Madison County Genealogical Society

Minutes of the Meeting - June 8, 2017

 

The June 2017 meeting of the Madison County Genealogical Society was held at the Edwardsville Public Library on Thursday, June 8, at 7:00 pm.

President, Robert Ridenour, called the meeting to order.

The following is the Treasurer's report for the month of May:

GIFT MEMBERSHIPS AVAILABLE

Do you have a family member that is interested in (or even obsessed with) genealogy? A membership in the Madison County Genealogical Society would be a very thoughtful gift. A gift card will be sent to the recipient of any gift membership.

The following memberships are available:
Individual/Family Annual Membership $25.00
Patron Annual Membership $35.00
Life Membership $300.00

Contact our Secretary, Petie Hunter, at [email protected], about a gift membership.

June Meeting

 

On June 8, 2017, a program titled Revolutionary Intelligence was presented by Lola DeGroff. Lola retired from the Department of Defense following more than 20 years of government service. She is the Vice Regent of the Illinois DAR, member of and past Regent of the Silver Creek DAR Chapter, past State President of the Illinois Society US Daughters of 1812, treasurer of the Shawnee Chapter Colonial Dames of the XVII Century, and a member of several other lineage organizations.

 

George Washington.  Commander and Chief of the Continental Army; Father of our Country; and super sleuth?

 

Spying is not a description normally used to describe Washington, but it is true that he was a skilled manager of intelligence — adept at deception operations and a skilled propagandist.

 

Much earlier than the Revolutionary War, the British colonial government sent, then 21 year‑old, Washington into the Ohio Territory to find out about the strength of the French military and how the French might respond if British expanded into the region.  Evidently Washington used his socializing with French officers to gain useful intelligence. 

 

Consequently, George Washington was quite a believer in the importance of intelligence and used ten percent of his military funds on such activities.  He recruited both Tories and Patriots, interrogated travelers to gather intelligence information, and sent scores of agents on intelligence and counterintelligence missions.  George Washington preferred to get more than one source of information – often assigned two different spies to get the same information.

 

He took a very hands‑on approach to intelligence gathering, even going so far as composing letters of instruction to his agents.  Instructing his generals, Washington said to “leave no stone unturned, nor do not stick to expense” in gathering intelligence. 

 

Washington knew that spying was a field fraught with risk. Stories of what happened to men like Nathan Hale, who was captured and later hanged, had to have weighed heavily on Washington’s mind, as Hale had been following the general’s orders. Washington knew that sending scouts and military officials close to enemy lines normally did not offer insight into troop movements. With the U.S. forces small in numbers, Washington knew that civilians could be called upon to help.  Women, children, and African Americans were often recruited as spies.  At that time, they were not considered as smart as white men — so if caught they might not understand what the messages they were carrying meant and would not add more info if interrogated. 

 

During the Revolutionary War period, the spying efforts pretty much fell under three main methods:

 

         Invisible Ink

         Codes and Ciphers

         Other Methods

 

Let us explore these for a moment.  Dr. James Jay, the brother of John Jay, developed a synthetic stain that used one stain for writing a message and a second stain to develop it.  This was considered to be much more secure.  In fact, George Washington suggested that reports could be written in the invisible ink “on the blank leaves of a pamphlet ... or a book of small value.”  His recommendation was to “write a letter ... with some mixture of family matters and between the lines and on the remaining part of the sheet communicate with the stain the intended intelligence.” 

 

Codes and Ciphers.  John Jay and Arthur Lee devised dictionary codes where numbers referred to the page and line in an agreed‑upon dictionary edition where the unencrypted message would be found.

 

Charles Dumas designed a type of diplomatic cipher that the Continental Congress and Benjamin Franklin used in communicating with agents and ministers in Europe.  This system substituted numbers for letters in the order in which they appeared in a preselected paragraph of French prose containing 682 symbols.  This method was more secure than the standard system where letters “a” through “z” are replaced with numbers 1 through 26 because each letter could be replaced with more than one number.

 

The first recorded Patriot intelligence network was a secret group of about 30 in Boston as early as 1774 known as the “mechanics.”  The name meant skilled laborers and artisans.  They organized resistance to British authority and gathered intelligence.  One of the group’s members was Paul Revere.  He arranged for the warning lanterns to be hung in the Old North Church to alert patriot forces at Charleston.  He then set off on his famous ride.

 

Serving with distinction at the Battles of White Plains, Brandywine, and Germantown, Continental Dragoon Benjamin Tallmadge was also the mastermind behind the Culper Spy Ring, one of the most effective espionage networks of the American Revolution. The New York native first organized the cabal in late 1778 at the behest of General George Washington. Operating under the pseudonym John Bolton, he recruited childhood friend Abraham Woodhull and several other acquaintances to provide intelligence from in and around British-controlled Long Island. Tallmadge instructed his operatives to communicate via a complex system of dead drops and coded messages. Once smuggled out of the city, the documents would be ferried to Tallmadge’s coastal Connecticut headquarters by a fleet of whaleboats operated by an agent named Caleb Brewster.

 

Despite operating from the heart of enemy territory, Tallmadge’s Culper Ring managed to gather intelligence for some five years without losing a single agent to the British. One of their most significant achievements came during the summer of 1780, when they informed Washington of a British plan to ambush French forces gathered at Newport, Rhode Island.

 

The Culper Ring included a mix of military and civilians. A tip might have originated with Robert Townsend, or “Samuel Culper, Jr.” a loyalist coffee-shop owner and society reporter, who often passed along scoops he overheard. A message then might have been communicated by Anna Strong, who would hang clothes on her clothesline in a specific manner. The Culper spy ring also used a numerical substitution code developed by Major Benjamin Tallmadge.  He took several hundred words from a dictionary and several dozen names of people or places and assigned each a number from 1 to 763.  For example, 38 meant attack, 192 stood for fort, George Washington was identified as 711 and New York was known as 727. 

 

In 1780, the Culper Spy Ring learned that General Henry Clinton was about to launch an expedition to Rhode Island. Tallmadge contacted General Washington who ordered his army into an offensive position. This caused Clinton to cancel the attack.

 

One female member of the Culper Ring was known only by her codename 355.  She was arrested shortly after Benedict Arnold’s defection in 1780 and evidently died in captivity.  The number 355 meant “lady” in the Culper code.  It is thought that she may have come from a prominent Tory family with access to British commanders.  355’s recruiter praised her espionage work, calling her “One who hath been ever serviceable to this correspondence.”  355 was one of several females who hung around Major Andre.  Benedict Arnold questioned all of Andre’s associates after he was executed and was suspicious when 355, who was with child, refused to identify her lover. Did you know that there is a DAR chapter in Illinois named Culper Ring Agent 355? Additionally, the TV show “Turn” is based on this ring.

 

Other Methods include political actions, covert actions, counterintelligence, deception, propaganda, etc.  One example was known as a “blind drop” — a hollow tree, or other place agreed to ahead of time where one person would leave a message and it would be picked up by someone else later.  Many British communications were intercepted as well. 

 

You may remember a few years ago when Richard Reid was arrested for trying to blow up a plane with explosives hidden in the heel of his shoe.  Back in Revolutionary War times, spies also used special boots made with a fake heel to hide messages. 

 

One woman in Philadelphia hid messages in her younger son’s fabric covered buttons.   The young man would walk into camp to visit his older brother, the soldier, and lose his button that contained notes on British attack plans.

 

Another agent, Anna Strong, signaled a message’s location with a code involving laundry hung out to dry.  A black petticoat indicated that a message was ready to be picked up and the number of handkerchiefs identified the cove on Long Island Sound where the agents would meet.

 

In 1776, prior to the Battle of White Plains, General Washington was eager for information about the British but men he had sent on reconnaissance missions had not returned. 

 

Nine‑year‑old Ariel Bradley had two brothers fighting for the Patriots.  They volunteered their little brother to gather information.  Young Ariel took an old horse, put a load of grain on its back and took off, riding within British lines while supposedly going to the mill.  As was the plan, Ariel was arrested but played “the country bumpkin” when interrogated by the British.  Evidently he played the part well, as he was released.  He estimated the enemy’s force by counting the number of tents and got a good mental picture of the layout of the forces along the river.  He reported his findings directly to General Washington. 

 

The next day the Americans and British battled to a draw.

 

Nancy Morgan Hart, a tall, muscular cross‑eyed woman, disguised herself as a man and went to Augusta, Georgia, to get intelligence on the British forces.  She was successful and later, when a group of Tories revengefully attacked her home, she captured them all. 

 

Of course the British had their spies also.  They were known to insert letters into the hollow quills of large feathers, sew them into buttons or insert them into silver balls the size of a rifle bullet.  The logic behind these balls was that the spy, if captured, could ingest them. 

 

Benjamin Franklin, appointed by the Second Continental Congress to the Committee of Correspondence — the forerunner of the CIA, spent considerable time in France during this time period.  Ben’s son, William, was a Loyalist who spied on his father, telling the British all about his father’s activities. 

 

General Washington made frequent use of deceptive operations by allowing fabricated documents to fall into enemy hands; had procurement officers make false purchases and even had fake military facilities built.  He managed to convince the British that his 3,000‑man army outside Philadelphia was forty thousand strong! 

 

The good general even recognized the value of an important hostage.  In 1782, Washington approved a plan to capture the son of King George III when he came to visit New York.  The plan failed because the British intelligence discovered the plan and increased security around the prince. 

 

One person well remembered for his spying was James Armistead, a slave.  At Yorktown, he joined Lafayette’s service with his master’s permission, crossed into Cornwallis’ lines in the guise of an escaped slave.  Cornwallis recruited him to return to the American lines as a spy.  Lafayette gave him a fabricated order that supposedly was destined for a large number of patriot replacements — a force that did not exist.  Armistead delivered the bogus order, claiming to have found it along the road.  Cornwallis believed him and did not learn he had been tricked until after the Battle of Yorktown.  The Virginia Legislature granted Armistead his freedom in payment for his service.

 

As you have heard, General George Washington certainly appreciated the value of intelligence and recruited and ran many spy rings, devised secret methods of reporting, and analyzed the raw data gathered by his agents. 

 

By the end of the war, several prominent Americans — Robert Morris, John Jay, Robert Livingston, and John Adams — were using other versions of numerical substitution codes.

 

James Lovell figured out the encryption method British commanders were using to communicate with each other.  When a dispatch from Lord Cornwallis in Yorktown to General Henry Clinton in New was intercepted, it enabled Washington to gauge how desperate Cornwallis’s situation was and to time his attack on the British lines.  It was not long before another decryption by Lovell warned the French fleet outside of Yorktown that a British relief expedition was approaching.  The French scared off the British, sealing victory for the Americans. 


We do not know how many spies served during the American Revolution.  Washington used a “secret service fund” to pay for intelligence services and did not identify the recipients in his journals, stating “The names of persons who are employed within the enemy’s lines or who may fall within their power cannot be inserted.”

 

Washington was an excellent spymaster. He learned his spycraft while serving in the French and Indian War. Spies were always paid in hard currency (gold and silver). The British had more spies in operation because they could pay more.

 

Historians believe that Washington’s ambitious use of gathering and analyzing data and his use of spies and other actions played a major role in securing our freedom from the British.

 

This presentation was well received and provoked many questions.

 

Back