he was buried in Westminster Abbey). Giving voice to this sympathy, Representative Benjamin Tallmadge of Connecticut persuaded Congress not to grant the men a requested pension increase in 1817, publicly assailing their credibility and motivations. Tallmadge, in 1780 a major, was the officer to whom André was taken after his capture, and he said he believed André's account over that of the three captors. He said Williams and the other two were "of that class of people who passed between both armies, as often in one camp as in the other." He said that "when Major André's boots were taken off by them, it was to search for plunder, and not to detect treason." He asserted that "if Andre could have given to these men the amount they demanded for his release, he never would have been hung for a spy, nor in captivity.." Despite the slight, the men's popular acclaim continued to grow throughout the 19th century to almost-mythic status. Some modern scholars interpreted the episode as a major event in early American cultural development, representing the apotheosis of the common man in the new society, even if that means both ignoring contemporary accounts of their character and actions and subsequent inflation of both during the nineteenth century. Williams is buried in the Old Stone Fort Cemetery in Schoharie, New York, southwest of Albany. The inscription on his obelisk reads: "He with his compatriots John Paulding and Isaac VanWart on the 22nd of September 1780, arrested Major John Andre and found on his person treasonable papers in the handwriting of Gen. Benedict Arnold, who sought by treachery to surrender the military post of West Point into the hands of the enemy. In resisting the great bribes of their prisoner for his liberty, they showed their incorruptible patriotism; the American army was saved, and our beloved Country became free." Legacy Williams is honored on the monument erected at the site of Major Andre's capture in Tarrytown, New York, on the east bank of the Hudson. The community has streets named for all three men. Three streets in nearby Elmsford, NY, are also named for them - although Williams Street was virtually eliminated in the 1960s by construction of I-287; it remains only as a short service road between the highway and Route 9A. Ohio's Williams County is also named after David Williams (see also Van Wert and Paulding Counties, also