Nathan Hale’s Diary
Nathan Hale, the Patriot spy, is associated with the legendary last words, “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.” This was his diary.
Hale was born in Coventry, CT in 1755. He graduated from Yale at 18 and became a teacher. In 1775, he enlisted in the 7th Connecticut Regiment. Hale also served in “Knowlton’s Rangers,” an intelligence unit organized by Ashford, CT’s Thomas Knowlton. When the Continental Army needed a spy to travel behind enemy lines in New York, Hale volunteered. Soon discovered by the British, Hale was hanged on September 22, 1776.
There is no contemporary record of Hale’s famous sentence, but Hale’s words survive, in his own hand, in this diary, which he kept in 1775 and 1776. One of Hale’s final entries, from August 21, 1776, describes a thunderstorm. A lightning strike had killed a nearby member of the Connecticut militia. “The Storm continued for two or three hours,” Hale wrote, “for the greatest part of which time was a perpetual Lightening and the sharpest I ever knew.”
Nathan Hale’s diary is in the collection of the Connecticut Museum of Culture and History in Hartford. Connecticut Landmarks maintains his homestead as a museum in Coventry.
Credits
Nathan Hale’s diary is in the Connecticut Museum of Culture and History in Hartford.