USA > New Jersey > Morris County > History of Morris County, New Jersey > Part 29
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Our enthusiastic witness forgot to say whether Baron Steuben did or did not bring forward on that brilliant oc- casion any of the patriots who had no shoes or coats ; but probably they did duty in camp that day, while those who were better clothed, but no better disposed, flaunted before spectators their gayest war-plumage! In the even- ing General Washington and the French minister at- tended a ball provided by our principal officers, at which was present a numerous collection of ladies and gentle- men of distinguished character. Fireworks were also exhibited by the officers of the artilery, so that doubt- less that night of the 24th of April 1780 was a very merry night : rockets exploded, cannons occasionally roared like thunder, and some very curious inventions whirled and snapped to the delight of some thousands who did not attend the ball. O'Hara's parlors were as light as they could be made with good tallow candles, re- quiring to be snuffed.
But while all this was passing where was "that distin- gnished gentleman, Don Juan de Miralles?" We learn that he visited the Short Hills on the 19th or 20th of April. When Baron Steuben on the 24th of April was reviewing the four battalions to the delight of Wash- ington, De la Luzerne, and others, and that night, while the fireworks were flashing their eccentricities in the darkness, and the sounds of music and dancing were heard at O'Hara's, Don Juan de Miralles was tossing with death fever. Four days afterward he died, and on L'e 29th of April his funeral took place, in a style never
imitated or equalled in Morristown since. Dr. Thatcher exhausted all his strong words in expressing his admira- tion of the scene, and doubtless would have used more had they been at hand. Hear him:
"I accompanied Dr. Schuyler to headquarters to at- tend the funeral of M. de Miralles. The deceased was a gentleman of high rank in Spain, and had been about one year a resident with our Congress from the Spanish court. The corpse was dressed in rich state and exposed to public view, as is customary in Europe. The coffin was most splendid and stately, lined throughout with fine cambric, and covered on the outside with rich black velvet, and ornamented in a superb manner. The-top of the coffin was removed to display the pomp and grandeur with which the body was decorated. It was a splendid full dress, consisting of a scarlet suit, embroidered with rich gold lace, a three-cornered gold-laced hat, a genteel- cued wig, white silk stockings, large diamond shoe and knee buckles, a profusion of diamond rings decorated the fingers, and from a superb gold watch set with dia monds several rich seals were suspended. His excel- lency General Washington, with several other general officers, and members of the Congress, attended the funeral solemnities and walked as chief mourners. The other officers of the army and numerous respectable citi- zens formed a splendid procession, extending about one mile. The pall-bearers were six field officers, and the coffin was borne on the shoulders of four officers of the artillery in full uniform. Minute-guns were fired during the procession, which greatly increased the solemnity of the occasion. A Spanish priest performed service at the grave in the Roman Catholic form. The coffin was enclosed in a box of plank, and in all the profusion of pomp and grandeur was deposited in the silent grave in the common burying ground near the church at Morris- town. A guard is placed at the grave lest our soldiers should be tempted to dig for hidden treasure."
This pompous funeral, so pompously described, was quite in contrast with the funeral procession which the previous week entered the same burying ground. The neighbors and friends of Jacob Johnson, who had been a bold rider in Arnold's troop of light horse, made a long procession. Dr. Johnes and the physician led the pro- cession on horseback, and the only wagon present was used to convey the coffin to the graveyard. At the house the pastor drew heavenly consolation for the afflicted from the word of God, and at the grave dismissed the people by thanking them for their kindness to the dead. And had Dr. Johnes officiated at the funeral of General Washington his services would have been just as simple and unostentatious. These two funerals made no un- interesting feature in the social life of Morristown when Washington spent his last winter there.
No one has studied more fully, or written more care- fully, the Revolutionary history of Morristown than the Rev. Joseph F. Tuttle, D. D., former pastor of the Pres- byterian church of Rockaway, and now president of Wabash College. In the interest of our readers we can not do better than to reproduce here, with his permission, a portion of an article from his pen, entitled "Washing- ton in Morris county, New Jersey," published in The Historical Magazine for June 1871.
On the 30th of November 1779 General Greene, the quartermaster-general, wrote from Morristown to one of
I2I
THE CAMP AT KIMBALL HILL.
the quartermasters of New Jersey that " we are yet like horse to the house of her brother-in-law, Mr. Leddel, on the wandering Jews in search of a Jerusalem, not having the road to Mendham; and on her return was accosted by some soldiers, who commanded her to dismount and fixt upon a position for hutting the army;" and he says that he has described two favorable positions to the let them take the horse. One of them had seized the commander-in-chief, "the one near Equacanock, the other near Mr. Kemble's, four miles from this place." The next day he writes to the same gentleman that "the general has fixed upon a place for hutting the army near Mr. Kimball's, within about four miles of this town. His reasons for this choice are unnecessary to be explained, but whatever they are they will prove very distressing to the quartermaster's department. * * * I beg you will set every wheel in motion that will give dispatch to business." His predictions concerning the commissary were fulfilled more literally than he himself dreamed of.
The position actually chosen is one of the finest lo- calities in Morris county, and can be reached by two roads. The one principally traveled that winter is the old road to Mendham, over " Kimball's Hill," as it is called to this day. The camping ground is about four miles southwest from Morristown. Following the Basking Ridge road four miles, through a region famous for its excellent soil and fine scenery, with the mountain on your right, you come to the Kimball property, now owned by H. A. Hoyt, Esq. Here you turn to the right and ascend the highlands for a mile, and you are on the ground which must be considered as consecrated by the unparalleled hardships of the American army. The dif- ferent camps where were quartered the troops from New England, the middle and the southern States were on the lands which then belonged to Mr. Kimball and Mr. Wick, including some one thousand acres. The house on the Wick property is still standing, very much as it was in that winter, and it is worthy of a brief description. It is on the crown of the hill, whence you descend west- ward to Mendham and eastward to Morristown. In front of the house was an old back locust-cut down in 1870-at least two feet and a half in diameter; and at the east end is the largest red cedar I have ever seen. Both these trees were standing in 1780. In the immediate vicinity of the house are several immense black cherry trees, which belong to the same period. The house itself is nearly square, and is built in the old style of New England houses, with a famous large chimney-stack in the center. The very door which swung then is there still, hanging on the same substantial strap-hinges, and ornamented with the same old lion-headed knocker. Passing through this door, which fronts southward, you come into a hall some eight feet wide, its width being just the same as the thickness of the chimney. Turning to the right, you pass from the hall into the ordinary family room, and to the left into the parlor. A door from the family-room and the parlor leads you into the kitchen, which is about two-thirds the length of the house. The fire-places of these three rooms all belong to the one huge stone stack in the center; and every- thing about them remains as it then was. They would alarm modern economists by their capacity to take in wood by the cord. The spaces above the old mantel- trees are filled up with panel-work, and in the parlor evidently were once quite fine, especially for that day. On the north side of the parlor is a door leading into the spare bedroom, with which is connected an amusing in- cident.
Great difficulty was experienced in the spring of 1780 in procuring teams to remove the army stores, and horses for cavalry. Mr. Wick's daughter, Tempe, owned a beautiful young horse, which she frequently rode, and always with skill. She was an admirable and a bold rider. One day, as the preparations for removing the army were progressing, Miss Wick rode her favorite
bridle-reins. Perfectly self-possessed, she appeared to submit to her fate, but not without a vain entreaty not to take her favorite from her. She then told them she was sorry to part with the animal, but as she must, she would ask two favors of them; the one was to return him to her if possible, and the other was, whether they returned him or not, to treat him well. The soldiers were com- pletely thrown off their guard, and the reins were re- leased, they supposing she was about to dismount, than which nothing was farther from her intentions; for no sooner was the man's hand loose from the bridle than she touched her spirited horse with the whip, and he sped from among them like an arrow. As she was riding away, at full speed, they fired after her, but probably withont in- tending to hit her; at any rate, she was unharmed. She urged her horse up the hill, at his highest speed, and coming round to the kitchen door, on the north side of the house, she sprang off and led him into the kitchen, thence into the parlor, and thence into the spare bed- room, which had but one window, and that on the west side. This was secured with a shutter. The soldiers shortly after came up and searched the barn and woods in vain. Miss Wick saved her horse by keeping him in that bed-room three weeks, until the last troop was fairly off. The incident, which is authentic, shows the adroit- ness and courage of the young lady, who afterwards be- came the wife of William Tuttle, an officer in the Jersey brigade during the entire war.
The descriptions of the different camps which are to be given are quite imperfect, but interesting; and, such as they are, are derived from the late Captain William Tuttle, who was stationed with the Jersey troops during that winter. It cannot be sufficiently regretted that some friendly pen was not ready to record the conversations of this fine old soldier, an officer in the Third Jersey regi- ment and perfectly acquainted with all the localities of the encampment on Kimball Hill. He was 20 years old at the time, and from the conclusion of the war until his death, in 1836, he resided most of the time either on the Wick farm or in the immediate vicinity. Very often would he go over the ground, especially with his young relatives, pointing out the precise spots occupied by the different troops, and filling up hours with thrilling anec- dotes connected with that winter; but these conversa- tions no one was at the pains to record, and now they are hopelessly gone. He enlisted in the regular service in 1777, and remained in it until peace was declared. He suffered the exposures of winter quarters at Middle Brook, Valley Forge, and Kimball Hill; was in the bat- tles of Chad's Ford, Germantown, Brandywine, Mon- mouth, Springfield, and "others of less note;" was with Lafayette in his Virginia campaign; and was at the siege of Yorktown; and yet his careless relatives culpably have suffered his history to be shrunk into the compass of his own meager but modest affidavit in the pension office.
As good fortune will have it, a former tenant on the Wick farm occupied it several years before Captain Tut- tle's death; and, in company with the old gentleman, frequently passed over the camp grounds. Under Mr. Mucklow's direction a small party of us passed over the varions points of interest. Taking the old Wick house as the starting point, we crossed the road, and, following in a southwest direction, came into a tract of timber on an easy slope and extending to a living spring brook. In the upper end of the woods, near the brook, we found the ruins of several hut-chimneys. Following the side hill, in the same direction as the stream, that is in a
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HISTORY OF MORRIS COUNTY.
southeast course, we found quite a large number of these seem to have been designed to prepare level places for the free movements of artillery; and a close inspection shows that cannon stationed at those two points on the hill top would sweep the entire face of the hill in case of an attack. This undoubtedly was the design. In the immediate vicinity are the remains of quite a number of chimneys, of huts probably occupied by a detachment of artillerymen. stone chimneys, and in some of them the stones seem to be just as the soldiers left them. At one point we counted two rows containing forty chimneys; some of them evidently belonging to double huts. Just below these we came into a fine level opening, almost bare of trees, and which may have been grubbed clean of stumps and roots for a parade ground. A few rods higher up the side of the hill were other ruins, extending with Passing down the west side of Fort Hill, toward the old house, we came into what has always been called the Jockey Hollow road, at a place which tradition points out as the spot where Captain Billings was shot, when the Pennsylvania troops mutinied, on New Year's day 1781. The aged mother of Robert K. Tuttle, of Morristown, pointed out a black oak tree by the roadside as near the spot where the unfortunate man was shot down and some degree of regularity around the face of the hill, in a curve, until the row was terminated at a brook on the east side, which puts into the stream already mentioned. On the crown of the hill is another row of ruins; and Captain Tuttle informed our guide that the cleared field on the hill was once covered with similar remains. Thus far we counted 196 of these and had been over the ground occupied by the Jersey brigade. Frequently did buried in the road where he was killed. Mrs. Tuttle was Captain Tuttle relate the fact that he had seen the paths at the time living on a part of the Wick farm, so that the tradition is undoubtedly true. leading from the Jersey camp to the Wick house marked with blood from the feet of the soldiers without shoes!
On the same side of the road, and near to it, is a cleared field. In this field a spring brook rises, around which the hill slopes in the form of a horseshoe. On the north side of this was a slaughter-house, and a little low- er down on the same side are the remains of the huts built for the commissary department, and in the vicinity of a beautiful spring. On the opposite side of the brook we found several ruins, which, with those just mentioned, amounted to 23. On the ground of the slaughter-house Mr. Mucklow plowed up an old bayonet.
Crossing the road, directly opposite this point we came into a cleared field, which is in the southern slope of Fort Hill. Along the road fence is a row of stones which were in the hut fire-places, and which were drawn off to clear the ground for plowing; but higher up in the woods are several remains. East of this lot and lower down the hill is an open field, in which we saw several rows, in regular order, containing sixty fire-places; and thence, following the curve of the hill in a northeast course, in regular rows, we counted 100 more. We were informed that the remains are to be seen around the en- tire hill, but want of time forbade our pursuing the in- quiry farther.
We now ascend Fort Hill, around the sides of which we had been walking for some time. It is shaped like a sugarloaf, and from the northeast to the southeast its sides are very steep, making the ascent not a little diffi- cult. I was on this point in the spring, before the leaves had put out, and the view from it is surpassingly beauti- ful. Fort Hill is one of the most commanding points in Morris county. Westward you can see the Schooley's Mountain range, and, as I fancied, the mountains along the Delaware. Southward is a fine range of highlands, in the midst of which is Basking Ridge (where General Lee was captured), so distinct that with a glass you can tell what is doing in its streets. Southeast of you Long Hill and Plainfield Mountain stretch far in the distance, from the top of which you may see from New York to New Brunswick, if not to the Delaware. East of you are the Short Hills, so famous as the watchtower of. freedom during the Revolutionary war, and on which night and day sentinels were observing the country along the Hackensack, Passaic and Raritan, and even to New York and the Narrows. Northeast you can see the two twin mountains in the vicinity of Ringwood, and beyond that the blue-tinged mountains toward Newburgh. Be- tween these prominent points are intervening landscapes beautiful as the eye ever rested on.
At the east and northeast, on the top of Fort Hill, are some remains not like those we had previously examined. They evidently were not the ruins of breastworks, but
We now returned to the house in order to visit Hos- pital field, as it is still called, and also the Maryland field, so called because the Maryland troops were there en- camped during the winter of 1779-80. These fields are about half a mile north from the house. Hospital field is on the slope of a high hill, facing east and southeast; and at the bottom is a fine spring brook, in the vicinity of which were huts for the hospitals. Of these there are no remains, as the plough has long since obliterated them; but near by is a most interesting place marked by a grove of locust trees, planted to protect the graves from the plough. Here are two rows of graves where were buried those who died at the hospitals that winter. A granite monument ought to be built immediately there, to com- memorate those unnamed men who died in the service of their country. The length of space occupied by the graves, as far as can now be seen, is about one hundred and seventy feet, thus making a single row of graves about three hundred and forty feet long. The graves evidently are near together, so that quite a large number must have died in the hospitals that winter. Whether there was any other burying ground used it is impossible now to determine; but it is very probable that the hill- sides in the vicinity contain many graves which will re- main unknown until the morning of the resurrection.
Directly east from Hospital field, on a hill opposite, the Maryland troops and perhaps the Virginia were " hutted;" but we were assured that no remains are left, as the ground has all been ploughed, so that we did not visit it. In all we had counted three hundred and sixty- five chimney foundations, marking the sites of as many huts, besides many which inadvertently we omitted to count. We must have seen more than four hundred in all; and I am thus particular in describing their positions because a few years more may entirely obliterate all traces of the camps on Kimball Hill.
If we return to the top of Fort Hill, and cast the eye over the prominent points already mentioned, we shall perceive how admirably they are adapted for the purpose of spreading alarm by means of beacon-fires. The ranges of the Short and Long hills and Plainfield Moun- tain on the southeast and east, Schooley's Mountain on the west, the mountains near Ringwood and along the New York line on the north and northeast, all are as dis- tinct as light-houses. Very early in the war there was a beacon station on the Short Hills, near the country resi- dence of the late Bishop Hobart; but in the winter of 1778-9 Washington communicated to the governor of New Jersey a plan for establishing these beacons throughout the State; and in accordance with his re- quest, on the 9th of April 1779 General Philemon Dick- erson, one of the most able militia officers in the State,
THE PATRIOT BEACON LIGHTS-SUFFERING AT KIMBALL HILL ..
was instructed to carry the plan into effect. Hitherto no traces of a written plan have been found, but there can be no doubt as to some of the locations. That on the Short Hills is remembered by persons still living [1854] from whom the Rev. Samuel L. Tuttle derived the account he gives of the matter. "On that commanding elevation," writes Mr. Tuttle, in his lecture on Bottle Hill during the Revolution, "the means were kept for alarming the inhabitants of the interior in case of any threatening movement of the enemy in any direction. A cannon, an eighteen-pounder-called in those times ' the old sow'-fired every half hour, answered the object in the daytime and in very stormy and dark nights; while an immense fire or beacon light answered the end at all other times. A log house or two * *
* were erected there for the use of the sentinels, who by relieving one another at definite intervals kept careful watch day and night, their eyes continually sweeping over the vast ex- tent of country that lay stretched out like a map before them. The beacon light was constructed of dry wood, piled around a high pole; this was filled with combustible materials, and a tar-barrel was placed upon the top of the pole. When the sentinels discovered any movement of the enemy of a threatening character, or such tidings were brought them by messengers, either the alarm gun was fired or the beacon light kindled, so that the tidings were quickly spread over the whole region. There are several persons still living in this place who remember to have heard that dismal alarm gun, and to have seen those beacon lights sending out their baleful and terrific light from that high point of observation; and who also re- member to have seen the inhabitants, armed with their muskets, making all possible haste to Chatham bridge and the Short Hills."
That there was a system of beacon lights there can be no doubt, although, unfortunately, the most of those are dead who could give us information about it, and there are no documents describing the various points where these lights were kindled. Of one we have some knowl- edge. Seven miles north of Morristown, near the present railroad depot at Denville, is a mountain which rises abruptly to a considerable height, from which you can see the Short Hills. On this point there was a beacon light, managed by Captain Josiah Hall, whose descendants still reside in the vicinity. A fire from this point would be seen from the top of Green Pond Mountain, several miles farther north; and a fire on that mountain would probably reach the portion of Sussex county where the brave Colonel Seward, grandfather of Senator Seward, resided. Tradition says that such was the case; and that often at night the tongue of fire might be seen leap- ing into the air on the Short Hills, soon to be followed by brilliant lights on Fort Hill, on the Denville moun- tain, the Green Pond Mountain, and on the range of mountains on the Orange county line. To many it has seemed inexplicable, and it was so to the enemy, that they could not make a movement toward the hills of Morris without meeting the yeomen of Morris, armed and ready to repel them. I have conversed with several old men who have seen the roads coverging on Morris- town and Chatham lined with men who were hurrying off to the Short Hills, to drive back the invaders. The alarm gun and the beacon light explain the mystery; and, as an illustration of scenes frequently witnessed, I may give an incident in the life of an old soldier, by the name of Bishop, who was living at Mendham. He was one morning engaged in stacking his wheat, with a hired man, when the alarm gun pealed out its warning. “I must go," exclaimed Bishop. "You had better take care of your wheat," said his man. Again they heard the dull, heavy sound of the alarm gun; and instantly
Bishop slid down from the stack, exclaiming, "I can't stand this. Get along with the grain the best way you can. I'm off to the rescue !" Hastily he packed a small budget of provisions; and, shouldering his musket, in a few minutes he was on the way to Morristown. He says that on his way there he found men issuing from every road, equipped just as they left their fields and shops, so that by the time he reached town he was one of a large company. Here they were met by a messenger who said the enemy was retreating. It was by such alacrity that it came to be a boast of the Morris county people that the enemy had never been able to gain a footing among these hills. They frequently made the attempt, but never succeeded. Once, as it is said, for the purpose of exchanging prisoners, a detachment did reach Chatham bridge, which was guarded by brave General Winds, to whom the braggart captain sent word that he proposed to dine next day in Morristown. The message called out the somewhat expressive reply that if he dined in Morristown next day he would sup in - (the place infernal) next night !
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