Abraham Woodhull

The Culper Ring was a successful operation that provided Washington with valuable information on the British Army headquartered in New York from October 1778 to the end of the war.

[4] He was motivated by the murder of his cousin Brigadier General Nathaniel Woodhull of the New York militia, who was wounded by sword and bayonet cuts after he had been captured on August 29, 1776.

[5] According to some reports, he had been deprived of medical care and food and suffered an agonizing death on September 20, 1776,[2] and Abraham Woodhull was inflamed against the British by that event.

[6] Woodhull had been caught smuggling contraband across Long Island Sound, and Tallmadge spoke with Connecticut Governor Jonathan Trumbull and got him released.

[11][13] Warren Walker suggested in 1956 that James Fenimore Cooper's character Harvey Birch had been based upon the work of "Samuel Culper" as a spy.