On this day 250 years ago in New York at about 8:00 pm, Maj. Gen. Nathanael Greene and Brig. Gen. Hugh Mercer led about 600 men from Pennsylvania rifle companies and Delaware militia regiments commanded by Col. Samuel Patterson and Col. Samuel Griffin from the Flying Camp in New Jersey across the Arthur Kill to Staten Island. Their mission was to capture “a company of British troops, one of Hessians and one of [Loyalist] militia” at the town of Richmond. They would return the next day with about 20 prisoners but lost two men in the raid. A British officer recorded that the British company was “obliged to retire from [Richmond] with some loss.”

Also on that day at Throg’s Neck in New York (now part of the Bronx) Sgt. John Smith of Lippitt’s Rhode Island State Regiment recorded that

in the morning… I walked out to see the country and found plenty of… apples and peaches and went as far as our lower lines and saw the enemy on Frog’s Point where they was at an house over a creek a little beyond musket shot of our guard One who appeared like an officer ventured down to the creek and was shot down by one of our men and was carried up by them to the house.

Sources: https://miniawi.blogspot.com/2011/10/october-15-1776.html; https://dep.nj.gov/wp-content/uploads/njgws/technical-pubs-info/bulletins-and-reports/historical/other-historical-reports/battles.pdf; Mackenzie Diary at 80 accessed at https://archive.org/details/diaryoffrederick21ptunse/page/80/mode/1up