Detecting and Defeating Conspiracies

Perhaps I am dating myself, but there is nothing quite like the process of combing back and forth through actual books checking indexes and following page numbers, reading surrounding texts and making connections. 

Today I sat with The Minutes of the Commissioners for Detecting and Defeating Conspiracies in the State of New York Albany County Sessions 1778-1781 looking for info about our Revolutionary War soldiers.

After a general flipping through of pages I hopped right to the index and the letter "B" for Bethlehem of course.

There is exactly one entry for "New Bethlehem in the Manor of Rensselaerwyck" and it is regarding the "numbers of Torys...collecting in the night time." Seth Perry was directed to apprehend "all such disaffected persons".

Other local place names in the book include Coxsacki, Onesquethaw, Norman's Kill, and New Scotland. But the big winner is The Helderbergs. As described in the introduction in the book, "the Helderbergs and adjacent regions were regular nests of robbers and hatcheries of treasonable designs."

There are plenty of local people in the books as well. Remember Cornelius Glenn from a previous blog post? His flip flopping on whether to join the rebellion or not is pretty clear just in the index entries (see picture below.) 

I haven't written about him yet but John Leonard has an interesting interaction with the Commissioners. He was almost kidnapped!

I also haven't written about the Haswell family yet (I will - there is some good stuff there!), but there is a notation in the minutes for when John Haswell bailed out a suspected Tory named John Harrison who had been "taken by the Party of Oneyda Indians a Prisoner."  

The Haswell family papers on file with the Town Historian's office contain a reminisce about Haswells during the Revolution. It asserts that there was a nest of Tory's on Meads Lane and that Beckers were Torys.  While I didn't find any Becker's in this book (and our list of Rev. War soldiers includes Dirck and Wouter Becker) I found so many Hoogtelings that were Torys. For example, Jacobus was apprehended as a robber and a follower of Butler and Brant. And William of Rennselaerwyck Manor who declared himself a "King's man."

But what exactly were the Commissioners for Detecting and Defeating Conspiracies up to?

For years the provincial government of New York was concerned about "intestive enemies." (That's a quote from a May 1776 committee appointed to deal with such folks).

Feb. 5, 1778 saw the passage of the law that established the commission that this book is concerned with. Let me just quote it from page 12:

In the original legislative act creative of the commissioners whose Albany proceedings constitute   these volumes, the reasons given are "the present invasion of this State;" "the disaffection of sundry of the Inhabitants of the same," and to guard and secure effectually the peace of the State "against the wicked Machinations and Designs of the Foreign and Domestic Foes thereof."

The commissioners' functions were defined as having the power "to send for Persons and Papers, and administer Oaths; to apprehend and confine...as necessary for public safety... all Persons whose going at large shall appear dangerous to the Safety of the State...

And there you have it about the Commission for Detecting and Defeating Conspiracies. Basically a commission with the power to round people up who were thought to be against the Revolution. They could detain people and demand bail money for their release but could not perform any corporal punishment.  I wonder about the amount of paranoia that must have been running rampant in the county. 

Have I got you intrigued about this set of meeting minutes? You can read them online here but it is not the same as flipping actual pages!

https://archive.org/details/minutesofcommiss0000newy/page/n17/mode/2up