History of Monmouth county, New Jersey, Part 36

Author: Ellis, Franklin, 1828-1885; Swan, Norma Lippincott. [from old catalog]
Publication date: 1885
Publisher: Philadelphia, R. T. Peck & co.
Number of Pages: 1148

USA > New Jersey > Monmouth County > History of Monmouth county, New Jersey > Part 36

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Crossing the Delaware at Trenton and the neighboring ferries in the morning of Septem- ber 1st, the armies marehed on towards Phila-

1 The celebrated corps known as the " Queen's Rangers" was mostly made up of Americans, Tories, enlisted into the corps in Westchester County, N. Y., and in neighboring por- tions of Connecticut. Colonel Simcoe had assumed com- mand of this body in 1777, and afterwards brought it up to a condition of excellent discipline and great efficiency.

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MONMOUTH COUNTY IN THE REVOLUTION.

delphia, which city they passed through on the 2d, and on the 14th of September reached Williamsburg, Va., from which point Wash- ington and Rochambeau went on board the French flag-ship, the " Ville de Paris," in the York River, and there, with the French admiral, Count de Grasse, coneerted the plan of the campaign which ended in the surrender of Lord Cornwallis with his army at Yorktown, professed to be stanch Royalists, and they were on the 19th of October.

CHAPTER X.

MONMOUTH COUNTY IN THE REVOLUTION. ( Continued.)

THROUGH all the years of the Revolutionary conflict, Monmouth suffered far more severely of Monmouth. Theserobbers infested the whole than any other county of New Jersey from the forays and depredations of bands of men who were partisans of the royal cause, though iu general they did not belong to the regular or- ganization of the British army, These men, who were known by the name of Tory Refugees, were inveterate enemies of the patriots and of the cause of American liberty, who had fied to the enemy's lines, and made a principal rendez- vous on Staten Island, under protection of the encireling war-vessels of the British. They had also a camp on Sandy Hook, called Refugees' Town, fortified to some extent and also pro- tected by the guns of the royal fleet. The fields, at their meetings for worship, aud by their Staten Island base of operations was for them a peculiarly convenient one from which to sally out on the marauding expeditions, by which they continually harassed the people

Among the worst of the ferocions gang of desperadoes who had their lair in " The Pines " of Monmouth, whence they sallied out on their inhabiting the neighboring territory of the forays of robbery and murder through the county county of Monmouth.

Besides being thus unfortunately situated for the peace and security of its patriot inhabitants of that time, Monmouth (then the richest of the counties of New Jersey) offered also the advan- tage of extensive woods and almost impenetrable swamps for hiding-places, which, together with the facilities of the rivers and inlets of the ocean coast and the bays of Raritan and Sandy Hook

for the sending of plunder to New York, brought hither some of the worst villains and desper- adoes of the whole country, who became notori- ous as the "Pine Woods Robbers of Mon- month," who not only never hesitated at the shedding of blood to sceure booty, but often committed cold-blooded murders for the mere gratification of malice or revenge. They always always bitter and inveterate enemies of the patriots ; but their principal object was rob- bery, and they plundered Tories as well as Whigs whenever an opportunity offered to do so in safety. They were, however, much more careful and secret in their outrages against the former. because they depended on the British and Tories in New York as purchasers of the plunder, and therefore they must not sacrifice the friendship of their patrons by open depre- dations on their friends and allies, the Tories county, but particularly the region known as " The Pines," and hence the general term " Pine Robbers" which was applied to them. They had their hiding-places and headquarters in caves burrowed in the sand : along the borders of swamps, and in other spots so secluded and masked by nature as to be comparatively safe from detection ; and from these places they went forth, usually by night, in bands and individ- ually, to rob, burn and murder : so that, for de- fense against these worse than Indian prowlers, the people of the county were obliged to keep their firearms constantly by them at their work in the bedsides at night.

during the Revolution, were Jacob Fagan, Lewis Fenton. Ezekiel Williams, Richard Bird, John Giberson, John Wood, John Farnham, - De Bow, -Davenport, Jonathan and Stephen West, John Bacon and two brothers named Thomas and Stephen Burke, the last-men- tioned of whom also sometimes assumed the alias of Emmons, and generally accompanied Fagan or Fenton, or both of them, in their ne-

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HISTORY OF MONMOUTH COUNTY, NEW JERSEY.

farious expeditions. Fagan was a resident of to Captain Dennis. The girl, Amelia, also saw him from her hiding-place and ran towards him, upon which the robbers fired at her, but withont effect. Holmes, alarmed by the firing, aban- dloned the wagon and fled to the swamp, and the baffled bandits, after plundering the wagon, left the place. the southeast part of the present county, living on or near the Manasquan River before he en- tered on the career of crime which he.continued in safety for two or three years, but which was finally closed by the avenging bullets of a detach- ment of Monmouth militia under command of Captain Benjamin Dennis, whose daughter, Ame- In the evening of the same day the man Smith stole away from the other two, and mak- ing his way to where Captain Dennis was on duty with a detachment of militia, informed him of the affair, and that it was the intention of the robbers to make another descent on his lia, then a girl of fifteen years, was an eye-witness of, and an actor in, the beginning of the affair which resulted in the death of the outlaw. The circumstances were narrated by her, years after- wards, as follows: She said that on a certain Monday in September, 1778, Fagan, Burke and house. Upon this, the captain, seeing that his a man named Smith came to the house of Cap- tain Dennis (on the south side of Manasquan River, four miles below the Howell Mills) to rob, it of some goods captured from a British

family could no longer remain there in safety, removed thiem the next day to Shrewsbury, un- der guard of some of the militiamen, and at the same time concerted a plan with Smith for vessel. Mrs. Dennis and her daughter, Amelia, the capture or killing of the villains Fagan and were in the honse at the time of their arrival, Burke. In pursuance of this plan, Smith ar- ranged with his supposed confederates to make a second visit to Dennis' house, on the Wednesday evening next following the first attempt. Cap- tain Dennis, fully apprised of their plan, lay in concealment with a party of his men, at a place agreed on by himself and Smith, on the way which the robbers woukl pass on their way to the house. They came at the time appointed ; Smith first, in a wagon intended for carrying away the plunder, then Fagan and Burke on foot, as a rear-guard. As they passed the ambuscade, at a preconcerted signal from Smith (a chirrup to the horse he was driving), the militiamen fired on the two robbers, who in an instant leaped into the brushwood and disap- peared, Burke being little, if any, hurt, but Fa- gan (as was afterwards ascertained), carrying a mortal wound. On the following Saturday her into disclosing the place where the valuables : some hunters (who had probably discovered his dead body in the woods) were drinking at a tavern in the vicinity, and made a bet with some of the people there that Fagan had been killed. This resulted in a so-called search, in which his body was found, recognized and buried. The welcome news spread rapidly through the region from Colt's Neck to Free- hold, and on the following day "the people as- sembled, disinterred the body, and after heaping and they knew Fagan, who had formerly been a near neighbor. Smith, although then in com- pany with two of the most notorious villains in the country, was in reality an honest man, who had joined the robbers for the purpose of be- traying them. On reaching the vicinity of the house, Fagan and Burke remained concealed, and sent Smith forward to reconnoitre, and see if the way was clear. Entering the house, he at once warned Mrs. Dennis of the danger, where- npon the girl Amelia, hiding a pocket-book con- taining eighty dollars in a bed-tiek, slipped out of the back-door, and with her little brother made good her escape to a swamp near by. Seareely had she gone when the two robbers en- tered, searched the house (including the bed) for booty, and failing to find any, endeavored, by threatening the life of Mrs. Dennis, to frighten were concealed, and, failing also in this, they proceeded to put their threat in execution, though the narrative states that Burke was op- posed to murdering her. Fagan's determina- tion, however, prevailed, and she was hung by the neck with a bed-cord to a young cedar-tree ; but the work was so carelessly done that in her struggles she freed herself and escaped, just as the attention of the robbers was attracted by the approach of John Holmes in a wagon belonging | indignities upon it, enveloped it in a tarred

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MONMOUTH COUNTY IN THE REVOLUTION.

cloth, and suspended it in chains, with iron bands around it, from a large chestnut-tree abont a mile from the court-house, on the road to Colt's Neck.1 There hung the corpse in mid- air, rocked to and fro by the winds, a horrible warning to his comrades and a terror to travel- ers, until the birds of prey picked the flesh from the bones, and the skeleton fell piecemeal to the ground. Tradition affirms that the skull was afterwards placed against the tree with a pipe in its mouth in derision." 2

The killing of Fagan was mentioned in Col- lins' New Jersey Gazette of October 1, 1778, as follows :

" About ten days ago Jacob Fagan, who "Van Kirk, at proper seasons, gave intel- ligence of their movements to Captain Dennis, who conducted himself accordingly. They were on the eye of setting off for New York to make sale of their plunder, when Van Kirk informed having previously headed a number of villains in Monmouth County that have committed divers robberies, and were the terror of travel- ers, was shot, since which his body has been gibbetted on the publiek highway in that county . Captain Dennis of the time of their intended to deter others from perpetrating the like de- testable crimes."

The robber Stephen Burke, who so narrowly escaped at the time when his confederate, Fa- gan, was killed by the militiamen, was himself killed (with his fellow-robbers, West and Wil- liams) by Captain Dennis' detachment in Jan- uary, 1779. An account of the affair (embraced in a letter from Monmouth County, written, as is supposed, by Dr. Thomas Henderson) was given in Collins' Gazette, of the 29th of that month, viz. :

"The Tory Pine-Robbers, who have their haunts and caves in the pines, and have been for some time past a terrour to the inhabitants of this county, have, during the course of the present week, met with a very eminent disaster. On Tuesday evening last Captain Benjamin Dennis, who lately killed the infamous robber Fagan, with a party of his Militia, went in pur- suit of three of the most noted of the pine-rob- bers, and was so fortunate as to fall in with them, and kill them on the spot. Their names

are Stephen Burke, alias Emmons, Stephen West and Ezekiel Williams. Yesterday they were brought up to this place, and two of them, it is said, will be hanged in chains. This signal piece of service was effected through the instru- mentality of one John Van Kirk, who was prevailed upon to associate with them on pur- pose to discover their practices and lead them into our hands. He conducted himself with so much address that the robbers, and especially the three above named, who were the leading villains, looked upon him as one of their body, kept him constantly with them and entrusted him with all their designs.

departure (which was to have been on Tuesday night last), and of course they would take to their boats. In consequence of which, and agreeable to the directions of Van Kirk, the captain and a small party of his militia planted themselves at Rock Pond, near the sea-shore, and shot Burke, West and Williams in the manner above related. We were at first in hopes of keeping Van Kirk under the rose ; but the secret is out, and of course he must fly the country, for the Tories are so highly exas- perated against him that death will certainly be his fate if he does not leave Monmouth County. The Whigs are soliciting contributions in his favour; and from what I have seen, I have no doubt that they will present him with a very handsome sum. I question whether the de- struction of the British fleet could diffuse more universal joy among the inhabitants of Mon- mouth than has the death of the above three most egregious villains."

The killing of Burke, West and Williams was narrated by William Courlies, of Shrews- bury, who joined the British in the fall of 1778, and who testified before a British court-martial as follows : "The deponent was carried prisoner to Monmouth in January, 1779, on the night of the 24th of that month. He saw Captain Dennis, of the rebel service, bring to Freehold

It was related by Dr. Samuel Forman, of Freehold, that in the time of the Revolution he (then a youth) assisted in the erection, near the court-house, of a gallows, on which no less than thirteen Pine Robbers, murderers and Refugees were hung at different times during the war.

2 Hist. Coll. of New Jersey.

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HISTORY OF MONMOUTH COUNTY, NEW JERSEY.

Court-House three dead bodies ; that Captain as he lay on the floor helpless from his broken Dennis being a neighbor of his (the deponent's), leg. The daughter, notwithstanding her wounds, slipped out and made her escape to the woods, and the ruffians, fearing that she would give the alarm and so bring a party of militia upon them, did not wait long to plunder the house, but beat a hasty retreat towards their hiding- place in the Pines. . he asked where those men were killed. He replied they were killed on the shore, where they were coming to join their regiments. Two of them, he said, belonged to Colonel Morris' corps, in General Skinner's brigade ; the other had been enlisted in their service by those two belonging to Colonel Morris' corps. He said also that he (Captain Dennis) had employed a man to assist them in making their escape at a place where he (Dennis) was to meet with them

An account of this murder was given in the Gazette, as follows: "July 31, 1779 .- Thomas Farr and wife, in the night, near Crosswieks Baptist meeting-house, and daughter were badly on the shore; at which place he did meet them ; wounded by a gang supposed to be under lead of Lewis Fenton. About the same time Fenton broke into and robbed the house of one Andrews, in Monmouth County. Governor Livingston offered £500 reward for Fenton and £300 and €250 for persons assisting him." Two months later Fenton met the fate he deserved, the fol- lowing aecount of his death being given in a

that, on coming to the spot, he (Dennis) sur- rounded them with his party ; that the men at- tempted to fire, and not being able to discharge their pieces, begged for quarters, and claimed the benefit of being prisoners of war. He or- dered them to be fired on, and one of them by the name of Williams fell; that they were all bayoneted by the party, and brought to Mon- communication printed in Collins' Gazette, of mouth; and that he (Dennis) received a sum of . September; 1779: "On Thursday last (Septem- money for that action, either from the Gover- ber 234, 1779) a Mr. Van Mater was knocked nour or General Washington,-which of the two he does not recollect."

The outlaw Fenton, who was a comrade of Fagan and Burke in their erimes, was a blaek- | the arm and otherwise much abused, besides

smith by trade, to which he had been appren- ticed in Freehold. His depredations were as numerous and as long continued as those of the others, and his record was foul and bloody with many murders. One of the most diabolical of these was the killing of Thomas Farr and his wife, an aged couple, who lived in Upper Free- hold township, near Imlaystown. The murder a wagon and horses and ordered three of his was committed in July, 1779, by Fenton, men to seerete themselves in it under some hay. Thomas Burke and several other villains of the Having changed his clothes and procured a gang, who came to Farr's house in the dead of guide, he made haste, thus equipped, to the place where Fenton lay. On the approach of the wagon Fenton (his companion being gone) rushed out to plunder it. Upon demanding what they had in it, he was answered a little wine and the night for purposes of robbery. The inmates were Mr. and Mrs. Farr and their daughter, who, as it appears, were on the alert and had the doors barricaded with logs. The assailants attempted to beat open the front door by using spirit. These articles he said he wanted, and a rail as a battering-ram ; but failing in this, they fired in on the defenders, wounding the daughter and breaking one of Mr. Farr's legs. They then went to the back door, and being successful in gaining entrance, they immediately shot Mrs. Farr and beat her husband to death

off his horse, on the road near Longstreet's Mills, in Monmouth County, by Lewis Fenton and one De Bow, by whom he was stabbed in being robbed of his saddle. In the mean time another person coming up drew the attention of the robbers and gave Van Mater an opportunity to escape. He went directly and informed a serjeant's guard of Major Lee's Light Dragoons, who were in the neighborhood, of what had happened. The serjeant immediately impressed

while advancing toward the wagon to take pos- session of them one of the soldiers, being pre- 'vionsly informed who he was, shot him through the head, which killed him instantly on the spot. Thus did this villain end his days, which, it is to be hoped, will at least be a warning to

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MONMOUTH COUNTY IN THE REVOLUTION.

others, if not to induce them to throw themselves sioned by the " Board of Associated Loyalists," on the merey of their injured country." About which was constituted at New York, having for two weeks before Fenton's death four of his its object the examination of American prisoners gang were captured and placed in Monmouth . of war and suspected persons, and the planning jail, from which some of them, if not all, were of measures for procuring intelligence and soon after taken to the gallows.

The outlaws of the Pines were very bitter in this body, the first president was Daniel Coxe, their hatred of Captain Benjamin Dennis, who often led the militia to punish them for their depredations, and the feeling of enmity towards him was particularly intense on the part of the villain Fenton, on account of the killing of | little with many words." He was succeeded a- president of the board by William Franklin, a natural son of Dr. Benjamin Franklin, and the last Royal Governor of New Jersey.

Fagan and Stephen Burke. Determined to have his revenge for this, he, a short time before his death, waylaid and murdered the captain while he was on his way from Coryel's Ferry (Lambertville, Hunterdon County) to Shrews- bury, in July, 1779. His daughter Amelia, who escaped from Fagan and Burke when they attempted to rob her father's house, afterwards became Mrs. Coryel. Mrs. Dennis, who on that occasion escaped so narrowly with her life, had previously been the victim of a murderous assault by a party of Hessians, who came to her house and beat her with their muskets until they supposed she was dead. This was in June, 1778, when the British army under Sir Henry Clinton was on its march through Mon- mouth County. After the murder of her hus- band she became the wife of John Lambert. who was afterwards for a time Acting Governor of New Jersey. She lived fifty-six years after the murder of her first husband by the Mon- mouth County outlaws.

Many murders and robberies, other than those which have been noticed in the preceding ac- counts, were committed by the banditti who infested the Pines of Monmouth (then em- bracing what is now Ocean County), and who at length became so numerous and audacious that " the State government offered large re- wards for their destruction : and they were hunted and shot like wild beasts until the close of the war, when they were almost totally extirpated."

The Refugees (or Loyalists, as they called themselves) were renegade Americans, organized as allies of the British, with officers commis-

otherwise giving aid to the royal eanse. Of a Jerseyman, who (as was said by a Refugee officer) received the appointment to deprive him of the opportunity of speaking before the board, as he had in a great degree " the gift of saying

Most of the Tories of Monmouth County wilo entered the service of the British were found in the First Battalion of the brigade known as the " New Jersey Royal Volunteers," other- wise often called " Skinner's Greens," from the name of their brigade commander and the color of their uniforms. Following are given the names of officer- of this corps, as far as they have been aseertained, viz. :

Brigadier-General Cortland Skinner, brigade com- mander.

First. Battalion.

Elisha Lawrence (previously sheriff of Monmouth ('ounty), colonel.

B. G. Skinner, colonel in 1781.

Stephen Delaneey, lieutenant-colonel.

Thomas Millidge, major.

William Hutchinson, captain.

Joseph Crowell, captain.

James Moody, lieutenant.

John Woodward, lieutenant.

James Brittan, lieutenant.

Osias Ausley, ensign.

Joseph Brittan, ensign.

Second Battalion.

John Morris, colonel.

Isaac Allen, lieutenant-colonel.

Charles Harrison, captain.

Thomas Hunlock, captain.

John Combs, lieutenant.

Third Battalion.

Abraham Van Buskirk, lieutenant-colonel.

Robert Timpany, major.

Philip Cortland (N. Y.), major.

Jacob Van Buskirk, captain.

James Servanier, lieutenant.

Philip Cortland, Jr., ensign. John Van Orden, ensign.

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HISTORY OF MONMOUTH COUNTY, NEW JERSEY.

The following-named were also officers in the brigade, but the battalions to which, respectively, they belonged cannot be designated :

Elisha Skinner, lieutenant-colonel.

John Barnes, major. R. V. Stockton, major. Thomas Lawrence, major.

John Lee, captain.

Peter Campbell, captain.

John Barbara, captain.

Richard Cayford, captain.

William Chander, captain.

Daniel Cozzens, captain.

- Keating, captain.

- Troup, lieutenant. Fitz Randolph, lieutenant.

Peter Meyer, ensign.

Dr. Absalom Bainbridge, surgeon.

Though the terms Loyalist and Royalist would properly include all who favored the cause of the crown, yet they were generally limited in their application to those who joined the Royal Vol- unteer organization, to distinguish them from the viler and more detestable bands of maraud- ing and plundering Refugees, of whom Gover- nor Livingston, in a message to the Legislature of New Jersey in 1777, said :

"They have plundered friends as well as foes ; effects capable of division they have divided ; such as were not, they have destroyed. They have warred on deerepit old age and upon defenseless youth ; they have committed hostili- ties against the ministers of religion, against public records and private monuments, books of improvements and papers of curiosity, and against the arts and sciences. They have butchered the wounded when asking for quar- ter, mangled the dead while weltering in their blood, and refused to them the rite of sepulture ; suffered prisoners to perish for want of sustenance, violated the chastity of women, disfigured private residences of taste and ele- ganee, and, in their rage of impiety and barbar- ism, profaned edifices dedicated to the worship of Almighty God."

But the Tories were not all as hardened vil- lains as those described by Governor Living- ston. The best class of them were too honora- ble to engage in midnight expeditions to rob and murder their former friends and neighbors.

Men of this class (which, however, formed a small part of the whole Tory league) rarely com- mitted acts dishonorable as soldiers ; yet the fact that they had previously stood well, and that some of them had held influential positions in the community, exerted a most injurious influence on the patriot cause among their former friends and acquaintances. The example of such men served to entice many to the ranks of the enemy and to cause others secretly to wish them well, or, at least, to strive to remain neutral at a time when their country most needed their services, and in a county which was suffering most severely from the devastation of a bloody parti- san warfare.

During the first year or two of the war the patriot cause was seriously endangered by Tory sympathizers, many of whom had sons, brothers or other relatives in the British army, but who, themselves, remained at home because age or other disability unfitted them for service in the field. These men endeavored for a time to injure the American eause by their insidious wiles and seeret seheming wherever and when- ever opportunity offered ; but when their con- duet became known, they received peremptory orders to leave, and did so, seeking safety within the enemy's lines, while those who remained quietly and strictly neutral at home (as a few of them did) were seldom molested, though a strict and continual watch was kept over their conduct. Another fact to be remembered is that many men of good standing and influence, who stood with the patriots at the outbreak of the war and remained true to their country for a vear or two afterwards, became alarmed at the disasters sustained by the Americans in the campaigns of 1776, and, abandoning their friends and country, sought safety and advancement by joining the enemy. Some of these are noticed in the following brief mention of a few of the more prominent of the better elass of Monmouth County Loyalists :

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History of Monmouth county, New Jersey, Part 36

Author: Ellis, Franklin, 1828-1885; Swan, Norma Lippincott. [from old catalog] Publication date: 1885 Publisher: Philadelphia, R. T. Peck & co. Number of Pages: 1148

Author: Ellis, Franklin, 1828-1885; Swan, Norma Lippincott. [from old catalog]
Publication date: 1885
Publisher: Philadelphia, R. T. Peck & co.
Number of Pages: 1148