Joshua Hett Smith

Photo: Color postcard showing the Treason House, Stony Point Road, West Haverstraw, NY. Belmont, later known as The Treason House and also called the Joshua Hett Smith House

http://www.encyclopedia.com/article-1G2-3454901448/smith-joshua-het...

SMITH, JOSHUA HETT. (1736–1818). Lawyer. New York. A son of William Smith, Joshua Smith was a successful lawyer in the tradition of his father and elder brother, Chief Justice William Smith. Although his father and brother were suspected of having Loyalist sympathies, Joshua was an active Patriot, a member of the New York Provincial Congress, and a member of the militia. His wife was from South Carolina, and he had met General Robert Howe in Charleston in 1778. When the latter assumed command at West Point, Smith directed Howe's secret service. When General Benedict Arnold succeeded Howe, he asked Smith to continue his intelligence work. Thus it was that Smith became—apparently in all innocence—a key actor in the events connected with Arnold's treasonous activities. …

Joshua Hett Smith House (demolished), also known as Treason House, was a historic house in West Haverstraw, New York. It stood on a hill overlooking the King's Ferry at Stony Point, an important crossing of the Hudson River. During the American Revolutionary War, General Benedict Arnold met at the house with British Major John André, while plotting to surrender the fort at West Point. Later, the house had a brief tenure as headquarters for General George Washington. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_Hett_Smith_House

"Joshua Hett Smith, at whose house, near Stony Point, Arnold and André held their interview (September 22), was tried by a military court and acquitted. He was soon afterwards arrested by the civil authorities and committed to jail at Goshen, Orange County, whence he escaped and made his way through the country, in the disguise of a woman, to New York. Smith went to England with the British army at the close of the war, and in 1808 published a book in London entitled An Authentic Narrative of the Causes which led to the Death of Major André , a work of very little reliable authority. He died at New York in 1818."