Editing Verplanck, New York (section)

==History==
[[File:George Washington by John Trumbull 1790.jpg|thumb|[[Washington at Verplanck's Point]], by [[John Trumbull]] (1790)]]

Verplanck lies on a small peninsula in the extreme northwest of the town of Cortlandt. Tucked along the east bank of the [[Hudson River]], it is bordered by Cortlandt's village of [[Buchanan, New York|Buchanan]] and hamlet of  [[Montrose, New York|Montrose]].

===Verplanck's Point===
{{main|Verplanck's Point}}
Verplanck's Point lies at Verplanck's southernmost end. The [[Continental Army]] of General George Washington encamped at Verplanck's Point during the [[American Revolutionary War|Revolutionary War]], as a staging area for crossing the Hudson at adjacent [[Kings Ferry (Cortlandt, New York)|Kings Ferry]], lying between the Point and Montrose. Pursued by the army of British General [[William Howe, 5th Viscount Howe|William Howe]], it crossed to [[Stony Point, New York|Stony Point]] on the west bank, en route to [[Fort Lee, New Jersey]].<ref>[[chernow|Chernow, 2010]], p. 257</ref>  From there it continued south to [[Yorktown, Virginia]], where Washington received the [[Siege of Yorktown|surrender of General Charles Cornwallis]] on October 19, 1781.

A year later, in September 1782, Verplanck's Point, an alluvial plain and natural place for an encampment during the inherent bottleneck of an arduous and slow ferrying of men and materiel across the river, again became the site of the Continental Army's bivouac upon crossing the Hudson.

[[John Trumbull]] painted a full-length oil portrait of ''[[Washington at Verplanck's Point]]'', and gifted it to [[Martha Washington]]. Based on its success he produced a much larger work scaled up to nearly four times its size for the City of New York, ''[[George Washington (John Trumbull, 1790)|George Washington]]'', substituting [[Evacuation Day (New York)|Evacuation Day]] of New York City in 1783 as its backdrop for departing French commander-in-chief General [[Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, comte de Rochambeau|Rochambeau]]'s review of Washington's [[Continental Army]] troops on September 14, 1782.