Nathaniel Gardiner was a surgeon for the New Hampshire Continental Infantry. He was the American surgeon who later attended to André before he was executed for spying with Benedict Arnold. Following the revolution, the island was formally brought under East Hampton town jurisdiction. During the War of 1812 a British fleet of seven ships of the line and several smaller frigates anchored in Cherry Harbor and conducted raids on American shipping through Long Island Sound. Crews would come ashore for provisions which were purchased at market prices. During one of the British excursions, Americans captured some of the crew. The British came to arrest then Lord of the Manor John Lyon Gardiner I, who, being a delicate man, adopted the "green room defense" where he stayed in a bed with green curtains surrounded by medicine to make him look feeble. The British, not wanting a sick man on board, let him be. The British were to bury several personnel on the island during the course of the war. Some of the British fleet that burned Washington assembled in the harbor in 1814. Gardiner's supply boats were manned by slaves during the war and this made it easier for them to pass through British lines. Many of the Gardiner slaves were to live in the Freetown, just north of East Hampton village. Julia Gardiner, who was to become President John Tyler's second wife and First Lady in 1844, was born on the island in 1820. From 1854 to 1894, the island was the site of the Gardiners Island Lighthouse. Gardiners Point Island is an island in Block Island Sound that was the former location of the Gardiner Island Lighthouse as well as Fort Tyler. For many years the island was connected via a shoal to Gardiners Island and as such it is under the jurisdiction of East Hampton (town), New York. In 1851 the federal government purchased on the peninsula from the Gardiners for $400 with the lighthouse first being lit in 1855 after a construction expenditure of $7,000. The lighthouse was in square, 1½ story brick building and had a sixth order Fresnel Lens, fixed white light above sea level. A March 1888 Nor'easter caused a break in the peninsula permanently turning the point into an island. Between 1890 and 1893 the island was shrinking at the rate of per year. On March 7, 1894, the lighthouse was abandoned and shortly afterward fell into the ocean. A lighted buoy was then moored ¼ miles northeast of the lighthouse. During the Spanish–American War the War Department appropriated $500,000 to build the Fort Tyler battery on the island (named for former President John Tyler who had married Julia Gardiner Tyler who had been born on Gardiners Island).