Culper Ring

The Culper Ring was organized by Benjamin Tallmadge under the orders of General George Washington in 1778. The Ring was tasked with infiltrating British controlled New York City and reporting troop dispositions and intentions. The Ring conducted covert operations until the end of the American Revolutionary War.

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After the battle of Monmouth in late June of 1778, British forces under General Henry Clinton retreated to Sandy Hook, New Jersey. From there they took ship for New York City which they had occupied for almost two years. General Washington was well aware of the need for good intelligence, and he asked one of his officers, Major Benjamin Tallmadge, to recruit people who could be trusted to collect it in New York City.

Tallmadge enlisted the services of Abraham Woodhull, a farmer from Setauket, NY Robert Townsend, a Quaker dry-goods merchant in Manhattan, agreed to supply the information, and a Setauket tavern keeper named Austin Roe served as the courier. Once Townsend’s reports reached Setauket, blacksmith Caleb Brewster and his men ferried it across Long Island Sound in a whaleboat where Tallmadge’s dragoons waited to carry it to Washington’s headquarters.

Two years earlier the British had caught Nathan Hale with drawings of their fortifications and had hanged him. Perhaps with Hale in mind, Washington made sure that these spies had more support. Through Tallmadge he provided them with codes, invisible ink, dead drops, and aliases.

Woodhull became known in dispatches as Samuel Culper Sr., and Townsend was referred to as Samuel Culper Jr. Secrecy was so strict that Washington himself didn’t know the identity of the operatives. In the case of Culper, Jr., neither did posterity until two sets of letters, one from Townsend and one from Culper, Jr., were compared in 1939.

One of those who aided the Culper Ring is the operative known only as “355,” the group’s code for “lady.” 355’s identity and her fate have been the subjects of a great deal of speculation.

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Reference books on the subject are:

George Washington’s Spies on Long Island and in New York, by Morton Pennypacker;

A Peculiar Service: A Narrative of Espionage in and around New York During the American Revolution by Corey Ford;

Turncoats, Traitors, and Heroes, by John Bakeless.

Also see:

Shadow Patriots, a Novel of the Revolution by Lucia St. Clair Robson tells the story of The Culpers and Spy 355.