Holland's Ferry

Holland's Ferry approximately near the end of 201st Street off 10th Avenue on the Harlem River in Manhattan.
See
Historical Guide to the City of New York Compiled by Frank Bergen Kelley From Original Observations and Contributions Made by Member and Friends of The City History Club of New York
Frederick A Stokes Company Publishers 1909 New York
p 166 Plate 31 Route 28a
Colonial and Revolutionary Sites East of Broadway
p 170-1
87. A British Camp of considerable extend existed on the edge of the bank of the river, between Two Hundredth and Two Hundred and First Streets on a site now entirely covered by the power house of New York Edison Company.
Here was a group of military buildings, storehouses or officers' huts. Near the remains of a great camp fire, numerous military objects, including many buttons of the 10th, 23d, 37th, 64th and Royal Provincial Regiments, were found.
Holland's Ferry across the Harlem [River] was maintained at this point, to connect with Fort No VIII [University Heights], on the hill just south of the Hall of Fame (New York University). This ferry was attacked and the ropes cut by the American forces in the raid of 1781.


Bolton, Reginald Pelham,. Relics of the revolution : the story of the discovery of the buried remains of military life in forts and camps on Manhattan Island.
p 185

XVI. Hollands ferry camp
Where the Speedway bends around the base of Fort George hill, a wide inlet extends from the Harlem River, which was long known to the Dutch settlers as the Half Kill, fed by the little brook, called Pieter Tuynier's Run, which once bounded the Round Meadow-later the Dyekman farm-and found its source at the base of Inwood Hill on Seaman Avenue.

Under cover of the guns in a fortification upon the crest of Fordham hill, where now the University of New York dominated the scene, the British Light Infantry Corps, under the comman of Brigadier General Edward Matthews, landed on November 16, 1776, in Sherman's Creek, as the Half Kill is now known, and advanced, with fixed bayonets, up the steep hillside to that hand to nad encounter with Colonel Baxter's Pennsylvanians which ended in the capture of Laurel Hill.

The importance of the advanced position of the Fordham fortification, which later became known as Fort Number Eight, necessitated the establishment of some means of ready communication between the forst and its supports upon Mahnattan, and during the occupation of New York Island by the British troops there wa in existence a ferry known as Holland's, which evidently had one terminal upon the promontory forming the north side of the inlet of Sherman's Creek, which in recent times was locally known as Bronson's Point and is now covered by the vast power station of the United Electric Light and Power Company.

An examination of the plan drawn by von Kraft in 1779 discloses a direct reference upon the drawing to Holland's ferry, the road leading to which around the level ground north of Laurel Hill is so inscribed. On the British headquarters' map of 1782, at the point above described, a small pier is shown extending into the Harlem, back of which is an enclosure surrounding four buildings, and bearing the appearances of a military compound. The ferry is referred to several times in von Kraft's diary, particularly in connection with the attach made in 1781 upon the positions then held by the Britidh on Fordham Heights, when the surprising forces cut the cables of the ferry, and scared the defenders of the locality very thoroughly.

[More about relics discovered in the area.]