Knapp and Totten (?) then pushed for the Widow Griffen's, nearly two miles off by the said road. When they raised the hill in the road a little west of, and near to the Widow Griffens house they halted and sent forward a flag demanding an instant and unconditional surrender. The Ameri =can officer in command finding himself surprised by a superior force hesitated an instant when the flag re-iterated his summons for immediate surrender promising in that case quarters and good treatment, but that otherwise they must abide (take) the consequences. The American officer then ordered his men who had turned out to ground their arms. They were of the Rhode Island regiment, and mostly, if not all, blacks. Two of the blacks refused, said they would defend themselves, and instantly fired upon Knapp's horse, who were advancing upon the house, wounding Totten in the toe. The black soldiers were now charged pursued through the fields and slaughtered without mercy. About thirty days before this attack, Totten had come up to Colonel Greene's with a flag, when for some reason he was coolly and slightingly received, placed under a negro guard, and felt so much neglected and insulted that at parting he let fall this threat: 'Colonel Greene shall before long repent the treatment I have this day received'. The French army when they retired from White Plains (in 1781 probably) left some sick soldiers in North Castle Church and a surgeon of one of the French regiments went down daily to see them, returning at night to his quarters in Yorktown some where north of the Croton and near Pines Bridge. On his return from one of these visits he was waylaid by James Totten, James Tillott and two others at a place not more than a mile from Pines Bridge in a straight line to the south.