The part performed by the militia and militia officers in the War of the Revolution does not seem always to have received the historical recognition which it deserves. It was really of great importance, especially in southern New England and the Middle States, at times actually rivaling and often indispensably supplementing that of the regular Continental Army. It will not be invidious to say that of all the militia none was of more importance or rendered more valuable services than those regime

“This family of the Ludingtons,” says Gray in his genealogical work on the nobility and gentry of England, “were of a great estate, of whom there was one took a large travail to the seeing of many countries where Our Saviour wrought His miracles, as is declared by his monument in the College of Worcester, where he is interred.” The immediate reference of the quaint old chronicler was to the Ludingtons of Shrawley and Worcester, and the one member of that family whom he singled out for special me

Henry Ludington, the third child of William and Mary (Knowles) Ludington, was born at Branford, Connecticut, on May 25, 1739. Some records give the date as 1738, but the weight of authority indicates the later year. Branford, originally called Totoket, was a part of the second purchase at New Haven in 1638, but was not successfully settled until two years later, when a dissatisfied company from Wethersfield, headed by William Swayne, secured a grant of it. Together with Milford, Guilford, Stamfo

In order justly to appreciate the circumstances in which Henry Ludington and his young family found themselves about fifteen years after his return from the French and Indian war, it will be desirable to recall briefly the political and social conditions generally prevailing throughout the Colonies at that time, which were nowhere more marked than in New York City and the rural counties lying just north of it. During the two or three years before the actual declaration of American independence,

The public services of Henry Ludington during the war for independence were threefold in character. Each of the three parts was of much importance, each was marked with arduous toil and frequent perils, and each was performed to the full extent of his ability. Nor was the sacrifice of personal welfare inconsiderable. We have seen that he was the father of a large family, eight children having been born to him prior to the signing of the Declaration of Independence, and was the leasehold occupant

Another part of Henry Ludington’s services to his country during the Revolution was intimately connected with that little known underworld of the Secret Service—the men who take their lives in their hands perhaps more perilously than the soldier in the open field, who have no stimulus of martial glory, who receive no public recognition, and whose very names are doomed to obscurity. A recent work of fiction, one of the best “historical novels” of our day—“The Reckoning,” by Mr. Robert W. Chambers

“Between the lines” is always a place of peculiar difficulty and danger. The Border States in our Civil War were the deadliest battle-grounds, not only the meeting-places of the contending armies but also the scene of innumerable local feuds and conflicts between the inhabitants, half of whom inclined to one side and half to the other. A similar position was held in the Revolution by Westchester and Dutchess counties, lying between the British at the south and the Americans at the north. As this

With the return of peace in the triumph of the cause for which he had battled, Colonel Ludington by no means lapsed into inactivity or obscurity, but continued to serve the State in various ways with the same earnestness which he had shown in war. For some time he was again a deputy sheriff of Dutchess County, and in the performance of his duties on one occasion was severely stabbed by a desperado named Brown, whom he was arresting. For many years he was a justice of the peace, his long service

It has already been observed that the earlier generations of the Ludington family, in colonial days, were prolific; as, indeed, the Ludingtons of the Old Country are said to have been. In revolutionary days, Comfort, Elisha, Stephen, and other collateral relatives of his were the comrades of Henry Ludington in the war and his neighbors in Dutchess and the adjoining counties. Their descendants, and the descendants of those of Colonel Ludington’s twelve children who married and had issue, have bee