A year after the building of the Peekskill house, Van Cortlandt seems to have been living in the older one at the Point, for it was there that Governor Tryon visited him in 1774, to secure, if possible, his interest for the King's cause in the approaching contest. In 1775, Phili]), the son of General Van Cortlandt, accepted a commission in the Continental army, an act which incurred the enmity of the Royalists against the whole family and led to f)itter persecutions. The Peekskill house was the one occupied by Mrs. Beekman during the war. On one occasion she faced a party of Tories, led by Colonel Fanning, and shar])ly rebuked them for calling her father "an old rebel." "I am the daughter of Pierre Van Cortlandt," she exclaimed, " and it becomes not such as you to call m}^ father a rebel." So she turned them out of the house. The little hamlet of Continental Village, on Canopus creek, just above Peekskill, was the place where the stores for the American army in the Highlands were accumulated. Gallows Hill, the place where Palmer the spy was executed, is a little north of a highway that intersects the Albany Post road, or Broadway, from the east ; near the southern side of that hill was the house to which Andre was taken after his capture.

3i8 The Hudson River

John Paulding, the captor, hved for a number of years after the e\'ent which made him famous on a farm on the Crom-pond road, about three miles east of Peekskill. A number of tales concerning him are current, for one of which we have space. He was attentive to a young woman named Teed whose brother was a lo}^alist. Upon one of his frequent \'isits to the homic of his lady-love, he was set upon by a number of Tories and forced to seek refuge in a barn, from which he fired upon his assailants, wounding some of them.