Loyalists Raid Middletown Point and Keyport

The April 5, 1778 raid against Manasquan and the destruction of the salt works there proved that a mid-sized British military party could land on the Monmouth shore and raze a neighborhood with impunity. It was inevitable that a similar raid would soon be attempted elsewhere. A month later, the Loyalists set their sights on Middletown Point (present-day Matawan) and its leading pro-Revolution residents—John Burrowes, Sr., John Burrowes, Jr., and Samuel Forman.

Building Toward the Raid against Middletown Point

John Burrowes, Senior, chaired the Monmouth County Committee in early 1776 as the county moved toward independence and censured Loyalists. He was a prominent merchant (nicknamed the “Corn King” because of his mill and storehouses) who also supported local privateering ventures against British shipping. His son, John Burrowes, Jr., was a captain in the Continental Army and the most capable officer in Colonel David Forman’s Additional Regiment.  Their business partner and brother-in-law was Samuel Forman (not the militia Colonel of the same name). He was one of Monmouth County’s three commissioners charged with renting Loyalist estates and preparing them for confiscation. Samuel Forman was also the father of Captain Jonthan Forman of the Continental Army. All three of these men were hated by Loyalist refugees.

According to antiquarian sources, the first attempt to punish the Burrowes family was in January 1778. Thirty Loyalists landed at Keyport, where they were treated to a lavish dinner by Revaud Kearney, a squire who supported the Loyalist insurrections of December 1776. However, while Kearney was disaffected, he was not a Loyalist and did not want bloodshed in his neighborhood. During the dinner, Kearney’s slave excitedly whispered into Kearney's ear. Kearney informed the raiders that the militia was on its way and hastened their departure. A second source claims that these raiders went on Middletown Point to capture John Burrowes, Sr., but Burrowes escaped by swimming the icy Matawan Creek. These details are not found in original sources.

Two events prefaced the punishing raid that would be made against Middletown Point on May 27. First, a party of privateers in an oar-powered whaleboat, under Captain Joshua Studson of Dover Township, rowed past the British guardship at Sandy Hook and entered Raritan Bay. Here, they “boarded a British schooner, captured her, and took her into Middletown Creek.” Thomas Brown of Studson’s crew hinted that this capture might have prompted the Loyalist raid:

We were shortly afterward blockaded by British vessels, from which a force superior to ours landed, attacked us in the night, burnt our boat, burnt Captain Burrowes mills at Middletown Point, and then returned to their vessels.

Studson’s men had to walk home to Toms River—40 miles.

There was also a small raid against Middletown on May 24 that may have been a probing action to test local defenses prior to the larger raid. The New York Gazette reported:

A very small detachment of Brig. General Skinner's Corps [New Jersey Volunteers] landed at Shoal Harbour, in East Jersey, a few nights ago, and marched up to Middletown, where they had intelligence a few of the rebel light-horse had collected; when they had surrounded the houses in town, expecting to meet these youths taking their repose, they found that eight of them, who were a little detached from the houses, had taken the alarm, and made off. They collected some sheep and a few cattle, and marched down to the shore, followed by some of the militia, who kept at a distance; another party followed the first with a brass field-piece [Joshua Huddy’s Artillery Company], and kept at long shot for an hour and a half; the man of war at the Hook observing the contest, reinforced the party with four boats of marines, when they came off with their booty without loss.

The Raid of Middletown Point

With the weakness of the defenses at Middletown demonstrated, Loyalists now attacked Middletown Point. New Jersey Gazette reported on the raid that occurred on May 27:

We are informed that on Wednesday morning last, a party of about seventy of the Greens from Sandy Hook landed near Major Kearney's, headed the Mill Creek, Middletown Point, and marched to Mr. John Burrowes's, made him prisoner, burnt his mills and both his storehouses, all valuable buildings, besides a great deal of his furniture -- also took Lt. Col. John Smock, Capt. Christopher Little, Mr. Joseph Wall, Capt. Jacob Covenhoven and several other persons; killed Pearce [Jonathan Pierce] and Van Brackle [John Van Brackle], and wounded another man mortally [Leonard Hoff]. Having completed these and several other barbarities, they precipitately returned the same morning to give an account of their abominable deeds to their bloody employers. A number of these gentry, we learn, were formerly inhabitants of that neighborhood.

The Loyalist New York Gazette reported on the raid too, providing additional insights on the raiders:

On Wednesday morning, before sunrise, a party consisting of marines from his majesty's ship Amazon and General Skinner's brigade landed at Middletown Point, where they surprised Col. Smock of the rebel militia, Captain Covenhoven of the light horse and one Lieutenant, and Mr. John Burrowes, a person of influence in Monmouth County in New Jersey; they killed three privates, wounded another dangerously, and took four privates prisoner; destroyed Mr. Burrowes grist mill and storehouses, with 5 or 6 hundred barrels of flour, and on Friday all of the abovementioned persons, with other prisoners, were lodged in safe custody in this city, without any substantial loss by the Royal party.

The additional militiaman who died was Abraham Lane on June 1, presumably from a wound during the raid. A pro-Revolution lawyer-merchant from New York City, Benjamin Helme, was another raid victim. Helme hid his valuables in Burrowes’s storehouse when the British took New York. Helme’s burned possessions “consisted of household furniture, law books & several valuable papers & manuscripts" with an estimated value of £1000.

Antiquarian sources credit John Burrowes, Sr’s daughter, Margaret Forman (another source claims it was Helena Burrowes) with saving her brother by delaying the raiders at the entrance of the Burrowes house. She reportedly refused them her shawl when the Loyalists demanded it as a bandage. They exchanged harsh words and she cursed them. For this, she was hit in the face. The raiders captured John, Sr., and then fired several shots upstairs and into the attic thinking John, Jr., was hiding there. But he had already escaped by swimming the Matawan Creek in his nightshirt.

One antiquarian source numbered the raiding party at 200, but that seems too high; the militia party is listed in one antiquarian source as 60 men but that number is not confirmed in original sources. All sources report that the family’s mill and storehouses were burned. One antiquarian account notes that the Burrowes home was spared as an act of mercy to the women of the Burrowes family. Another one suggests that Burrowes’s sponsorship of local whaleboat privateers was among the reasons that the family was targeted.

Samuel Forman, Jr., a boy at the time of the raid, later recalled:

Some of the Tory invaders had been employed in the erection of the mill, and were personally well known to the citizens, and it would appear their object was, at least, the capture of Samuel Forman [Senior]. They plundered the houses of the settlement, destroying what they could not carry off, boasting that they had assisted in building the mill, and now assisted in kindling the fire to burn it down... Samuel Forman [Senior] eluded their vigilance, but lost heavily by their invasion, for he owned almost all of one side of Middletown Point, and part of both sides of Main Street. In the foray, the enemy burned down two storehouses of Mr. John H. Burrowes, robbed his house, and took him prisoner to New York. After several months, he was exchanged and returned home.

The Middletown Point raid is briefly mentioned in two postwar veteran pension applications. Joseph Walling’s widow, Margaret Walling, recalled that her husband “was in the scrimmage [skirmish] at Middletown Point when the mills were burnt - when Leonard Hoff, Jonathan Pierce and John Van Brackle were killed." Joseph Vanderveer recalled "a party of refugees and Tories and British surprised a small guard at Middletown Point & killed some, besides burning a mill & stores at which place.” His militia company arrived too late to battle the raiders.

In consequence of the raid and resulting captures, Dr. Thomas Henderson of Freehold (son-in-law of John Burrowes, Sr.) and Capt. Peter Wikoff of Manalapan led a gang of men from Freehold to Middletown where they took William Taylor (son of squire John Taylor and the leader of a Loyalist association in 1776). They jailed Taylor in the courthouse at Freehold. According to an antiquarian source, this was done "to secure the person of William Taylor, a prominent citizen who was suspected of favoring the Loyalists.”  A prisoner exchange was negotiated – William Taylor for John Burrowes, Sr. The imprisonment and exchange of Tayor for Burrowes was – it appears – an extra-legal event. Locally-negotiated prisoner exchanges would become increasingly controversial as the war continued.

Beyond Taylor’s capture, tempers ran high after the raid. Abel Morgan, the generally apolitical Baptist minister for Middletown, preached about “the murderous enemies” who killed his congregants (and militiamen) John Pierce and Leonard Hoff. The New Jersey Gazette printed a warning of retaliation:

O, ye butchering British monster!  We are not obliged to delay retaliating any longer! - Therefore, as you value the safety of your friends on the Island [Brooklyn or Staten Island], do not send another example as that of Middletown [Point], for the consequence may prove fatal to the Tories on the Island, in spite of your efforts to protect them.

Retaliation promptly occurred. In early June, a raiding party from Middletown co-led by Captain John Schenck of Middletown and William Marriner (a boatman who had helped capture a British ship in 1776) launched a retaliatory raid against Loyalists in Brooklyn. This counter-attack is the subject of the next article.

Related Historic Site: Burrowes Mansion

Sources: Edwin Salter, Old Times in Old Monmouth (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1970) p 115; John Stillwell, Historical and Genealogical Miscellany (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1970) v3, p 145; Thomas Brown’s pension narrative in, John C. Dann ed., The Revolution Remembered: Eyewitness Accounts of the War for Independence (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980) pp 137-9; The New York (Royal) Gazette, May 27, 1778; Damages by British, Aquacanuck/Essex County Ledger, claim #54, New Jersey State Archives; Forman, Samuel S. Narrative of a Journey down the Ohio and Mississippi in 1789-90 (Cincinnati, R. Clarke and Co., 1888) p 7; Franklin Ellis, The History of Monmouth County (R.T. Peck: Philadelphia, 1885), pp. 529-30; Franklin Ellis, The History of Monmouth County (R.T. Peck: Philadelphia, 1885), pp. 830-1; William S. Stryker, Official Register of the Officers and Men of New Jersey in the Revolutionary War (Trenton: Naar, Day & Naar, 1872); John Stillwell, Historical and Genealogical Miscellany, 4 vols, Genealogical Publishing Co, 1970, v3, p140-1; Library of Congress, Early American Newspaper, New Jersey Gazette, reel 1930; Pennsylvania Gazette, June 13, 1778 (CD-ROM at the David Library, #24882); Library of Congress, Rivington's New York Gazette, reel 2906; William Horner, This Old Monmouth of Ours (Freehold: Moreau Brothers, 1932) p 394-5; Monmouth, Page in History (Freehold: Monmouth County Bicentennial Commission, 1976) p 17; Archives of the State of New Jersey, Extracts from American Newspapers Relating to New Jersey (Paterson, NJ: Call Printing, 1903) vol. 2, pp. 246-7; Koegler ,M.L. Burrowes Mansion of Matawan, New Jersey, and Notations on the History of Monmouth County (Matawan, NJ: Matawan Historical Society), pp. 31, 33, 36, 40-3; National Archives, revolutionary War veterans Pension Applications, New Jersey - Joseph Walling; National Archives, Revolutionary War Veterans' Pension Application, Joseph Vanderveer of Ohio, S.3114.