Captain

Parents: Jonathan Lawrence (1695–1775) and Elisabet Van Klocek (1729**–**1816).

Spouse: (1) Jeanette Neale (1767**–1790);** **(2) Mary Mann (1763–**1835)

Children: With Jeanette Neale: Charles Lawrence (1786**–1854), Herbert Lawrence (1788–1882), Eleanor N. Lawrence);** with Mary Mann**: Jonathan Lawrence III (1795–1883), Jennet Lawrence (1797–1870), George M. Lawrence (1799–1872).**

Kinship**:** Third cousin seven times removed of post-World War II Smith generation.

There were numerous men named Jonathan Lawrence, all related, many of them contemporaries, and several of whom served in Revolutionary forces. The following account concerns Jonathan Lawrence Jr. (1759–1802) and appears to be the most reliable reconstruction of his life and service.

Jonathan Lawrence Jr. was born in 1759, the son of Jonathan Lawrence Sr., a New York City businessman. His grandfather, Jonathan Lawrence the Elder Senior, had purchased the house later known as the Big House on what is now Route 9W in 1747 from Henry Ludlow, who had constructed it circa 1736.

In 1775, Jonathan’s father was appointed one of three commissioners charged with overseeing construction of a new Hudson River fortification, Fort Constitution (later West Point). Jonathan Jr. and his parents were present there in May 1776, when his mother was accused of selling tea at an illegal price. Later that year, Jonathan Jr. was living at the Big House with his grandfather and helping to guard the Hudson River, which was threatened by British warships advancing north from New York City. By December 1776, although only seventeen years old, he was serving at Fort Constitution as a “clerk of the cheque.”

In March 1777, Jonathan Lawrence enlisted in Colonel William Malcom’s regiment as a Second Lieutenant. He spent two months with the Continental Army at Valley Forge and fought at the Battle of Monmouth while marching north. During the summer of 1778, he was promoted to First Lieutenant and served as Acting Assistant Adjutant General at Fort Clinton, overlooking the Hudson River near Bear Mountain.

In the spring of 1779, Malcom’s regiment was merged with another unit, and Lawrence lost his Continental Army position. He returned to the Big House, which was then owned by his uncle Nathaniel Lawrence following his grandfather’s death in 1777. Soon afterward, he was appointed a captain in the militia—units composed of local men who enlisted for six-month terms.

As a militia captain, Lawrence gathered intelligence on British movements, which was forwarded to General George Washington. Washington referred to him several times in his correspondence, describing him as sensible and discreet. On July 21, 1780, Captain Lawrence captured the well-known British Loyalist spy James Moody near Englewood, New Jersey.

In the fall of 1780, soldiers from the Corps of Sappers and Miners were stationed near the Big House constructing a blockhouse overlooking Snedens Landing; its remains were reportedly visible on Woods Road until relatively recent times. On June 19, 1781, Washington issued an order appointing Jonathan Lawrence, Esq., to the rank of Captain in the Corps of Sappers and Miners. His service in the Corps proved brief. On August 28, 1782, Lawrence wrote requesting permission to retire from active duty due to ill health. A certificate signed by the hospital surgeon at West Point stated:

“Captain Lawrence of the Corps of Sappers and Miners, from indisposition, is rendered unfit for the fatigue of Military duty. His complaints of the breast are of such an alarming nature as require the strictest and earliest attentions to remove.”

Lawrence returned to the Big House to recover and to resume civilian life. Although major fighting had ended, widespread looting by both British and American forces had impoverished the countryside. On November 11, 1783, Lawrence wrote to Washington seeking assistance. Washington replied within days, expressing regret that he could not help because Lawrence had resigned his commission before the formal conclusion of the war.

In 1784, at the age of twenty-four, Jonathan Lawrence married Jennette Neal, then seventeen. Over the next six years they had three children—two sons and a daughter. In 1788, Lawrence was awarded 200 acres of land in Ohio on the grounds that he had not resigned from Colonel Malcom’s regiment but had instead been declared supernumerary. He sold the land, likely out of necessity. In 1790, Jennette Lawrence died; her sandstone tombstone survives in the Palisades Cemetery.

Facing financial and personal hardship, Lawrence submitted a renewed appeal for veterans’ benefits, which appears to have been successful. In 1794, at age thirty-four, he married Mary Mann, age thirty-one, the daughter of his near neighbor George Mann, whose house, built in 1784, still stands. That same year, Jonathan Lawrence repurchased the Big House, which had been sold out of the family by a relative in 1792. Jonathan and Mary had three additional children and lived there together for several years.

Jonathan Lawrence Jr. died in 1802 at the age of forty-two, probably of tuberculosis, a disease with which he had struggled for many years. His tombstone, and that of his second wife Mary, are both located in the Palisades Cemetery.

Captain Lawrence was the third of four men named Jonathan Lawrence to live in the Big House, his grandfather having purchased the house and approximately 504 acres in 1749. During the Revolutionary War, he played an active role in combat and intelligence gathering and is remembered in particular for the capture of James Moody in 1780.

It is traditionally said that during the Revolution, General George Washington, the Marquis de Lafayette, and Baron von Steuben were guests of Captain Jonathan Lawrence Jr. at the Big House and may have dined at the table now preserved in the Palisades Library. Given that all three officers were present at the nearby trial of Major John André in Tappan in 1780, and that Washington personally supervised construction of the blockhouse overlooking Snedens Landing that same year, such a gathering is entirely plausible.