Watching the Sound: Huntington's Quiet Role in Washington's Spy Trail

Washington's Spy Trail — Part of an Ongoing Series

Watching the Sound: Huntington's Quiet Role in Washington's Spy Trail

Long before it was known for harbor views and a walkable Main Street, this North Shore town endured one of Long Island's longest occupations — and helped keep watch over the water Washington needed eyes on most.

By Douglass Gillespie  ·  7 min read

If you drive Route 25A through Huntington, New York today, you'll pass coffee shops, a marina, and streets lined with well-kept homes. Nothing about it announces itself as a battlefield. And in the strictest sense, it wasn't one. Huntington's part in the story of Washington's Spy Trail was quieter than a battle — it was about who controlled the high ground, who controlled the harbor, and who could get a message across Long Island Sound without being caught.

That quieter kind of history is often the kind worth understanding best, because it's the kind that shapes a place long after the war ends. Huntington's Revolutionary War experience left marks that are still visible in its oldest cemetery, its town records, and the roads that carried both British patrols and, indirectly, American secrets.

A Town Occupied Longer Than Almost Any Other

Most people picture the Revolutionary War as a series of battles with clear beginnings and endings. Huntington's experience was closer to a long, grinding occupation. From September 1776 until March 1783 — nearly six and a half years — British forces controlled the town. That's longer than many Long Island communities endured, and it meant Huntington spent most of the war as a garrisoned outpost rather than a battlefield.

Being occupied that long changes a place. Local militia had to disband or go underground. Homes were requisitioned. And the town's role in any intelligence network had to be built around British eyes that never really left.

Why Huntington Mattered Strategically

Picture the North Shore of Long Island as a long fence line, with Long Island Sound as the yard on the other side and Washington's forces in Connecticut and along the Hudson watching from a distance. Whoever controlled the harbors along that fence controlled who could cross, and what they could carry with them. Huntington's harbor and its high ground overlooking the water made it valuable to the British for exactly that reason — it let them watch for boats moving supplies, messages, or people across the Sound.

The Arsenal Hidden in a Weaver's House

Before the British ever arrived, Huntington had already prepared to resist them. In 1774, the town joined other colonies in adopting a Declaration of Rights, and by 1775 roughly eighty local men were drilling on the Village Green. The New York Provincial Congress sent gunpowder to arm them — one hundred pounds at first, then a thousand pounds more the following year.

That gunpowder, along with a small store of arms, didn't sit in a fort or a formal armory. It was kept in the home of a local weaver named Job Sammis, at the south end of the Village Green. Today that house is known simply as the Arsenal, and it's significant enough that a bill introduced in Congress has proposed including it as an official stop on a new Washington Spy Ring National Historic Trail, alongside Raynham Hall in Oyster Bay and the Brewster House in Setauket.

What makes the Arsenal worth remembering isn't scale — it was a private home, not a garrison. It's a reminder that resistance often starts in ordinary places, hidden in plain sight, long before anyone calls it a network.

A Cemetery Turned Into a Fort

By the fall of 1782 — a full year after Cornwallis had already surrendered at Yorktown, and with peace talks underway in Paris — six hundred British troops were still stationed in Huntington. Rather than winding down, their commander, a Loyalist officer named Benjamin Thompson, ordered a new fort built. He chose the town's Old Burying Ground for the site, the same ground where Huntington had laid its dead to rest since the 1650s.

The nearby Presbyterian church was torn down and its timbers used in construction. Wood came from local orchards and barns as well. Well over a hundred gravestones were pulled up and repurposed for flooring, fireplaces, and ovens. Thompson named the result Fort Golgotha — a deliberate, bitter reference to the place of the skull.

A burial ground meant for grieving became, for one bitter season, a garrison — proof that Huntington's occupation reached even its dead.

The fort stood for roughly three months before the British finally withdrew. Thompson's parting act was to burn the surplus wood so residents would have less fuel to heat their homes through the rest of that winter. Locals tore the fort down soon after. Years later, in 1790, President Washington visited Huntington and was reportedly taken to see the site for himself.

The Water That Carried Secrets

Huntington's shoreline connects it to a bigger story. Just across the Sound from Setauket and Oyster Bay, its bay and beaches sat along the same stretch of water the Culper Spy Ring depended on to move information from British-occupied New York City to Washington's headquarters in Connecticut and New York's Hudson Valley. Abraham Woodhull in Setauket, Robert Townsend in Manhattan, and Caleb Brewster ferrying dispatches by boat all relied on this corridor.

Huntington Bay also has an earlier, better-known connection to Revolutionary intelligence work. In 1776, Nathan Hale set out from its shores on the mission that would end with his capture and execution in New York City — a mission that predates the Culper Ring by two years, but one that shows why this stretch of coastline mattered from the very start of the war.

Route 25A: The Road That Still Follows the Story

About fifty miles of Route 25A, once called the King's Highway, is officially recognized in New York as Washington's Spy Trail. It's the same road that links Huntington to Oyster Bay and Setauket today, and driving it — slowly, with a few stops — is still the simplest way to feel how close together these towns actually are, and how easily information could move between them under cover of ordinary travel.

What You'll Find in Huntington Today

Why This Still Matters, Even in Essex County

I don't sell real estate on Long Island, but I've come to appreciate why stories like Huntington's are worth telling to homeowners here in Essex County. Towns like Montclair, Nutley, Glen Ridge, and Bloomfield all carry their own layers of history, some of it Revolutionary, much of it far less dramatic but still part of what gives a neighborhood its character.

Understanding a town's history won't change your mortgage rate or your closing costs, but it does change how you experience a place once you live there. That's true whether you're weighing a move-up purchase in Verona or simply trying to understand why a certain block in South Orange feels different from the one two streets over.

Frequently Asked Questions

The Short Version

Huntington's part in Washington's Spy Trail wasn't built on a single dramatic act. It was built on geography, on a hidden arsenal in a weaver's house, on nearly six and a half years of occupation, and on a cemetery turned briefly into a fort. Taken together, those pieces explain why a modern congressional bill wants Huntington remembered alongside Setauket and Oyster Bay — not as the loudest name in the story, but as one of the towns that made the whole network possible.

This article is provided for educational purposes only and should not be considered financial, legal, tax, or mortgage advice. Market conditions change over time, and every situation is unique. Consult the appropriate licensed professionals regarding your specific circumstances.