Robert Townsend (spy) - Life After The Culper Ring

Life After The Culper Ring

After the war, Townsend ended his business connections in New York and moved back to Oyster Bay. Townsend never married, sharing his family's home and growing old with his sister Sally.

Townsend likely had a son, Robert Townsend, Jr., and it is unclear who the child's mother was. One possibility is Townsend's housekeeper, Mary Banvard, whom Robert Sr. left $500 in his will. Another possibility is that the mother was a Culper Ring member known today only as Agent 355, however this possibility is unlikely. Questions remain about whether Robert, Jr. was indeed Townsend's son. Solomon Townsend once claimed that Townsend's brother, William, was actually the father.

Robert Townsend died on March 7, 1838, at the age of eighty-four. He managed to take his alternate identity to the grave. The identity of Samuel Culper, Jr. was discovered in 1930 by New York historian Morton Pennypacker. The Townsend home in Oyster Bay is now a museum known as the Raynham Hall Museum.