"Your Excellency's Dog kennel at Mount Vernon is as good a Quarter as that I am now in" | Maurice D. Hinchey Hudson River Valley National Heritage Area

Events

Please call the individual sites directly to inquire about the events listed below.

Events must be related to the themes of the Maurice D. Hinchey Hudson River Valley National Heritage Area and be heritage, cultural, historical, and/or recreational/trail related.

"Your Excellency's Dog kennel at Mount Vernon is as good a Quarter as that I am now in"

Nov 11, 2024 3:00 PM to 6:00 PM Location: 1042 Route 94 New Windsor, New York 12553 Website: www.facebook.com/newwindsorcantonment Email: michael.mcgurty@parks.ny.gov Phone: 8455627141

The home of James Edmonston has stood for over 250 years. Rescued in the 1960’s by the National Temple Hill Association, the house by that point was a junkyard showroom filled with old car parts. Nicely restored, the house serves as the headquarters for this local historic organization. When General Horatio Gates was assigned the Edmonston home as winter quarters for 1782-83, he wrote General George Washington: “Your Excellency’s Dog kennel at Mount Vernon, is as good a Quarter as that I am now in”. Eyeing the larger and far more refined Ellison House, he expected to be billeted at that nearby property. To please Gates, the senior ranking major general in the Continental Army, Quartermaster General Colonel Timothy Pickering had to evict Surgeon General John Cochran from the Ellison house. Angered by his removal, Cochran challenged the beleaguered Pickering to a duel. Despite his utter defeat and shameful flight from the battlefield of Camden, South Carolina, in 1780, he still remained as arrogant as ever. An intriguer and schemer, he used friends in Congress to wrest the command of the army that would eventually defeat and capture a British army at Saratoga, in 1777. Many of his contemporaries and later historians believed that the victory was the result of the efforts of the man he replaced - Philip Schuyler. He was implicated in a plot with the same Congressional partisans who helped him supersede Schuyler to supplant Washington as commander-in-chief. While at the Ellison house he was involved in a conspiracy in March 1783, which threatened the very freedoms the country had fought to achieve. Organized in 1933, The National Temple Hill Association is a non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation of historic sites related to the last encampment of Washington’s Continental army. New Windsor Cantonment State Historic Site is part of the Palisades Interstate Park Commission. Find us on Facebook at: www.facebook.com/newwindsorcantonment The Palisades Interstate Park Commission administers 40 parks, parkways and historic sites for the Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation in New York as well as the Palisades Interstate Park and parkway in New Jersey. For more information about New York State Parks and Historic Sites, please visit our website at www.parks.ny.gov