times Randalls was known as "Buchanan's Island" and "Great Barn Island", both of which were likely corruptions of Great Barent Island. Captain John Montresor, an engineer with the British army, purchased Randalls Island in 1772. He renamed it Montresor's Island and lived on it with his wife until the Revolutionary War forced him to deploy. During the Revolutionary War, both islands hosted military posts for the British. In 1776, the British used Randalls Island to launch amphibious attacks on Manhattan. Montresor's house there was burned in 1777. He resigned his commission and returned to England in 1778, but retained ownership of the island until the British evacuated the city in 1783 and it was confiscated. Both islands gained their current names from new owners after the war. In November 1784, Jonathan Randell (or Randel) bought Randalls Island, while Jaspar Ward and Bartholomew Ward, sons of judge Stephen Ward, bought Wards. Nineteenth century Although a small population had lived on Wards since as early as the 17th century, the Ward brothers developed the island more heavily by building a cotton mill and in 1807 building the first bridge to cross the East River. The wooden drawbridge connected the island with Manhattan at 114th Street, and was paid for by Bartholomew Ward and Philip Milledolar. The bridge lasted until 1821, when it was destroyed in a storm. After the destruction of the bridge, Wards Island was largely abandoned until 1840. Jonathan Randel's heirs sold Randalls to the city in 1835 for $60,000. In the mid-19th century, both Randalls and Wards Islands, like nearby Blackwell's Island, became home to a variety of social facilities. Randalls housed an orphanage, poor house, burial ground for the poor, "idiot" asylum, homeopathic hospital and rest home for Civil War veterans, and was also site of the New York House of Refuge, a reform school completed in 1854 for juvenile delinquents or juveniles adjudicated as vagrants. Between 1840 and 1930, Wards Island was used for: Burial of hundreds of thousands of bodies relocated from the Madison Square and Bryant Park graveyards The State Emigrant Refuge, a hospital for sick and destitute immigrants, opened in 1847, the biggest hospital complex in the world during the 1850s The New York City Asylum for the Insane, opened around 1863 Manhattan Psychiatric Center (incorporating the Asylum for the Insane), operated by New York State when it took over the immigration and asylum