250 and Counting

Tag: New Jersey History

  • Headed To Fort Lee–November 10, 1776

    Cover art for November 10, 1776: view of modern-day Manhattan from Fort Lee Historic Park. Photo uploaded to Wikipedia by user Hudconja.

    Yes, I busted on New Jersey in yesterday’s episode, but I was born and raised in the New York Metro Area and it’s part of my DNA.

    To be fair, lots of New Jersey is quite nice. Fort Lee (the town)…not so much. I mean, it’s fine. But not especially nice. Having said that, Fort Lee Historic Park is a neat little—well, 33 acres—island of peace among a bustling urban center.

    Just out of sight of this photo to the left is the George Washington Bridge, which crosses the Hudson River to New York City. Basically the photographer has the end of the New Jersey Turnpike over their left shoulder. But for that, it’s not as noisy as you’d imagine it would be.

    The dirty secret about Fort Lee Historic Park is that, while the site itself is extremely historical, very little of what you see there is original. Most of it is reconstructed: the blockhouse, the battery, the barracks. But it’s still a cool place to visit and you do learn a lot there.

    Fort Washington, which we’ve discussed many time previously, was almost directly across the river from Fort Lee. There’s a park there as well, which crosses under the GW Bridge. It’s part of the Hudson River Greenway. The idea behind these twin forts, plus the chevaux-de-frise in the river, was to make it as tough as possible for British ships to move through the Hudson River at this point. In addition to the fort itself, which is at the top of the bluffs, there were also fortifications closer to the water’s edge at Burdett’s Landing. This was a spot where the land leveled out just enough to make access practical. Burdett’s Landing can’t be visited as an historic site since it exists only as part of a cooperative community. However, if you can find the Community Center, there’s a historic plaque marking the area.

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  • Bernard Smith–July 5, 1776

    Cover art for July 5, 1776: A 2008 photo of Mount Holly Cemetery, where Bernard Smith is buried.

    In the biography of Bernard Smith in today’s episode, it was noted that he spent a couple of years as the Collector of Customs in 1809 and 1810. Which set up the question for me: what does a Collector of Customs do?

    My guess wasn’t too far off, tell the truth. The Collector of Customs assesses import duties and tariffs, enforces trade laws and regulates goods moving across international borders. My research didn’t turn up where he worked, but it could have been in New York. On the other hand, the Customs House in Linwood (near Atlantic City) was fairly new at the time so that could have been the location. At that time, tariffs and duties were the primary source of revenue for the US Government. Federal income taxes weren’t levied until 1861 for a few years, and then permanently in 1913.

    At any rate, after Bernard Smith put in his time with the Sixteenth Congress, he was register of the land office in Little Rock, Arkansas, then secretary to the governor of Arkansaw, and finally an agent to the Quapaw Nation until his death in 1835, shortly after his 59th birthday.

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  • Prison For Governor Franklin–June 24, 1776

    Cover art for June 24, 1776: portrait of William Franklin, attributed to Mather Brown, ca. 1790. via WIkimedia Commons.

    As Mike notes, we haven’t talked about the Royal Governor of New Jersey, William Franklin, in quite some time. But matters were quickly coming to a head, and it was decided that he needed to be imprisoned. The biggest reason for this is that he not only remained loyal to the Crown, he actively reported to the British anything he heard about American movements and plans.

    William Franklin was finally placed under house arrest in January for these shenanigans, but as things heated up and New Jersey replaced its provincial government, it was determined that he still posed a threat to operational security, and he was sent to Connecticut for imprisonment. And, as Mike also tells you, even prison in Connecticut wasn’t quite getting the job done.

    I guess we have to admire his ability to commit to the bit.

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  • New Jersey Votes Yes–June 22, 1776

    Cover art for June 22, 1776: Portrait of Abraham Clark by James Reid Lambdin, 1873, after a portrait by John Trumbull. via National Park Service.

    How the Jersey Five got its name isn’t especially mysterious, but what’s interesting is that one of the Five, Abraham Clark (pictured in the cover art), was not a new delegate to the Continental Congress. In fact, he was the only one retained because he was also the only delegate who was in favor of Independence.

    So when the new Provincial Congress took over in New Jersey, they retained Clark and appointed new delegates around him. And thus was the Jersey Five born.

    Clark is the namesake of the New Jersey township just south and west of Newark, and that’s pretty cool. But Richard Stockton has a rest area on the New Jersey Turnpike named after him, so there’s that. For what it’s worth, Francis Hopkinson left New Jersey shortly after signing the Declaration, so he doesn’t have a lot of legacy there. John Hart has several streets bearing his name, and John Witherspoon has memorials all over the state, so I guess he wins this contest I just now invented.

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  • Arrest of a Franklin–January 28, 1776

    Cover art for January 28, 1776: Portrait of William Franklin, 1790, attributed to Mather Brown. via Wikimedia.
    Portrait of William Franklin, 1790, attributed to Mather Brown. via Wikimedia.

    It used to be rumored that Benjamin Franklin had over 30 children out of wedlock, but that’s since been debunked. (And there goes a perfectly good “lightning rod” joke.)

    But William Franklin was considered illegitimate, though he was raised by his father and his common-law wife Deborah Read. There are some breadcrumbs here and there that lead some historians to believe that Deborah was, in fact, William’s mother, but nothing thick enough exists to confirm that.

    At any rate, William was one of the last great Loyalists, and while his arrest and move to Connecticut was alluded to in the play 1776, it didn’t quite happen the way it was described there. Or at the time the viewer was led to believe. Tune in to get the real story from Mike.

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  • A Most Dreadful Voyage–January 23, 1776

    Cover art for January 23, 1776: "An English Ship at Sea Lying-To in a Gale," painted by Willem van de Velde the Younger, late 17th century.
    “An English Ship at Sea Lying-To in a Gale,” painted by Willem van de Velde the Younger, late 17th century.

    The HMS Blue Mountain Valley—which probably got its name from the place in eastern Jamaica—had rather a rough trip to America from London in late 1775 and early 1776.

    They left London in mid-October 1775 and ran into multiple storms before arriving somewhere near Boston nine or ten weeks later. Damage to the ship was such that it was judged unsafe to enter the Massachusetts Bay because safe navigation there couldn’t be guaranteed. They decided to head further south, arriving near Egg Harbor, NJ on January 18.

    Given that they were under orders not to approach the coast without an escorting warship (or reassurance from a warship that a given harbor was safe), they chose to take the Blue Mountain Valley a few miles north to Sandy Hook, where they could get a refit to navigate the ship safely. Bad luck for them; Patriot forces knew they were coming and laid a trap, capturing them easily. By that point, the sailors were hungry and thirsty, much of their cargo had died or gone rotten, and it’s entirely possible that the crew actually viewed capture as a kind of rescue. The ship was moved to Elizabethtown (now known as just Elizabeth, just south of modern-day Newark Airport) and the crew given parole in the town.

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    PS: much of my research for this episode came from Eric Wiser’s Journal of the American Revolution article “Blue Mountain Valley and the Rise of Lord Stirling,” which goes into much greater depth than I could provide either here or in the episode. It’s a pretty fascinating read.

  • Dr. James Carnahan–November 15, 1775

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    Cover art for November 15, 1775: Undated photo of Rev. James Carnahan, via findagrave.com.

    As noted during the episode, James Carnahan was the president of what was later known as Princeton University, the ninth man to hold that title since the school’s founding nearly 90 years earlier.

    Carnahan held that position for over 30 years, making him the longest tenured president of that school to that date, a record that remains to this day.

    Carnahan was buried in the University President’s Plot at Princeton Cemetery. Curiously, he specified in his will that none of his lectures, manuscripts or other writings be published, even though he was held in high esteem as a writer. This may account for his relative obscurity despite his enormous tenure.

  • September 22, 1775: Philip Milledoler

    Cover art for September 22, 1775: Portrait of Philip Milledoler By James Peale - Private Collection, ca. 1830

    Philip Milledoler was a minister and the fifth president of Rutgers University (Rutgers College, then), but it’s a little more complicated than that.

    Milledoler took a moribund college and transformed it into the intellectual powerhouse it is today. But how it happened is at the heart of our story.

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  • 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.

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  • 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!

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