USA > New Jersey > Somerset County > The Somerset hills : being a brief record of significant facts in the early history of the hill country of Somerset County, New Jersey > Part 2
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The colonial administration of America abounds in memories of gentlemen of distinction no less than in tyrannical time-servers and selfish poli- ticians. Of the gentlemen, the Colony of New Jersey was favoured with not a few. Of such was Col. Robert Hunter, who was appointed to the governorship of the provinces of New York and New Jersey early in the eighteenth century in the reign of Queen Anne.
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It was during his administration that Northern Somerset County was settled, and the western portion was set off as a separate county, named in compliment to him, Hunter-don. He was a personal friend of Addison, Steele, and Swift, and was thus in close touch with the literary life of the Augustan Age of English letters. Indeed, it is said he owed his appointment to Addison, who was then Under Secretary of State. Himself a graceful and witty writer, it would seem that he shared the mantle of the brilliant dean of St. Patrick's. Writing to Swift from the executive mansion, Perth Amboy, under date of March 13, 1713, he says : "This is the finest air to live upon in the universe ; and, if our trees and birds could speak, and our assem- blymen be silent, the finest conversation also."
The consecration of Swift to the bishopric of the Church of England in America was once seriously considered. The plan was abandoned, however, and the mother Church never sent a
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bishop across seas to the American Colonies. The American episcopate of the Protestant Epis- copal Church, therefore, dates from a period after the Revolution, nearly a century after the plan of sending Jonathan Swift hither was considered. Had he been sent to the new world instead of to Ireland perhaps " Gulliver's Travels " had not been written, and Stella and Vanessa had not languished.
All functions relating to the administration of the Government were attended with great dignity and ceremony. These, of course, were based on English precedent, some of them, indeed, being still in force. Judges on a circuit were "met outside of the town by the sheriff, justices of the peace, and other gentlemen on horseback who conducted them in honour to their lodg- ings." When Lord Stirling, a distinguished son of Somerset, officially attended the Governor's Council, "he rode in a great coach with gilded panels, emblazoned with coronets and medal-
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lions, and altogether affected a style and splen- dour probably unequalled in the Colonies." A contemporary speaks of the equipage of Governor Lewis Morris (Governor of New Jersey from 1738 to 1746) rolling down Broadway " with silver mountings glittering in the sun- shine and the family arms emblazoned upon it in many places." To support all this state, private fortunes were expended, and salaries were out of all proportion to modern ratios. The salary of the royal governor of New Jersey, a modest little colony which at no time before the Revolution numbered more than 150,000, is estimated at quite or nearly £1,000.
Indeed, to reconstruct the social life in the Colonies, even in the modest little province of New Jersey, it would seem necessary to deduct but little from the brilliant pen pictures of Thack- eray and Macaulay which depict contemporary England. One important deduction must, how- ever, be borne in mind : Architecturally, the
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colonial mansion, be it ever so "stately," could never rival the manor house or castle of Old England. The colonial houses developed in the English American Colonies have a beauty and fitness of their own, but they are not to be compared to the splendour that "falls on castle walls" of enduring stone, or to the domestic beauty and comfort of a Tudor manor house.
MARE PER
PER
ITERRAS
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IV.
PLUCKAMIN AND BEDMINSTER.
T HE name of the village of Pluckamin is of doubtful origin. It is probably de- rived from an Indian word of uncertain mean- ing from which we get our word persimmon. The settlement of the village dates about the middle of the eighteenth century. The names of the early settlers, together with the early religious history of the village, indicate a Dutch and German origin of the first land-holders of Pluckamin. St. Paul's Lutheran Church was erected in 1756, and maintained a vigorous existence for the next generation. The con- gregation was gradually absorbed by the Pres- byterians whose church building is near the site of the Lutheran Church which was torn down early in the nineteenth century.
At the outbreak of the revolution, it was a
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flourishing village, and situated as it is on the highroad between Trenton and Morristown, was the scene of many marchings and counter- marching, of halts and incidents worthy of recollection. After the battle of Princeton early in January, 1777, Washington wished to attack the British at New Brunswick before going into winter quarters at Morristown. But the jaded condition of his small army led him to abandon the plan, and so, bearing to the northwest of the enemy, he reached Pluckamin on Satur- day, the 4th of January, halting there over Sunday. The wounded were quartered in the village; the British prisoners, numbering nearly three hundred, were quartered in the Lutheran Church which was turned into a temporary prison. The army camped on a snow-covered hill to the south of the village. The head- quarters of Washington during these two event- ful days was the Fenner house, still standing. Here he wrote his official report of the battle
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of Princeton and immediately dispatched it to Congress by Col. Henry. The moral effect of the victories of Trenton and Princeton to the American cause is almost incalculable. As strategic successes they rank with the brilliant achievements of any war. The ageing King of Prussia, Frederick the Great, who watched the progress of the war in America with keen interest, pronounced them master-strokes of military genius. There was no community of interest between the Prussian autocrat and the American Colonists, but, like the figures on a chess board, the game deeply interested him as a study in military science. His admiration of the strategic skill displayed in the movements on Trenton and Princeton led him to send to Washington a sword with the complimentary inscription, "From the oldest general in the world to the greatest."
The Commander-in-chief's modest official re- port of the engagement at Princeton, penned
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on that busy mid-winter Sunday spent in Pluck- amin, is well worth perusal and is inserted here unabridged :
PLUCKAMIN, 5 Jan. 1777.
TO THE PRESIDENT OF CONGRESS.
SIR : I have the honour to inform you that since the date of my last from Trenton I have re- moved with the army under my command to this place. The difficulty of crossing the Dela- ware on account of the ice made our passage over it tedious, and gave the enemy an oppor- tunity of drawing in their several cantonments, and assembling their whole force at Princeton. Their large pickets advanced towards Trenton, their great preparations, and some intelligence I had received added to their knowledge that the Ist of January brought on a dissolution of the best part of our army, gave me the strongest reason to conclude that an attack on us was meditating. Our situation was most critical and our force small. To remove immediately was
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again destroying every dawn of hope which had began to revive in the breasts of the Jersey militia; and to bring those troops who had first crossed the Delaware, and were lying at Cross- wicks under General Cadwalader, and those under General Mifflin at Bordentown (amount- ing in the whole to about three thousand six hundred) to Trenton was to bring them to an exposed place. One or the other, however, was unavoidable. The latter was preferred and they were ordered to join us at Trenton, which they did by a night march on the Ist instant. On the 2nd, according to my expectation, the enemy began to advance upon us; and after some skirmishing the head of their column reached Trenton about four o'clock, whilst their rear was as far back as Maidenhead. They attempted to pass Sanpink Creek, which runs through Trenton at different places, but finding the fords guarded, they halted and kindled their fires.
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We were drawn up on the other side of the creek. In this situation we remained till dark, canonading the enemy and receiving the fire of their field pieces, which did us but little dam- age. Having by this time discovered the enemy were greatly superior in number, and that their design was to surround us, I ordered all our baggage to be removed silently to Burlington soon after dark; and at twelve o'clock, after renewing our fires and leaving guards at the bridge in Trenton and other passes on the same stream above, marched by a roundabout road to Princeton where I knew they could not have much force left and might have stores. One thing I was certain of, that it would avoid the appearance of a retreat which was of conse- quence, or to run the hazard of the whole army being cut off, whilst we might, by a fortunate stroke, withdraw General Howe from Trenton and give some reputation to our arms. Happily we succeeded; we found Princeton about sun-
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rise with only three regiments and three troops of light-horse in it, two of which were on their march to Trenton. These three regiments, es- pecially the two first, made a gallant resistance, and in killed and wounded and prisoners must have lost five hundred men ; upwards of one hundred of them were left dead on the field ; and with what I have with me and what were taken in the pursuit and carried across the Dela- ware, there are near three hundred prisoners, fourteen of whom are officers, all British.
This piece of good fortune is counterbalanced by the loss of the brave and worthy General Mercer, Colonels Hazlet and Potter, Captain Neal of the artillery, Captain Fleming who com- manded the first Virginia regiment, and four or five other valuable officers, who, with about twenty-five or thirty privates, were slain in the field. Our whole loss cannot be ascertained, as many who were in pursuit of the enemy (who were chased three or four miles) are not,
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yet come in. The rear of the enemy's army lying at Maidenhead not more than five or six miles from Princeton, was up with us before our pursuit was over, but as I had the precau- tion to destroy the Bridge over Stony Brook about half-a-mile from the field of action, they were so long retarded there as to give us time to move off in good order for this place. We took two brass field-pieces, but for want of horses could not bring them away. We also took some blankets, shoes, and a few other trifling articles, burned the hay and destroyed such other things as the shortness of time would admit of.
My original plan when I set out from Trenton was to push on to Brunswic; but the harassed state of our troops, many of them having had no rest for two nights and a day, and the danger of losing the advantage we had gained by aiming at too much, induced me by the advice of my officers to relinquish the attempt.
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But in my judgment, six or eight hundred fresh troops upon a forced march, would have de- stroyed all their stores and magazines, taken (as we have since learned) their military chest con- taining seventy thousand pounds, and put an end to the war. The enemy, from the best intelligence I have been able to get, were so much alarmed at the apprehension of this, that they marched immediately to Brunswic without halting except at the bridges (for I also took up those at Millstone on the different routes to Brunswic) and got there before day. From the best information I have received, General Howe has left no men either at Trenton or Princeton. The truth of this I am endeavoring to ascertain that I may regulate my movements accord- ingly. The militia are taking spirit and I am told are coming in fast from this State, but I fear those from Philadelphia will hardly submit to the hardships of a winter campaign much longer, especially as they, very unluckily, sent
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their blankets with their baggage to Burlington. I must do them the justice, however, to add that they have undergone more fatigue and hardship than I expected militia, especially citizens, would have done at this inclement season. I am just moving to Morristown where I shall endeavor to put them under the best cover I can. Hith- erto we have been without any; and many of our poor soldiers quite barefoot and ill clad in other respects.
I have the honour to be, etc.
This was an eventful Sunday in the annals of the quiet Somerset village. Besides the Com- mander-in-chief, there were among others known to fame, Generals Greene, Knox, and Sullivan; there was, too, the venerated Dr. Ben- jamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, soon to be appointed surgeon- general of the army. Among the fourteen British officers captured and under guard was
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one Captain William Leslie, son of the Earl of Leven, who was so severely wounded in the battle that he died soon after reaching Pluck- amin. Dr. Rush, who ministered to the dying captain, was a native of Philadelphia. He graduated from Princeton College at the early age of fifteen, and then studied medicine in Edinburgh where he took his degree. During his residence abroad, he knew the family of the Earl of Leven intimately. It was his mel- ancholy privilege to attend the dying captain in his last moments, and see him reverently interred in the Lutheran Cemetery. The journal of Captain Rodney of the Delaware line has the following record of the event:
PLUCKAMIN, N. J., Jan. 5, 1777.
The General continued this day also to re- fresh the army. He ordered forty of our light infantry to attend the funeral of Colonel Leslie, to bury him with the honours of war. He
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was one of the enemy who fell at Princeton. They readily obeyed in paying due respect to bravery, though in an enemy. Captain Henry was now gone home, and I, myself, had com- mand of the five companies of infantry, but as I had not paid any attention to the military funeral ceremonies, I requested Captain Hum- phries (Humphreys ?) to conduct it.
Dr. Rush had the grave marked with a head- stone bearing the following touching inscription :
In memory of the Hon. Capt. William Leslie of the 17th British Regiment. Son of the earl of Leven in Scotland.
He fell January 3d, 1777, aged 26 years, at the Battle of Princeton. His friend, Benj. Rush, M. D., of Philadelphia, hath caused this stone to be erected as a mark of his esteem for his worth, and respect for his noble family.
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About the year 1835 the crumbling .. tomb- stone was replaced by the then Earl of Leven. He ordered a literal copy of the inscription written by the good Dr. Rush, who, the day after the burial of Leslie, hurried off to Prince- ton to attend the dying General Mercer.
More than a century later, another Phila- delphia physician was to find inspiration in the life and character of Dr. Rush. In Dr. Weir Mitchel's novel of the Revolution, "Hugh Wynne," Dr. Rush divides the honours and the interest with the nominal hero of the romance.
Another incident of the halt at Pluckamin is not so sombre. This was the arrival of Captain John Stryker's troop of Somerset horse, laden with some timely spoils of the enemy. Cornwallis, in his hurried retreat, had left several broken-down baggage wagons in charge of a guard of two hundred men. Captain Stryker with but twenty troopers, . suddenly fell upon them at night and so
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terrorized the guard that they fled, leaving the baggage to fate. Captain Stryker promptly repaired the wagons, bringing them in triumph to the army during the halt at Pluckamin.
In the disposition of the army during the winter of 1778-79, General Knox was in com- mand of an artillery corps, stationed at Pluck- amin while the Commander-in-chief made his headquarters in the Wallace house near Raritan. General Knox's headquarters were in the Van der Veer house near the Bedminster Church where he was joined by Mrs. Knox, who also spent the winter there. The corps, which boasted a fine artillery train captured from Burgoyne, was stationed near the village.
Facing the parade ground was a building known as the Academy-enclosing a room thirty by fifty feet which did service as a lecture hall, for the camp was turned into a training school during the periods of inac- tivity. The camp known as Artillery Park was ·
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General Knox's Headquarters, Bedminster
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the scene of much merry-making and social life during this winter.
" You know what an agreeable circle of ladies this State afforded two years ago," wrote an officer to a brother of General Knox. "It is since much enlarged, so that we can (in military stile) at a moment's warning, parade a score or two."
The most brilliant event of that season took place on February 18th (1779). It was a grand fête and ball to celebrate the first anniversary of the French Alliance. There were military reviews and manœuvres directed by Baron Steuben, the Inspector-General. There was a dinner followed by a display of fireworks and a grand ball. The company included all the army officers stationed at or near Pluckamin, the Commander-in-chief and his staff, and many people of distinction in residence near the camp. A grand pavilion one hundred feet long, roofed by thirteen arches, was decorated
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with allegorical paintings executed for the occasion. The sixth of the thirteen arches was a grand illuminated representation of Louis XVI. as "The encourager of letters, the supporter of the rights of humanity, the ally and friend of the American people." A strange fate met this "supporter of the rights of humanity" a few years later on the Place de la Revolution.
This early significant use of the number thirteen was the subject of a brilliant Tory sarcasm at the time. The Lampoon states : " Thirteen is a number peculiarly belonging to the rebels. A party of naval prisoners, lately returned from Jersey, say that the rations among the rebels are thirteen dried clams per day; that the titular Lord Stirling takes thirteen glasses of grog every morning, has thirteen enormous rum bunches on his nose, and that (when duly impregnated) he always makes thir- teen attempts before he can walk. That Mr.
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Washington has thirteen toes on his feet (the extra ones having grown since the Declaration of Independence) and the same number of teeth in each jaw . .. that a well organized rebel household has thirteen children, all of whom expect to be generals and members of the High and Mighty Congress of the Thirteen United States when they attain thirteen."
General Knox writes to his brother of the event with great pride:
"We had at the Park on the eighteenth," he says, "a most genteel entertainment given by self and officers-everybody allows it to be the first of the kind ever exhibited in this State, at least: We had about seventy ladies- all the first ton in the State-we danced all night-between three and four hundred gen- tlemen-an elegant room-the illuminating fire- works, etc., were more than pretty."
A correspondent to the Pennsylvania Packet of March 6th gives a detailed account of the
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celebration and concludes with the following tribute to the women of the period:
"Is it that the women of New Jersey, by holding the space between two large cities, have continued exempt from the corruptions of either, and preserved a purity of manners superior to both ? Or have I paid too great attention to their charms and too little to those imperfections which observers tell me are the natural growth of every soil?"
It was doubtless a brilliant company that danced in the academy that night. The event stood in bold relief against the inactive and troubled social life of the preceding years. General Washington himself, with Mrs. Knox, opened the ball. Mrs. Washington, Lady Stirl- ing, Mrs. Greene and others received the guests. And there was William Duer, Englishman, West-Indian, New Yorker, ex-member of Con- gress, and army officer, come to dance with his fiancée, Lady Kitty Stirling.
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Among the guests was the distinguished Henry Laurens, late president of Congress, who was soon to be a prisoner in England while his son, Col. John Laurens, was doing such valuable service in bringing about the active co-operation of the French. Exasperated with the dalliance of the French ministers, Colonel Laurens resorted to an argument with Count de Vergennes which was irresistible. " The sword which I now wear in the defence of France as well as of my own country," he said, "I may be compelled in a short time to draw against France as a British subject, unless the succor I solicit is immediately ac- corded."
The sojourn of General and Mrs. Knox in Pluckamin closed in gloom. A tombstone in the graveyard of the Bedminster Church tells part of the story. The inscription reads :
"Under this stone are deposited the Remains of Julia Knox, an infant who died on the second
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of July, 1779. She was the second daughter of Henry and Lucy Knox, of Boston in New England."
The Consistory of the Dutch Reformed Church refused to allow the child to be buried in the churchyard, because the Knoxes were not of their faith. But Jacobus Van der Veer, Gen- eral Knox's host, invited him to bury the infant in the field adjoining the graveyard, where his own daughter was buried, for a still more brutal reason. She had died insane- "possessed of the devil"-and therefore should not have Christian burial. Years afterwards the field was included in the churchyard, but the incidents are sorry illustrations of the re- ligious intolerance of the day.
With the breaking up of General Knox's camp, the important revolutionary incidents of the village come to a close. Eoff's tavern continued to be a convenient half-way house, and a detachment of the Continental troops,
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with our French allies under Lafayette, passed through in 1781 on the hurried march to Yorktown. With the return of peace the village returned to the even tenor of its way-which, it would seem, has scarcely been interrupted since.
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V.
BERNARDSVILLE.
Bernards Township and Bernardsville prob- ably commemorate one of the royal governors of the province, Sir Francis Bernard, who was appointed in 1758. He was a popular gov- ernor, and when he was transferred to Massa- chusetts in 1760 by the home government, the regret was general. His administration of that province was less happy. It was he who in- troduced the royal troops to the city of Boston, prorogued the Colonial Assembly for refusing to vote supplies for their support, and so con- tributed to the volume of grievances that led to the Revolution.
Governor Franklin, of New Jersey, writing to his father, Benjamin Franklin, from Burlington in 1769, says :
"The Boston writers have attacked Gov-
Sir Francis Bernard
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ernor Bernard on his letters and on his being created a baronet. They worry him so much that I suppose he will not choose to stay much longer among them. There is a talk that a new governor is shortly to be appointed. Many of the principal people there wish you to be the man, and say you would meet with no opposition from any party, but would soon be able to conciliate all differences."
The old name of the village was Vealtown, and the old Vealtown Inn, known as Bullion's Tavern, is frequently mentioned in Revolution- ary annals. It occupied the site of the present stone tavern in the village. While the scene of no distinguishing event, Bernardsville was frequently the halting or camping place of officers and troops in their crossing and re- crossing of New Jersey. After the disastrous battle of Long Island in August, 1776, Gen- eral Lee was extremely dilatory if not posi- tively disobedient in following the Commander-
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in-chief in retreat across New Jersey. On the twelfth of December, his command camped for the night in Bernardsville. Lee, however, temporarily transferred his command to Gen- eral Sullivan, and, "governed by some freak or whim, or still baser passion," put up for the night at Mrs. White's Tavern at Basking Ridge. The story of his capture by the British the following day is told more in detail in the note on Basking Ridge.
A month later Bernardsville again saw the Continental troops. This time, however, not in disheartening retreat, but flushed with the great strategic and actual victories of Trenton and Princeton. After the battle of Princeton, early in 1777, the first halt made by Washington and his army on the way to Morristown was at Plucka- min. From thence, after a few days' sojourn, he proceeded through Bernardsville and New Ver- non, making his winter headquarters at the Arnold Tavern on the Morristown "Green."
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