James Fenimore Cooper was inspired by a tale related to him by neighbor and family friend John Jay. It was more successful and became a bestseller; the setting of this Revolutionary War tale is widely believed to have been John Jay's family home "The Locusts" in Rye, New York. In 1823, Cooper published "The Pioneers", the first of the "Leatherstocking" series. The series features Natty Bumppo, a resourceful American woodsman at home with the Delaware Indians and their chief Chingachgook. Bumppo was also the main character of Cooper's most famous novel "The Last of the Mohicans" (1826), written in New York City where
The Spy (Cooper novel) ground between the British and Continental armies. Harvey Birch, peddler and patriot, is a character remotely founded upon that of a real spy who helped John Jay. H. L. Barnum's "The Spy Unmasked; or Memoirs of Enoch Crosby, alias Harvey Birch" (1828; 5th ed., 1864) claimed to identify the historical spy. The Spy (Cooper novel) The Spy: a Tale of the Neutral Ground was James Fenimore Cooper's second novel, published in 1821 by Wiley & Halsted. This was the earliest American novel to win wide and permanent fame and may be said to have begun the type of romance which