Richard Lippincott as an Active Loyalist Partisan

As noted in prior articles, the Associated Loyalists were a paramilitary group of Loyalist refugees who sought to punish Whigs (supporters of the Revolution) for real and perceived abuses against Loyalists. Their Board of Directors designated three Monmouth Countians—Thomas Crowell, Clayton Tilton and Richard Lippincott—as “captains.” Over time, however, Lippincott emerged as the most active and menacing Associated Loyalist to Monmouth County Whigs. In March 1781, he led an attack on the Monmouth shoreline, and his partisan activities continued afterward.

Just two weeks after bringing the ship, Hannah, back from Little Egg Harbor, Lippincott was back in front of the Board of Directors. On April 7, the Board’s minutes record:

Captain Lippincott informed the Board that Nathaniel Wardell, as associator of his company, was taken prisoner the 30th of March last, by a party of rebel twelve-month men [State Troops], who stripped & otherwise ill used him - he also informed that some of his people had just taken a noted rebel prisoner.

This documents that at least a few of Lippincott’s men were active in Monmouth County in early April.

On May 15, the prize money from the Hannah taken by Richard Lippincott in March was divided: 10% for the Board's charity fund, 5% for the Board, and remaining to be divided among Lippincott's men (half for officers, half for the rest). It was noted that Lippincott used some of his funds to purchase arms and supplies for his company.

Richard Lippincott Returns to Monmouth County

On May 26, the Board approved Lippincott’s next proposal. The Board’s minutes record Lippincott’s request “for the party under him to encamp at Sandy Hook." The request was considered and approved two days later:

Captain Lippincott, having received his provisions and being ready to proceed on this intended excursion, the Board gave orders to proceed immediately - They also gave him instructions... and a certificate to pass the guard ship without molestation.

Unlike Lippincott’s March trip when Lippincott left Sandy Hook and went 60 miles down the Jersey shore, it appears that Lippincott’s stayed near Sandy Hook this time. Documentation is lacking, but this deployment was difficult for Lippincott and it apparently only consisted of small parties raiding areas contiguous to Sandy Hook. On July 9, the Board released a prisoner errantly taken by Lippincott:

Captain Lippincott having sent here John Alward as a prisoner, and the Board being informed he is an inoffensive trader. They ordered Mr. Chaloner [keeper of the Provost Jail] to grant him a parole.

Lippincott was still at Sandy Hook in late July. His activity was apparently limited by men refusing orders. The Board recorded on July 31:

The Secretary wrote a letter to Captain Lippincott, directing him to call on all those of his company who refused to do duty, and if persisted in refusing, to recall his certificate [to be on Sandy Hook] he had given them.

The threat to recall Lippincott in disgrace from Sandy Hook, likely prompted him to attempt a more ambitious action. Lippincott apparently went to Toms River with a party too small to battle the State Troop guard there. Instead, Lippincott “man-stole” one of the village’s Whig leaders, James Randolph. Randolph was the Port Marshal at Toms River and the Dover Township Coroner, but these were civil positions. He was a non-combatant whose primary offense, it appears, was having kin who were officers in the militia and Continental Army.

On August 15, Thomas McKean of the Continental Congress wrote to Thomas Bradford, the Continental government’s Commissary of Prisoners, about the capture of Randolph:

Colo. Randolph informs me that a party of the enemy, or rather Tories employed by the Board of Directors [Associated Loyalists], as they are called, have on Friday last, taken his brother, James Randolph, an inhabitant of Monmouth County not in arms, as a prisoner; and from their threats has reason to apprehend the most cruel treatment of him; if they do not murder him, on account of his avowed & decided conduct in support of the liberties and independence of his country.

McKean asked Bradford to “remonstrate in the warmest manner against this conduct” and threaten “immediate retaliation” for the taking of non-combatants:

If such measures are pursued by our inveterate enemies, they will before God and man be solely responsible for the consequences. Our vengeance has been slow, but it may nevertheless be sure.

The controversy surrounding Randolph’s capture may have led Lippincott to lay low for the next few months.

Richard Lippincott Seeks Prisoner Exchange

However, in November 1781, Lippincott sought to negotiate a prisoner exchange. The Board’s minutes record on November 7:

Mr. Hendrick Smock to Captain Lippincott, that he might find him out of parole for twenty days to effect the exchange of seven Associated Loyalists now confined in irons in Burlington gaol, and to inform him that five prisoners taken by Capt. Tilton [Clayton Tilton] in New Jersey & now in the Provost [Jail], will also be ironed until the active Loyalists are treated as prisoners of war.

Lippincott did not take Smock. Instead, on December 26, Lippincott appeared before the Board to request a Flag "to transport Hendrick Vanderveer, Elisha Shepard, Jacob Shepherd, Joseph Maxson, Jacob Compton and Britton Mount, prisoners of the aforesaid Associated Loyalists, to New Jersey for the purpose of an exchange.” But Lippincott never left New York with the prisoners. On December 27, he informed the Board “that Associated Loyalist prisoners in New Jersey, whom he meant to have exchanged, have been sent to Burlington jail and there confined in irons." It was common practice to move dangerous prisoners from the Monmouth County jail in Freehold jails in safer locations. As a result, the potential exchange was called off.

It is probable that Lippincott’s attempts to craft an exchange fell on deaf ears. Anger at the Associated Loyalists in New Jersey was reaching a crescendo in December 1781. Just a week before Lippincott called off the exchange, the New Jersey Assembly endorsed and sent to the Continental Congress a report written by Thomas Henderson of Monmouth County. The report called the Associated Loyalists "a new fangled body of Executioners” and reversed the legislature’s prior disavowal of retaliation as a government policy. It called for eye-for-an-eye retaliation for each abuse committed by Associated Loyalists so that "the vengeance of an injured people may fall on British officers and other citizens whose credit and influence may induce the British Commander in Chief to do justice."

As for Lippincott, he apparently avoided additional partisan activity during the winter of 1781-1782 before re-emerging in April to undertake the most notorious act of the final year of the Revolutionary War. Lippincott implemented the brazen hanging of Captain Joshua Huddy in retaliation for the murder of an Associated Loyalist, Philip White, two weeks earlier.

Caption: Richard Lippincott was the most active Monmouth Countian in the Associated Loyalists. In 1781, he kidnapped a prominent non-combatant at Toms River in addition to other incursions.

Related Historic Site: United Empire Loyalists Heritage Centre

Sources: Clements Library, Proceedings of the Board of Directors of the Associated Loyalists, April 1781 p. 5; Clements Library, Proceedings of the Board of Directors of the Associated Loyalists, May 1781 p. 10, 13; Clements Library, Proceedings of the Board of Directors of the Associated Loyalists, July 1781 p. 6, 22; Information on James Randolph is compiled in Michael Adelberg’s Biographical File, unpublished, Monmouth County Historical Association; Thomas McKean to Thomas Bradford, Letters to Delegates of Congress, vol. 17, p524 (www.ammem/amlaw/lwdg.html); The Library Company, New Jersey Votes of the Assembly, December 15, 1781, p 58; Clements Library, Proceedings of the Board of Directors of the Associated Loyalists, November 1781 p. 5; Clements Library, Proceedings of the Board of Directors of the Associated Loyalists, December 1781 p. 4-5; Princeton University Library, Microfilms Collection, #1081.133, Board of Associated Loyalists, June 6, June 24, 1782.