JAMES MOODY
He was the brother of John Moody and I found this in a book called "Turncoats, Traitors and Heroes" by John Bakeless.
The Tory spy, James Moody, in General Washington's own guardhouse, and the British lieutenant governor of Detroit, Henry Hamilton, in Thomas Jefferson's jail, both freed themselves of fetters with no great difficulty.
Early in 1777, the most redoubtable of Cortlandt Skinner's secret agents joined Howe's forces. This was James Moody, an ardent king's man, who had begun to find his farm in Sussex County, New Jersey, a dangerous place to live. In April, taking more than seventy Tory recruits along, Moody fought his way to Bergen, New Jersey, where , with most of his men, he joined Barton's Battalion of Skinner's Brigade. Service under Skinner naturally led to secret recruiting in New Jersey, and so to espionage. By June, 1777, Moody had recruited and organized a secret force of five hundred Jersey Tories, ready to rise whenever the British Army moved forward toward Philadelphia, a scheme that failed only because, in the end, Howe decided to go by sea.
Moody's first specific mission in military intelligence, as distinquished from illegal recruiting, was assigned him in May, 1778, just as General Howe was giving up the command to Sir Henry Clinton, for whom Moody, in the next few years, was to carry out one daring feat in espionage after another. This first of many missions was a journey to "interior parts of the rebel country," to get information from Colonel John Butler, the frontier Tory leader commanding Butler's Rangers, whom Clinton supposed to be at Fort Niagara. Moody left New York May 18, 1778, with four companiions and, after a secret visit one day to his own home, spent the summer lurking in rebel territory, sending back information from time to time and returning only in mid September.
He managed to establish direct contact with Butler, by sending a "trusty loyalist," who met the rangers and Indians "between Niagara and Wyoming," on their way to the Wyoming Massacre' stayed with them until the capture of Forty Fort, near modern Wilkes-Barre; then returned with the news. It was clearly this subagent of Moody's who sent in a long report on the Wyoming Massacre still extant in the Clinton papers.
James was equally active under Clinton. He was out on a guerrilla raid through New Jersey in June, 1779, and in October went out to spy directly on Washington's army. In November he crossed New Jersey into Pennsylvania to observe General John Sullivan's army, after its raid on Iroquois New York. Having ascertained its strength, he started back, pausing in Morris County, New Jersey, for a secret examination of the ration books of the Continental Army, which gave him a good idea of American strength. He paused again in Pompton, New Jersey, to spy on Gates forces, collecting "the exactest information, not only of the amount of the force then with him, but of the numbers that were expected to join him." During the trip, he also managed to raid an American jail, releasing a British prisoner under sentence of death.
Moody was not always successful. He failed to blow up the American magazine at Suckasanna, about eighteen miles from Morristown, and his attempt to kidnap Governor William Livingston, of New Jersey, discovered almost at once, led to some tart correspondence between the intended victim and the British commander and to a proclamation by Governor Livingston, offering a reward for Moody's capture.
This was too much for Moody's sense of humor. He replied with a private proclamation of his own, offering two hundred guineas for "a certain William Livingston, late an Attorney at Law, and now a lawless usurper and incorrigible rebel." Further: "If his whol person cannot be brought in, half the sum above specified will be paid for his Ears and Nose, which are too well known, and too remarkable to be mistaken." The British spy's reference to the governor's nose was extremely unkind. A surviving silhouette, confirmed by a painted portrait, shows that it was of almost elephantine proportions. To make the unkind cut unkinder still, everyone knew that bounties for "vermin"-wolves, foxes and other troublesome animals - were often paid for the ears or nose.
In mid-May, 1781, James Moody was nearly captured several times and had to fight his way back to New York; but the very next night, May 18, the intrepid Tory tried his luck again, feeling sure no patriots would expect him so soon after his defeat. After a fight near Saddle River (probably between Passaic and Hackensack), he pushed on to Pompton, only to find that the official mails were now sent by a different route.
The word spread: "Moody is out." The Americans had long since learned to fear the doughty guerrilla. On May 4, 1781, the American commissary, Charles Stewart, was panic-stricken on learning he was in the field again and hasily demanded protection for his quartermaster stores at Sussex Court House, New Jersey. The presence of Indian raiders at the same time did not worry him; but he wrote: "Moody is a fellow of enterprize and knows the Contry well he has traveled it through and through and will doubtless effect the Destruction of the Stores."
Eventually, the pitcher went too often to the well. Lieutenant General Baron Wilhelm von Knyphausen had captured Thomas Edison, or Addison, who had been assisting Charles Thompson, Secretary to the Continental Congress. Edison talked his captors into believing that he had access to congressional papers (which was true) and that he would betray them (which was not). He was released and told when and where to meet the spies near Philadelphia. On November 7, 1781, John Moody, the spy's brother, and Laurence Marr found Edison waiting for them on the Jersey bank of the Delaware, opposite the city, while James Moody himself lurked within hearing but out of sight.
Edison assured his dupes that next evening he could let them into "the most private recesses of the State-house," where secret papers of the Continental Congress were filed.
When the time came, John Moody and Marr crossed to Philadelphia, while James Moody waited openly in the ferryhouse on the New Jersey shore, telling a woman there that he belonged to the Jersey Brigade. He was entirely truthful. There was an American as well as a British, Jersey Brigade. Moody did not feel called upon to state which one he belonged to, and no one troubled to ask him.
James moody heard a new arrival from the Pennsylvania side remark, about eleven
o'clock that "there was the devil to pay in Philadelphia; that there had been a plot to break into the Statehouse, but that one of the party had betrayed the others; that two were already taken; and that a part of soldiers had just crossed the river with him, to seize their leader, who was said to be thereabouts."
Snatching his pistols, the British agent fled for a neighboring woods, saw cavalry ahead, and flush himself flat in a ditch. Searching troopers passed within ten feet, and he could see the men running their bayonets into shocks of corn in a field near by. When the searchers had passed, he hid for two days in one of the corn shocks he had already seen being searched. Later he found a refuge which he always refused to name; stole a boat, inwhich he rowed openly up the Delaware, conversing in a friendly way with other boatment as he passed; and working his way from one Tory house to another, across New Jersey, reached New York. John Moody was hanged November 13, 1781. Marr probably gave enough information to save his life. Congress paid Edison a cash reward of $266 2/3.
LAWRENCE MARR JR
GOVERNOR HENRY HAMILTON
WYOMING MASSACRE
FT NIAGARA
CORTLANDT SKINNER
LOYALIST
SIR HENRY CLINTON
