Close Calls and Brushes With Disaster Led to the Emergence of the Culper Ring’s Most Valuable Agent
In June of 1779, a smalltime Long Island pirate was captured by the British, and to secure his release, he snitched on Abraham Woodhull by telling the British that the Setauket farmer was up to something iffy. Acting on the tip, a British detachment was sent to look in on Abraham, but he was away in New York City at the time, so they beat up his father, the local magistrate. Abraham only escaped arrest after another British officer vouched for him, but the close brush with disaster frightened him into laying low.
Things only got worse when a letter from Washington to Tallmadge, coded but still offering clues to the identities of some Culper Ring members, plus other telling information, was intercepted by the British. In early July of 1779, a British cavalry raid on Tallmadge’s camp seized documents mentioning an agent C___, who was reporting to Tallmadge from New York City.
Abraham Woodhull was already jittery, and news of the raid on Tallmadge’s camp heightened his anxieties. So he informed Tallmadge that things were too hot for him to keep venturing into New York City, as he was under suspicion from the British. However, he added that he had recruited an agent who lived in the city, who could do the intelligence gathering for him.
That agent, Robert Townsend (1753 – 1838), was given the codename “Samuel Culper, Jr.” (Abraham Woodhull was “Culper, Sr.”). He was a storekeeper with Patriot political leanings, who lived and worked in New York’s red light district, catering to a clientele of soldiers and the working class. His political inclinations were solidified by British mistreatment of colonists in his hometown of Oyster Bay, Long Island, and the seizure of the Townsend home to quarter British soldiers.
Balanced against Townsend’s Patriot inclinations was his upbringing as a liberal Quaker. His faith and its pacifist ethos, as well as his personality, kept him from taking up arms. When Woodhull asked him to spy on the British, it gave Townsend a means of helping the Patriot cause without personally engaging in acts of violence prohibited by his religious upbringing. He would prove to be the most valuable and productive agent of the Culper Ring, and the most valuable American spy throughout the entire war.