My father then reasoned with and shamed Colonel Holmes for allowing an old acquaintance to be robbed. He replied "That is the usage of war." Just before this I heard them say, "Give up your money, or you are a dead man!" I ran into the room in my night dress, and knocked up the muzzle of a gun pointed at my father's breast They took off all our bed clothes and most of our other clothes which we never got again. They enquired
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for my brothers and took one of them a prisoner. Then they enquired for the other bothers. I told them the others had gone to Bedford for a force to take them. They then left my fathers in a hurry and retreated. A few plunderers remained behind to take off what remained of our clothes My brother Samuel (a Lieutenant) was concealed between two beds and suffocated almost. He at last got his gun &c went out and fired at them. This alarmed them, and an officer came back, struck the plunderers with the flat of his sword and made them give up the plunder. They took off all our cattle but when my brother fired at them they abandoned the cattle. They then took the road towards Stanwich. This occurred in the last of the Revolutionary war.
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Peace was declared the very next year. Our cattle were taken three different times and every time re- -taken. They spared the tories when the Refugees came up, but plundered the whigs." [Does not the foregoing account of the plundering excursion to Middle Patent towards the close of the war relate to Colonel Hatfield's foray of July 1st 1780? J. M. M.] "Colonel Holmes insisted upon taking my father prisoner notwith- -standing all he could say, and sat down and wrote and gave him a parole requiring him to go down to Morrisania in ten days, but it being towards the end of the war he did go.