Bovina and the American Revolution - Elisha Maynard (1763-1840)

On November 12, 1778, a company of militia in Westchester County was on guard duty at the home of the colonel of the regiment. Not long before daylight, the company was attacked by a British infantry force, killing the regiment’s lieutenant and a private, wounding the captain and taking the rest of the force, including the colonel they were trying to protect, as prisoners.  

One of the privates in this company, was Elisha B. Maynard, who later was one of earliest Europeans (if not the first) to settle in what became the town of Bovina. But before Elisha’s adventurous trek as a pioneer in the wilds of the Northern Catskills, he led an adventurous life while in the service of his country. 

He enlisted in March 1778 while residing in the Town of Harrison, Westchester County, serving until November 1778 when he was taken prisoner. He, along with other members of his company, was taken to New York City, first in the “provost jail” where he spent three months then to the “Sugar House” where he remained a prisoner until April 1779 when he was exchanged. He was later paid for his time in captivity 12 pounds 7 shillings and 1 pence.

Image from Wikipedia entry for Sugar House dates from long after the war, but provides an idea of what one of the prisons in which Maynard was housed looked like.

The Sugar houses prisons in New York City were notoriously bad. They were used to store sugar and molasses imported from the British West Indies. These were owned by several prominent families, including the Livingstons, ironically, who owned much of what is now Bovina. The sugar houses were confiscated by the British when they occupied New York City to be used for prisons. Over 17,000 soldiers are estimated to have perished under the substandard conditions in these sugar houses and prison ships over the course of the war, more than double the number of killed in battle. 

Revolutionary War veteran Levi Hanford from Walton, who was captured in March 1777, about a year and a half before Maynard, described his experiences in the sugar house. The cramped conditions initially housed about 40 to 50 prisoners but the population soon swelled to between 400 and 500, though attrition was constant due to those succumbing to illness. Rations consisted of pork and sea biscuits, which were often moldy from sea water and infested with worms. Supplies for sick prisoners were provided by the fledgling American government, as "the British furnished nothing" according to Hanford.

Elisha was released in New Jersey in April 1779. He had to walk back to New York across the  Hudson River near Tarrytown before he could get back to the home of his father in Bedford. He continued to serve throughout the rest of the war, mainly in Westchester County as a private in various companies. In March 1781, he joined a company to “convey and guard a number of British prisoners from Bedford…to the American Prison at Fishkill in the County of Dutchess…”

After the war, he lived about eight years in the Town of Harrison before moving his family to what is now Bovina. He first arrived in 1792, leasing about 150 acres of land in the northern part of Bovina. Married with 3 children, he and his wife Esther would have 12 children all together. 

In 1828, he turned his Bovina farm over to his son and moved back to Westchester County, settling in Rye, NY, dying ther in 1840. He had applied for a pension in May 1834. 

Unfortunately, we do not know where he is buried, though I’m assuming it was in Westchester County.