Several years ago, the Sag Harbor Historical Museum undertook a restoration project for the headstone of Capt. Lester Beebee, and Zach Studenroth, the museum’s vice president, remembered someone asking before it was unveiled if the museum spelled the name right.
Some panic set in — “I hope so,” he remembered thinking — before he discovered that there are conflicting sources on the spelling. On one hand, the federal government and military records listed the name as “Beebe,” the typical spelling, which is engraved on the headstone. However, the family spells the name “Beebee.”
“Will the real Beebee please stand up?” Mr. Studenroth joked about his fretting.
While Captain Beebee’s headstone now sits pristine atop the hill next to the Old Whalers Church, the rest of the family’s six plots sit in disrepair. Recently, however, the museum received a $10,000 grant from the Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation, which will allow for the restoration of the remaining headstones.
Back in 1767, less than a decade before revolution broke out in what would become the United States, colonials chose the Sag Harbor site as a cemetery. “As it turns out, it’s the highest elevation in the village,” Mr. Studenroth said last week. To prepare it as a place of burial, locals cleared out all the trees.
Moving forward a decade, the British had just stymied the Continental Army at the Battle of Long Island in early 1776, solidifying their control over southern New York through a series of successful campaigns. With Sag Harbor as the most eastern port in New York, the British looked there to establish a garrison.
“They arrive, and they have a bald hill,” Mr. Studenroth said of the soldiers deciding where to entrench. “It was like the perfect spot.” By that point, he added, the British had been successfully waging war for centuries, so they had handbooks and guides on how to entrench.
With that, the troops constructed a redoubt — an entrenched, fortlike position with pikes facing outward — at the top of the hill where Sag Harbor had established its cemetery.
Hypothetically, Mr. Studenroth said, a Continental soldier, together with his “band of ruffians,” could stand at the bottom of the hill wondering how to attack while the “well-disciplined, well-dressed, well-fed, well-armed British are inside their fort.”
Col. Return Jonathan Meigs, a Continental officer, likely knew that in May 1777, when he landed at what is now the Morton National Wildlife Refuge in Noyac with the intention of capturing the port at Sag Harbor.
Brig. Gen. Samuel Holden Parsons, operating out of New Haven, had organized the expedition, which was based on a plan that was far from foolproof.
First, the crew would sail from New Haven to Guilford, Conn. Then, the Continentals would board whaleboats and run the British blockade in Long Island Sound, as they raced for Southold. Once there, the Yankees planned to cross on foot, whaleboats in tow, until they reached Peconic Bay, where the soldiers would again row their boats to their landing spot in Noyac.
Once near the redoubt, the group considered their next move, eventually deciding to attack through the woods at the southern end of the fort, Mr. Studenroth said, which was the passage through which the British shuttled supplies.
“If you ever take a boat, the ferry, over to New London, picture looking down, picture rowing a whaleboat from Guilford to Southold and then, in the middle of the night, with muffled oars because you don’t want to disturb anybody, coming across Southold.”
From there, the force split into two, with one detachment assaulting the garrison and another raiding the ships in the harbor. The expedition was a resounding success: The Continentals captured the garrison without incurring any casualties and took 90 prisoners back to Connecticut.
When the war ended, the site again became a cemetery, Mr. Studenroth said, serving as the resting place for around 20 patriots. Before the restoration of the headstone of Captain Beebee, who served in a regiment of minutemen before becoming a ship’s captain after the war, all that was left was a small piece at the top.
Aside from the headstone restoration project, the museum also plans to reconstruct the layout of the redoubt using a noninvasive archaeological process called ground-penetrating radar.
“Of course, doing an archaeological investigation of a burial ground — the optics on that are a little challenging!” Mr. Studenroth said of the project.
The ground-penetrating radar technology detects disturbances beneath the ground in situations where actually digging could be a problem, such as near sewer lines. Bodies present a unique disturbance, he said.
While the results have not yet been returned, Mr. Studenroth said that they will confirm through an illustrated report that the 50-foot redoubt was constructed where the Old Burial Ground is now located.
“That is really so huge,” he said.
