09/10/2026
This etched windowpane from the home of Liss’s enslaver, Samuel Townsend, is usually shown as an example of the affections of British officers for Townsend’s teenaged daughter Sally. But the man who etched the message, a British officer named Capt. John McGill, has a much darker history. He was responsible for the enslavement of a Black couple from Charleston who were seeking their freedom in New York.
In June 1780 Capt. McGill and a soldier named Steven Jarvis sold the couple back into slavery behind their commander’s back. He was Col. John Graves Simcoe, who had just transported the man and woman from Charleston by boat with his regiment. Simcoe, who had helped Liss escape the year before, was furious and determined to hold McGill and Jarvis accountable.
In August the regiment returned to the Townsend home in Oyster Bay. Jarvis recorded the confrontation in his account of the war, included in our book “Espionage and Enslavement in the Revolution”:
“Young man, what is this you have been doing? I understand you have been selling [enslaved people],” Simcoe demanded, his face filled with anger.
“Sir, I have not,” Jarvis insisted, bewildered by the drastic change in tone from what he was anticipating. “Some of the men have, not me, I assure you, Sir.”
Simcoe replied simply, “Go to your Troop, Sir”—an order which Jarvis quickly obeyed.
“Imagine what my feelings must have been at this moment, but I had yet a much greater mortification still,” Jarvis recalled of the incident. That evening he wrote “a true statement of the facts” to a relative, outlining McGill’s approval of the entire incident. Jarvis noted everything to his confidante in detail, “enjoining him to secrecy; that he was not to divulge it until after my death,” and asked a fellow officer who was going to Manhattan to mail the letter for him. His conscience clear, he once again imagined the matter was over.
The following morning, however, he discovered that Simcoe was far from satisfied with his explanation of what had occurred. Jarvis recalled, “The next day there was a Court of Enquiry, a Captain and two Subalterns. I was examined; I told my story, as it happened, except how far Mr. McGill was concerned, but one of the men flatly told the Court that McGill had given them leave to sell the[m].” With this new damning testimony, Jarvis was cross-examined but still refused to give up McGill. At this point, his loyalty to his friend became almost manic:
“I was then called again and examined as to that fact. To this I refused to answer. Whatever I have done I must be the sufferer, for I would say nothing that would in the least to injure Mr. McGill.”
The matter was dismissed by the Court—but not by Simcoe.
Still enraged, the commander meted out his own punishment. Jarvis recounted, “The next morning after the men were assembled for the morning parade, Colonel Simcoe called me to him, and laying his head down on the neck of his horse gave me one of the most serious reprimands I believe man ever received, and told me decidedly ‘that I had lost my promotion and his countenance forever. Go Sir and join your Troop.’ I returned to my duty more dead than alive.”
Jarvis was so upset by Simcoe’s disapprobation that he claimed, “I lost my appetite, and my sleep went from me; my frame decayed, and in a few days I was a complete skeleton.”
But he had still not heard the last from his commander. Somehow, Simcoe obtained the letter of confession Jarvis had penned, and he once again called him and McGill to his quarters: The Colonel then turned to me, taking a letter from his pocket handed it to me saying, “Is not that your handwriting?” I was thunderstruck, and it was some time before I could answer. “Speak Sir, speak, is that your letter?” and “Is what you have stated true?” I then answered, Sir it is my letter, and since I must answer, the contents are true, but Sir you must give me leave to say that if I could have imagined that my friend would betray me the confidence that I had now in my hands. “Go to your Troop,” was his reply. What he said to Mr. McGill I forbear mentioning.
As this drama played out, both within the Townsend home and in the streets of Oyster Bay, it is very likely that Hannah, Lilly, Jane, Gabriel, Jeffery, and the many other enslaved members of the household witnessed the lengths to which Simcoe persisted in sorting out the matter and punishing the men responsible for selling innocent people into slavery. And they no doubt thought of Liss, who had left with him the year before.”
- “Espionage and Enslavement in the Revolution” pp 53-54. Etched windowpane, collection of the Friends of Raynham Hall Museum.
