He was j^eculiarly anxious to obtain an office, no matter what, nor on what terms ; he was particularly zealous in his desire that he might administer testoaths to his neighbors;'' and it is more than pi-obable that he was, in fact, a " friend of the Government," in disguise, notwithstanding all his official disclaimers.'* He had been in command of one of the skeleton Companies of Minute-men of which the skeleton Regiment of Colonel Samuel Drake had been nominally composed'^ -- it is more than probable that one of those two blank Commissions, for Captains of Companies, which had been issued in advance of the formation of those Companies,'" was held by him ; and it is far from impossible that the men whom he and his Subalterns had evidently on hand, when he applied to the Committee of Safety for admittance into the service of the Continent, in a different Regiment, had been really enlisted for the re-inforcement of the former Regiment, then at Hoern's Hook.

He evidently completed his Company, in season to take a place, as the second Company of the apportionment to Westchester-county, in the First Regiment of the New York Line, in the Continental Army of 1776, commanded by Colonel Alexander McDougal, of which it was the Sixth Company, Isaac Titus having been his First Lieutenant, Isaac Ruyckman, Junior, his Second Lieutenant, and Benjamin Jones his Ensign.'' But, like Captain Hyatt, Captain Steenrod had deceived his men and the Congress, in his enlistment of his command for six and twelve months instead of for the entire period of