Enoch Crosby (1750–1835) was an American spy and soldier during the American Revolution. His life may have been the basis for the character Harvey Birch in James Fenimore Cooper's novel The Spy.
Enoch Crosby’s spy career began with a simple case of mistaken identity. In 1776, the Connecticut-born shoemaker was making his way to a Continental Army camp in New York when he was confused for a British sympathizer and invited to a meeting of loyalist militiamen. Crosby played along and later reported what he learned to Patriot leader John Jay, who seized the opportunity to recruit him as one of the nation’s first counterintelligence operatives.
Enoch Crosby
The job required Crosby to work deep undercover. To help sell his new identity, his handlers arranged for him to be arrested as a loyalist before staging his escape to the Hudson River Valley. Crosby then reunited with the British sympathizers and began reporting on their movements. Thanks to the intelligence he gathered, the entire gang was rounded up in a Continental raid a few days later.
A 1776 map of New York City. (Boston Public Library)
In the months that followed, Crosby infiltrated British loyalist groups on at least four more occasions. Each time he would be “arrested” along with his hapless co-conspirators, only to later escape and return to the field to start the whole process over again. The young spy carried a special pass that would identify him as an American agent in a pinch—he once had to use it to avoid being picked up by Continental sentries—but outside of Jay and a few others, no one knew he was actually working for the colonials. Before he was finally discharged and hailed as a hero in 1777, even Crosby’s own parents believed their son was a traitor to the Patriot cause.
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