Experiencing Independence in a Vanished House: Eyewitness Accounts from Mt. Pleasant, New York

This paper examines Mt. Pleasant in New York, an estate where a crossroads of voices existed during the American Revolution. Due to the demolition of the house one hundred years later, the house and its inhabitants—a gardener and his wife, British Generals James Howe and Henry Clinton, prisoners-of-war the Baron and “Mrs. General” Fredericke Reidesel and their family from Germany, General George Washington, Captain Nathan Hale and Major John André, among others—and the things they experienced there, have not received much attention from scholars. This paper centers on the crossroads of activity at Mt. Pleasant through the eyes of its residents and visitors. What can we learn about this long-gone site on the East River through the diary of Lady Reidesel, the notes left behind by the gardener, John Hannah, the material culture saved from the house in museum collections, and British accounts of the hanging of the young spy Nathan Hale from Connecticut? Mt. Pleasant, no longer extant, played an important role in the American Revolution and deserves such attention.