It is widely known that Cooper was mainly indebted to Chief Justice John Jay for the facts of Crosby's career which led to the writing of the " Spy," that Jay was in error in supposing that Crosby's operabut it appears tions took him occasionally within the British lines in New York the counCity. The fact is, he devoted himself quite exclusively to historian of try districts. Mr. Joseph Barrett, the well known local Westchester our Town of Bedford, in an address delivered before the account of thorough very a County Historical Society in 1879, gave mpermanent and great The Crosby's life and patriotic services.

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terest of the subject justifies the following extended reproduction, copied from the digest of Mr. Barrett's address in Seharfs History: Crosby was born in Harwich, Barnstable Comity, Mass., January 4, 1750, and at the breaking out of the Revolution was a shoemaker at Danbury, Conn. He had previously been a tanner and currier. He was an ardent patriot, and enlisted before the battle of Lexington in Benedict's company, of Waterbury's regiment, which was attached to that branch of the Canada expedition of August, 1775, commanded first by Schuyler and then by Montgomery. His term of enlistment expiring, he returned to Danbury after the occupation of Montreal, and then traveled over Dutchess and Westchester Counties as a peripatetic shoemaker. Thus he not only acquired that intimate knowledge of the country that was to prove so valuable to the American cause, but also was brought into contact with the Whigs and Tories, the bumCowboys, and Skinners "who infested the Neutral Ground between the lines of mers, raiders,armies. the opposing His first work as a spy was accidental. Determining to re-enlist, he tramped southward toward the American forces, through Westchester County, in September, 1776, and on the way met a Tory, who fell into the belief that Crosby was one of his own stamp.