On the Manhattan side of the Spuyten Duyvil Creek, in today’s Marble Hill, you could find Hyatt’s Tavern. Cole Thompson wrote about the tavern on his excellent blog. In Cole’s article, he writes that Washington was rumored to have visited the tavern in 1789. He actually documented the visit in his diary, here. I am intrigued by Washington’s statement in the diary entry about the “Six Servants which composed [his] Retinue.” Is that the polite southern way of referring to slaves? If yes, they would not have been the only slaves at the tavern that night. According to the 1790 census, Caleb Hyatt, the innkeeper, had three slaves. The 1790 census reveals a shockingly large number of slaves in the neighborhood at that time.