Here's a Google Earth placemark to consider when beginning James Fenimore Cooper's 1821 historical romance, The Spy: A Tale of Neutral Ground.
In the fall of 1780, John Paulding and two other American militiamen caught John André as he approached this bridge in "neutral ground." Today Tarrytown boasts a statue of Paulding here in "Patriot's Park." Just to the north is Sleepy Hollow, the town immortalized by Washington Irving. Both towns lie in the center of Westchester county, New York, the setting for James Fenimore Cooper's novel, The Spy: A Tale of Neutral Ground. As Cooper describes it, "The county of Westchester, after the British had obtained possession of the island of New-York, became common ground, in which both parties continued to act for the remainder of the war of the revolution." See James Fenimore Cooper, The Spy: A Tale of Neutral Ground (New York: Penguin, 1997) 1. Download 1780AndreandCooperNeutralGround.kmz (1.0K)
