from the book titled Moses Vail, WM. Penn. Moses Vail. Privately Printed. 1947

TRIBULATIONS OF L. I. VAILS IN REVOLUTIONARY WAR

"Alfred Vail did not succeed in tracing many lines back of the Revolution. This comes from the fact that all the Vails of that time lived in regions that were occupied successively by each army. It is all very well now to claim that one's ancestors were all patriots - let us hope they were: but there was much to be said on the other side and nearly all the men of property and education were Tories."

"It is also true that many of moderate means and fair education did not know which side to favour - they favoured each in turn as they felt that they had to do. Then when the other army came back their neighbours, `told on them' and their horses, their cattle, their hay, their grain, their cider and their ready cash were all taken by the soldiers. Both sides seized whatever they could get."

"Long Island was occupied as winter quarters for the English every year. The people on the eastern end were `rebels' from the first. Most of them left immediately after the battle of Long Island (27 Aug. 1776). Those who stayed wished they had fled and those who fled hankered for their homes. It is pitiful to read their letters."

"When they fled they took no records with them. It was all they could do to get through the lines with their lives. The family records of that date were generally destroyed. There were no roads before 1750 worthy of use. It was a fearful journey from Boston to New York when Mrs. Knight traveled it and wrote her journal in 1704. Because of this lack of roads the early settlers, when they removed, went by water. My own great grandfather went to Vermont before the war. He took his furniture, his tools and his family Bible up into the woods with him. He must have had a job of it! There was no road for the last six miles except a trail over the ridges. I suppose he went in on the snow in the Winter. I know he could not have done it in Summer. I have not found a single person who could track back of the Revolution from their own family records, and who lived on Long Island or in Westchester County in that era."

"The Vails of that period (the Revolutionary era) were still largely on L. I., in Westchester Co. N. Y., Orange and Dutchess Counties, N. Y. and in New Jersey. One family has escaped to Western Vermont and one to Eastern Vermont, the others were all in regions harried by war especially in Westchester Co. and in L. I."

"Life grew more and more unendurable as the war continued for years. They were robbed by both sides. War never respects property or life. They were driven from their homes, impoverished and destitute. The records of births, deaths and even of property transfers were neglected or destroyed. They can never be replaced."

"Those Vails who lived on Long Island were driven away or ruined by the continuous occupation of the regions by British troops. Those in Orange and Dutchess County were in a newly settled region and constantly liable to Indian assaults or to be overrun in succession by troops of one side or the other. Even the inhabitants of Westchester County were from time to time subject to Continental control or to British control and it has long been a mooted question whether the three captors of Andre were patriots when they captured that officer. They turned him over to the Americans and thereby settled their place."

"Lately I talked with one man who knows most about the treason of Arnold and the capture of Andre. He has often lectured on the subject. He expressed a doubt as to whether the three captors were not on a hunt for anything that might be to their advantage. This was quite the common attitude of the people of Westchester who were being ground between the upper and the nether millstone."

"Nowadays many Americans would take pride in a Loyalist ancestor, many a Northerner in a relative who wore the Grey; heroes all, and patriots."