[3] By September 1776, Crosby had left behind his shoemaking to return to the Continental Army and made his way to the camp at White Plains, in Westchester County.

Crosby requested that if he died, the Committee of Safety would clear his name for having supported the British, and it also gave him a special pass that was to be used in an emergency if he was captured by American forces.

[4] The intelligence that he provided was used both to capture Loyalists and to undermine local support for the British, and on at least one occasion, it proved useful to the commander of the Continental Army, George Washington.

[3] To protect his identity, on one occasion he was put up for a mock trial at the Van Wyck House, after which he was quietly allowed to escape and carry on with his work.

[3] As reported in his obituary in the Cabinet Newspaper (Schenectady, New York), July 8, 1835, p. 3, Crosby's life was the basis for the character Harvey Birch in The Spy, a novel that was published in 1821 and written by the American writer James Fenimore Cooper.