 Militia members included students at King's College (now Columbia University) such as Nicholas Fish, Robert Troup and, most famously, Alexander Hamilton.The company drilled in the graveyard of nearby St. Paul's Chapel before classes in uniforms they designed themselves, consisting of short green tight-fitting jackets, a round leather hat with a cockade and the phrase "Liberty or Death" on the band, and a badge of red tin hearts on their jackets with the words "God and Our Right" (the motto "Dieu et mon droit", translated into English and adapted to make its possessive pronoun plural).In August 1775 the Hearts of Oak participated in a successful raid, while under fire from , to seize cannon from the Battery, thereby becoming an artillery unit thereafter.