The book is the story of our country’s search for independence from England, as seen by a teenager, who was in the Continental Artillery for the whole of seven years. He signed up in July 1776 and served till 1783. He narrates the events at which he is in attendance.

The book is written for all ages and follows the war from New York City to after Yorktown, then continues for the rest of his life.

David L. Taylor was born June 7, 1941 at Rahway General Hospital, Rahway, New Jersey. David was baptized on December 14,1941 by Rev. Franklin L. Artley at Elmora Presbyterian Church, Elizabeth, New Jersey.

He started kindergarten at Elmora School #12 in September 1946. All of his growing up was spent living at 850 Floral Avenue. Dave started the Seventh Grade at Alexander Hamilton Junior High School in September 1953.

In early September 1956, Dave began attending Thomas Jefferson High School. He graduated from High School in June 1959. September 1959 Dave started college at SUNY Morrisville, New York. After two years, he switched his credits to Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey. Summer of 1961, he started work as a copyboy for the Elizabeth Daily Journal and attended Rutgers University at night. Working for the Journal continued until October 1963, when Dave joined the United States Navy, under the SNJC Program. This program guaranteed him a school of his choice and the rank of E-3 after boot camp. He left for boot camp at the Great Lakes Recruit Training Center.

After graduation from boot camp, January 1964, Dave was assigned to Photo A School at the Naval Air Technical Training Unit, Pensacola Naval Air Station, Pensacola, Florida. Three months later, he had passed training and was assigned to VFP-63, Miramar Naval Air Station, Miramar, California.

Late 1966, Dave extended his tour of duty by 11 months and was assigned to overseas shore duty at Naval Station, Bermuda. It was at this time that Dave went on a blind date with his future wife-to-be. This happened over the New Year’s Holiday weekend 1966-1967. A few dates later, Dave asked Catharine Elizabeth Featherstone to marry him. They were married on June 3,1967 at Naval Station Chapel by the Chaplain Lt. CDR Van Tassel. September 1968, Second Class Photographer David L. Taylor was honorably discharged from the United States Navy. They moved to Florida to be near the rest of his family and settled in Tampa. On November 26,1969, Robert Cameron Taylor was born. They lived in Tampa until May 1989, when they moved to Treasure Island.

After moving to Treasure Island, Dave started family genealogy research. This led him to discover that he was directly related to a Revolutionary War Veteran. He joined the Sons of the Revolution on August 16, 1993 and the Society of the Descendants of Washington’s Army at Valley Forge on January 19, 1995.

He has become President of the Brig. General John Glover Chapter of the Sons of the Revolution in the State of Florida and is currently Chaplain for the Sons of the Revolution in the State of Florida.

On August 21,1999, Dave gave a talk on the Battle of Long Island to the local Chapter of the Sons of the Revolution. This led to the writing of a five-lesson class on Religion in the Revolution. He taught this class twice at Pasadena Presbyterian Church.

The popularity of his talk on the Battle of Long Island, led to it being published in the Spring 2000 issue of Flintlock & Powderhorn. Magazine of the Sons of the Revolution General Society located at Fraunces Tavern, New York City.

In my research for this book and my first book Give’em Watts, Boys! I have found over and over the total abuse by the British and Hessian troops of the general population. These people started out as either neutral or leaning towards the British. After less than a year of occupation by British and Hessian troops, they changed to ardent believers in independence. It is not surprising when you discover over and over the documented records of the continuous raping of innocent women the whole time period that Staten Island was occupied.

The outright stealing of land, houses, barns, animals, supplies, and people by occupation troops was going on during the entire period of time.

The burning down of whole towns especially churches was condoned by the British. Also the desecration of churches by using them as stables and whorehouses was also a common practice.

The continuous bayoneting of troops by the Hessians, after these troops had tried to surrender.

The placing of bounties and rewards on the heads of clergymen like the Reverend James Caldwell, that was responsible for the death of his wife and eventually his death.

The use of Native Americans as a fear tactic against rural farmers. That is, threatening them with scalping and burning. This was a real worry because The British paid bounty for scalps.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not condoning any abuses that the Americans may have done to Tory loyalists. But this practice was very strongly punished by Washington’ s troops. The penalty for guilty was hanging and this was strictly enforced by General Washington.

I am not trying to convince anyone of my viewpoints but I felt that I, as a direct descendant, had to make this statement.

A lot of us can remember that this kind of treatment happened in the Second World War and is still going on in the 20th Century and now in the 21st Century. But, it should never be condoned.

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Jeremiah was born March 3, 1760. He was the youngest of seven children raised in an English - Dutch religious family. There is a very good chance that his mother died shortly after his birth and his father remarried Judith Lammerse about a year later. He was lucky to be born into a large family. There were many cousins and relatives, who lived in Brooklyn and Jamaica, New York. His uncles, Nicholas and Abraham Brouwer owned the Gowanus Mills, that were located on the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn.

New York City and Manhattan Island had changed very little in 1760 from the way it had been back when the Dutch had owned it. Once it was rugged terrain, some of it all but impassable, with sheer cliffs and ravines and bare limestone outcroppings – the rough northern part of Central Park is typical of the whole island--and several rather imposing elevations. Commanding lower Manhattan was Bayard’s Mount, a hill that reared 100 feet above Mott and Pell Streets, in the heart of what is now Chinatown. Its cedar-crested summit looked west across the Hudson River to the Newark Moutains, east to the fertile green plains of Long Island, south to the gabled roofs and spires of the little city a mile away. At its base, about Foley Square, was New York’s main source of fresh water, a natural lake called Collect Pond, which was supposed to be bottomless and to hold a sea monster. Bayard’s Mount has been leveled to fill the bottomless lake; the sea monster is locked forever beneath New York’s Municipal Court.

Many of New York’s winding streets trace the course of forgotten brooks. Maiden Lane was a footpath along a crystal stream which tumbled over flat stones in cascades and rills, forming occasional pools where Dutch vrouws and their dimpled daughters came to do their washing. Minetta Street marks a willow-lined rill, which started in a swamp at Fifth Avenue and 21st Street and meandered west through Greenwich Village to the Hudson. The pronounced dip in Park Avenue at 31st Street, where the underpass emerges, is the ancient bed of Sunfish Pond, the loveliest fishing lake on the island. Its grassy banks were shaded by hickories and oaks, and boys with willow poles angled in its spring-fed water for sunnies and sticklebacks and yellow-bellied cobblers, the sweetest perch of all.

Porpoises and sharks and an occasional whale cruised off the black rocks of the Battery, and sturgeon plunged and rolled up the Hudson as far as the Highlands. Lobsters were plentiful in the unpolluted East River. The muddy banks abounded in oysters and clams. It was a beautiful and bountiful island, still largely uninhabited, with native cherries and plums and mulberries everywhere. Wild strawberries grew in such profusion that people lay down in the fields and gorged themselves. This was the natural surroundings that Jeremiah grew up in. After chores, he could go hunting or fishing with his brothers or anything else that a boys imagination could think of.

But it wasn’t to be so completely idyllic. There were outside pressures happening around him. When he was just turned five in 1765, the hated Stamp Act went into effect. This caused immediate reaction from the people. They revolted and mobs went on a rampage led by the Sons of Liberty. Tyranny was tyranny, whether abroad or at home. The masses echoed the phrases "Taxation without Representation! Rights of Man! Slavery! Tyranny! Enemies of Liberty, Beware!" Though they had no property to tax, they banged their tankards in protest against the Stamp Act and rallied to the heady cry of "Liberty".

General civil war was averted when a fast packet from London brought word that the Stamp Act had been revoked, and newspapers hailed the "Glorious news for America and no more Shim Shams." Church bells rang all night, an ox was roasted whole on the Commons. A large mob of the Sons of Liberty went to the Fort to congratulate the Governor. The grateful Assembly voted funds to erect a statue of King George III in Bowling Green, and broadsides were posted in all coffeehouses: "Peace proclaimed."

It was an uneasy peace, finally late in 1769, when the British soldiers, weary of epithets and brickbats, revenged themselves on their tormentors by chopping down the pine post called the Tree of Liberty. After four successive poles had been destroyed, the Sons of Liberty secured a tall ship’s mast, bound it with iron bands, and set it in a deep hole on the Commons. Some members of the Sixteenth Regiment, during the dead hours of the night, blew it up with gunpowder and insolently deposited the fragments on the doorstep of the Widow de la Montagne’s Tavern on Broadway, the rebel rondezous. In retaliation the mob collared three lobsterbacks next morning and marched them towards the Mayor’s office. A group of comrades in arms came to their rescue, wielding musket butts and bayonets, but the civilians defended themselves so vigorously with canes and cart stakes that the soldiers retreated toward Golden Hill, a waterfront section near Burling Slip. Here a lively street fight broke out, one citizen was slain and several were wounded, and the mob leader named Isaac Sears, received a bayonet scratch on his arm. The Battle of Golden Hill marked the first bloodshed of the Revolution, two months before the Boston Massacre.

By 1773, Jeremiah was 13 years old, and all around him was the influence of descent and disagreement caused by a tax on all tea. But despite the distractions, he became a Smith’s apprentice and started to learn the trade that he would work at the rest of his life. But in December, a courier came from Boston with news of the Boston Tea Party in Boston Harbor. The local Liberty Boys prepared Mohawk disguises of fringed buckskins, sharpened their hatchets, and waited grimly for the first tea ship to arrive at New York.

On April 22 the merchant ship London slipped through the Narrows and tied up at Murray’s Wharf, with eighteen chests of tea

in its hold. Scorning their Indian disguises, they boarded the London, broke into the hold and tossed its cargo into the East River. As the smell of water-soaked tea wafted from the harbor the following morning, cannon boomed at the Battery, the patriot’s flag, a Union Jack cantoned on a red field, was raised on the Liberty Pole, and a parade led by Issac Sears escorted the London’s captain back to his ship to the ironic strains of "God Save the King."

Shortly before noon on the 23rd of April---a year to the day after the New York Tea Party--- the doors of Trinity Church swung open at the end of Sunday service, and the fashionable congregation emerged blinking into the bright sunshine. It was a beautiful morning, soft and breathlessly calm. No trace of a breeze stirred the lacy branches of the elms, their leaf buds already unfolding in the early spring. The least sound carried a long way in the noonday stillness; quail were calling in the green meadows sloping to the Hudson, and curlews whistled along the rocky shore, bright with shadbush in broom. The humid air bore the heavy scent of narcissus and hyacinths, imported from Holland and arranged in neat borders along the brick walk that led to the rear of the church and the Broadway gate. Even the city was hushed, and the voices of the parishioners were unnaturally loud as they strolled toward the deserted avenue. There was another sound in the distance, a gale of wind sweeping out of the north. It seemed to swell in volume, building to hurricane force, punctuated by the far-off crackle of muskets and guttural cheers.

The bell of the Brick Presbyterian Church near the Commons began clanging erratically, like a harbor buoy tossed by a storm, and above the tumult the listeners made out the clatter of hooves coming down Broadway.

The express courier was riding at a full gallop. He stood in the stirrups and his arm rose and fell regularly, flogging his horse on. He had been a long time in the saddle; mud caked his boots and spattered his blue homespun breeches, and their inseams were stained with lather from his horse. He reined to a halt before the church, and took a dispatch from his bag and read it out loud. The message was dated four days ago:

April 19, 1775

Wednesday morning near 11 of the clock

Israel Bissel wheeled his horse and lashed it with the reins, rounded Wall Street, and galloped toward the Committee of Correspondence chambers in the Merchants’ Coffee House. The roar of the mob was growing louder, starting down Broadway. The clash of arms, resounding from Lexington, had ended a genteel and decadent way of life forever.

Jeremiah was there at Trinity Church that Sunday with his family. He was also a member of the Sons of Liberty. But until now he was like a lot people, not sure of his loyalties to England or . . . But this news made up his mind, as to where his loyalties lay. "The Kings Soldiers had gone too far now. It looked like war was coming."