The Carleton Commission and Evidence of Arson in the Great New York Fire of 1776
By Bruce Twickler
In October of 1783, just six weeks before the British evacuated New York, the Commander-in Chief-of the British forces, Sir Guy Carleton, commissioned a panel of three British officers to investigate the disastrous fire that devastated the city seven years earlier. Shortly after midnight on September 21, 1776, fire had erupted in lower Manhattan. By daybreak it had consumed five hundred buildings – including schools, churches, warehouses and homes – and caused more destruction than all the previous colonial fires in New York combined.[1]
The timing of the fire proved suspicious, occurring a few days after British troops had defeated Washington’s Continental Army and then occupied the city. Carleton instructed the panel “to ascertain whether the same (the fire) was accidental or the effect of design.”[2] If the panel determined that the fire was ‘by design,’ it would further seek out those culpable for the great destruction and find out whether the arsonists were acting alone or in groups directed by a higher authority.
Whereas Benjamin Carp suggests that the Carleton Commission provided evidence of deliberate arson,[3] most scholars remain unconvinced. One recent writer commenting on the Carleton Commission noted that it “failed to resolve whether the fire was accidental, deliberate, or a combination of both.”[4] Evidence found in the Carleton Commission, however, points to this destructive event as resulting from an act of arson. The testimonies of eyewitness and secondary accounts from the Commission report make several mentions of arson, and are further strengthened when examined alongside other corroborating sources.
For instance, John Grundy, a British private in the 43rd Regiment, told the panel that on the night of the event, he responded to “a cry of Soldiers, Soldiers there is a man setting fire to the town,” and witnessed a man torching a shed on lower Broad Street near the Exchange. Grundy pursued the man down Water Street toward the Fly Market, eventually catching him and taking him to jail.[5] The arrested man turned out to be Amos Fellows, of Tolland, Connecticut, who served as a captain in the 22nd Connecticut militia regiment. The official American records of Fellows’ arrest and imprisonment match the testimony provided by Gundy.[6]
Grundy’s testimony suited the agenda of the Commission. Carleton anticipated that Loyalist claimants would seek compensation for either buildings that had been destroyed or property that had been confiscated. To limit the liability of the British government for the destructive 1776 fire, the Carleton Commission sought evidence showing that the British military had not caused or encouraged the fiery destruction, but had in fact, fought the blaze to its termination. The Commission also set out to prove whether the Americans either acting in concert or as individuals burnt their own city.
The Commission followed the lead of the Loyalist press in blaming the destruction on American forces. The New-York Gazette, for example, reported in the fire’s aftermath: “The Rebel Army having carried off all the Bells of the City, the Alarm could not be speedily communicated. . .the City’s being set on Fire in so many places at nearly the same Time, so many Incendiaries being caught in the very Fact of setting Fire to Houses. . .clearly evince beyond the Possibility of Doubt, that this diabolical Affair was the Result of a pre-concerted, deliberate Scheme.”[7]
Formed by Carleton on October 18, 1783, the Commission met and took its first deposition two days later. Ward Chipman, a member of an earlier commission for claims against the British Army, served as the Recorder for the Commission.[8] Chipman transcribed thirty-nine testimonies over the next three weeks that yielded about one hundred written manuscript pages.[9] The commissioners called witnesses individually, gave them the opportunity to make a short statement, and followed up each testimony with a series of questions.
Nearly three-quarters of the witnesses—British military and auxiliaries, and civilians—held strong pro-British sympathies and would be on the boats leaving the city within weeks. It therefore seemed a certainty that the Commission would get from them the “proof” of British innocence and Patriot culpability they expected. The remaining witnesses identified as either Patriots or less politically-active Loyalists, like the firemen who intended to stay in the city after the British evacuation. Collectively, those remaining had little reason to give a pro-British “spin” to their accounts of the conflagration. It is therefore surprising that the depositions by the witnesses from both groups, with few exceptions, proved remarkably consistent.
John Dash, one of the FDNY veterans who held Loyalist sympathies[10] and who managed the department during the Revolution, testified that based on his decades-long experience, he did not “believe it possible, that the fire could have communicated to different parts of the City. . .but verily believes that it was purposely set on fire in different places, that he never supposed the fire accidental.” A mere five weeks later after the British evacuated, Dash petitioned the Governor Clinton to organize the post-war fire department for the city.[11] For a Loyalist lobbying to supervise the post-war fire department, and thereby ingratiate himself with the new Patriot government, his testimony appeared quite candid and far from self-serving.
Like Dash, two-dozen other witnesses pointed to an act of deliberate arson based on seeing multiple fires far from the original blaze near Whitehall. In addition, other witnesses, most of whom were soldiers like Grundy, actually viewed people starting fires. Another source outside the Commission reinforces their conclusion. John Joseph Henry, an American veteran of the Revolution, and later President of the Second Judicial District in Pennsylvania, watched the fire from aboard his prison ship in the harbor. As he observed, “my own view of the distant beginnings of the fire in various spots, remote from each other, and the manner of its spreading, impressed my mind with the belief, that the burning of the city was. . .for the purposes, not only of thieving, but of devastation. . .”[12]
Several individuals claimed that they saw combustibles, usually large fire-sticks, stashed in caches, and on many people, carried openly or hidden in their clothing. As witness after witness testified to the fire-sticks, the Commission began to ‘follow the fire-sticks’ and this activity led them to understand how the multiple fires could be set simultaneously. The commissioners discovered that the Patriot military had manufactured large numbers of the fire-sticks, often referred to as “matches,” for use as components of a fire-ship or fire raft.[13] The fire-sticks were eighteen inches long, one inch square of white cedar or walnut, with six inches of rosin and brimstone (sulfurous compounds) saturating one or both ends.[14] The ship-makers would pack bundles of thirty to fifty fire-sticks/matches around barrels of gunpowder on an expendable fire-ship, such as a small harbor boat or a purpose-built raft. In practice, volunteers would steer the floating bomb as close to a British warship as possible and ignite it; a hazardous if not suicidal duty.[15]
Cruger’s Wharf was the center for storing the matches and assembling the fire-bomb ships in New York.[16] The shops and warehouses there had not been properly secured when American troops vacated the city. One witness saw several people even after the fire, just before they were arrested, pilfering the fire-sticks perhaps for their own hearths or perhaps for more revolutionary purposes.[17] Dr. Melvin Nooth, Superintendent General of Hospitals, told of how one of these bundles exploded after being placed in a chimney in one of his hospitals.[18]
British soldiers arrested dozens of people found with fire-sticks. Several suspects carried the bundles in plain sight oblivious to the fact that soldiers fighting the fire had already caught several arsonists carrying and using fire-sticks.[19] Some of those arrested claimed that they were removing them from their homes and businesses as a safety measure. This explanation, however, failed to explain how and why they had the fire-sticks in the first place. After the blaze was extinguished, General Robertson, the British Commander for New York, sent several teams to search and remove combustibles hidden in the city. The map below shows where explosives were found:[20]
Map of Combustibles – James Wells, with one of the search teams, found a large bundle of matches in a house on Broad Street (6) between Princes and Garden. John Burns, a fireman on another team, found ‘great quantities’ of fire-sticks concealed in houses in Dock (7), New (8), and Broad Streets (9). William Hervey came upon a house in Smith Street (10) that had no matches but did have a container of gunpowder under some straw with a train of loose powder to be used as a fuse leading to the door.
One did not need a special assignment to find matches. Jeronymus Alstine, a fireman, found matches lying carelessly about on Water Street (11), which he threw into the river. Peter Bilter working near Fly Market (12) found matches under his window after scaring off an intruder the night before. Samuel Bayard discovered matches under a flight of wooden steps in little Dock Street (13). Soldiers arrested suspicious characters carrying matches or deploying combustibles the night of the fire within yards of its eastern boundary (1,2,3,4,5). Note: Area shaded in red was the part of the city destroyed by the Great Fire of 1776.
General Robertson’s discoveries might not have provided enough evidence to prove a case of deliberate arson. They did show, however, that if some people were trying to burn down the town, they had massive quantities of fire-sticks to complete their task. Moreover, the placement of the combustibles could certainly have convinced a conspiracy theorist that the fire was both deliberate and planned. Dr. Nooth’s chimney explosion, for example, was not a spontaneous arson by a revolutionary firebrand. It had been planted ahead of time. Other planted combustibles including fused barrels of gunpowder, which had they not been found, would have transformed a spark or small flame into a building-blazing explosion.[21]
Based on the above testimonies alone, it would have been easy for the Commissioners to believe that many people planted explosives and started fires. In other words, they had their credible evidence of deliberate arson. What the testimony failed to establish, however, was a conspiracy directed or supported by either patriot officials or Washington’s Army. The three American officials--Comfort Sands, Isaac Stoutenburgh, and William Ellsworth--testifying voluntarily and separately, provided a convincing and mutually reinforcing narrative arguing against a patriot conspiracy overseen by higher authorities .
Comfort Sands, a wealthy merchant and member of the Provincial Congress, testified that the fire was not ordered by any civil or military authority, and in fact had not even been debated in Congress. Isaac Stoutenburgh, member of the Provincial Congress (and later the State Assembly), and a commissioned officer, testified that the Congress never proposed or debated the fire. He explained the flight of the city’s population was from fear of the general calamities of war rather than knowledge of a planned military incineration. He even told of ordering the removal of the buckets to City Hall from the abandoned houses of those who fled, so they would be ready for an emergency. William Ellsworth, an American soldier and FDNY fireman provided the most convincing detail. Charged with collecting the buckets, he told of the difficulty of picking the locks of the abandoned houses, finding the sometimes-hidden buckets, and depositing them in City Hall. He also told of the many Patriots still in the City who swore they would burn their own house rather than leave them for the British.[22]
Although the commission also heard second-hand testimony stating that senior American officers directed small bands of arsonists into the city,[23] there was still no compelling evidence before the Commissioners that suggested a large, deliberately planned conspiracy. The testimony of Major Adye supported this notion. He had overseen the investigation of the fire in 1776, and had interrogated many of the accused arsonists at the time. Adye had detained two hundred people the night of the fire, interrogated forty suspects, and brought to trial two of the most suspicious. The results of the trial were sent to William Howe, the general commanding British forces in North America. Howe apparently found so little of interest in the proceedings that these two were released and no others were tried. However, not all prisoners were released. A small group of perhaps six in all, probably American officers, were imprisoned without trials. A few died in prison, while others were eventually paroled or exchanged within a few years.[24]
Those assuming the testimony of the Carleton Commission to accurately reflect what happened in the fire of 1776 would probably conclude that at least some of the destruction was the result of deliberate arson. Although the original fire might have been accidental, the fact that several fires occurred within an hour so far from that initial blaze would persuade them, as it did many original witnesses, that the conflagration was more than mere chance or an unfortunate mistake. The witnesses who actually saw an arsonist start a fire or individuals carrying fire- sticks, or those like Dr. North who saw an explosion at the hospital, did not need to be persuaded.
In other words, the Carleton Commission, if accepted, provides credible evidence of deliberate arson. Its testimony demonstrates that the totality of the destruction was anything but accidental. If the Commission testimony is not accepted, then a long explanation would be required of how the testimonies of so many people were mutually consistent, corroborated by external sources, and clarified so many events surrounding the fire about which there is no dispute such as the fire-sticks.
The Carleton Commission Report provides a record of testimonies, but it nonetheless presents no explicit conclusions. It could be that Ward Chipman provided one when he delivered the final Report to the British government in London.[25] Perhaps the best way to look at the Carleton Commission Report might be as a data point; a big data point of what happened at the Great Fire in New York in 1776. Perhaps the question is not whether or not there was arson, but how significant that arson was in the destruction of the five hundred buildings.
Bruce Twickler, created technology companies; two PBS documentaries, Damrell’s Fire and Broadside (now on Amazon Prime); and the website SavingNY.Com, which includes a facsimile and transcription of the Carleton Commission.
[1] “The number of Houses, that were burned and destroyed, in the city at that awful conflagration were thus: From Mortkill Street to Courtlandt St. 167, Courtlandt Street to Beaver St. 175, Beaver Street to the E River 151, Total Houses 493.” David Grim, Collections of the New-York Historical Society for the Year 1870 (New York, 1876), 276. A modern estimate of the number of houses is between 500-600, perhaps 15-20% of the city. Richard Howe, “Notes on the Great Fires of 1776 and 1778,” Gotham: A Blog for Scholars of New York City History (31 Dec. 2014) https://www.gothamcenter.org/blog/notes-on-the-great-fires-of-1776-and-1778
[2] For an introduction, summary table, and transcription of the Carleton Commission designated here as the Carleton Commission Report (CCR) see http://www.savingny.com/carleton1776.html The website also contains links to facsimiles of the original documents. The three officers serving on the Commission were Brigadier General William Martin, Royal Artillery; Major William John Darby, Royal Fuzileers; and Major George Beckwith, 37th Regiment. Their Commission from Carleton handwritten by Major Frederick MacKenzie is archived with “The Manuscript of Proceedings of the Board of Enquiry as authorized by General Carleton in 1783,” New-York Historical Society (New York City: Misc MSS Boxes 12 & 13 1776-1780).
[3] Benjamin L. Carp, “The Night the Yankees Burned Broadway: The New York City Fire of 1776,” Early American Studies (Fall 2006), Pages 471-511.
[4] Rick Atkinson, The British Are Coming (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), Kindle Edition Loc 399. For others accounts of the 1776 fire in New York City, see Barnet Schecter, The Battle for New York (New York, Walker & Company, 2002), and David McCullough, 1776 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2005), Kindle Edition Loc 3633.
[5] CCR, 80-82.
[6] Carp, “The Night the Yankees Burned Broadway,” 484. For the record of Fellows’ imprisonment, see George Washington to Joshua Loring, 20 January 1777, The Papers of George Washington, Revolutionary War Series, vol. 8, 6 January 1777 – 27 March 1777, ed. Frank E. Grizzard, Jr. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1998, 118.
[7] New-York Gazette, and the Weekly Mercury, September 30, 1776.
[8] Ibid., June 9, 1783.
[9] Chipman had established a lucrative law practice in New York and was appointed to a Board examining claims against the British Army in May 1783. For more on Chipman, see Sibley’s Harvard Graduates vol. 17 1768-1771 (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1975), 369-79.
[10] All but one of the FDNY witnesses who appeared before the Carleton Commission can be designated as holding pro-British sympathies; as Loyalists, they signed the “Manifesto” to British military leaders in 1776, welcoming them to the city and condemning the Patriot resistance. For other testimonies by firemen who shared Dash’s pro-British outlook, see that of John Burns, Summary Table Testimony #26.
[11] Arthur Costello, Our Firemen: A History of the New York Fire Departments (New York: Costello, 1887; reprint Knickerbocker, 1997), 42-44.
[12] John Joseph Henry, Campaign Against Quebec (Watertown, N.Y.: Knowlton and Rice, 1844), 200-202.
[13] CCR: Waddell, 29-32.
[14] CCR: Chew, 8.
[15] For more on the naval use of these weapons, see Frank L. Fox, The Four Days Battle of 1666 (Andover, MA: Docema LLC, 2009), 58-60.
[16] CCR: Bridges, 42.
[17] CCR: Henry Law, Captain of the Port, 17-20.
[18] CCR: Nooth, first deposition.
[19] CCR: Ashton, Grundy, and Cochran, 79 – 84.
[20] CCR: Wells, Burns, Hervey, and Kerr, Norton, Ashton, Cochran, and Grundy, 72, 58, 32, 79-86. Benajmain Carp also discusses sources corroborating the Commission report in “The Night the Yankees Burned Broadway,” 481-484.
[21] CCR: Kerr, Hervey, 84-85, 32-33.
[22] CCR: Sands, Stoutenburgh, and Ellsworth, 28-29, 52-56, and 68-70.
[23] One witness related that an American colonel told him that he had directed eight soldiers into the city the night of the fire to start fires. The would-be arsonists embarked from Paulus Hook and landed near Trinity Church where they started a few fires. Only six of the soldiers returned, the other two were caught and executed on the spot by British soldiers. CCR: Roome, 24-25.
[24] Elias Boudinot to George Washington, April 22, 1778, Founders Online, National Archives http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-14-02-0553. David L. Sterling, “American Prisoners of War in New York: A Report by Elias Boudinot,” William & Mary Quarterly 13 (July 1956): 388. See also Carp, “The Night the Yankees Burned Broadway,” 484-485.
[25] Sibley’s Harvard Graduates vol. 17 1768-1771 (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1975): 373.