THE JOSHUA PENNY WEB SITE

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From East Hampton History by Jeanette Edwards Rattray, page 161:

Joshua Penny, who is said to have attempted unsuccessfully to destroy the flagship of the British fleet with a torpedo, was snatched from his bed at Three Mile Harbor in the night. Following the offer of a reward for his capture, someone at Sag Harbor was thought to have "sold a Penny for a thousand dollars." He was thrown into a dungeon in Halifax for nine months, but returned to East Hampton after President James Madison secured his exchange for a British officer captured on Gardiner's Island. Joshua Penny's "Life and Adventures," written at the Pudding Hill house here with the aid of Jeremiah Osborn, a lawyer, and published in 1815, is a hair-raising tale. Penny had sailed on a Jamaica slaver; he was impressed into the British Navy and escaped, to spend over a year on a South African mountain without seeing another human being.

Higher up on the same page is a discussion of "Pudding Hill." From page 161:

Many homely tales are told of brave women who refused to aid the enemy; "Pudding Hill' at the corner of Woods Land and Ocean Avenue gets its name from such an incident. The mistress of the house, who was either an Osborne or a Miller, (there seems to be some argument on that point,) threw a hot boiled pudding down the sandy hill, kettle and all, rather than allow British soldiers to dine upon it as they had planed. ] 

To read a page of the book, click on that page, and when done click on Back on your browser (usually near the top of the screen), then click on the next page. Many of the pages are hard to read in their original size, so these pages are enlarged. You will have to scroll up and down and possibly side to side and to see the entire page.] 

The Life and Adventures of Joshua Penny