Loyalist Refugees Go Into British Lines

As discussed in prior articles, Monmouth County Loyalists began going over to the British within days of the British invasion fleet and army arriving at Sandy Hook. More Loyalists joined them through the summer and these men became the nucleus of the New Jersey Volunteers. But another and larger wave of Monmouth County Loyalists went behind British lines after the defeat of the three Loyalist insurrections (in Upper Freehold, Freehold-Middletown, and Shrewsbury) and the toppling of the Loyalist militia at Freehold in early 1777.

The leading Loyalist refugees were often from the most prominent pre-war families, such as Elisha Lawrence of Upper Freehold, Daniel Van Mater of Freehold (the subject of another article) and George Taylor of Middletown. But most Loyalists came from yeoman families and families of modest means.

There is no source that tracked and compiled all of the Loyalists who became “refugees” behind British lines. The best surviving source may be the muster rolls of the New Jersey Volunteers, a large number of which still exist. From these rolls, it is clear the largest body Loyalists joined the British cause between December 1776 and April 1777. The table below compiles the dates of officer enlistment in the New Jersey Volunteers between September 1776 and September 1777. Officer commissions were typically tied to recruiting success, so it is safe to assume that the officer totals roughly correlate with rank & file recruitment. The enlistment figures below do not include the first cohort of Monmouth County Loyalists who joined the Volunteers in July 1776:

• 1 officer enlistment in September 1776

• 1 officer enlistment in October 1776

• 7 officer enlistments in November 1776

• 24 officer enlistments in December 1776

• 10 officer enlistments in January 1777

• 11 officer enlistments in February 1777

• 4 officer enlistments in March 1777

• 9 officer enlistments in April 1777

• 0 officer enlistments in May 1777

• 1 officer enlistment in June 1777

• 0 officer enlistments July-September 1777

Below are a handful of examples of Loyalists who joined (or sought to join) the British cause between December 1776 and May 1777. Their experiences ranged from men who joined the New Jersey Volunteers, to becoming London traders and Loyalist partisans to those who attempted to join the British but failed to do so. Many more examples could have been included in this article.

Examples of Loyalist Refugees

According to a Loyalist compensation claim submitted after the war, James Stillwell of Middletown “took refuge with the British Army on their coming in December 1776." Stillwell “did join the British troops and continued with them until some time in the year 1779, when he did settle on Staten Island, leaving a wife and four children [on the family’s 300-acre farm]." Stillwell was one of many Loyalist men who separated from his family. This was because of the difficulties associated with moving a family behind British lines and hopes of holding onto estates by keeping kin on the family farm. The fate of Loyalist families on confiscated estates is the subject of another article.

Brothers Wiliam Stevenson and Shore Stevenson provide examples of yeomen who became Loyalist refugees. They lived together, with their families, on a 400-acre Middletown farm before the war. At the height of the Loyalist insurrection, on December 23, 1776, Wiliam joined the New Jersey Volunteers as a Lieutenant and served into 1781. He died in New York in 1782.

William’s brother, Shore Stevenson, was arrested by David Forman’s men in late November, 1776, but he escaped. He was active in the Freehold-Middletown insurrection and participated in Thomas Kearney’s Loyalist association. Shore Stevenson was a London Trader and Loyalist partisan throughout the war. He was captured while London trading in 1781 and indicted for burglary in the Monmouth County courts in 1782.

Richard Reading also participated in the Freehold-Loyalist insurrection. He drifted back and forth between American and British lines, ran afoul of New Jersey authorities, and was jailed in Morristown. He and his family were banished to Hunterdon County in September 1779, but fled to Staten Island instead. In June 1780, Reading captained a small Loyalist privateer, Revenge, but was captured and set ashore at Egg Harbor. He made it back to Staten Island, but was killed during a Continental raid in 1781. (See appendix for a detailed retelling of Reading’s sad story.)

Michael Price was a Shrewsbury Loyalist who joined the British when the Loyalist insurrection in Shrewsbury was toppled by Francis Gurney’s Pennsylvania troops. Price owned a three-acre lot at Red Bank and a 49-acre farm. He frequently carried goods from Shrewsbury’s farm to market in New York. He captained the trading vessel, Peggy, during the war. After the war, Price described that he “joined the British Army in 1776 upon their taking possession of New Jersey, and he was obliged to fly the country upon their abandoning it [in January 1777].”

The 1782 memorial of John Williams discusses another route to active Loyalist, one that included several months in prison before joining the British in the middle of 1777:

Whereas your humble petitioner has always, from the first of these times, been a uniform friend to Government, was five years past, taken up with thirty-five others and marched to Fredericktown in Maryland, and there continued for six months, for his Loyalty to his sovereign, then tried for his life and required, but still refused, to take up arms against his Majesty. Finding he could not live there, he came within British lines for protection, then the rebels seized all his property, lands and stock, stripped his farms, and turned them out of doors, his family thought proper to come into British lines, has a wife and three small children and an old mother to support, and finding their needs more than he is able to do."

Another Loyalist insurrectionary, Thomas Fowler of Upper Freehold, described living in a cave for a month after the collapse of the Loyalist regime. He was captured and failed to join the British:

He (Fowler) and Walter Milton Thorn & Samuel Woodward pushed off to Shrewsbury, but the boats were destroyed and they could not get off. and they set off and came home, staid about 30 days & then went to live in a cave. and so did Nicholas Williams & Samuel Woodward, after which Walter Milton Thorn made his escape. Nicholas Williams & Samuel Woodward went to live in a poplar swamp, near John Stewart's, and Nick came to Fowler and told him that Bestedo [Lewis Bestedo] would be going to Bordentown, and persuaded him (Fowler) to go with him & they would go and take him and carry him to Shrewsbury, and they would take him [Bestedo] to the Hook, and he thought he would get Jesse Woodward to go & pilot them to Shrewsbury."

As discussed in another article, Fowler and others were captured by Bestedo and jailed in far-off Sussex County. In July, they petitioned Governor William Livingston for relief:

Your Petitioners, being confined as enemies of the American cause for some time past, and deluded by false information, petition for leniency… may it therefore please your honor to consider your petitioner's unhappy situation, and as they are very distant from their families, who suffer hard thro' inadvertently, as your petitioners are will convinced of their error, are willing to comply with the law provided for such unhappy men, to return to their duty; [pray] release of your petitioners from this deplorable place on some mode which your honor may think best.

Fowler and his colleagues were not released but were transferred to the Burlington County jail in order to be closer to their families.

Early 1777 was a terrible time for Monmouth County Loyalists—their insurrections were crushed and Washington’s victories at Trenton and Princeton ended hopes of a rapid British victory. But it was also the highwater mark for the New Jersey Volunteers (which swelled to become the largest Loyalist corps of the British Army). Of course, not all Loyalists went into the British Army. Loyalist emigration in 1777 also created the first cohorts of embittered Loyalist partisans who would lead raids back into Monmouth County and change the character of the local war.

Related Historic Site: Conference House (Staten Island, NY)

Appendix: The Sad Case of Richard Reading

Richard Reading joined the British during the Loyalist insurrections of December 1776, though much of his extended family stayed home in Middletown. He was arrested on a trip home in late 1777 but apparently was not detained for very long. He likely signed a loyalty oath as was permitted to return home. Reading sailed illegally between Middletown and Staten Island (probably a number of times). Nathaniel Fitzrandolph of Middlesex County captured him near Staten Island in December 1778 and took his sloop. Reading was jailed in Morristown.  While there, the Monmouth County Court of Common Pleas imposed an exceptional order on September 2, 1779:

Whereas six respected and well-affected [inhabitants] from the neighborhood in which you reside have made oaths before us, John Anderson and John Lawrence, two of the Judges of the Court of Common Pleas.... That they believe you, the said Richard Reading, Catherine Reading and Ferdinand Reading, to be inimical to the present Government, and that your continuance near the lines is dangerous to the liberties of the State & safety of the well-affected inhabitants - Therefore, you are hereby commanded [to] within ten days, to repair to the County of Hunterdon & to remain in said County until you are lawfully discharged.

Instead, the Readings fled to New York. A month after being banished, Richard Reading petitioned the British for relief:

Richard Reading of Middletown, New Jersey had been forced to flee his home in 1776 and had the misfortune to be taken prisoner twice afterwards, spending fifteen months in jail. Upon his release in the Fall of 1779 he found to his dismay his wife and five children sent into the lines by the Rebel authorities in Monmouth County. His finances in ruins, his property confiscated and without employment, he was forced to do what would become common for hundreds of Loyalist families: grudgingly request provisions from the British. A tough circumstance indeed for a people used to self-sufficiency and personal responsibility.

Reading was given a pension by the British, proof that he performed a tangible service for them. He bought a small farm on Staten Island and was joined by his wife, Catherine. But Reading returned to the sea as the captain of a small Loyalist privateer aptly named Revenge. He was again captured by a rebel privateer. He was brought to Egg Harbor, where he signed the parole notice below:

I, Richard Reading, late Captain of the Armed Sloop Revenge was captured and brought into this place by Captain Rufus Gardner lately from New York do acknowledge myself Prisoner to the United States of America and pledge my Faith and Sacred honour that I will not say, do, or cause to be said, or done, anything that may inquire the Welfare of the said states by holding any Correspondence with the enemies thereof or those in any way opposing the measures enforced into by them with defence of their Liberty or that they may in any shape be Constructed so to be that I will go to Philadelphia and there deliver myself to Thom Bradford Com. Of Pris. Within three days from this date in testimony with where I have been held.

Reading likely did not go to Philadelphia. He somehow made it back to Staten Island. In 1781, he was killed on his farm during a Continental raid.

Sources: Compiled Muster Rolls of the New Jersey Volunteers, Library of Congress, MMC, Courtland Skinner, box 1; William S. Stryker, The New Jersey Volunteers in the Revolutionary War (Trenton: Naar, Day and Naar, 1887) p. 59. Gregory Palmer, Biographical Sketches of Loyalists of the American Revolution (Westport, Conn.: Meckler Publishing, 1984), pp. 825-6; Peter W. Coldham, comp., American Loyalist Claims (Washington, D.C.: National Genealogical Society, 1980), p 387, 398. Gregory Palmer, Biographical Sketches of Loyalists of the American Revolution (Westport, Conn. and London, 1984) p 703.  Rutgers University Library Special Collections, Great Britain Public Record Office, Loyalist Application Claims, D96, AO 13/19, reel 6 amd AO 13/110, reel 10; John Stillwell, Historical and Genealogical Miscellany (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1970) v1, p 306-14; Deposition of Thomas Fowler, New Jersey State Archives, Bureau of Archives and History, Manuscript Collection, box 38, #36-37; Petition of Thomas Fowler, Jesse Woodward and Richard Robins, New Jersey State Archives, Collective Series, Revolutionary War Documents, #44; Peter W. Coldham, comp., American Loyalist Claims (Washington, D.C.: National Genealogical Society, 1980), p 408.  Gregory Palmer, Biographical Sketches of Loyalists of the American Revolution (Westport, Conn. and London, 1984) p 719; David Library of the American Revolution, Great Britain Public Records Office, British Headquarters Papers, #2246; Memorial of Richard Reading, 10/6/79: -- Memorial of Richard Reading, October 6, 1779, Great Britain, PRO 30/55/2358; Parole affidavit of Richard Reading, taken at "Forks of Egg Harbor" 6/13/80, Witness Liba Wescott -- David Library of the American Revolution, Prisoners of War, #264, Parole letter of Richard Reading.