Horseneck Landing (West Greenwich), Connecticut
Horseneck Landing (West Greenwich), Connecticut
HORSENECK LANDING (WEST GREENWICH), CONNECTICUT. 25-27 February 1779. Major General William Tryon, with a task force of five regiments reinforced by light troops left the vicinity of Kings Bridge, New York, on the 25th to destroy American facilities at Horseneck Landing. The next morning he entered it, brushed aside a Connecticut militia force (of probably less than 150 men) led by Major General Israel Putnam, and then moved on to Greenwich. With the loss of only two or three killed, fourteen wounded, and from twenty to forty captured, Tryon destroyed a salt works, three small cannon, three small vessels, and a store; plundered the settlement; and carried off about two hundred head of cattle and horses. He then successfully withdrew before a much larger militia force could assemble, getting back to Kings Bridge on the 27th. Local lore emphasizes that Putnam escaped capture by a daring ride down a steep, rocky hill that enemy dragoons were afraid to negotiate.
SEE ALSO Putnam, Israel; Tryon, William.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Kemble, Stephen. Journals of Lieutenant Colonel Stephen Kemble, 1773–1789. Boston: Gregg Press, 1972.
Nelson, Paul David. William Tryon and the Course of Empire: A Life in British Imperial Service. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990.
revised by Robert K. Wright Jr.