The Place Fraunces Tavern has been the site of many historical events including Washington's farewell to his troops.
Wikipedia (
visit link) informs us:
"Pre-Revolution history
New York Mayor Stephanus van Cortlandt built his home in 1671 on the site, but retired to his manor on the Hudson River and gave the property in 1700 to his son-in-law, Etienne "Stephen" DeLancey, a French Huguenot who had married Van Cortlandt's daughter, Anne. The DeLancey family contended with the Livingston family for leadership of the Province of New York.
DeLancey built the current building as a house in 1719. The small yellow bricks used in its construction were imported from the Dutch Republic and the sizable mansion ranked highly in the province for its quality. His heirs sold the building in 1762 to Samuel Fraunces who converted the home into the popular tavern, first named the Queen's Head.
Before the Revolution, the building was one of the meeting places of the Sons of Liberty. During the tea crisis of 1765, the patriots forced a British naval captain who tried to bring tea to New York to give a public apology at the building. The patriots, disguised as American Indians (like those of the subsequent Boston Tea Party), then dumped the ship's tea cargo into New York Harbor.
In 1768, the New York Chamber of Commerce was founded by a meeting in the building.
Revolution history
In August 1775, Americans took possession of cannons from the artillery battery at the southern point of Manhattan and fired on the HMS Asia. The British ship retaliated by firing a 32-gun broadside on the city, sending a cannonball through the roof of the building.
When the war was all but won, the building was the site of "British-American Board of Inquiry" meetings, which negotiated to ensure to American leaders that no "American property" (meaning former slaves who were emancipated by the British for their military service) be allowed to leave with British troops. Board members reviewed the evidence and testimonies that were given by freed slaves every Wednesday from April to November 1783, and British representatives were successful in ensuring that almost all of the loyalist blacks of New York maintained their liberty.
Washington's farewell to his officers
After British troops evacuated New York, the tavern hosted an elaborate "turtle feast" dinner on December 4, 1783, in the building's Long Room for U.S. Gen. George Washington where he bade farewell to his officers of the Continental Army by saying "[w]ith a heart full of love and gratitude, I now take leave of you. I most devoutly wish that your latter days may be as prosperous and happy as your former ones have been glorious and honorable.'"
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Person Wikipedia (
visit link) adds:
"Samuel Fraunces (circa 1722, West Indies – October 10, 1795, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) was an American restaurateur and owner/operator of Fraunces Tavern in New York City. During the Revolutionary War, he provided for prisoners held during the seven-year British occupation of New York City, and may have been a spy for the American side. At the end of the war, it was at Fraunces Tavern that General George Washington said farewell to his officers. Fraunces later served as steward of Washington's presidential household in New York City (1789–1790) and Philadelphia (1791–1794).
Since the nineteenth century, there has been a dispute about Fraunces's racial identity.[1] According to his 1983 biographer, Kym S. Rice: "During the Revolutionary era, Fraunces was commonly referred to as 'Black Sam.' Some have taken references such as these as an indication that Fraunces was a black man. ...[W]hat is known of his life indicates he was a white man." Philadelphia historian Charles Blockson, however, cited references to Fraunces being described as "Negro," "coloured," "Haitian Negro," "mulatto," "fastidious old Negro," and "swarthy." But, as Rice wrote in her Documentary History of Fraunces Tavern: "Other than the appearance of the nickname, there are no known references where Fraunces was described as a black man" during his lifetime."