Thomas Hickey (died 28 June 1776) was a Continental Army soldier who was executed for mutiny and sedition early in the American Revolutionary War.

In 1776, after the conclusion of the Boston campaign, General George Washington and the Continental Army marched to New York City and prepared for an anticipated attempt by the British Army to occupy the city. The Royal Governor of New York, William Tryon, had been driven out of the city by American Patriots and was compelled to seek refuge on a ship in New York Harbor. Nevertheless, the city had many residents who favored the British side, known as Loyalists.

Thomas Hickey was a private in the Commander-in-Chief's Guard, a unit formed on 12 March 1776, to protect General Washington, his official papers, and the Continental Army's cash. That spring, Hickey and another soldier were arrested for passing counterfeit money. While incarcerated, Hickey revealed to another prisoner, Isaac Ketchum, that he was part of a wider conspiracy of soldiers who were prepared to defect to the British once the expected invasion came. Arrested by civilian authorities, Hickey was turned over to the Continental Army for trial. He was court-martialed and found guilty of mutiny and sedition. He was executed before a crowd of 20,000 spectators.

Hickey was the only person put on trial for the conspiracy. During the trial, David Mathews, the Mayor of New York City, was accused of funding the operation to bribe soldiers to join the British. Although the charge was never proven, Mathews and twelve others were briefly imprisoned. The conspiracy became greatly exaggerated in rumor, and was alleged to include plans to kidnap Washington, assassinate his officers, and blow up the Continental Army's ammunition magazines. The false rumors greatly damaged the reputation of Loyalists throughout the nascent United States.

Lossing-Mines Legend

Although Hickey was jailed for counterfeiting, and charged with sedition and conspiracy while in prison, William Spohn Baker, the great late-19th-century Washington expert, believed that the real reason for his execution was involvement in a plot to kill or kidnap Washington:

"Thomas Hickey, one of Washington's Guard, was tried by a court-martial and sentenced to death, being found implicated in a plot to murder the American general officers on the arrival of the British, or at best to capture Washington and deliver him to Sir William Howe.

The plot had been traced to Governor Tryon, the mayor (David Matthews) having been a principal agent between him and the persons concerned in it.

Baker obviously was wrong about the specific crimes of which Hickey was convicted, but in 1776, the rumor of an assassination plot seems to have been real:

"[June 24, 1776.] A most infernal plot has lately been discovered here, which, had it been put into execution, would have made America tremble, and been as fatal a stroke to us, this Country, as Gun Powder Treason would to England, had it succeeded.

The hellish conspirators were a number of Tories (the Mayor of ye City among them) and three of General Washington's Life Guards.

The plan was to kill Generals Washington and Putnam, and as many other Commanding Officers as possible."

"[July 13, 1776.] I suppose you have heard of ye execution of one of the General's Guards, concerned in ye hellish plot, discovered here some time past. There was a vast concourse of people to see ye poor fellow hanged."In 1870, the antiquarian Benson J. Lossing introduced a housekeeper into Hickey's court-martial:

"The guardsman was tried by a court-martial, and on the testimony of the housekeeper and one of the corps, whom the culprit had unsuccessfully attempted to corrupt, he was found guilty of 'mutiny and sedition and of holding a treacherous correspondence with the enemies of the colonies' and was sentenced to be hanged.[*]

[*] "These facts were related to a friend of the writer (Mr. W.J. Davis), by the late Peter Embury, of New York, who resided in the city at the time, was well acquainted with the general's housekeeper, and was present at the execution of Hickey."Lossing's information was third-hand (as he freely admitted). The story is undermined by the trial minutes of Hickey's June 26, 1776 court-martial, which contain no housekeeper's testimony.

In the January 1876 issue of Scribner's Monthly Magazine, John F. Mines gave a name to Lossing's housekeeper:"A daughter of "Black Sam," Phoebe Fraunces, was Washington's housekeeper when he had his headquarters in New York in the spring of 1776, and was the means of defeating a conspiracy against his life. Its immediate agent was to be Thomas Hickey, a deserter from the British army, who had become a member of Washington's body guard, and had made himself a general favorite at headquarters. Fortunately, the would-be conspirator fell desperately in love with Phoebe Fraunces, and made her his confidant. She revealed the plot to her father, and at an opportune moment the denouement came. Hickey was arrested and tried by court-martial."Mines listed no sources for the information in the magazine article. It was nationally read in the patriotic build-up to the Centennial celebration.

In 1915, Henry Russell Drowne (great-grandson of the 1776 chronicler above) repeated the Lossing-Mines legend in his history of Fraunces Tavern:

"His [ Samuel Fraunces's] daughter Phoebe was Washington's housekeeper in the Mortier House on Richmond Hill, occupied by the Commander-in-Chief as Headquarters, in June, 1776, and it was she who revealed the plot to assassinate Generals Washington and Putnam, which led to the apprehension of her lover, an Irishman named Thomas Hickey, a British deserter, then a member of Washington's bodyguard, in consequence of which he was promptly executed on June 28, 1776.

Legend Refuted

There is no record of Samuel Fraunces having had a daughter named "Phoebe". The name does not appear with those of his children in the baptismal records of Christ Church, Philadelphia, or Trinity Church, New York. His will, dated September 11, 1795, does not mention a "Phoebe"; nor does a family history written by one of his descendants. It is well-documented that Fraunces's nickname was "Black Sam", but the 1790 U.S. Census for New York lists him as a white man and a slaveholder. If a "Phoebe" ever existed, she may have been a woman enslaved or employed by him, rather than his daughter.

In an effort to wish the Lossing-Mines legend true, amateur historians have recently declared that "Phoebe" was the nickname of Samuel Fraunces's eldest daughter, Elizabeth. No documentation, such as letters or even family lore has been presented to support this new assertion. If the "Phoebe" of the Lossing-Mines legend had been Elizabeth Fraunces, she would have been rather young for espionage or a clandestine wartime romance. Her birth date of December 26, 1765, means that during the week of Thomas Hickey's June 28, 1776 execution, Elizabeth turned 10-1/2.

References

• Van Doren, Carl. Secret History of the American Revolution. New York: Viking Press, 1941.
• Article: "Thomas Hickey court martial"

Primary documents from the The American Archives, published online by the Northern Illinois University Libraries:

• "Court Martial for the trial of Thomas Hickey and others"
• "Warrant for the execution of Thomas Hickey", from George Washington
• Notice from the Provost-Marshal that Hickey had been executed as directed

Notes:

1. William Spohn Baker, Itinerary of General Washington from June 15, 1775, to December 23, 1783 (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1892), p. 41.
2. Dr. Solomon Drowne to his sister Sally Drowne, New York, June 24, 1776; quoted in Henry Russell Drowne, A Sketch of Fraunces Tavern and Those Connected with Its History (New York: Fraunces Tavern, 1919), p. 8.
3. Dr.Solomon Drowne to his brother William Drowne, New York, July 13, 1776; ibid., p. 10.
4. Benson J. Lossing, Washington and the American Republic (New York: Virtue & Yorston, 1870), vol. 1, pp. 176.
5. Hickey Court-martial Minutes
6. John F. Mines, "New York in the Revolution," Scribner's Monthly, vol. XI, no. 3 (January 1876), p. 311.
7. Drowne, A Sketch of Fraunces Tavern, p. 8.
8. Manuscript at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
9. "At first we supposed it was only a sham, /Till he drove a round ball thro' the roof of black Sam-" The Poems of Philip Freneau, Written Chiefly During the Late War (1786) p. 321. This refers to an August 23, 1775 incident in which Fraunces Tavern was hit by a cannonball.
10. Elizabeth Fraunces as "Phoebe"
11. Christ Church, Philadelphia, records her baptism on January 27, 1766.