s (in 1760), Mr. Van Arsdale
married Catherine, daughter of James Mills, deputy-sheriff of New York.
Ten years later, weary of his charge, then at the New Jail, built in
1757-9 (the Provost of the Revolution, and now the Hall of Records); he
resigned it, bought a schooner, and engaged in the more congenial
pursuit of marketing produce.

The Revolution coming on, Capt. Van Arsdale entered with his vessel into
the American service, supplied our army at New York with fuel brought
from Hackensack (the Asia man-of-war once taking his wood and paying him
in continental bills), and afterwards helped to sink the
_chevaux-de-frize_ in the Hudson, opposite Fort Washington. In this
arduous work he was aided by his son John, then lately returned from the
Canada expedition. The day the enemy entered the City he conveyed his
family to his vessel at Stryker's Bay, and, crowded with fugitives, made
good his escape up the Hudson to Murdner's Creek. Here his companion,
who had borne him eleven children, died in 1779; but he survived not
only to witness the war brought to a happy close, but long enough to see
much of the waste repaired, and the greatness of his country assured.
Respected and beloved for his amiable qualities and exemplary christian
character, Capt. Van Arsdale, the elder, died in 1798 at the residence
of his son-in-law, Mr. William Sherwood, at "The Creek."

The junior Van Arsdale would have been unworthy of his honest ancestry
had he not possessed in a good degree the same stability of character.
Bereft of a mother's love at so early an age, John was tenderly reared
at his grandfather Van Pelt's till his father married again. Then New
York became his home for ten years or more, during which time his
playground was the Green (now City Hall Park) with the fields adjacent
to the New Jail, of which his father still had the custody. The times
were turbulent, and many stirring scenes passed under his boyish eyes.
One was the Soldiers' Riot, in 1764, when the jail was assaulted and
broken into by a party of riotous soldiers, with design to release a
prisoner, and in which Mr. Mills, in resisting them, was rudely handled
and wounded. And the gatherings, hardly less tumultuous, of the "Sons of
Liberty" to oppose the Stamp Act, or celebrate its repeal, by raising
liberty poles, which were several times cut down and replaced, all
serving to implant in his young mind an abhorrence of foreign rule, with
the germs of that patriotism