Islanders became refugees during Revolution

The Revolutionary War era Robb house on South Midway Road, once
owned by members of the Tuthill family. Its name,
“Kemah,†an Indian word, is
described variously; local sources suggest the name means
‘Peace.’ Others suggest
the definition, ‘Facing the
Wind.’

Part Two of our Fourth of July feature follows. To recap, after the “shot heard round the world” was fired, the battle was joined and America’s fight for independence had begun. Forty-three Shelter Island men, representing 27 families, signed the first draft of the Declaration of Independence and three of them, with five others from off-Island, represented Suffolk County in the meetings of the Provincial Congress in New York.
Sources for this article are “The Refugees of 1776 from Long Island to Connecticut” by Frederic Gregory Mather, “The History of New London County, Connecticut,”  edited by D. Hamilton Hurd, and “The Story of Shelter Island in the Revolution” by Helen Otis Lamont.
In August 1776, the Battle of Long Island was fought and lost and the British General Howe began an inexorable advance against the Americans; Washington retreated again and again until, by the end of that year, his forces lay to the west of the Delaware River. Long Island was occupied territory under martial law.
Then the Continental Congress, meeting in Harlem passed a resolution: “Resolved: that it be recommended to the inhabitants of Suffolk, Long Island to remove as many of their women, children and slaves and as much of their livestock and grain as they can” to the Connecticut mainland. The Long Wharf in Sag Harbor, where last weekend visitors and residents enjoyed the shops and theatre, was crowded then with refugees and their families waiting for passage on the more than 129 ships that would bring them across Long Island Sound to Connecticut. Their expenses would be repaid by the new fledgling government. Those who remained behind fared much less well than the refugees; there were many alleged excesses against them by British troops, and all the physicians and surgeons had left with the first wave.
The Derings, with a number of other Islanders, settled in Middleton. The bill the family submitted for reimbursement for transported freight included three loads of flax, two loads of oats, 15 large hogs and 20 bushels of turnips. Nicoll Havens, with his “wife, mother, sister, seven children, eight servants, one mare and a small lot of poultry” moved to the New London area where Dr. Adams, the chaplain of the Dering household, had also fled. Nicolls’ son, Jonathan, was a student at Yale and New Haven was accessible to New London.
No one realized at the time how long the war would last and as the years went by, the elapsed time in and of itself posed significant challenges. Supplies ran out and needed to be restocked. Refugees worried about their homes and other family members left behind. The authorities worried about the comings and goings of the refugees back and forth between Connecticut and Long Island, that they would be captured, that goods they might be transporting would be confiscated thereby benefitting the enemy, and increasingly it became more and more difficult to receive the necessary permits for travel.
Before the end of 1776 a privateer service had been formed to police the waters of the Sound and Gardiner’s Bay under the auspices of the Provincial Congress. These ships were commanded and manned by refugees from Long Island, Shelter Islanders among them. The ships were heavily armed and the training of these captains and crews, who had never shot anything but rabbits and deer with household rifles, must have been minimal at best; how they learned we no longer know, but learn they did. On the Continental frigate, Confederacy, were John Gardiner, John Griffing, David Tuthill and Ebenezer Wade; on the John was Captain Benjamin Conkling; Captain Edward Conkling commanded the Eagle and the Revenge and Captain Joseph Conkling served on the Whim, the Revenge and the Venus.
The master of the sloop Beaver, carrying 12 guns and a crew of 65, was Captain William Havens, who supplied one of the more notable achievements of a Shelter Islander during the war. He was born here in 1747  and is sometimes listed as a Sag Harbor resident since he moved there with his wife Bethiah Bowditch later in life. His first wife was Desire Havens, who died at a young age. He was the second cousin of James Havens of Heartsease.
A 12-gun loyalist brig, the Ranger, had been plundering the coastline throughout the war and was moored to the wharf in Sag Harbor as three privateers set out to attack her. They were the sloops Beaver and the Eagle, commanded by Captain Edward Conkling, along with the brig Middletown under the command of a Captain Sage. The attack, on January 31, 1779 was successful and the men brought their captured prize in triumph to New London.
It might be noted that Connecticut, although safer than Shelter Island, was far from a safe haven. In a letter to  Thomas Dering, Captain Thomas Jackson, in charge of gathering intelligence, wrote the following:
Stratford, July 9, 1779
I robb (sic) my necessary and requisite rest in this retreat from Fairfield of a moment to communicate to you the Horrible Scenes that have been exhibited to view this two days since, of the accursed Cruel Barbarity and  Pusillanimity of the Enemy in flying from our Regular Army and plundering Murdering Burning and destroying a defenceless Town. But Oh, My Friend at this time to see and hear while the Enemy were advancing under the Mortification of the loss of a Town, the cries of the Women and Children would have melted your Heart or made you Mad. They… made the most finished piece of destruction I ever saw in my life. The Murdered Inhabitants laying in the Streets, the Lamentations of the unfortunate and the Flames of the Town form too affecting a Subject to write further about.
Clearly, this war shares much with those that preceded and followed it.
It’s interesting to note that for the British, the American Revolutionary War was a humiliating disgrace to be forgotten as quickly as possible. The soldiers who fought hard for six years to maintain the British Crown returned home to find themselves ignored. Victories such as the Battle of Long Island and that of Brandywine, Pennsylvania do not appear as battle honors on any regimental colors.
The men who dared to put their names on a declaration that repudiated their government took real risks. They had every reason to believe at the time that the consequences might be deeply dangerous, that they might well be hanged for having done so. In addition, they had a collective conscience and knew that their actions could easily be understood as treason. The first sentence of the Declaration of Independence bears consideration in this light:
“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”
And then they did and proceeded to risk all and sacrifice much to support the revolutionary cause and fight for their independence.