32. Sandy Hook Lighthouse is the oldest surviving lighthouse in continuous use in the United States. When constructed, it was 500 feet from the tip of the hook; because of tides and shifting sands, at present it is landlocked by more than a mile. “The lighthouse first cast forth its beam into the night June 11, 1764. A newspaper account of the time described the structure as being an ‘…octagonal Figure, having eight equal Sides; the Diameter at the Base 29 Feet; and at the top of the Wall, 15 Feet. The lanthorn is 7 feet high; the Circumference 33 feet. The whole Construction of the Lanthorn is Iron; the Top covered with Copper. There are 48 Oil Blazes. The Building from the surface is Nine Stories. The whole from Bottom to Top is 103 Feet.’” The attempts to douse the lantern occurred in the spring of 1776. “Sandy Hook Lighthouse,” www.njlhs.burlco.org/sandyhk.htm.
33. Chase, Papers of Washington, 207–9.
34. Letter, Lt. Loftus Cliffe, 46th Regiment, to brother Jack Cliffe, “Camp near Philadelphia 24 October 1777,” Cliffe Papers, Clements Library.
35. Cantelupe Diary, entry for July 8.
36. André, Journal, 55, 67.
37. Osborn Letters 3, 98.
38. Cantelupe Diary, entries for July 8 and July 23; “Embarkation Return of the Brigade of Foot Guards…13th July 1777,” Orders of British Troops.
39. Johann Conrad Döhla, A Hessian Diary of the American Revolution by Johann Conrad Döhla, translated by Bruce E. Burgoyne (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1990), 43–44n.
40. Ibid., 43–44.
41. Orderly Book, Captain Wilson's 49th Regiment, Washington Papers online.
42. Letter, William Dansey to his mother, “On Board the Earl of Oxford, 10 July 1777,” Dansey Papers.
43. Von Münchhausen, Diary, 20.
44. “Mr. Joseph Galloway on the American War,” Scots Magazine 41 (October 1779): 526–27.
45. Annual Register for 1777, 127.
46. Journal entry for June 19, 1777, Cresswell, Journal, 237.
47. Letter/Journal, James Parker to Charles Steuart, “New York July 16, 1777,” Parker Family Papers 1760–95 (originals in Liverpool, England), film 45, reel 2, David Library. “Te Deum” was a long, elaborate medieval Christian hymn of Thanksgiving (Te Deum laudimus, “We praise thee, O God!), traditionally sung after a military victory.
48. Encyclopaedia Britannica; or, A Dictionary of Arts and Sciences, Etc., vol. 2 (Edinburgh: A. Bell and Colin MacFarquhar, 1771), 21.
49. Huth, “Letters,” 498.
50. Grant to Harvey, July 10, Grant Papers.
51. Letter, John Adams to James Warren, “Philadelphia June [sic; July] 11, 1777,” Smith et. al., Letters of Delegates, vol. 7, 181–82. This letter is dated June 11 and is noted as a “recipient's copy.” The contents of the letter, though, reveal that it is clearly July 11, as it mentions the British evacuation of New Jersey, which occurred on June 30. Adams's letter of July 11 to Abigail contains similar wording about Howe's intentions.
52. Letter, John Adams to Abigail, “Philadelphia July 11, 1777,” Smith et. al., Letters of Delegates, vol. 7, 334.
53. Magee's Weekly Packet, Dublin, Saturday, August 9, 1777, no. 8, British Library Newspaper Archive.
54. Letter, Fitzpatrick to his brother, July 8, 1777, Fitzpatrick Letters.
55. Von Münchhausen, Diary, 21. Others had privately expressed their opinions of the British generals. Lt. Col. Allan Maclean had written in February, “General Howe is a very honest man, and I believe a very disinterested one. Brave he certainly is and would make a very good executive officer under another's command, but he is not by any means equal to a C. in C…He has, moreover, got none but very silly fellows about him—a great parcel of old women—most of them improper for the American service. I could be very ludicrous on this occasion, but it is truly too serious a matter that brave men's lives should be sacrificed to be commanded by such generals. For excepting Earl Percy, Lord Cornwallis, both Lt. Generals, and the Brigadier Generals Leslie and Sir William Erskine, the rest are useless.” Quoted in Commager and Morris, Spirit of Seventy Six, 523.
56. Letter, Frazer to his wife Polly, “Camp at the Cloves, July 18th 1777,” Frazer, Frazer Memoir, 148–49.
57. Pickering and Upham, Life of Pickering, vol. 1, 147. Versions of suppawn appeared all over rural America well into the twentieth century. “Indian pudding” in New England and grits in the South are variations. For further discussion and an illustration of how suppawn was eaten in the Hudson Valley area, see Peter G. Rose, The Sensible Cook: Dutch Foodways in the Old and New World (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1989), 31–34.
58. Letter, Frazer to his wife Polly, “July 18, 1777.”
59. Letter, Col. John H. Stone to Gov. Thos. Johnson, “Camp at Crumb Pond below Peeks Kills July 24th 1777,” William H. Browne, Archives of Maryland, vol. 16, Journal and Correspondence of the Council of Safety/State Council 1777–1778 (Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society, 1897), 319–20.
60. Letter, John Adams to Abigail, “May 22 [1777] 4 O Clock in the Morning,” Smith et. al., Letters of Delegates, vol. 7, 103.
61. Letter, Nathanael Greene to Jacob Greene, “Camp at Middlebrook, June 4, 1777,” Greene, Papers 2, 104.
62. Letter, John Adams to Nathanael Greene, “Philadelphia July 7, 1777,” Smith et. al., Letters of Delegates, vol. 7, 305–7.
63. Alfred J. Morrison, Travels in the Confederation 1783–1784, from the German of Johann David Schoepf (Philadelphia: William J. Campbell, 1911), 107. Schoepf arrived in America in June 1777 as a surgeon with the Ansbach-Brandenburg-Bayreuth reinforcements. He stayed in the army until 1783, and then went on his own tour of America and published his observations in Germany in 1788. For some letters that he wrote while in the army, see Schwalm 7, no. 2 (2002), 14–20. Schoepf spends several pages decrying the “bastard tongue” of the Pennsylvania Germans, and cites a number of examples.
64. Cresswell, Journal, 271.
65. Letter, Jedediah Huntington to Jabez Huntington, “Peeks Kill 28 July 1777,” Huntington Papers: Correspondence of the Brothers Joshua and Jedediah Huntington during the Period of the American Revolution, Collections of the Connecticut Historical Society vol. 20 (Hartford, CT: Connecticut Historial Society, 1923), 355–56.
66. Letter, John Adams to Abigail Adams, “Philadelphia Aug. 6, 1777,” Smith et. al., Letters of Delegates, vol. 7, 433.
67. Muhlenberg, Journals 3, 68.
68. Letter, John Chester to Joshua Huntington, “Wethersfield [Conn.] July 23d. A.D. 1777,” Huntington Papers, 66. Ironically, Admiral Byng was a near neighbor and close friend of Sir George Osborn's father, Sir Danvers Osborn.
69. Letter, John Adams to Abigail Adams, “Philadelphia August 19, 1777,” Smith, et. al., Letters of Delegates, vol. 7, 506.
70. Letter, John Adams to Abigail Adams, “Fryday July 18, 1777,” Smith et. al, Letters of Delegates, vol. 7, 350–51.
71. Frazer, Frazer Memoir, 148.
72. Letter, Jedediah Huntington to Jabez Huntington, “Peeks Kill 16 July 1777,” Huntington Papers, 350.
73. Letter, John Adams to Abigail, “Philadelphia August 8. 1777,” Smith et. al., Letters of Delegates, vol. 7, 439.
74. Letter, Jedediah Huntington to Andrew Huntington, “Peeks Kill 20th July 1777,” Huntington Papers, 352.
75. Ambrose Serle, The American Journal of Ambrose Serle, Secretary to Lord Howe, 1776–1778, edited by Edward H. Tatum Jr. (San Marino, CA: Huntington Library, 1940; reprint, New York: Arno Press, 1969), 239–40.
76. Letter, Forman to Congress, “Middletown, county of Monmouth, June 20 1777 [sic]” Written on the bottom of the letter is “(Copy T. M. [probably Timothy Matlack]” and “(The date I presume should have been July instead of June. T. M.).” Hazard, Pennsylvania Archives, 435–36.
77. Letter, Forman to Congress, “Shrewsbury [NJ], 23 July 1777,” Hazard, Pennsylvania Archives, 439–40.
78. Serle, Journal, 240. Sandy Hook Lighthouse is still in service after 240 years, the oldest surviving li
ghthouse in the United States.
79. Cresswell, Journal, 273.
80. Letter, Forman to Congress, July 23, 1777.
81. “Memorandum of Lt. Gilbt. Purdy for the Year 1777,” Z 20/C21/ 1975/U2, National Archives of Canada, Ottawa.
82. Parker Family Papers, film 45, reel 2.
83. Letter, Hale to his parents, “Head of Elk River, Maryland, 30th August 1777,” Hale, “Letters,” 21.
84. Letter, Instructions to Capt. John Hunn, “In Council, July 24, 1777,” Hazard, Pennsylvania Archives, 450; also see Colonial Records, Minutes, 250–51. “An order was drawn on David Rittenhouse Esq'r., in favour of Capt. Hunn, for the Sum of One Hundred Pounds, to hire expresses & Pay such Expenses as may accrue, and for which sum he is to account to the Board.” For a brief biography of Hunn, see Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 11 (1887): 218–19.
85. The Oxford English Dictionary defines cripple as “U.S. (local) A dense thicket in swampy or low-lying ground” and cites 1675 and 1705 sources, both of which relate to land in New Jersey. A spong is “a long narrow piece or strip of land,” source obscure. Both words have been used by locals (“Pineys”) in the Pine Barrens since the seventeenth century. “In the vernacular, a low, wet area where the Atlantic white cedars grow is called a cripple. If no cedars grow there, the wet area is called a spong, which is pronounced to rhyme with ‘sung.’ Some people define spongs and cripples a little differently, saying that water always flows in a cripple but there is water in a spong only after a rain. Others say that any lowland area where high-bush blueberries grow is a spong.” John McPhee, The Pine Barrens (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1981), 54–55.
86. Journal of Thomas Hopkins, manager of the Friendship Salt Works at Egg Harbor, August 11 and August 24, 1780, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, quoted in Arthur D. Pierce, Smugglers’ Woods, (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1960), 240, 242.
87. Vickers Journal, quoted in ibid., 6.
88. Letter, Fithian to Rev. Enoch Green, quoted in ibid., 159.
89. Letter, Hunn to Wharton, “Cape May, July 30th, Eleven o'clock,” Hazard, Pennsylvania Archives, 467.
90. Benjamin West, The New-England Almanack, or Lady's and Gentleman's Diary for the Year of Our Lord Christ 1777 (Providence, RI: Printed and sold by John Carter), 8.
91. Montrésor, Montrésor Journals, 429–30. The land at N 39.48 is Island Beach, just over two miles above Barnegat Light and thirty-six miles north of Great Egg Harbor, which is at 39.18. Montrésor stated that the latitude at noon was N 39.48, and that later that afternoon they spotted Great Egg Harbor. The notations are remarkably good, given the ever-improving charts of the period, the distance and visibility, as well as the size and constant movement of the fleet at the mercy of the wind and tides.
92. Metchie J. E. Budka, Under Their Vine and Fig Tree: Travels through America in 1797–1799, 1805, with Some Further Account of Life in New Jersey by Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz (Elizabeth, NJ: Grassmann Publishing Co., 1965), 219–22. Niemcewicz was a companion of Tadeuz Kosciusko on his visit to America in the late 1790s. In June 1799, Niemcewicz visited Peck's Beach as part of a nature expedition and left a detailed description. At that time, there was one house on the island, occupied by a “poor family.” His description is memorable, especially of the “million mosquitoes,” of which he said, “They are at once uninvited physicians and musicians, passing through fire and smoke with their lancets and clarinets.” The nearby salt marshes also breed greenheads [Tabanus nigrovittatus], voracious flies whose painful bites draw blood. Peck's Beach is the site of Ocean City, New Jersey.
93. Letter, Hunn to Wharton, “Cape May, July 26, 1777”; Letter, Stillwell to Wharton, “Cape May, July 26th, 1777”; “An Account of the Arms, &c. taken from the Enemy on Fryday July 25, 1777,” Hazard, Pennsylvania Archives, 453–54. The purpose of the expedition is not given, but most likely it was to secure fresh beef. Yo ho ho!
94. Note, Dr. John McGinnis to Colonel Bradford, “Little Egg Harbor Saturday July 26th 1777,” Washington Papers online, ser. 4, General Correspondence, images 157–58.
95. Letter, Thomas Mifflin to Washington, “Philadelphia Sunday Morning [July 27th] 9 oClock,” Washington Papers online, ser. 4, General Correspondence, image 180.
96. Hiltzheimer Diary for 1777. Hiltzheimer was a well-known horse merchant, who handled procurement of horses for the army and militia. In the 1790s he sold horses to President Washington, who was one of the best horsemen and most astute horse dealers in the country. As a note of historical interest, Hiltzheimer wrote in his diary the next day, “this afternoon paid Jacob Graff, Junr. for the House & Lott at the corner of Seventh & High [Market] Streets & Recd. the Deed for the same, the sum pd. him is £1775.” This was the boardinghouse where Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence.
97. Muhlenberg, Journals 3, 62–63.
98. Drinker, Diary, 226.
99. Letter, Washington to Thomas Mifflin, “Flemington [NJ] July 28th 1777,” Washington Papers online, ser. 4, General Correspondence, image 200–201.
100. Montrésor, Montrésor Journals, 430.
101. Cantelupe Diary, entry for July 28.
102. Letter, Hunn to Wharton, “Cape May, July 29th 1777,” Hazard, Pennsylvania Archives, 462–63.
103. Letter, John Adams to Abigail Adams, “Philadelphia July 30, 1777,” Smith et. al., Letters of Delegates, vol. 7, 395.
104. Letter, Hunn to Wharton, “Cape May, July 30th, Eleven o'clock,” Hazard, Pennsylvania Archives, 467. On Friday, August 1, the Supreme Executive Council ordered David Rittenhouse to draw an order “in favor of Abraham Bennett, for the Sum of Seven Pounds ten Shillings, for riding express from Cape May to this City, on public business.” Colonial Records, Minutes, 257.
105. Letter, Hunn to Wharton, “Cape May, July 30, 1777, 5 P.M.,” Hazard, Pennsylvania Archives, 468.
106. Cantelupe Diary, entry for July 30.
107. Montrésor, Montrésor Journals, 430–31. The remark about the “Pennsylvania shore” is not entirely erroneous. The state of Delaware was originally part of Pennsylvania, granted to William Penn by King James II as coastline for Pennsylvania, and was referred to in the eighteenth century as “the Three Lower Counties” or “the Three Delaware Counties.”
108. The Cape Henlopen lighthouse stood until 1926, when it collapsed into the sea after 160 years of service. Its site was chosen by Henry Fisher, the river pilot. Originally it was said to have been a quarter mile from the water, but the shifting sands of the cape finally brought the house down. When it fell, it was the second-oldest lighthouse in the country. Numerous fireplaces in the Lewes area are said to be built from its stones. See Hazel D. Brittingham, “The Fall of the Cape Henlopen Lighthouse,” in The Delaware Estuary: Rediscovering a Forgotten Resource, edited by Tracey Bryant and Jonathan R. Pennock (Newark, DE: University of Delaware Sea Grant College Program, 1988), 40–41. This work is a fascinating study of the history and ecological development of the Delaware River and Bay.
109. Letter, Hall to Rodney, “* O'Clock A. M. Lewestown, August 2nd, 1777,” Delaware Archives, Revolutionary War, vol. 3 (Wilmington, DE: Charles Story Co., 1919), 1380.
110. Letter, Henry Fisher to State Navy Board, “Wednesday Morning, 10 o'clock, July ye 30th, 1777,” Hazard, Pennsylvania Archives, 465.
111. Letter, Colonel Richardson to Continental Board of War, “Sussex County [Del.] 9th August 1777,” Caesar Rodney, Letters to and from Caesar Rodney 1756–1784, edited by George Herbert Ryden (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1933), 211n.
112. Letter, Rodney to Hancock, “Dover July 30th 1777—5 Oclock,” ibid., 201–2.
113. Letter, Hancock to Washington, “Philada. July 31t. 1777. 5 O'Clock A. M.,” ibid., n. 1.
114. Fisher to State Navy Board, July 30, 1777; Hancock to Washington, “Philada. July 31t. 1777. 5 O'Clock A.M,” n. 1. There is a discrepancy between the two versions of the letter from Rodney, which suggests that at least two l
etters were sent to make sure that one got through. In the Pennsylvania Archives 1 printed source, the notation at the bottom is written, “Fifteen minutes before six o'clock, and forwarded at 6 o'clock,” and endorsed by General Mifflin. Although this letter is endorsed as being received at 5:45 and forwarded at 6, it is clear from Rodney's letter to Hancock that this same news arrived in Dover at 5 P.M. on July 30, and Sarah Logan Fisher's account that the alarm guns fired at 6 A.M. on the thiry-first suggest that Mifflin received it at 6 A.M. on the thiry-first, not 6 P.M. on the thirtieth as it might appear at first glance.
115. Chase, Papers of Washington 10, 466–68.
116. Fisher, 439.
117. Muhlenberg, Journals 3, 63.
118. Resolution of Congress, July 31, 1777, Hazard, Pennsylvania Archives, 469–70.
119. Supreme Executive Council to Congress, 31st July 1777, Hazard, Pennsylvania Archives, 471–72.
120. “July 31: Thursday Clear. at 10 oClock at Night His Excelly. Genl. Washington came to Town with abut 200 Light horse.” Hiltzheimer diary. A letter from Washington to Greene dated August 1, 1777, is headed “City Tavern Philadelpha.,” Washington Papers online, ser. 4, General Correspondence, image 292.
121. Letter, Percy to Polly Frazer, “Camp near Howells Ferry July 29th 1777,” Frazer, Frazer Memoir, 151. Coryell's Ferry is now Lambertville, New Jersey, and New Hope, Pennsylvania.
122. Denys Hay, “The Denouement of General Howe's Campaign of 1777,” English Historical Review, vol. 74 (1964): 503. Hamond's papers are in the University of Virginia Library and contain his unpublished autobiography, which provides the only eyewitness account of the meeting on the Eagle. At the time and for many years afterward, Hamond was blamed for persuading the Howes to sail to the Chesapeake, thus prolonging the campaign by nearly a month. By using his autobiography and other primary documents, the author bears out the fact that Howe's decision was confirmed by Hamond's information, not made by it.
123. Ibid., 504–5.
124. Serle, Journal, 241.
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