occupied by troops, it was, like the rest of Westchester, troubled by the pests that kept farmers awake nights and demanded caution all day long--those two marauding bands of men, the "Cowboys" and the "Skinners." Prepared for them, Moses Sherwood and John Peterson had their muskets leaning against the nearest apple tree.