Abigail Larke’S Journal

By Helene-Carol Brown

Abigail Larke and her Patriot family could never have imagined the sort of destruction Tory raiders and Hessian soldiers could bring to New Jersey.

When the port of Elizabeth Town was raided and its revered Academy and popular Patriot church burned, Pastor James Caldwell is forced to remove his family farther inland to the village of Connecticut Farms. Abigail joins the pastors household as an assistant nurse to the his nine children. Shortly after, Abigails father is beset by Tory highwaymen. The pastors wife is shot dead by a brace of enemy musket balls, and the manse in Connecticut Farms is burned to the ground.

Abigail rejoins her family now removed to their uncles farm near Springfield, New Jersey. Redcoats and Hessians invade Springfield nothing after in an attempt to cross the Wachtung Mountains and capture General Washington at Morristown. A bloody battle ensues.

Through it all, two Continental soldiers have become especially important to the Larke family. One helps Pastor James Caldwell, the Fighting Parson, to collect shoes, blankets and food for the famished, freezing Continentals encamped at Morristown. The other is captured, taken to the vile prison ship in New York harbor, and hanged.

Who could have fathomed how this enemy behaved? The perils of war made no room for the Sixth Commandment: Thou shalt do no murder.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 25, 2015
• ISBN: 9781503587564

Helene-Carol Brown

Helene-Carol Brown received her AB in History from UCLA in 1964 and her MA in History from the University of New Hampshire in 1985. A native of Philadelphia, she has taught school in Southern California, was a research assistant in New England, and now lectures on History and Art History in Eugene, Oregon where she lives in a small house with a little grey cat. She is an avid reader and a retired Master Gardener.

Book preview

Part One

Elizabeth Town used to be called Elizabeth Port. It was a very early settlement in the Province of New Jersey, which was then sometimes spelled New Jarsey upon old maps. The town is situated upon Newark Bay, immediately across from Staten Island. King Charles the Second of England gave the land to two men, Lord John Berkeley and Sir George Carteret, in 1664. The men had rendered King Charles goodly aid in regaining the crown of England after the English Civil War and the disastrous years of Oliver Cromwell. Sir George Carteret was once the Governor of the island of Jersey; thus he chose the name for the province in America. Our port town was named for Sir George Carteret’s wife, Elizabeth.

The Province of New Jersey contained some of the most fertile soil in all of the new world. The summers there proved long and warm. The founders sold land at very reasonable prices, and soon many Europeans as well as Englishmen settled in the new province. Most of the settlers were farmers. Corn, wheat, vegetables, and fruits grew aplenty in the rich, moist soil. Most of the agriculture went to nearby provinces and colonies less fertile than New Jersey. Early settlers discovered iron deposits which led to the manufacture of plows, locks, nails, tools, and kettles by talented blacksmiths. Cattle, sheep, hogs and chickens went by sloop to New York, as did flax and hemp for textiles. Timber, furs, coal and iron were shipped from several ports in New Jersey to England. Elizabeth Town became one of the most prosperous port towns along the Atlantic seaboard. The careful organization of the Province of New Jersey insured that trade would flourish.

Puritans from New England began to drift south to worship more freely in New Jersey than was permitted in their strict colonies. Religious tolerance thrived in New Jersey. Tolerance assisted prosperity. The founders, Berkeley and Carteret, divided the land into East Jersey and West Jersey to insure more efficient administration of the province. When the province became a Royal Colony, the governor was answerable to the crown. The colony had a Representative Assembly elected by prosperous landowners. For a time, New Jersey shared a governor with its neighbor, New York, but that did not prove practical, and New Jersey returned to having its own governor.

Elizabeth Town, just next to the port itself, had a number of handsome churches. The two largest were St. John’s Episcopal and Elizabeth Town Presbyterian. There was something of a rivalry between these two congregations. The flock belonging to St. John’s Episcopal Church were much more attached to English ways, and when the Revolution came, we thought likely most of St. John’s flock were Tories. Their minister was very strict about respect for the King and Parliament. He was also very strict about the terms for church or parishioner. One could receive a tongue-lashing from Reverend Charles Bailey if one called his church the Episcopalian Church. Of course, an Episcopalian is a person, not a church. The church was the Episcopal Church, and Reverend Bailey brooked no argument upon that.

Our family were members of Reverend James Caldwell’s Elizabeth Town Presbyterian Church. Of course we should be since we were connected to the Elizabeth Academy, a very prestigious school. The Academy was strongly Presbyterian in form and separatist in politics. Most of us were of an Independence frame of mind. We Presbyterians elected our church officers, as the early Christians had done. The name of the church comes from the Greek for presbyter—a church elder who is righteous and caring. We shared a number of views with other Protestant faiths, theological descendants of John Calvin the great Reformer, but we had long ago left behind the strict intolerance of Calvin, and many of us questioned his idea of predestination.

Our busy port town prided itself upon allowing people of many diverse ideas to live in harmony. That made for good business, and good business was what Elizabeth Town was about. Reverend Caldwell was a kindly man, who reserved judgement upon his fellow man until all the evidence was accumulated. He preferred to see a mug of cider as half full, rather than half empty. Once hostilities in Boston had irredeemably broken the colonies’ faith in King and Parliament, Pastor Caldwell began collecting supplies for the Patriot militias and the newly formed Continental Army. Independence, he said, required effort — from a citizen, from an army, and from a man of God.

Reverend Caldwell was famous for his fiery sermons upon the need for separation from England. He had come to Elizabeth Town in 1762 at the age of twenty-five. He was a popular minister, and because of his services to the Continental Army as Chaplain, he earned the nickname, the Fighting Parson. The British called him the Rebel High Priest. He was a tall and handsome man, known for his fair dealing, and he welcomed all to his services, including slaves. This was not true of every minister. He was oft-times visiting rural parishioners whatever the weather, and the British hoped to catch him unawares at some point.

In Elizabeth Town, Reverend Caldwell lived in a red saltbox with his goodwife Hannah and their nine children. Reverend Caldwell’s goodwife was a particularly sweet woman. She was very small and very strong. She had curly light brown hair and a cheerful smile. Her blue eyes danced with merriment at the arrival of a friend or the antics of a toddling child. She brought all but the smallest of her nine children to church every Sunday, and they sat very quietly for the opening of the service. Of course when it came time for the long sermon, Mistress Hannah Caldwell escorted her children and those of other meetinghouse members to a small building next to the church for Bible stories and the singing of a few easily learned hymns. The children’s nurse, Constance, minded the two youngest at home. Children could hardly be expected to sit through an hour’s sermon without squirming and wriggling. Truth be told, oft-times of a warm summer Sunday, it was all the adults could do not to squirm and wriggle after an extended lesson upon the wages of sin. Nonetheless, we of Elizabeth Town’s Presbyterian Church were grateful for our learned and kindly minister and our very handsome meetinghouse.

Before the War for Independence began, our life in the Larke household was pleasant and peaceful. My father was Samuel Larke. He was a slender man, a bit taller than average, with hazel eyes and sandy hair. He was soft-spoken, quick to commend and slow to censure. He was assistant to the headmaster of the Elizabeth Academy. It was oft-times called the Old Academy or the Presbyterian Academy. Father was a dedicated teacher. Headmaster Francis Barber was well-pleased with Father’s lessons for the younger lads at the Elizabeth Academy.

The headmaster taught the older lads, preparing them for the College of New Jersey, where they would encounter a rigorous academic calendar. Mr. Barber lived just next to the Academy. That dwelling house was very well built, with a beautiful oaken door, and white-washed shutters. The Academy itself was a small Georgian-style structure resembling a Greek temple, as befitted a building where the classics were emphasized.

Our other Larke relations lived just outside Springfield, a town seven miles away. They were successful farmers and had a handsome dwelling house and a fully-stocked barn set upon some one hundred acres of bountiful land. They also had a small orchard that ran up a hill. This type of orchard was oft-times called a hanging orchard. We made occasional trips to the Springfield farm to visit my Mother’s sister, Ruth, and to collect luscious fruits and vegetables that we did not have room to grow in our Elizabeth Town garden. More frequently, Aunt Ruth’s family brought their produce into Elizabeth Town to sell at the Saturday markets in the town square. We enjoyed their company at early Saturday dinners, and were oft-times the beneficiaries of luscious berries and peaches in the summer season.

We Larke children in town had a favorite pastime before the war. We accompanied Father on Sunday afternoons to the docks a mile or so from the center of Elizabeth Town to watch smaller sloops from New York unload their goods, and to see the great sailing vessels upload their wares bound for England. The docks were always bustling, and sometimes a sailor would provide us with a treat such as a small pineapple from the islands of the Caribbean. A pineapple was a sign of hospitality and Mother was always delighted when one arrived upon her kitchen table. Only infrequently, a sailor would give us a lump of sugar from the plantations of the same area. Sugar was shipped in great cones, but once in a long while, a piece would have broken off—and we would be the lucky recipients. Many local farmers traded their fruits and vegetables for those from the Sugar Islands when a ship came into the harbor.

My father had long ago decided he had no real talents as a farmer, but he was a very patient teacher. His work involved teaching young lads to read and write Latin, and sometimes Greek, so that they could go on to the next classes taught by Headmaster Barber—and from thence to the College of New Jersey in the charming town of Princeton. We knew that Alexander Hamilton and Elias Boudinot had gone to the Elizabeth Town Academy before graduating from the College of New Jersey. Our town was held in honor for its fine preparatory school.

Besides the classics, both Headmaster Barber and Father insisted that their students write correctly in English, and brooked no mis-spelled words in the essays their students were required to write upon the works of Shakespeare or Milton. Fortunately for us children in the Larke household, Father taught us to read and write and to take care with our spelling and grammar as well. Mother insisted that we learn Geography and History, since her family had been in the area for generations and we had some very accomplished ancestors. I was especially taken with History, particularly the early settling of the colonies.

We of the Larke family enjoyed the bustle of trade, the benefits of learning, the company of neighbors, and the pleasant houses and open spaces which made the town a cordial and industrious habitation. Elizabeth Town had very close to 800 residents, and about 400 dwelling houses of weathered shingles on five tree-lined streets. Nearly every house had a large garden and many had small orchards at the back of their property. One Swedish visitor to Elizabeth Town had remarked that the whole of the town was in a garden. Like many towns in New Jersey, there was a parade ground in front of the most important building. For us that was the Courthouse, complete with a bell tower. An old stone bridge spanned the Elizabeth River. In summer children fished from the bridge and oft-times caught themselves a fulsome dinner.

Our family lived in a small dwelling house some blocks away from the Academy. There was a lovely little brook just behind the house, where my seven year old brother David was forever in search of some fat green frogs. Our house was made with ship lath, as were many port town houses. Sailors oft-times used the winter to build houses when it was too dangerous to go sea. The Larke house had a large stone central chimney, and a charming herb garden just outside the kitchen door. The staircase had graceful, turned spindles. We children were not allowed to slide down the staircase banister. Upon the rare occasion, however, my freckle-faced nine year old brother, Benjamin, managed to do so anyway.

Our dwelling house in Elizabeth Town was painted a dark red. The former owners had used berry juices and sour milk for the stain. Although it was small, the house was two storeys tall and very comfortable. It had black shutters, large windows of six-over-six panes, and a well of its own. It was modest, yet suitable to the dignity of an assistant headmaster. Our house had four rooms upstairs and four downstairs. The kitchen was on the north side of the house. It was one large room with a copious fireplace and a generous oven. This kept the room warm in winter. In summer, we opened the kitchen door to allow the cooler breezes to blow through the whole of the dwelling. The dining room had a long pine table and six rush-seated chairs. The sitting room, on the south side, also had a fireplace. This room contained a settle, two wing chairs, a round table, and two shelves of very well-worn books, a few of them by famous authors. Our family Bible was one of the books.

Children in our area oft-times ate standing at the table after their parents had finished their meal, but our family did not observe that rule. We all ate together. Our conversational skills were practiced religiously. Father, and oft-times Mother as well, read to us after dinner in the sitting room. We especially loved the warmth of the fireplace and a good story in winter. Oft-times, Headmaster Francis Barber came to our house for dinner. Mother was always a bit nervous when he dined with us. He was kindly yet somewhat stern, and to some he gave the impression that he required perfection. Mother said she felt she was being put to an examination of her housekeeping and her cooking skills whenever Mr. Barber came to dinner. Father said Mr. Barber was just delighted to spend a pleasant late afternoon without editing advanced Latin or Greek.

Mother’s particular specialty was stewed chicken with vegetables and dumplings. The entire of the little house was scented with rosemary, and the savory broth with carrots and celery was delicious.

Mother was a very busy woman with four children and a house to keep. She was a spare woman, above five feet four inches, with auburn hair, green eyes and graceful ways. She loved her children, yet she brooked no opposition to her few rules, and chief among these was that the house was to reflect our virtues. Clean, simple, godly; these were her ways. She was a talented goodwife, and a great help to Father.

I assisted with many of the chores, especially the mending, since we could not afford a servant. I seemed to have a way with a needle and thread, and Mother’s sister, Aunt Ruth, taught me embroidery stitching when I was ten. I finished a sampler when I was thirteen. Mother hung it on the wall of the sitting room. She did not say so precisely, but I think she was proud of my work.

I also learned many of the needed kitchen skills. We had a plentitude of iron kettles and pots for all the dishes we made during the week, and for Sunday dinner as well. Sunday dinner was a time for sharing with the younger lads from the Academy. They were delighted to get a delicious meal upon the Sabbath after a morning of sermons. We Larke children enjoyed hearing about their studies of Literature and History.

Father delighted in his students learning to retell the stories with conviction and accuracy. Fortunately, the lads retold the stories in English.

In Elizabeth Town we little thought that our comfortable and happy family would be disturbed by the shouting and civil disturbances in Boston. The colony of Massachusetts was well known for raising a ruckus whenever trade was involved. They detested taxes, and many merchants there had been smuggling goods—especially rum—to and from the French, Spanish and English Caribbean colonies for years. They got away easily with the practice. However, after the French and Indian War, England found itself in desperate need of money. We colonies were prosperous and so King George the Third and his Parliament decided that we should help support the Empire that England was building around the globe. At the very least we colonists in America should stop smuggling and start paying the proper taxes.

Boston merchants would have none of it. They threw tea in the harbor. The King closed the port of Boston and shut down their trade. Of course they were angry. The King then issued a proclamation that the port town of Boston and the colony of Massachusetts were in rebellion, and he sent no small number of soldiers to put down any further disturbances. This made the citizens of Massachusetts even more angry. Other colonies agreed. If this could happen to the port of Boston, what might happen to them?

Soon the colonies formed a Continental Congress to redress their grievances. Unfortunately the King was in no mood to redress what he saw as disobedience. He sent even more troops to the colonies and took away some colonial charters. In the hot and humid month of July, 1776, the colonies declared their Independence. War, with all its tribulations, came to our much-loved land.

The first battles were far north of us in New England. The Patriots, who were in favor of Independence, won these battles. Then the war moved a bit to the south and there were battles in New York. The Patriots lost every one of these military contests. It was a very dire summer of 1776 for the new Continental Army. Untrained in warfare, they were pitted against the famously powerful British army and the most formidable navy in the world.

We in New Jersey watched soldiers from both sides cross back and forth through our farmlands, villages, and towns. When the British soldiers, who were soon called Redcoats, were in the area, barns were invaded and the produce of months of Patriot labor were stolen and shipped to the British soldiers upon Staten Island or to the city of New York where hard currency insured good profits. Anything salable was purloined—especially by the Hessians who had no respect for property. They were in America on loan from some German principality and they did not care whose food or cloathes or shoes or candles they stole.

It surprised everyone when General George Washington took his ragged and discouraged Army across the Delaware River on Christmas Day in 1776 and beat the Hessian soldiers at the town of Trenton. It surprised everyone even more when he repeated the victory at Princeton a week later. He settled in at White Marsh, Pennsylvania, for the winter. It was a long-standing practice that an army rested in a winter encampment through the inclement cold season.

Our Larke relations in Springfield suffered many a raid upon their farm. They were firm Patriots and sold their wheat, beef and butter to the Continental Army encamped at various positions in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Many merchants and farmers in New Jersey became leery of the newly-printed and oft-times unrecognized Continental Dollar, no little because almost as soon as it had been issued, it had fallen precipitously in value. Worse, the British began to make forgeries of our Continental currency — and of the various currencies of the individual colonies. By the end of the first two years of the war, the Continental Dollar was not worth more than two or three pennies. Nonetheless, our relatives said that we must support the Patriots or we should all perish in the retaking of New Jersey by the British.

Elizabeth Town had been raided for supplies by the British numerous times during the war. We had a standing militia in Elizabeth Town to alert us to their coming from New York itself or by way of Staten Island, just a half-mile across the sound. Our Patriot militia kept a sharp eye for enemy soldiers arriving in the various sloops which regularly plied the waters of the bay and the Hudson River. Indeed our town was perhaps the most convenient target for the British stationed upon Staten Island as there was so little space between the shores.

Since the war had begun, we women folk were careful to stay indoors or even repair to the spring house or the cellar, or the nearby woods, when the British were about. A particularly odious British officer named Rawdon bragged of the number of Patriot maidens he and his troops had ravished upon Staten Island. He considered it a sport to despoil a maiden. We wished no such attacks in our port. And yet, The Evening Post recorded that in one raid nearby, a thirteen year old named Evelyn Stalls had been seized and dragged into a back room of her house where she was ravished. Friends, and her aunt, who came to console her, found themselves violated two days later when more raiding British privates returned to the same dwelling. We lived in shocking times amid the conflict.

New Jersey, like our neighbor Pennsylvania, had nearly a third of its population Tory, another third Patriot, and the last third sitting upon the fence waiting to see who would win this war for Independence. It was oft-times difficult to tell who was who, and spies were everywhere. With the war upon us, we youngsters sadly gave up our visits to the merchant ships and were careful to stay away from the docks.

The British very much hoped to capture General Washington. It would have completely demoralized the Continental Army, and the war would have been over for the Patriots. Four years into the war, however, the British had still neither defeated nor captured General Washington.

Loyalists to the king had left Elizabeth Town and gone to New York when New Jersey voted for Independence. Tories, as they were called, were perennially intent upon revenge for the loss of their homesteads. They were frequently on the look-out for ways to retrieve their belongings and their confiscated property. The British Army was always eager to find foodstuffs and supplies for their soldiers encamped in New York. Cattle and sheep, chickens and geese regularly disappeared. Tory militia were an especial menace, since they raided in very small groups, and lived by their own rules.

The winter 1780 left New York in British hands, and they enjoyed a pleasant stay in the large port city brimming with friendly Tories. We in New Jersey kept ourselves upon alert. Night raids had been the norm for months, but in such frigid temperatures as January of 1780 had afforded us, a raid was nearly unthinkable. No one could have imagined that the British would leave their comfortable quarters in New York to embark upon a midnight raid in such weather.

Part Two

Our thinking changed in an instant on the night of January 25, 1780. It had been snowing mightily for some days. Sentries were posted, clad as warmly as possible so as not to freeze to death whilst keeping their two-hour watch. Several Continental officers and a goodly number of Patriot militia were stationed along the shoreline or upon the important roads. Yet this surprise midnight raid upon Elizabeth Town terrified all of us.

That Tuesday, January 25, had dawned clear and exceedingly cold. We had spent a day of schooling and business, the militia keeping a watchful eye upon the main road into town from the docks. Darkness came. We had all repaired to our own houses for dinner and some hopeful rest in the extreme cold. The sentries said that they did not see any movement across the bay throughout the evening.

Just after midnight, seven or eight lead-clad boats with high sides, designed to ward off musket balls from snipers, came across the sound and through the frozen marsh reeds. British soldiers and Hessians, bundled in layers of heavy wool and fulsomely plied with extra rations of rum, came ashore. Loyalist volunteers now exiled to New York, some of them relatives of Elizabeth Town’s own citizens, acted as their as expert guides. They waded through the frozen mud, and laboriously marched through deep snow into the centre of the town.

The goal of the raid was to find our pastor, the Reverend James Caldwell and take him prisoner to New York. When Reverend Caldwell was not preaching upon the Lord’s lessons to the righteous Israelites, he was an expert at collecting supplies for the Continentals, especially the desperately needed shoes and blankets. Unfortunately, as much as the Continentals appreciated his dedicated work, the British longed to find him and see him hanged for a rebel and an abettor of treason.

Elizabeth Town had a handsome Courthouse, since it had once been the capital of our colony. There was also our respected Academy. We could not have understood that in this raid the Courthouse and the Academy were exactly the buildings the enemy was intent upon burning. This was a raid to demoralize a town replete with Patriots. The Academy housed a number of the treatises and tracts which