| Subject: Nathan Hale |
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Sep. 22, 1776
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Date Posted: Saturday, September 22, 2012, 10:53:29am
Revolutionary War Captain, Spy. Captured by British troops and executed 2 days later. Nathan Hale was born in Coventry, Connecticut, on June 6, 1755.
When little more than twenty-one years old, he was hanged by order of General William Howe, as a spy in the City of New York on September 22, 1776.
Nathan Hale's father was Richard Hale, who had emigrated to Coventry from Newbury, Massachusetts, in 1746 and had married Elizabeth the daughter of Joseph Strong. By her he had twelve children of whom Nathan was the sixth.
On September 14, 1775 they were ordered by Washington to Cambridge. They were placed on the left wing of his army and made their camp at the foot of Winter Hill. Hale was seized and examined. Hidden in the soles of his shoes were his memoranda, in the Latin Language.
They compromised him at once. He was carried on board the frigate and sent to New York the same day, well guarded. Hale landed while the city was in terror of the great conflagration of September 21st. In that the fire nearly a quarter of the town was burned down.
Hale was taken to General Howe's head-quarters and there met his doom. Howe at once ordered that he should be hanged the next morning. Hale was confined for the night of September 21st in the greenhouse of the garden of Howe's head-quarters.
Hale was marched out by a guard and hanged upon an apple-tree in Rutger's orchard. The place was near the present intersection of East Broadway and Market Streets.
Cunningham asked him to make his dying "speech and confession." "I only regret," he said, "that I have but one life to lose for my country."
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