Iron men: Part 1

High Bridge, New Jersey has a long and colourful history. The area was established around 1742 when two men, William Allen and Joseph Turner, leased 3000 acres from the West Jersey Society and built an iron forge on the banks of the Raritan River.

The area was a remote wilderness but the men were attracted by the fast flowing river which they harnessed to drive the machinery of the mill and the heavily forested hills which promised a ceaseless supply of wood for the furnaces. The iron-works that they built and called Union Iron Works, ran continuously until 1971 making it the oldest foundry in US History and the 13th longest continually operating company in the world.

There had been settlers already farming in the area since 1700 but, with the granting of the lease, they all became squatters in law – a situation which lead to unrest and rioting. The situation was eventually resolved only by the intervention of the British Army.

When the American Revolution broke out, Turner and Allen – both loyalists – were forced to flee and Robert Taylor became superintendent of the iron-works. Taylor – a fierce patriot – was soon charged by the American Government with the incarceration of the loyalist colonial Governor of Pennsylvania, John Penn and his attorney-general, Benjamin Chew in the house attached to Union Iron Works.

Solitude House today.

 

These slave quarters at the rear of Solitude House are a reminder of darker times.

 

 

The two were held for seven months in reasonable comfort (they had their own Italian violinist for entertainment and were allowed to wander six miles from the house unescorted) and Generals Washington and Lafayette, Colonel Charles Stewart, and Aaron Burr all visited them in their captivity.

The Union Iron Works (which would soon be renamed the Taylor Iron and Steel Company was at that time (1777) busy producing cannon balls and musket barrels for Washington’s army.

Around the same time that the Allen and Turner mill came into being, an inn was built on what would later become Main Street. I don’t know what name it went by at that time but it came to be called the American Hotel and it existed in the same spot from the 1740’s until it was razed in 1979.

All that now remains to commemorate the American Hotel.

 

 

This bench should bear a plaque reading “General Washington slept here”. It would be both funny and accurate.

 

 

 

This ‘artistic rendering’ is all there is at the site to give an idea of the building’s appearance.

 

 

On the left of this image from 1917, you can make out the Hotel as it then looked. This is now the street that Jersey girl and I live on. (Image: The High Bridge Historical Society)

When Washington and his wife, Martha visited Penn and Chew at Solitude House (as the two prisoners had rather pithily named it and as it remains known to this day) he stayed at the tavern the original site of which I can actually see from my living room window.

Why such a significant piece of history was destroyed (replaced by a municipal car park no less), I don’t know but it is a sad state of affairs in my opinion.

The Taylors held on to both Solitude House and the Union Iron Works after independence had been won. They were still in possession when America’s next great trial came around.

New Jersey in the 1860s was by no means a strong supporter of the Union (industrialized New Jersey had many economic ties to the South) and had considered joining the Secessionist states before finally throwing its weight fully behind the Northern cause. Once committed to the fight, however, the men of New Jersey joined up in their tens of thousands.

Three entire New Jersey Regiments marched off to Washington fully armed and uniformed (one of the few properly outfitted Federal units at the war’s commencement). Over the course of the war, 52 N.J. Regiments would be formed.

When the 1st, 2nd, and, 4th New Jersey Volunteer Infantry were combined to make up the “First New Jersey Brigade”, it was a Taylor, Major General George W. Taylor, who lead them.

Taylor had been born at Solitude House and, after a stint at a Connecticut Military College, had joined the family business as a worker at Taylor Iron Works. But the young Taylor seems to have been possessed of a somewhat restless spirit. In 1827, he joined the Navy, serving in the Mediterranean before resigning his commission. Later, at the outset of the Mexican American War, He joined the Army and went off to fight.

By the time of the Civil War, he had been out to the Californian goldfields and was back working in the family business in High Bridge but he returned to military service to help organize the newly formed New Jersey Regiments.

In June 1862, Taylor was promoted to brigadier general of the 1st New Jersey Brigade. They fought under his command in the Seven Days Battles. On August 27, during the battle of Manassas Station, his brigade was surprised by General ‘Stonewall’ Jackson’s entire corps and routed. Taylor suffered a fatal leg wound from a cannon shot and died four days later.

His body was returned home by train and buried in the Riverside Cemetery in nearby Clinton. A large crowd gathered to pay their final respects. The poem “The General’s Death” by Joseph O’Connor commemorates the Death of George Taylor.

Continued

 

Words and images (except where otherwise stated) are my own.

 

©2018

If you sleep always like this

 

 

This town where Jersey girl and I currently live is tiny, really tiny. It is more properly a village than a town. It was officially established as a turnpike village around 1806, however, tucked away in an almost forgotten corner is the original cemetery dating back to the mid 1700’s.

I’ve visited the spot once before back in the Summer but it was so overgrown with bushes and Ivy that it was hard to read the inscriptions on a lot of the stones. I remember thinking that this was a cemetery that kept its secrets well.

As I mentioned in the last post, my son has been visiting with us from Melbourne and a few days ago he and I went back to the small cemetery to take some photographs. Upon arrival, we discovered that the place had been considerably cleared since the Summer.

It was much easier to gain access to the stones and we quickly discovered something quite amazing. This tiny place holds the remains of not one but five soldiers of the Revolutionary War.

This was a great surprise to me. Even today the village population is far less than two thousand. At the time of the Revolution, this wasn’t even a settlement, just a collection of scattered farms. And yet, somehow, we have five graves of men who fought in (and survived) the great war for independence.

 

We even have a soldier born on the 4th of July.

 

 

Words and images are my own.

 

©2018

Children of the Revolution

 

 

 

Words are my own. Image is mine and Mr. Franklin’s.

 

©2017

Revolution

 

 

The Battle of Princeton Monument.

 

 

This great State in which I now reside was the crossroads of the Revolution. More battles were fought over New Jersey soil than over any other of the thirteen colonies. Places like Trenton, Princeton, Springfield, and Monmouth were the sites of some of the most crucial battles of the struggle. In fact, Trenton and Princeton are where the tide began to turn in favour of the Patriots.

Not four miles from where I type this, is a place where Washington stayed while his army was camped at White House, just down the road (sadly the house burned down in the 1960s but a commemorative sign still marks the spot).

Six miles in a different direction and you find Solitude House, High Bridge. This was another house where Washington (and his wife Martha) is known to have visited as well as General Lafayette, Colonel Charles Stewart, and Aaron Burr. It was also the house where two important loyalist prisoners were held for a period of time during the war, John Penn, the last colonial governor of Pennsylvania; and his chief justice, Benjamin Chew.

 

Solitude House from the front.

 

 

And from the side and rear.

 

The house belonged at the time to the nearby Union Ironworks which produced cannon balls and musket barrels for the American troops.

Long Valley (originally German valley until the outbreak of WWI made all things German distasteful to American sensitivities), just one county over, features a house once nicknamed ‘the Fort’ where both British and American troops were stationed at various times during the conflict.

 

The Fort, Long Valley.

There is also the ruin of a Presbyterian church where the minister famously donned an American uniform at the pulpit and declared, “there’s a time for preaching and a time for war!” He then marched out of the church and joined the Continental army.

 

Also very near to where I write, the small hamlet of Annandale features two buildings which could not more perfectly illustrate the situation which afflicted the country at the time of the revolution. First is the Vought House built in 1759 which belonged at the time of the Revolution to a family of German origin who remained loyal to the German-descended King of England, George III.

 

The Vought house.

 

While, not ten minutes walk away stands a building* which was once a tavern owned by  Thomas Jones, an avowed patriot.

The former Jones Tavern from the rear.

And from the front (the top storey is a later addition). When the  Declaration of Independence was eventually signed, it was read publicly to the people of the local area from the balcony of this Tavern.

Jones Tavern was a local recruiting post for the Hunterdon County militia and Jones himself was one of the officers who procured and hid the boats that Washington used to cross the Delaware and attack Trenton.

One night, Vought’s son, john, and about 25 loyalists broke into the tavern and severely beat Jones for his rebel allegiances. This did not go over well with the Provincial Congress of New Jersey when word of it reached them. And it led to the Vought house being surrounded by militia and to Christopher Vought, John’s father, being placed under arrest. His son escaped but later surrendered.

The two spent five days to two weeks in prison for their troubles and, soon after, fled to join the British. They were captured in the battle of Two Bridges and the family went into exile in Nova Scotia.

About 20 miles from here, the British, led by famed Commander Cornwallis, launched a surprise attack against the American garrison at Bound Brook. They were attempting to capture the entire Continental contingent but failed to seal off all escape routes and so were unsuccessful in their main objective. The American reinforcements under Major General Nathanael Greene reoccupied the fort as soon as the British had left.

Monmouth County, about fifty miles South East of here, provided raiding grounds for the infamous Colonel Tye. Tye (whose far more impressive real name was Titus Cornelius) was an escaped negro slave who joined the Royal Army to fight against the Americans.

The British Earl of Dunmore had declared that all black slaves who left their rebel owners and fought for the King would be granted their freedom. Tye escaped his Quaker owner in Colt’s Neck, Monmouth County just a day later (quite coincidently) and took the announcement when he heard it as a fortuitous development. He joined the British soon after.

His first taste of action was at the battle of Monmouth near Freehold (where, in the American ranks, the woman who came to be known as Molly Pitcher wielded her rammer at the mouth of her wounded husband’s cannon). Serving with the Ethiopian Regiment, Tye managed to capture Captain Elisha Shepard of the Monmouth Militia. Soon after he was leading raids all over Monmouth County and up towards New York, operating out of a coastal fort at Sandy Hook.

New Jersey is rich with such stories and much of that history is present in the stone and plaster of buildings still found all over the State. You can reputedly see the depression in the wall of Nassau Hall, Princeton, where one of Hamilton’s artillery balls impacted it during the Battle. And at nearby Morven House, a piece of bullet-riddled wall has been preserved to remind us of the ferocity of that desperate conflict.

Many of the old battlefields have been subsumed by urban sprawl but you can still walk parts of the fields at Princeton, Bound Brook, Red Bank, and Monmouth. I found Princeton particularly evocative and deeply moving. Men fought and died all over New Jersey and the other twelve colonies to win freedom from a foreign oppressor. The Great American experiment found new hope in the blood, mud and freezing snows at Trenton and Princeton.

Princeton Battlefield.

The Clarke house, where General Mercer lay dying for nine days after being bayonetted by the British for refusing to surrender at the height of the battle.

Though I loathe war, I dearly love the ideals and the vision that those men (and women) were willing to sacrifice life and treasure to secure. It fills me with a strange pride to be surrounded by so many reminders of that idealistic and, conversely, brutal time here in my adopted home.

 

* I have visited this particular building many times and it plays an undocumented but important role in my own and my wife’s story.

 

 

Words and images are my own.

 

©2017

 

 

 

18. The River

There’s diamonds in the sidewalk there’s gutters lined in song
Dear I hear that beer flows through the faucets all night long
There’s treasure for the taking, for any hard working man
Who will make his home in the American Land

Springsteen, American Land

That winter, Jersey girl and I took a drive down the Delaware to Washington’s crossing. This was right towards the end of my second visit and so was inevitably tinged with a certain sadness. I must say, however, that day remains one of my most magical memories of the entire three weeks.

We began in Frenchtown. This had actually been the scene of the mini-drama I wrote about in my post Iceman, but that had all occurred on the far-flung outskirts of the town. I had not, at that point, seen the town proper and this encounter left a very different impression.

View of the bridge from the Bridge.

Frenchtown lies on the Jersey side of the mighty Delaware River. It is a bit of a magnet for arty, bohemian, hipster types and so, for a slightly out of the way little village, it has quite a culturally vibrant aesthetic.

We lunched at the Bridge Café which, as the name implies, is situated adjacent to the steel girder bridge that spans the river over to PA. The food was great and the coffee more than decent (a huge relief for me – I’m from Melbourne, where really good coffee is everywhere you go – In Jersey? Not so much). After eating we wandered around the town a little. It really is a charming little place and well worth a visit.

Then we got back in the car, crossed the bridge and headed down towards our ultimate destination; Washington’s crossing. The drive alongside the river on the Pennsylvania side is so beautiful. There are many houses and villages that date back to colonial times, so you can well imagine how stunning a lot of it looked under a blanket of snow.

Everywhere we looked there was food for the eyes and I think I was grinning and clicking the camera for the entire drive. The only largish sized town between Frenchtown and the crossing is New Hope. If you love a little colour, I recommend New Hope. It is made up almost entirely of bars, restaurants and galleries. If you do find yourself there, try Marsha Brown a very cool place to eat situated in what was once an old church.

After many ‘oooh’ moments, we eventually arrived at Washington’s crossing. I shouldn’t really have to remind anyone of the significance of this place, but educations being what they are these days; I’ll include a little context.

In 1776, during the American Revolutionary War, General Washington’s army was driven out of New Jersey by the British and forced to winter, under very difficult conditions, in Pennsylvania. It was becoming clear that the brutal snows and the series of defeats and retreats that had been suffered had taken a heavy toll of his men. Soldiers were beginning to desert in droves and Washington knew that, if he didn’t do something decisive soon, He would lose his army.

He decided to go on the offensive. This was virtually unheard of in those times. Armies bunkered down in the winter and fought when the weather was more hospitable. Washington, therefore, knew that the German Hessians, garrisoned in Trenton and celebrating Christmas, would not be expecting an attack.

The crossing took place around 11pm on Christmas day and from the start things didn’t go to plan. He had split his army into three units and only a portion, rowing through the ice filled water in small boats, made it to the other side at the appointed time. It was therefore with a somewhat denuded force that Washington attacked Trenton the following morning, 26^th December.

Despite these setbacks, Washington took the Hessians completely by surprise and, in a matter of an hour or two, had captured the town and close to a thousand prisoners. Due to a lack of troops and artillery, he could not hold the town and ultimately the victory was more symbolic than strategic. However, this success put fresh spirit into the hearts of the patriots and probably helped turn the tide of war in favour of the rebel cause.

There’s a convenient bridge there now.

Jersey girl and I wandered around the historic buildings that have been left, pretty much, as they were at the time of the revolution. It was an idyllic way to spend an afternoon and I found it hard to believe that in just a few short days, we would have to part again. I gazed around at the gleaming snow and tried to imagine being back in the sticky heat of a Melbourne summer. Somehow, my brain just didn’t want to make that jump.

We drove back over the same route we’d come by and I really enjoyed seeing it all over again. I think that was the day I absolutely knew that this was a place where I could make a life. I’d long been committed to Jersey girl as my true ‘home’, but in that moment, I committed myself fully to America.

I can’t really think of a more apt place to have made that commitment.

All images in this post are my own.

©2016