The following is an excerpt from Travels in North-America, in the years 1780-81-82 by François Jean de Beauvoir, Marquis de Chastellux (1734-1788), a French military officer who served during the American Revolution under General Comte de Rochambeau. Here he describes his travels in Dutchess County, including a visit to Fishkill Supply Depot.
The country is well cultivated; affording the prospect of several pretty farms, with some mills; and notwithstanding the [Revolutionary] war, Hopel township [Hopewell Junction in Dutchess County] is building, inhabited chiefly by Dutch people, as well as the greatest part of the state of New York, which formerly belonged to the republic of Holland, who exchanged it for Surinam.
My intention was to sleep five miles on this [north] side of Fishkill, at Colonel Griffin’s tavern. I found him cutting and preparing wood for fences; he assured me his house was full, which was easy to be believed, for it was very small. I continued my journey therefore, and reached Fishkill about four o’clock.
This town, in which there are not more than fifty houses in the space of two miles, has been long the principal depot of the American army [the Fishkill Depot]. It is there they have placed their magazines [gunpowder storage], their hospitals, their workshops, etc.
All these form a town of themselves, composed of handsome large barracks, built in the wood at the foot of the mountains; for the Americans, like the Romans in many respects, have hardly any other winter quarters, than wooden towns, or barricaded camps, which may be compared to the hiemalia [winter camps] of the Romans.
As for the position of Fishkill, that it was a post of great importance is evident from the campaign of 1777. It is clear that the plan of the English was to render themselves masters of the whole course of the North River [Hudson River], and thus to separate the Eastern and Western States.
It was necessary therefore to secure a post on that river; West-Point was made choice of as the most important to fortify, and Fishkill as the place the best adapted to the establishment of the principal depot of provisions, ammunition, etc.
These two positions are connected together. I shall soon speak of West-Point, but I shall remark here, that Fishkill has all the qualities necessary for a place of depot, for it is situated on the high road from Connecticut, and near the North River, and is protected at the same time by a chain of inaccessible mountains, which occupy a space of more than twenty miles between the Croton River and that of Fishkill.
[This refers to the rugged peaks of the Hudson Highlands, including Anthony’s Nose, Breakneck Ridge, and Mount Beacon. British troops marching north from occupied New York City (1776-1783) could not easily penetrate this area, safely isolating the American base at Fishkill while still remaining close to the Hudson River.]
The approach of winter quarters, and the movement of the troops occasioned by this circumstance, made lodgings very scarce. It was with difficulty I found any, but I got at last into a middling inn, [kept] by an old Mrs. Egremont.
[This was William Board’s Tavern (sometimes William Bord’s), and was located to the northwest of Fishkill in or near Low Point, now the hamlet of Chelsea in Wappinger, NY.]
The house was not so clean as they usually are in America, but the most disagreeable circumstance was the want of several panes of glass. In fact, of all repairs, that of windows is the most difficult, in a country where, from the scattered situation and distance of the houses from each other, it is sometimes necessary to send twenty miles for a glazier. We made use of every thing that came to hand to patch up the windows in the best way we could, and we made an excellent fire.
[When the Marquis returned two years later in December 1782 he wrote that he “alighted at Boerortts tavern, which I knew to be the same I had been at two years before, and kept by Mrs. Egremont.” He noted the house had “changed for the better” and served a good supper.]
Soon after, the doctor of the hospital, who had seen me pass, and knew me to be a French General-Officer, came with great politeness to see if I wanted any thing, and to offer me every service in his power. I make use of the English word doctor, because the distinction of surgeon and physician is as little known in the army of Washington, as in that of Agamemnon.
[In ancient Greek mythology and Homer’s epics, Agamemnon was the King of Mycenae and the commander-in-chief of the Greek forces in the Trojan War.]
We read in Homer, that the physician Macaon himself dressed the wounds; but our physicians, who are no Greeks, will not follow that example. The Americans conform to the ancient custom, and it answers very well.
They are well pleased with their doctors, whom they hold in the highest consideration. Doctor Craig, whom I knew at Newport, is the intimate friend of General Washington; and the Marquis de la Fayette had very lately an aid-de-camp, Colonel MacHenry, who the year before performed the functions of doctor in the same army.
[James McHenry (1753 – 1816) was an Scots-Irish American military surgeon, who represented Maryland in the Continental Congress. A signer of the US Constitution, Fort McHenry at Baltimore was named in his honor.]
[In 1776, he was appointed surgeon of the Fifth Pennsylvania Battalion, stationed at Fort Washington and was taken prisoner the following November when the fort was taken by Sir William Howe. While being held by the British, he witnesses and tried to raise the alarm about American prisoners being given little medical attention]
[He was paroled in January 1777, then released from parole in March 1778. George Washington made him an aide and secretary in May 1779. McHenry was present at the Battle of Monmouth. In August 1780, he was transferred to Lafayette’s staff, where he remained until he retired from the army in the autumn of 1781.]
The 21st [of November], at nine in the morning, the Quarter-Master of Fishkill, who had come the night before with the utmost politeness to offer me his services, and to place two sentinels at the door, an honor I refused in spite of every thing he could say, called upon me.
[The Quartermaster of Fishkill was another Scottish immigrant living in Quebec in 1775-1776, Deputy Quartermaster General Udney Hay (also spelled Udny, 1739–1806). On June 24, 1780, he was appointed the state’s agent to supply provisions for the Continental Army by New York’s first governor, George Clinton.]
After drinking tea according to custom, he conducted me to see the barracks, the magazines, and workhouses of the different workmen employed in the service of the army.
These barracks are wooden houses, well built, and well covered, having garrets, and even cellars, so that we should form a false idea, were we to judge of them by what we see in our armies, when our troops are barraquts [barracks].
The Americans sometimes make them like like ours, but this is merely to cover the soldiers when they are more within reach of the enemy. They call these huts, and they are very expert in constructing one and the other.
They require only three days to build the former, reckoning from the moment they be gin to cut down the trees; the others are finished in four and twenty hours. They consist of little walls made of stones heaped up, the intervals of which are filled with earth kneaded with water, or simply with mud.
A few planks form the roof, but what renders them very warm is that the chimney occupies the outer-side, and that you can only enter by a small door, at the side of the chimney.
The army has passed whole winters under such huts, without suffering, and without sickness. As for the barracks, or rather the little military town of Fishkill, such ample provision is made for every thing which the service and discipline of the army may require, that a prevote [a military magistrate, a provost] and a prison are built there, surrounded by palisades.
One gate only affords access to the enclosure of the prevote; and before it is placed a guard-house. Through the window bars of the prison, I distinguished some prisoners, with the English uniform; they were about thirty soldiers, or regimented Tories.
These wretches had accompanied the savages [sic, their Indigenous allies] in the incursion they had made by Lake Ontario and the Mohawk River. They had burnt upwards of two hundred houses, killed the horses and cows, and destroyed above one hundred thousand bushels of corn.
[Chastellux refers here to the brutal British, Loyalist and Indigenous raids of 1780, which culminated in the Battle of Klock’s Field and the widespread destruction of the Mohawk Valley. The prisoners he observed were Loyalist from Sir John Johnson’s King’s Royal Regiment of New York or John Butler’s Rangers.]
The gallows should have been the reward of these exploits, but the enemy having also made some prisoners, reprisals were dreaded, and these robbers were only confined in rigorous and close imprisonment.
After passing some time in visiting these different settlements [around Fishkill], I got on horseback, and under the conduct of a guard which the Quarter-Master gave me, I entered the wood and followed the road to West-Point, where I wished to arrive for dinner.
Four or five miles from Fishkill, I saw some felled trees, and an opening in the wood, which on coming nearer I discovered to be a camp, or rather huts inhabited by some hundred invalid soldiers.
These invalids were all in very good health; but it is necessary to observe, that in the American armies, every soldier is called an invalid, who is unfit for service; now these had been sent here because their clothes were truly invalids.
These honest fellows, for I will not say creatures, (they know too well how to suffer, and are suffering in too noble a cause) were not covered, even with rags; but their steady countenances, and their good arms in good order, seemed to supply the defect of clothes, and to display nothing but their courage and their patience.
Near this camp I met with Major Liman, aid-de-camp to General Heath, with whom I was particularly intimate at Newport, and Mr. de Ville Tranche, a French officer, serving as an Engineer at West Point.
[Major Daniel Lyman (1756-1830), of Connecticut, served in the battles of Capture of Ticonderoga and Fort Crown Point, and at the Battle of St. Johns, before becoming aide-de-camp to General William Heath.
[General William E. Heath (1737-1814) commanded forces from his home colony of Massachusetts during the last stage of the Battle of Lexington and Concord in April 1775. During the siege of Boston he devoted himself to training the militia. In 1776 Heath participated in the defense of the city of New York, and the Battles of Long Island, Harlem Heights and White Plains.
[In August 1776 he was promoted to Major General, but Washington doubted his abilities and posted him where no action was expected. In November he was put in command of forces in the Hudson Highlands.
[In January 1777, he was ordered to attack Fort Independence in the Bronx, to distract from Washington’s movements toward Trenton and Princeton. When this was botched and his troops routed he was censured by Washington and never given another command of combat troops. Heath was put in charge of John Burgoyne’s surrendered troops after the Battles of Saratoga.
[In 1780, he was returned to command of West Point in the Highland Department after Benedict Arnold‘s treason, which was discovered September 23, 1780, just weeks before the Marquis’ visit.
[Major Jean Louis Ambroise de Genton, Chevalier de Villefranche was a French military engineer who played an important role in designing the fortifications at West Point.]
General Heath had been informed of my arrival by an express, sent without my knowledge, by the Quarter-Master of Fishkill, and he had dispatched these two officers to meet me.
I continued my journey in the woods, in a road hemmed in on both sides by very steep hills, which seemed admirably adapted for the dwelling of bears, and where in fact they often make their appearance in winter.
We availed ourselves at length of a less difficult part of these mountains to turn to the westward and approach the river, but which is still invisible. Descending them slowly, at the turning of the road, my eyes were struck with the most magnificent picture I had ever beheld.
It was a view of the North River, running in a deep channel formed by the mountains, through which in former ages it had forced its passage.
Read more about Fishkill History.
Chastellux served as the principal liaison officer between General Comte de Rochambeau and George Washington. This excerpt, comes from George Grieve’s translation of the original french (London, 1787) in a “consolidated and economical form.” It was lightly edited for clarity and annotated by John Warren.
Illustrations, from above: François Jean de Chastellux portrait (detail) by Charles Willson Peale, ca. 1782 (Independence National Historical Park); a modern aerial view of the Fishkill Supply Depot’s 75 acres along Route 9 in Fishkill (courtesy Friends of Fishkill Supply Depot); Revolutionary War huts of the Massachusetts troops at the nearby New Windsor Cantonment; a Revolutionary War physician bandaging the foot of a soldier (Don Troiani, National Park Service); map of the Fishkill Supply Depot site by Paul Huey, 1968, modified by M. Byster in 2006 (Friends of Fishkill Supply Depot); and General William E. Heath by an unknown artist (NYPL).
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