Ebenezer Foote's Swimming the Hudson River Story

Abram Foote's own History casts this narrative in a different, and a rather dubious, light.

Abram Foote, Foote Family and Genealogy, p. 85:

This was the character Judge Foote had attained at an early day in his native state. That he was a soldier in the Revolution is evidenced by the following extract from a letter written by him in the 87th year of his age, in 1832, to Hon. Elial T, Foote, and still preserved by a son of the latter, H.A. Foote, Esq., of New York, who has furnished the writer of this sketch with a copy of the same. He says: There was a mistake in the account that Rennsalaer (Foote) gives about Ebenezer's (Judge Foote's younger brother, who was afterwards a prominent citizen of Delhi, Delaware County, where he was successively Member of Assembly, District Attorney, State Senator and County Judge,) swimming across the Hudson river in the winter. He was taken prisoner by the enemy at the evacuation of New York, I think in September (1776). I was there at the same time as a militiaman.

He was taken by the Hessians in that retreat, but he got away from them and fled to the river, and he, with three others who made their escape, collected some logs and withed them together and shoved out into the river with setting poles, and the tide being going out then it wafted them toward the British shipping. Some people from the Jersey side seeing their condition manned a boat and went out and took them across to the Jersey side, and the next day they crossed back again and came into camp where I was." No further evidence than this is needed of the fact that he was a patriot soldier in the stormy days of the Revolution.