Robert Townsend

Robert Townsend (November 25, 1753 – March 7, 1838) was a member of the Culper Ring during the American Revolution. He operated in New York City with the aliases "Samuel Culper, Jr." and "723" and gathered information as a service to General George Washington. He is one of the least-known operatives in the spy ring and once demanded Abraham Woodhull ("Samuel Culper") never to tell his name to anyone, even to Washington. Early life Townsend was the third son of eight children of Samuel and Sarah Townsend from Oyster Bay, New York. His father was a Whig-slanted politician who owned a store in Oyster Bay. Little is known about his early life. His mother was an Episcopalian and his father was a liberal Quaker (a 1789 document from the Oyster Bay Baptist Church shows Samuel registered as a Baptist). His father arranged an apprenticeship during his mid-teens with the merchant firm of Templeton and Stewart, where Robert lived and worked among soldiers and residents of Holy Ground, New York City's biggest red-light district during the war. Templeton and Stewart catered to the working-class residents of the district. According to Alexander Rose, Townsend's early years were dedicated to making a fortune, not to demonstrating his patriotism. Rose suggests that Townsend fared well financially during the war by operating a store even as he was spying for Washington. Joins Culper Spy Ring A number of factors led Townsend to the Culper Spy Ring, including the influence of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, the British harassment of his family, and his relationship with Woodhull. Even among those who were not members of the Quaker faith, its philosophies were widespread in much of the northeast at the time and colored the thought of many people; this included the sect's adherence to pacifism. However, Pennsylvania had experienced a break between "political" Quakers and "religious" Quakers during the 1750s. Essentially, the "religious Quakers" accused the "political Quakers" of breaking with traditional values, which resulted in political Quakers resigning from office and leading to a wave of "purification" within the movement. The remaining Quakers pledged to embrace nonviolence and never to rebel against a legal government, and the Quakers generally emerged as the strongest supporters of British rule.