have taken the committee [Committee of Safety] and sent them on board of the 'Asia'. I go to-morrow to New York to the Congress – Thursday night were here to supper and breakfast of Colonel Hammond's Regiment, about three hundred men. They said they drank two Hogsheads of cider." The Neutral Ground was also an inviting target for militarily-led refugee Loyalists and for other loosely organized bodies, dubbed "Cowboys", if they were loyalist in sentiment, or "Skinners" if they supported the rebel cause. Pierre's daughter, Cornelia, married to Gerard G. Beekman, Jr., saw the Cowboys as a cruel menace. She wrote her father in April 1777, while residing at the Upper Manor House near Peekskill, that one of the slaves had admitted to her that a scheme had been hatched by which a number of slaves would flee upon the appearance of the next raiding party. In October she and her husband reported on a visit that various units of the King's Rangers had made to their home. Yesterday 10 Clock Coll. [Edmund] Fanning and Coll [John] Byard with 200 of the New Levies March'd by this to destroy barracks No. 2 and the Village [Peekskill]. The soldiers immediately rush'd in the house and ask'd who liv'd hear, we told them Beekman they then passed by then Came others and began to use abusive Langguage and said that the house was theirs, and that I was the daughter of the damnest rebble in the Province. All the Sholdiers knew that much of me and Call'd me a damnation rebel bitch. Every moment, at that time Coll Fanning and Col Byard came to the house to bid them keep their abuse, but they would not mind. Fanning told me not to be frightened that he would Pertict me that I should not be hurt. Only once was she prevailed upon to leave her residence, being persuaded by her brother, Colonel Philip Van Cortlandt, to retire with her family some miles back in the country for safety from a scouting party on their way from Verplanck's Point. A historian wrote that upon Cornelia's return: Not an article of furniture was left, except a bedstead; a single glass bottle was the only drinking utensil; and one ham was all that remained of the provisions, having by good fortune, been hung in an obscure part of the cellar. This disaster, and the inconveniences to