Huntington History

There are 125 historical markers throughout the Town of Huntington.  Each has a story to tell.  Probably only one is the subject of a 358 page book by a New York Times bestselling author.

In some ways, Isaac Ketcham may have been the most influential Huntingtonian during the years the country fought for independence from Great Britain.  That’s because he alerted authorities to a plot to kill George Washington in the months leading up to the Declaration of Independence and the Battle of Long Island.

It is a story visitors to Firemen’s Park in Cold Spring Harbor may be aware of thanks to the historical marker there, but few, if any, know the full story.

A new book by the History Channel’s Brad Meltzer and Josh Mensch gives much more detail about the story than the few words on the marker.  Ketcham, a widower with six children, was recruited by brothers Israel and Isaac Young (or Youngs) of Cold Spring Harbor to purchase the special paper needed for their counterfeiting scheme.  Even though Ketcham had a change of heart at the last minute and never secured the paper, he was arrested and imprisoned in Manhattan.  While in jail, he overheard other prisoners talking about a plot to assassinate Washington.  Ketcham alerted the authorities and the assassination plot was foiled.

You can read a much more detailed version of the story in Meltzer’s book, which tends to repeat itself in the way many television history programs do for the benefit of those who may have forgotten a previous segment during the commercial breaks.  The story could have been told in half as many pages, but the book is a quick read nonetheless.

The story was previously told in the pages of the Long Island Forum (“Cold Spring Harbor Mysteries #1 The Counterfeit Plot of 1776,” by Andrus T. Valentine, August 1979); The Journal of Long Island History (“Long Island’s Revolutionary Counterfeiting Plot,” by Edward J. Smits, Volume II, Number 1, Spring 1962); and The New York Historical Society Quarterly (“Narratives of the Revolution in New York,” page 143, et seq., 1975).

Poor Isaac Ketcham.  The important role he played in the early months of the Revolution was almost lost to history, he was arrested for a crime he never committed, and even his first name is wrong on the historical marker.