Key takeaways :
The reading of the Declaration of Independence was a major event in Trenton in July, but it was just one among a huge number of developments challenging the residents’ lives that month. Samuel Tucker continued as chairman when the Provincial Congress became the Convention of the State of New Jersey on July 18 to hold things together until elections could be held for the new state government outlined in the July 2 constitution. The Convention announced in newspapers that everyone living in New Jersey was now under its authority. New Jersey had two capital cities, Amboy in the east and Burlington in the west, but Trenton continued to host Convention sessions at the Friends Meeting House or one of Trenton’s taverns, with local resident Daniel Bellerjeau serving as doorkeeper.
Beginning the previous fall of 1775, for various personal reasons some Trenton men had volunteered for the Continental Army as full-time soldiers and marched off to fight in Canada, leaving their worried families pretty much in the dark about their experiences there. Lacking cellphones, relying on horses to carry messengers meant information was very sporadic. Men between the ages of 16 and 50 who did not join the full-time army were required to sign-into their local militia company, a system created in the early colonial days as a community defense force. Adult men formed armed companies to defend their communities. Militia duty was supposed to be local and very part-time but by July 1776, the militia had been transformed into a force prepared to defend the entire state with more frequent calls to active duty.
When Washington called on New Jersey to supplement his army with several thousand militiamen volunteering for a five-month long, full-time militia to be sent to New York, the creation of those “five-month levies” depleted the normal militia companies. With the British beginning to threaten New York, Trenton militiamen were now being called out to the eastern side of the state. Those “part-time” militiamen being sent were “full-time” farmers, craftsmen, merchants, etc. who were the mainstay of the state’s, as well as their families, economy. Samuel Tucker had to notify the Continental Congress that militiamen were not turning out in sufficient numbers. Their inaction was partly in protest to the number of men being called out for what many considered to be a Continental Army responsibility. It was also due to the time of year as July was one of the heaviest months for farm work whose neglect could ruin the farm’s success for the year.
To recognize the importance of the five-month levies, efforts had been made to bring Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland militiamen into New Jersey to form a “Flying-Camp” to defend the state and allow the regular militiamen to do their civilian jobs keeping the economy going. While these troops would operate mostly in the eastern areas of the state, many of them rendezvoused at Trenton on their way to defensive positions nearer New York, such as Amboy. About July 14, sixteen shallops carrying about 1100 Maryland men docked at Trenton Landing, near where the ballpark is today. At about the same time, six or seven Pennsylvania infantry companies and two artillery companies, with their field pieces and baggage wagons crossed at the ferry and noisily came through Trenton. A week later, another twelve shallops carrying Maryland troops landed. Pennsylvania troops continued to pass through Trenton throughout the month. Providing these men with food and lodging caused many problems. One group was refused use of the Friends Meeting House for quarters until the frustrated soldiers threatened to break down the doors. The Friends would continue to resist, however. In 1776 Trenton was a farm town where merchants relied on produce from the nearby farmers while also gaining income by selling needed items to the farmers. The large number of troops passing through town greatly disrupted normal life while producing physical damage to roads, fences, and buildings.
A frustrated Samuel Tucker reinforced with Congress the critical need for the Pennsylvanians, encamped uselessly at Trenton awaiting orders, to be sent east quickly to relieve the few New Jersey militiamen who had reluctantly turned out, so they could return home to harvest the wheat crop, writing “the support of the Colony” is currently in great danger of being lost. Totally frustrated because not enough men volunteered for the Flying Camp, on July 18, the New Jersey Convention reluctantly passed an ordinance calling out two thousand unsuspecting regular militiamen for the Flying Camp, hoping it would be a stopgap for just one month.
The troops at New York and those serving in the Flying Camp in New Jersey needed supplies of all types, and Trenton began a long period serving as a supply depot for the American army. In addition to sending flour collected at Trenton to the troops who needed it, on July 16, the State ordered township committees to collect lead so it could be cast into musket balls. Items to be collected included lead weights from house windows and clocks, one pound and greater lead weights from shops, stores and mills, and any other available lead. It was forwarded to commissioners Alexander Chambers, Lieutenant Colonel Abraham Hunt, David Pinkerton, or Captain William Tucker, all Trenton residents and merchants, who would pay for it.
At least some of the several thousand Pennsylvania militia coming through Trenton needed supplies of arms and camp equipage, in addition to food. Merchant Alexander Chambers paid various local people for such items as muskets, cartridges, lead, flints, shovels, pick handles, cartridge boxes, and knapsacks. John Machett sold him 100 cartridge boxes, and Hopewell saddler Steven Burrowes was paid for cartridge boxes and for making up cartridges. On July 4, Benjamin Yard received £51 for 12 muskets and on July 15 £1 and 14 shillings for 17 scabbards delivered to Hunterdon County commissioner Abraham Hunt. Ironically, Captain Charles Harrison was also paid on July 4 for supplying lead and flints, just four days before he resigned and went over to the Loyalists. Benjamin Smith, Lott Dunbar, and William Yard respectively made 200, 82, and 80 knapsacks. Lyndon Brown provided 112 canteens, J. Somers six camp kettles, and Neil Livingston 15 shovel and pick handles. Local men also helped transport supplies. Trenton merchants Brown and Reeder carted gunpowder to New Brunswick while William Coxe provided a baggage wagon and Neil Livingston arranged for carting militia baggage to Elizabethtown.
Army Commissary Carpenter Wharton at Trenton supplied assembling troops with limited provisions. He had recently received 150 head of oxen, 500 head of sheep, and 1,500 barrels of flour, but these would only supply the many troops passing through Trenton for a short time.
Dealing with Loyalists was a big concern in the move toward independence. On July 2, Trenton doctor and militia Colonel Isaac Smith took charge of 14 Loyalists apprehended in Hunterdon County, brought them to the jail in Trenton, and used his militiamen to keep them under guard.
Trenton grist mill owner Samuel Henry, born in Ireland about 1717 and living in Trenton since 1738, came under suspicion of disloyalty and on July 11 was ordered “committed to the common goal of Hunterdon” at the county courthouse and kept in close confinement. On July 16, Henry appeared before the New Jersey Convention and heard the charges against him read and several witnesses examined. The following day Henry proclaimed that he wanted to make amends for any comments or actions the Convention deemed objectionable. Determined to conduct himself in the future in a positive way he was ready to “give any security the Convention may think necessary to require.” Taking him at his word, the Convention discharged him from confinement on July 20, requiring him to provide £2,000 as a bond “for the faithful performance of his parole” and to stay within two miles of his mill, unless given leave by the Convention or future legislature.
Multiple suspected Loyalists came to Trenton this month to explain themselves to the Convention and hopefully obtain parole rather than jail or banishment. The High Sheriff of Hunterdon County, John Barnes of Trenton found it hard to arrest suspected Loyalists because he himself was “a friend of the government.” Barnes, a distiller who lived on Queen Street near the Assunpink bridge, resigned his office on July 18 after Ebenezer Cowell, Jr. accused him of refusing to receive and execute arrest warrants for suspected Loyalists. Two days after this resignation, busy shoemaker and militia Captain William Tucker, brother of Convention Chairman Samuel Tucker, was named to replace Barnes until a new sheriff could be chosen in the upcoming election.
We will leave Trenton in this state of revolutionary change and return in September with further stories of how Trentonians dealt with a building and then deteriorating Revolutionary conflict in the months leading up to the famous December battle in Trenton.