Abraham Woodhull

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Abraham Woodhull (born, Oct 7, 1750 died, Jan 23, 1826) was a member of the Culper Spy Ring during the American Revolution. after the Revolution, he served as a magistrate and a judge. He freed his slaves. It may be that Cooper's character Harry Birch was based upon his work as a spy.^[1]

Woodhull developed a code to communicate with members of the patriot army that the British forces were unable to understand. This code was a series of letters and numbers that were put together and looked like nothing more than gibberish. Abraham Woodhull went by the name "Culper Jr." so that the British didn't discover who he really was, and harm him and/or his family. In some of his letters, Woodhull used a type of invisible ink that needed to be doused in a certain type of chemical to be read. Woodhull also would deliver messages to him by burying the message in a box in a certain place, where he would know to look for it. This type of message delivery was known as a "Dead Drop."