David Forman Seeks Passport for Mrs. Prevost

A prior article discussed the messy matter of permitting people to cross enemy lines. The process and permissible circumstances for granting passports shifted frequently during the war, but trended toward ever greater restrictions. Restrictions aside, the military frontier line between Monmouth County and British-held New York remained porous due to the long shorelines, lures of lucrative illegal trade, and family connections across enemy lines. Yet, despite the difficulties of crossing legally and relative ease of crossing illegally, local leaders in Monmouth sought passports from time to time. The case of Mrs. Prevost is a good case study because it is particularly well documented.

Before the war, John Prevost was a merchant at Middletown Point (present day Matawan). Based on the testimony of an informer, William Sands, John Prevost was in the Loyalist association led by the wealthy and openly disaffected Kearney family. John Prevost went behind British lines some time in 1777 but, as with many Loyalist families, John’s wife stayed home—likely an attempt to maintain the family estate. The wife was either Mary Prevost or Ana Prevost, both of whom appear in the Middletown tax rolls (showing that they did, in fact, keep at least some of the family estate).

Advocacy to Send Mrs. Prevost to New York

Colonel David Forman of Manalapan was George Washington’s best source of intelligence on British naval movements at Sandy Hook. His reports during the Yorktown Campaign in fall 1781 were circulated among civil and military leaders in the Continental government. This likely raised Forman’s stature with national leaders, despite his leadership of an extra-legal vigilante society and past disputes with New Jersey leaders.

With his value demonstrated, Forman proposed a scheme to give a passport to Mrs. Prevost to visit her Loyalist husband in New York. Passes were previously granted to allow the families of captured soldiers to visit their kin and exile Loyalist women to New York. But allowing a woman to visit her Loyalist husband in New York and return was highly unusual and fraught with risks. The woman might carry valuables to New York and might provide intelligence on local defenses to an vengeful enemy still launching raids into Monmouth County.

For Forman, sending Prevost was not an act of mercy. He would require Prevost to make contact with one of Forman's informants in New York and pay the informant for past and pending services. It would also be an opportunity for Prevost to settle an old debt and bring valuable British currency out of New York into New Jersey. In one of his intelligence reports to George Washington, on February 23, 1782, Forman made his pitch:

Application has been made to me for assistance in procuring a permission for a lady [Mrs. Prevost] and her friend to go into New York for the purpose of receiving a large sum of money that has lately been left to her and is in the hands of David Matthews, Mayor of New York. I objected to the Gentleman who [was] proposed to go in with her, and proposed one whose character I am well assured of, and from whose acquaintance with New York and abilities I think considerable advantages may be drawn from him when he returns.

Forman then requested the passport. The sensitivity of the request was underscored by Forman deliberately omitting the name of Prevost’s proposed travel companion:

If your Excy thinks proper to grant the permission, beg it will be for Mrs. Prevost and Mr. [---blank---] to go into New York and settle Mrs. Prevost's accts with David Matthews, Esq., and to return with such sums of money as she may receive on settlement. Your Excy will I hope excuse my leaving a blank for the gentleman's name. I will be answerable for this person and he shall in wise not operate against the interests of any of these United States. Of course, I would have them go off & return by way of Elizabethtown Point.

On February 28, Washington deflected Forman’s request to Governor William Livingston:

I have made it an invariable practice not to give permissions for any citizens to go within the Enemy's lines without liberty first obtained from the Executive of the State to which they belong. I must refer the persons mentioned in your letter to the civil authority for that purpose. Upon thus obtaining such permission, there will be no difficulty in getting passports to pass & repass our guards on the lines.

Forman promptly went to Livingston, but Livingston also turned down Forman’s request. He cited the poor track record of New Jersians previously sent to New York to recover funds. The Governor wrote:

As to Mrs. Prevost, the rule I have been obliged to prescribe to myself from experience, & which fidelity of the State I am obliged to abide by is to refuse passes to all persons who apply to go into the enemy's lines on pretense of obtaining money due to them, unless I am previously satisfied by probable evidence that they will succeed, which I believe not one in twenty ever did.

Livingston also worried that passports issued to disaffected persons frequently abetted illegal trade across enemy lines—a topic discussed at the end of this article. Despite his suspicions, Livingston left the door open to concurring with the passport if Washington supported issuing it as a military matter. So, Forman wrote Washington again on March 5. This time, Forman stressed the military intelligence value of sending Prevost:

Had I considered it a mere matter of civil resort, I should not have inserted myself so considerably in obtaining permission. Neither would I have given your Excy trouble on the occasion had I not the fullest assurance of being able to obtain a very good acct of the enemy's situation and intentions from the gentleman who shall be engaged to attend Mrs. Prevost.

Forman also explained why he was troubling Washington with the request again after being directed to Livingston: “The Governor, in his answer, says it is a matter of military resort and refers me to your Excy." Interestingly, Forman alluded to a more permissive time when he was apparently given several blank passports. He wrote that he had "formerly been granted [passports] with blanks for the names to be filled in.” Forman “had not been informed of these being disallowed at this time."

Washington remained unconvinced, writing on March 7:

Exclusive to the objection I have to the establishment of a precedent for granting passports to citizens without the interference of the authority of the State to which they belong, I think the circumstance of my deviating from a fixed rule might in the present instance be an occasion of suspicion to the enemy & frustrate the ends you have in view. I cannot therefore consider it advisable or consistent with the line of conduct I have addressed to grant the passport in question.

However, Washington did not want to disappoint Forman, on whom he relied for important intelligence. So, he made a conciliatory gesture to Forman: “I have written to Governor Livingston on the subject.” The general promised to go along with Livingston’s decision “if there are no particular reasons of policy operating against it."

A note in the published George Washington Papers suggests that Livingston approved the plan for Mrs. Prevost on March 8 and the Continental Army presumably let Prevost and her companion pass to New York. The results of Prevost’s trip to New York are unknown, as are Forman’s full motivations for advocating so diligently to send her.

The Connection between Passports and London Trading

Livingston’s concern that Prevost’s trip would contribute to illegal trade was well grounded. John Prevost was active in illegal trading between New York and Middletown Point in 1777 before he went over to New York. And, while the Governor could not have known it when he wrote Forman, John Prevost remained involved in illegal trading while in New York. In a clandestine letter between New York and Monmouth County, William Hartshorne, a disaffected Quaker, discussed Prevost to “John Steady” (likely an alias). Hartshorne wrote that a London Trader operating under the alias “Thom Druid” had brought valuables across enemy lines from "Burke, Prevost & c.” Hartshorne wrote with satisfaction that “we find it has happily got over, we congratulate you thereon."

Livingston’s concern over a passport enabling illegal trade can be seen in his handling of another Monmouth County passport request a month earlier. In January 1782, the Governor exchanged letters with Monmouth County’s three delegates to the Assembly (Thomas Henderson, John Covenhoven, and Thomas Seabrook). They wanted Livingston to grant a passport to Major John Cook of Toms River whose brother, Thomas Cook, had been held prisoner since 1777. Cook wanted to bring his brother a variety of goods lacking in New York including foodstuffs that fetched a high price from British commissaries. Livingston noted that Continental officers were granted passports for similar reasons: “Those under the direction of the Continent go often." He granted Cook a passport:

In virtue of your recommendation of him as having been of humane & beneficent to our prisoners, I have cheerfully given him a pass for his family, with all their apparel and hard money they may bring.

But he denied the request for Cook to bring provisions, "I cannot think it my duty to oblige Mr. Cook in a permission to bring over those goods.”

It must be wondered if Forman had an unstated ulterior motive for sending Prevost to New York. If Prevost returned from New York with money owed her, might Forman have stood to benefit in some way? Perhaps she owed him money that could only be paid if she recouped money from New York. In 1783, Forman proposed a scheme to extract specie from New York via illegal trade; perhaps Prevost’s trip had a similar, unstated purpose.

Related Historic Site: Fredericton Region Museum (Canada)

Sources: David Forman to George Washington, Library of Congress, George Washington Papers, Series 4, General Correspondence, February 23, 1782; George Washington to David Forman, Library of Congress, George Washington Papers, Series 4, General Correspondence, February 28, 1782; William Livingston to David Forman, New Jersey State Archives, William Livingston Papers, reel 16, February 29, 1782; David Forman to William Livingston, Carl Prince, Papers of William Livingston (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1987) vol. 4, p 384 note; David Forman to George Washington, Library of Congress, George Washington Papers, Series 4, General Correspondence, March 7, 1782; John Fitzpatrick, ed., The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1932) vol. 24, pp. 46-7 notes 63-5. Library of Congress, George Washington Papers, series 4, reel 83, February 3, 1782 and March 5, 1782; George Washington to David Forman, Library of Congress, George Washington Papers, Series 4, General Correspondence, March 7, 1782; William Hartshorne to “John Steady” (alias?), Hartshorne Family Papers, MCHA, box 2, folder 19; William Livingston to Thomas Henderson, John Covenhoven, and Thomas Seabrook, Carl Prince, Papers of William Livingston (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1987) vol. 4, pp. 367-8; Michael Adelberg, Biographical File, unpublished manuscript at the Monmouth County Historical Association.