Daniel Van Mater and Monmouth Refugees in New York

As discussed in a prior article, hundreds of Monmouth County Loyalists went behind British lines in the first months of 1777. For most of these “refugees,” life in British-held New York was difficult. Most Monmouth Countians were farmers and landowners—few had the opportunity to remain so in New York. New York was an overcrowded garrison city with continuous shortages of housing, food, and wood. Loyalist men could enlist as soldiers, but most Loyalists of means did not wish to “lower themselves” to a rank & file soldier. There were limited economic opportunities beyond that for men; women and children had even fewer opportunities.

The Loyalists who chose to serve in the New Jersey Volunteers are documented in other articles. This article provides a case study of one Loyalist—Daniel Van Mater—who sought a civilian life in New York. He is the best documented Monmouth County Loyalist among those who did not seek military service.

Daniel Van Mater as an Active Loyalist

Daniel Van Mater was a prosperous farmer before the war. He owned 530 acres of non-contiguous farmland in Freehold and Middletown townships. Van Mater’s wealth was considerable—it included seven slaves and 53 head of livestock. While the majority of the Dutch-descended families of Monmouth County favored independence, Daniel Van Mater strongly opposed it. He went behind British lines shortly after the Declaration of Independence, living with relatives in New York. At least one of his brothers, Chrineyonce Van Mater, became a notorious Loyalist (he helped capture leading Whigs, Richard Stockton and John Covenhoven).

Daniel Van Mater returned to Monmouth County on December 17, 1776, and helped raise wagons and corn for the British Army during the Loyalist insurrection. He also led a party that captured a militia officer, Tunis Vanderveer. Another Loyalist, Richard Lawrence, would testify about Van Mater:

In December 1776, Mr. Van Mater was active in rendering every assistance to the troops and disarming and taking the rebels prisoner; that he, with some others, took on Tunis Vanderveer, a rebel militia Captain, prisoner, and some privates, and took them to this deponent.

When the insurrection collapsed, Chrineyonce Van Mater escaped but another brother, John Van Mater “was taken by the Continental Army and sent to Maryland, 250 miles from his house, where he was confined in close gaol for six months.” Daniel returned to New York.

Daniel Van Mater in New York

Back in New York in early 1777, Daniel Van Mater visited and assisted some of the Monmouth militiamen who were captured at the Battle of Navesink. On February 20, he wrote David Forman of “being on Long Island with my relations, hearing of our Monmouth men being taken prisoner, went to New York to see them, petitioned for sundry of them to leave their imprisonment.”

Van Mater claimed to have negotiated parole for two of the prisoners and wrote “I hope to get more released.” For this service, Van Mater made a request of Forman:

I beg the favor of you to admit me to come home to my young family & pray you would consider my age, as I was out from home before you came in our Country to give me your protection - if I had known you had command I should have come home as soon as I could have obtained leave and submitted to your direction.

Van Mater acknowledged participating in the Loyalist insurrection and seeking the return of his imprisoned brother, but concluded:

I am a friend to my country, I humbly beg your benevolence and clemency & further pray that you will not suffer my property destroyed but protect it; please ask Mr. [John] Covenhoven and [Richard] Stockton of my conduct & friendship when confined, I have acted from no principle other than to get my brother out of confinement; times are so very precarious. We may slide into errors undesigned and know not how to steer clear of blame.

If Forman responded, his letter has not survived. Van Mater stayed in New York.

Daniel Van Mater Captured and Impoverished

Daniel Van Mater attempted to return home in December 1778. But he was intercepted by a Continental patrol which did not accept his British-issued passport and brought him to Elizabethtown. General William Maxwell wrote George Washington about Van Mater, and the larger British practice of issuing passports to Loyalists:

I ordered this Vanmater back immediately and His Lordship [Lord Stirling, William Alexander of the Continental Army] had ordered the others home before, but the inclosed [sic] shows that they had been appointed to come here long before His Lordship knew anything of the Matter & I have good reason to think that they are collecting their friends from different parts and providing passes for them on their arrival here, and refusing all others.

In February, Van Mater, back in New York, wrote a memorial (petition) to Henry Clinton, commander-in-chief of British forces in America, on behalf of an unnamed group of Monmouth Loyalists:

Since the commencement of the troubles, they have been uniform friends of the Government, on the 18th of December 1776, took their protection under the [Loyalist] Government of New Jersey, have since been obliged to quit their homes and property for services rendered to the Government, have since lived within British lines at a very great expense, without any assistance from the Government.

The Loyalists requested "rations to be drawn for ourselves and one servant each” from the British commissary. It is unknown if Clinton responded.

Daniel Van Mater petitioned for relief again on September 1, 1782. He discussed his loss of wealth and need to find employment as a streetsweeper and housekeeper for a British officer:

Your memorialist has left a very considerable estate, both real and personal, and undertaken the principles of Loyalty to his sovereign, came in a very precipitate manner, with very little cash or property, has long since been constantly borrowing upon his credit, which was naturally his own, has met with a great deal of sickness to himself and family, and which has been very expensive to him... In order to get bread, did hire a horse in Brooklyn, in order to follow some public employment for which said employment gives £150 per annum and ever has kept a card house with a broom and also keeps house for the wife of an officer.

Van Mater ended the memorial with a plea for help: “Your Memorialist prays your Excellency will be pleased to take favorable notice of his humble state and grant payment for the guard room and upper room, as he is unable to pay the rent for the whole of these rooms."

Van Mater again petitioned for relief after the war as part of the Loyalist compensation process that was set up by the British government. In his application, he discussed:

He has been entirely excluded from all the benefits of his property, and experienced considerable embarrassments while at New York, having beside himself four children to maintain - nevertheless, he has never yet enjoyed any allowance whatsoever, only about nine months rations when he first came to New York.

The Similar Fate of Dr. James Boggs

Van Mater was not the only well-to-do Loyalist to suffer economic ruin during the war. Dr. James Boggs of Shrewsbury, for example, also petitioned for relief after the war. “By the unfortunate issuance of the American war, your memorialist has lost all. That he has a wife and a very large family of children to provide for - that is reduced to great distress.” He stated in a second appeal for relief:

He resided in Shrewsbury, in New Jersey and says that he uniformly supported British Gov't. He ever opposed the choosing of Committees, and say he never took an oath or carried arms with the Americans. A number of Loyalists were taken up in Shrewsbury in 1776. The dread of being taken made him fly to Sandy Hook, where he got aboard the Fly, sloop of war. He has continued under the protection of the British troops ever since. He acted as a mate in the Gen. Hospital at New York from July 1777, until Sept. 1783, when he was appointed by Sir Guy Carleton Asst. Surgeon on staff. His pay in both situations has been 7s, 6d per diem [a fraction of his prior income].

His wife, Mary, like other wives of Loyalists, attempted weather the war as a neutral at the family home on Rumson Neck, but in April 1782 she petitioned Governor William Livingston for permission to join her husband in New York, writing: “I have no means of support but what I can derive from my husband, have been plundered and distressed by the Continental galleys, and had so little returned that, but for the assistance of my friends, we must have suffered this winter past." The request was presumably granted as the Boggs estate was confiscated and sold in 1783.

Both Van Mater and Boggs had their estates confiscated.

Loyalist Women also Suffer in New York

While the difficulties experienced by formerly comfortable men like Daniel Van Mater and James Boggs were real, the difficulties experienced by poorer Loyalists, and Loyalist women in particular, were generally greater. This was known by British leaders who were continually petitioned by Loyalist women for poor relief when their husbands were captured or dead. The author’s research documents twenty Loyalist women from Monmouth County emigrating to New York during the war—with complete documentation, the number certainly would be higher.

Catherine Reading’s 1781 memorial provides an example of Loyalist women suffering in New York. She wrote of living "genteelly" in Monmouth County with her husband and five children before the war. But she needed to flee to New York because she could not support her family without her husband (who was in New York). Now in New York, she petitioned for rations because her husband had lost his sloop and with it, the ability to support the family. She wrote that her “children are sick and she has no means of support.” She also noted that she has previously been allowed to draw rations but now "must show cause why she could not subsist without them."

General James Pattison perceived New Jersey women coming to New York as a nuisance. He wrote in August 1779: “I am really at a loss to say with regard to the Legions of women from the Jersies -- by your description of them, in no other light than as a swarm of locusts who will devour the fair crop of Long Island." Six months later, Pattison banned Loyalist women from entering New York on the pretense that some were spies. He gave the order: “You will not allow any women whatever to cross from the Jersey shore." Meanwhile, Colonel Roger Morris, charged with provisioning Loyalists in need of poor relief in New York, found that 153 as men, 208 women, and 406 children were deserving of relief in December 1779. It is impossible to know how many of these Loyalists were from Monmouth County.

Caption: British commander-in-chief, Henry Clinton, had to contend with thousands of Loyalist refugees in New York. Supporting these refugees strained British resources through the war.

Related Historic Site: The Old Stone House (Brooklyn)

Sources: Peter W. Coldham, comp., American Loyalist Claims (Washington, D.C.: National Genealogical Society, 1980), p 504. Gregory Palmer, Biographical Sketches of Loyalists of the American Revolution (Westport, Conn. and London, 1984) p 888; Daniel Van Mater, Rutgers University, Special Collections, Loyalist Compensation Applications, Coll. D96, PRO AO 13/112, reel 11; Daniel Van Mater to David Forman, Rutgers University Library Special Collections, Neilson Family Papers; John Fell's Journal, Brooklyn Historical Society, coll. 1974.225; Daniel Van Mater and James Boggs, United Empire Loyalists, Loyal Directory: http://www.uelac.org/Loyalist-Info; William Maxwell to George Washington, The Papers of George Washington, Revolutionary War Series, vol. 18, 1 November 1778 – 14 January 1779, ed. Edward G. Lengel. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2008, pp. 426–427; Daniel Van Mater, Memorial, David Library of the American Revolution, Great Britain Public Records Office, British Headquarters Papers, #1769; Daniel Van Mater’s Memorial, David Library of the American Revolution, Great Britain Public Records Office, British Headquarters Papers, #5518; Memorial of James Boggs, Great Britain, Public Record Office, Audit Office, Class 13, Volume 17, folio 99; Loyalist Compensation Application of James Boggs, Rutgers University, Special Collections, Loyalist Compensation Applications, Coll. D96, PRO AO 13/112, reel 10; Letter of Mary Boggs, Mary Benjamin, "American Revolution ALS,"  The Collector, vol. 69, July - Aug., 1956, p 74; Memorial of Catherine Reading, BF Stevens, Report on American Manuscripts in the Royal Institution of Great Britain (London: Mackie & Co, 1906) v2, p117; James Pattison, "Official Letters of Major General James Pattison: Collections of the New-York Historical Society for the Year 1875, (New York: The New York Historical Society, 1876.)  pp. 237, 367; Roger Morris, "Return of Refugees Receiving Provisions,” Return of Refugees, Online Institute for Loyalist Studies, www.royalprovincial.com: University of Michigan, Clements Library, Henry Clinton Papers, vol. 86, item 20.