To George Washington from Brigadier General Samuel Holden Parsons, 27 July 1780
From Brigadier General Samuel Holden Parsons
Reading [Redding, Conn.] 27th July 1780
Dr General
Before you receive this you will be informd that the french Fleet are blockd up in Rhode Island by fifteen Ships most of them large; as every Mov’ment of the Enemy may now be of Importance; I think it my Duty to inform you that about fourteen Transports, Square rig’d Vessels, supposd to have Troops on Board arriv’d at Huntington from the Westward the Night before last, and Yesterday Two british Ships Touchd in at Huntington from the Eastward on which the whole Fleet weighd & stood Westward & are out of Sight.1
Accounts are that the Troops incampd near East Chester imbarkd last Sunday2 at white Stone if so tis probable this Fleet is the whole or part of them the Occasion of their Return is more likely to be truly accounted for by your Excellency than by any Conjecture I can make.3
Col. Simcoe with about 500 Men is gone East to sweep all from Long Island4—I intend to Morrow to go to the Governor & Council once more on the Subject of our Recruits, about 1100 are gone forward, I hope such Orders will now be given as will give Reason soon to expect the Residue.5 I am Sr yr Obedt Servt
Saml H. Parsons
ALS, DLC:GW.
1. For movements of British transports and warships in Long Island Sound between 25 and 27 July, see , 236.
2. The previous Sunday was 23 July.
3. British troops embarked in transports between 21 and 25 July (see , 2:94–95; see also , 235–36). These embarkations were part of a British design to attack the French at Newport (see GW’s second letter to Rochambeau, this date, n.3).
4. British Lt. Col. John Graves Simcoe commanded the Queen’s Rangers. In his diary entry for 18 July, British officer Archibald Robertson wrote: “Queen’s Rangers cross’d to long Island from Frog’s Neck, to patrole down Long Island” (, 235). In his memoirs of the war, Simcoe wrote: “On the 19th of July Lieut. Col. Simcoe joined his corps, and proceeded with it to Long Island, crossing the sound at Flushing. He marched to Huntingdon, where an hundred of the militia cavalry, of the island, joined him: this corps was destined to secure the communication over-land between the fleet, which lay off the eastern end of the island, and New-York” (, 149).
5. Parsons met with the Connecticut council on 31 July (see , 3:140–42).