From Diary of the American Revolution, Vol II. Compiled by Frank Moore and published in 1859.
The following is the return of prisoners taken in Fort St. George:—One half-pay lieutenant-colonel, one half-pay captain, one lieutenant, one surgeon, fifty rank and file, one garrison standard. The British account of this expedition is as follows:—”A party of rebels, about eighty in number, headed, it is said, by a rebel Major Tallmadge, assisted by a certain Heathcot, Muirson, Benajah Strong, Thomas Jackson, and Caleb Brewster, officers belonging to the said party, all formerly of Long Island, came across in eight whale boats from somewhere about New Haven on the Connecticut shore, and landed between the Wading River and the Old Man’s, and are supposed to have been concealed two or three days on the island by their old friends, the rebels. On Thursday morning, the 23d instant, about fifty of them marched across the island, the remainder being left to guard the boats, and just after daylight arrived at Smith’s Point, St. George’s Manor, south side Long Island, where they surprised a body of respectable loyal refugees belonging to Rhode Island and the vicinity thereabout, who were establishing a post in order to get a present subsistence for themselves and their distressed families. The sentry, upon observing them, fired, which they returned and mortally wounded him, and rushed into a house. Mr. Isaac Hart, of Newport, in Rhode Island, formerly an eminent merchant and ever a loyal subject, was inhumanly fired upon and bayoneted, wounded in fifteen different parts of his body, and beat with their muskets in the most shocking manner in the very act of imploring quarter, and died of his wounds a few hours after, universally regretted by every true lover of his king and country. Four more refugees were wounded also, but are in a fair way of recovery; a poor woman was also fired upon at another house, and barbarously wounded through both breasts, of which wounds she now lingers a specimen of rebel savageness and degeneracy. The rebels carried off about forty prisoners. On their return, at Coram, they burnt a magazine of hay about one hundred tons, and the same day embarked for the Connecticut shore.”1
1 Rivington’s Gazette, December 2.