Tag: New Jersey History

  • June 21, 1775: New Jersey Gets in the Game

    Cover art for June 21, 1775: Portrait of William Franklin, attributed to Mather Brown, ca 1790

    New Jersey’s Provincial Congress first convened in May, but by now they’d gotten a bunch of stuff done. They’d already made arrangements to remove the Royal Governor from power, and resolved to do it like gentlemen (it didn’t work out that way, unfortunately).

    At this point the colony had only one delegate to the Continental Congress: a couple had resigned, one never showed up, and that left exactly one man holding down the fort. So the Provincial Congress appointed new delegates, with a specific mission.

  • May 23, 1775: New Jersey Gets Into the Act

    Cover art for May 23, 1775: colonial banknote signed by John Hart.

    New Jersey has been pretty quiet since the Lexington and Concord fighting took place. But no more: today they came back…with a vengeance!

  • February 8, 1775

    Cover art for February 8, 1775: Portrait of Colonel John Cox in 1793 by Charles Willson Peale

    (Forgive us the jokey headline–sometimes it’s late at night when we post this stuff and we get punchy.)

    Over the course of a single year—and beginning with this day in 1775—John Cox experienced what any reasonable person would call a “meteoric rise” in his personal and professional fortunes. He started out adjudicating British laws in the Colonies, but moved quickly into assisting with the Colonial resistance effort and subsequently to assisting with the actual war. He did this both materially (as a Quartermaster) and passively (allowing his land to be used by Patriot troops).

    He died in 1793, at the age of 60, and even this week he’s probably still more productive than most of us.