266 HISTORY OF BROOKLYN.

To his surprise, the place was found to be entirely unoccupied, and the country open to the base of the Bushwick hills, where the Jamaica road enters upon the plains. Crossing the fields from the New Lotts road, in a direct course, to this point, the army halted, at two o’clock of the morning of the 27th, at William Howard’s Halfway House, which yet stands at the corner of the present Broadway and the Jamaica and Brooklyn road. In front of them, on this road, was the Jamaica Pass (ante, 261), a winding defile, admirably calculated for defence, and where the British expected, as a matter of course, that their passage would be hotly contested. The perfect success of the flank movement which Howe was now performing, demanded that this pass should be turned without risking an engagement, or even attracting the attention of those who, as it was supposed, defended it. Here his Tory guides seem to have been at fault, and, at their recommendation, perhaps, he pressed into his service William Howard, the innkeeper, and his son, then a lad of fourteen years.1 Father and son were compelled, at the point of the

1 William Howard, ae. 87, says the British army was guided by N. W. along a narrow road across Schoonmaker's Bridge (where a small force might easily have brought the whole British army to a stand). Thence they turned off east of Daniel Rapalje'’s (threw open the fence) and crossed the fields to the south of Howard's Half-way House, where they halted in front of his house. About 2 o’clock in the morning, after the market wagons had passed, Howe (?), with a citizen's hat on and a camlet cloak over his uniform, entered Wm. Howard’s tavern, attended by Clinton and two aide, and asked for something to drink, conversed with him, and asked if he had joined the association. Howard said that he had. “That's all very well—stick to your integrity. But now you are my prisoner, and must lead me across these hills out of the way of the enemy, the nearest way to Gowanus.” Howard accordingly conducted the army by a passage-way between his house and horseshed over the the hills and woods east of his house, till they came to the cleared land north of the woods. The horses drew the artillery up the bill in a slanting direction, and halted on the brow to breathe a little. The army then proceeded west and came out at Baker's tavern, by the Gowanus road. The British took Adj. Jeronimus Hoogland, (Lieut. Troup), and Lieut. Dunscomb, American patrols, at the big white-oak (since struck by lightning), in the middle of the road, by the mile-post, a little east of Howard’s. Isaac Boerum, a trooper of New Lotts, was also taken in Bushwick, and died of small-pox in prison.”—Onderdonk, Kings Co., sec. 805

Lossing says (Field Book of Rev., ii. 807) that in 1852 William Howard, a son of this old Whig tavern-keeper, was still living, ae. 90, in the old tavern (Howard’s Half-way House) still (1867) standing, although considerably altered, at the corner of Broadway and Fulton avenue. The part nearest the corner is the building, the other part being a house of Joseph Howard. He well remembered the above scene described In his father’s statement.