Washington's Letter Praising War Spy Auctioned

George Washington's Letter about Eastern Long Island Revolutionary War Spy on the Block at Christie's This Week

By Dan Rattiner

Posted 02/06/09

A letter George Washington wrote in 1780 to the head of his eastern Long Island spy ring is going up for auction at Christie's on February 12. Written in Bergen County, New Jersey, it orders Maj. Benjamin Tallmadge, the head of the ring, to see to it that proper credit is given to the most valuable member of the spy ring after the war was won. He was referring to a man who went by the name of "Culper, Jr.," who lived on Long Island and who Washington knew to be crucial to the success of the Revolution.

"Should he continue Serviceable and faithful," Washington wrote, "and should the issue of our Affairs prove as favorable as we hope, I shall be ready to recommend him to the public, if public employ be his aim, and if not, that I shall think myself bound to represent his conduct in the light it deserves, and procure him a compensation of another kind."

The Culper ring, based in Setauket, and referred to in recent years as the Setauket Spy Ring, had connections with Patrick Henry, who, when caught by the British said, as he was taken to the hangman's noose, "Give me liberty or give me death." "Culper Jr.," on the other hand, was never caught.

The letter is currently owned by an anonymous private collector who hopes to net about $35,000 from the sale - the amount of Christie's appraisal.

This letter is of particular interest to Stony Brook University, which already has another letter written by Washington to the spy ring in its collection. Stony Brook is very interested in acquiring this one too, since the ring was headquartered just a few miles from the campus. This earlier letter had been bought directly from a collector in 2006 for $96,000. Prices have come down since then for these sorts of letters. But at that time, about half of the $96,000 was paid by the State and the other half by millionaire Henry Laufer as a donation.

This is the first major piece of history bought at an auction since the 1840 log of a Sag Harbor whaling ship captain was auctioned in 2002. It was purchased and brought back to this area by donations permitting the East Hampton Library to get it for its historical collection in the Morton Pennypacker Room. As I recall, it fetched $6,200.

In 2006, a self-portrait by William Merritt Chase owned by the Parrish Art Museum in Southampton sold at Sotheby's for $110,000.

Chase, for many years during the last decade of the 19th century, summered in Shinnecock and taught painting to the wealthy ladies of that summer colony. Many of his Shinnecock paintings are in the Parrish collection. And so was this self-portrait. But the Parrish, in 2006, needed money. And so the self-portrait, painted in his Manhattan studio but gifted to the Parrish by his grateful students, got auctioned off.

"Culper Jr.," it turned out, was actually a Long Islander named Robert Townsend. Although the letters about him were known about shortly after the revolution and survived, his existence remained secret until the 1930s, when Morton Pennypacker, the great collector of Long Island history, compared the handwriting of "Culper Jr." to letters in his collection written by other Long Islanders. Using that method, he was able to prove that "Culper Jr." had been, in fact, Robert Townsend, a merchant living in Oyster Bay who risked his life to get his messages through to Washington and his army for this country. He has since been honored posthumously and is now a treasured part of American history.