Monmouth County's Jail and the Jailbreak of February 1781

The Monmouth County jail was in the basement of the county courthouse in Freehold. While no surviving document describes it in detail, it can be assumed that the prison consisted of few rough rooms that were neither designed nor expected to house dozens of dangerous prisoners at a time.

Even early in the war, it was understood that Monmouth County was incapable of handling all of its prisoners. For example, in late 1776, roughly 200 Loyalist insurrectionists were taken during the campaigns of Colonels David Forman and Charles Read. Most of these men were sent to jail in Philadelphia—and then further west in Pennsylvania and to Fredericktown, Maryland.

Back in Freehold, there was apparently a string of prisoner escapes in early 1777 as Colonel Francis Gurney brought in new prisoners. The escapes promoted a petition to New Jersey Assembly in March:

The gaol of said County has been frequently broken out, and prisoners rescued; and praying that their Magistrates may be empowered, in extra-ordinary cases, to send disaffected persons out of the County to be confined.

William Perrine, a Loyalist, was one of those escaped men. After the war, he wrote:

He was applied to by agents of Congress to sign a paper called the Association, and on refusal of the same was deemed an enemy to my country and committed to close confinement, from thence I found means to break prison & escape to the British Army and left my house and family to the mercy of my enemies.

Dangerous prisoners, such as Jesse Woodward and Richard Robins, a few other leaders of the Loyalist insurrections were jailed in distant Sussex County. Far off confinement was harsh punishment in an era when travel was difficult—it made regular family visitation impossible. Men confined far from home appealed to come home which, in turn, created a need to better secure the county prison. In 1777, Upper Freehold militia companies served as prison guards. Josiah Dey wrote of this service:

[He] was a considerable time stationed at Monmouth Court House to guard the prisoners confined in jail and prevent their being liberated by the enemy, and served as one of the guards to remove the prisoners thereupon to the jail in Burlington County.

In June 1778, Monmouth County’s 2nd Court of Oyer and Terminer sentenced twelve men to death, though six were quickly pardoned by Governor William Livingston. On June 22, Baptist Minister Abel Morgan, ministered to the men on death row. He noted afterward, "At the request of some prisoners, I preached to 8 under sentence of death. A moving sight." However, on June 25, Sheriff Nicholas Van Brunt took the condemned men to Morristown. But another felon housed in the jail, the Loyalist partisan Chrineyonce Van Mater, stayed in jail until he was freed by the British on June 27. The Pennsylvania Gazette reported:

The court sentenced him to pay a fine of £300 and to suffer six months imprisonment. We hear that the enemy in their late passage through that country released Van Mater; who, after having piloted them through his neighborhood, went off with them to New York.

Mistreatment of prisoners began after the British Army razed a neighborhood near Freehold, a hostile, gratuitous act that stoked local resentments. This may have led to two Loyalist deaths at the county jail in the months that followed. The Loyalist, Joseph Williams wrote that his brother, Obadiah Williams "was taken prisoner & confined in the dungeon in Freehold gaol, until he was emaciated & soon after died.” James Pew, of Middletown before the war, left for New York and then was captured in late 1778 while visiting his family. Pew was jailed and murdered by the prison sentry, James Tilley, who shot him in his prison cell.

In late 1779, as Loyalist arrests trended up, Monmouth Countians started worrying again about the security of the county jail. In October, Sheriff Van Brunt again transported prisoners out of the county, to Burlington. And militiaman, John G. Holmes, when describing his service in later 1779 noted that his company was “stationed at Monmouth [Court House] to guard the prisoners then in jail, as the jail was not thought sufficiently strong."

The security of the Monmouth County jail worsened in early 1780. In March, the jailkeeper, William Lawrence complained to the New Jersey Assembly about Major Henry “Light Horse Harry” Lee taking his quarters at the Court House. He also claimed that Lee “had also taken charge of and maintained a number of different prisoners confined for different crimes and misdemeanors” in the jail. This glut of prisoners may have led Kenneth Anderson, the county clerk, to write Governor Livingston in April:

There now being confined in Monmouth County several prisoners, committed for sundry most atrocious robberies perpetrated in this county, and many persons out of the gaol who expect their trials, and we being apprehensive that the prisoners may effect an escape.

In August, as Loyalist irregulars penetrated all the way to Colts Neck (five miles from Freehold), Chief Justice David Brearley, worried "there is a design to rescue them [Loyalist prisoners] by a party from the Pines." This, again, prompted a cohort of prisoners to be moved out of the county. In September, the jailkeeper compiled "A List of Prisoners of War in Monmouth Gaol to be Sent to Philadelphia by order of the Governor and Council of the State in New Jersey." The list included six British sailors, five British soldiers, and five Monmouth County Loyalists (Obadiah Parker, Nathaniel Tyron, Elijah Curtis, Richard Freeman, and Aaron Brewer).

The Prison Break of February 1781

As noted in a prior article, a crackdown on illegally trading shore residents swelled the dockets of Monmouth County’s courts in late 1780, which in turn, swelled the number of prisoners in the county jail. The county’s leaders worried about the jail’s vulnerability. In October 1780, at the start of the crackdown, David Rhea, the quartermaster officer responsible for purchasing foodstuffs in the county wrote that a food shortage at the county jail was causing problems "as there are a number of prisoners, very impudent, in the gaol now." That same month, David Forman worried about the security of the county jail:

We now have some atrocious villains in gaol & they would have made their escape had I not providentially discovered them and had them secured in irons - no guard having been kept at the court house since the elections.

The decision to put prisoners in irons sparked the Loyalist, Thomas Crowell, to do the same with captured Whigs.

While Forman may have foiled this attempted prison break, he was not in position to stop the next one a few months later. In February 1781, the New Jersey Gazette reported:

On the night of the 4th instant, the prisoners in the gaol of the County of Monmouth made their escape by sawing off their irons and some of the window grates; it is thought that the sentry was remiss in his duty. Among those who escaped were Humphrey Wade and Joel Parker, both under sentence of death for horse stealing. There were several others who were charged with capital offenses; one of whom, of the name DeNight (together with a Negro man) was retaken.

The Monmouth County prisoners may have been inspired by a group of five Monmouth County prisoners who escaped from the Continental jail in Philadelphia on January 10. The Loyalist New York Gazette reported on January 20 that:

The following persons arrived in this city, they have been made prisoners by the Rebels and confined in Philadelphia gaol, from whence they fortunately escaped on the 10th inst., a reward of $2000 was published for apprehending them.

The five Philadelphia escapees included Chrineyonce Van Mater, who had been freed from jail in Freehold in June 1778 only to be retaken in the summer of 1780.

The prisoners who escaped the Monmouth County jail likely committed a robbery in Upper Freehold on February 5, the day after their escape. The New Jersey Gazette reported on February 6 that the prior day, "at eleven o'clock in the forenoon, a certain Samuel Read of Philadelphia, being on his way to Freehold in Monmouth County, was robbed by three villains, disguised in frocks and trousers, of sixty guineas, twenty half Joes and nine hundred Continental dollars." They may have been seeking to link up with Pine Robbers who dwelled in the county’s pine forests.

The escape of the death row convicts likely prompted an inquiry to Chief Justice Brearley about the men who were now on the run. Brearley wrote Governor Livingston on February 6:

The following persons were capitally convicted and sentenced to be hanged on Friday next, Robert James for High Treason… Humphrey Wade and John Parker for Horse Stealing, their cases are very clear -- they were in the company of stolen horses, and taken together at a place called Squankum in Shrewsbury.  They acknowledged that they stole the horses out of the pasture of John Coward of Upper Freehold. Wade is an elderly man, Parker is a youth about seventeen.

James would be pardoned by Livingston on March 20. Three other Loyalists (who apparently were quickly retaken) were hanged. On February 8, the Royal Gazette reported: "On Thursday last, three Loyalists were put to death, on a gibbet in Monmouth County, New Jersey, their crime being an attachment to the old Constitution."

Problems at the County Jail Continue

There is no evidence that the February 1781 prison break led to any substantial changes at the Monmouth County jail. In April 1782, Richard Lippincott, a captain in the Associated Loyalists (who would soon be scandalized for hanging Captain Joshua Huddy) proposed a raid against Freehold to free Clayton Tilton, another Associated Loyalist jailed there. Samuel Blowers of the Board of Associated Loyalists, testified that:

Captain Lippincott then proposed to make an expedition against the Jerseys with a view to force the gaol in Monmouth County, with a party of about thirty Loyalists, and to rescue Clayton Tilton, or if that was found impracticable, to make an attempt to seize General Forman.

If a party of twenty might force open the county jail, it could not have been heavily guarded. While Tilton was not freed by Lippincott, he did escape. He wrote in his post-war Loyalist compensation application:

He had the great misfortune of being made a prisoner by the rebels, who tried him by their own laws for High Treason against the State & condemned him to be hanged for his loyalty, but he had the good fortune to be rescued, and got safe again to British lines in New York.

Clayton Tilton’s brother, Ezekiel Tilton, was jailed in Freehold just three months later. According to his wife, Elizabeth Tilton, Ezekiel “endeavored to gain an occupation of fisherman to support his family” until he was “taken by a row boat fitted out in the Jersies.” She continued:

He is carried to Monmouth Gaol and confined, and it is reported as a State prisoner -- So much oppressed with close and heavy irons that his flesh is in a state of mortification, in which apartment [cell] one of his neighbors [James Pew] has been shot & murdered without provocation, and others led to the gallows for their loyalty.

She appealed to British authorities for a prisoner exchange to free her husband. Another Loyalist taken that summer, Peter Stout, claimed that he was extorted into forfeiting his estate after being confined as a prisoner in the Monmouth County jail. He wrote:

He was about the month of August 1782 taken prisoner by the Americans & confined in Freehold gaol for near four months, after which he was exchanged upon giving bond & security in £1000 that he would not leave the county, but should return to gaol when called for.

However, after Stout agitated for permission to return to New York, he ran into problems with John Burrowes, Jr., the new sheriff, and David Forman:

Who absolutely refused suffering the deponent to come within British lines and discharging his security bonds -- upon which the deponent's mother conveyed her right to the deponent's confiscated estate unto Mr. John Burrowes, the purchaser thereof, upon which being done, the deponent was retrieved from irons, and discharged from the dungeon by John Burrowes, Jr.

Historian David Fowler noted that captured pine robber leaders raised fears of Loyalist attacks to liberate prisoners. When John Bacon, for example, was captured in 1782, David Forman, now a judge, secured a writ to put him in irons at a secret location. The writ states "safely keep him close, confined in irons to answer charges of High Treason, murder and horse stealing, whereof he stands accused." Despite the special treatment, Bacon escaped.

Meanwhile, other dangerous prisoners continued to be shuttled outside the county, and not returned until trial. In November 1782, Sheriff Burrowes, hired and paid Captain John Walton for “bringing Edward Price, Peter Patton, Joseph Sheldon, John Okerson, Ezekiel Tilton, William Horner, Fuller Horner & others from Burlington to Monmouth gaol.” A Court of Oyer and Terminer was held in early 1783, but there were no capital convictions at that court.

The insecure Monmouth County jail was never greatly improved, but hostilities did wind down. The retrieval of prisoners in 1782 may have been the last time that the Monmouth County jail needed to be emptied of dangerous prisoners.

Caption: The jail in York, PA. was one of a few buildings in America built to be a prison. The Monmouth County jail was in the basement of the court house. It suffered a jail break and many irregularities.

Related Historic Site: National Prisoner of War Museum (Andersonville, Georgia)

Sources: Joseph Holmes to Asher Holmes, Monmouth County Historical Association, Cherry Hall Papers, box 5, folder 9; The Library Company, New Jersey Votes of the Assembly, March 3, 1777, p 90; Jones, E. Alfred. The Loyalists of New Jersey, (Newark, N. J. Historical Society, 1927) p 171. Gregory Palmer, Biographical Sketches of Loyalists of the American Revolution (Westport, Conn. and London, 1984), pp. 682-3. Rutgers University Special Collections, Great Britain Public Record Office, Loyalist Compensation Claims, D96, AO 13/19, reel 6 and AO 13/111, reel 10; National Archives, revolutionary War veterans Pension Applications, New Jersey - Josiah Dey; R.T. Middleditch, "Abel Morgan of Middletown", The Baptist Quarterly, 1874, vol. 8, p332; Edwin Salter, History of Monmouth and Ocean Counties (Bayonne, NJ: E. Gardner and Sons, 1890) p 90; Franklin Ellis, The History of Monmouth County (R.T. Peck: Philadelphia, 1885), p196-7; Pennsylvania Gazette, July 14, 1778 (CD-ROM at the David Library, #24982); Minutes of the Provincial Congress and the Council of Safety of the State of New Jersey 1775-1776 (Ithaca: Cornell University Library, 2009) pp. 276-277; Journals of the Legislative Council of New Jersey (Isaac Collins: State of New Jersey, 1779) p104; National Archives, revolutionary War veterans Pension Applications, New Jersey - John G. Holmes; The Library Company, New Jersey Votes of the Assembly, March 1, 1780, p 132; New Jersey State Archives, William Livingston Papers, reel 11, April 27, 1780; David Fowler, egregious Villains, Wood Rangers, and London Traders (Ph.D. Dissertation: Rutgers University, 1987) p 242; David Library of the American Revolution, Prisoners of War, #66, “A List of the Prisoners of War in Monmouth Gaol to be Sent to Philadelphia by order of the Governor and Council of the State of New Jersey”; David Forman to William Livingston, New York Public Library, William Livingston Papers, vol. 3, pp. 55-58; William Horner, This Old Monmouth of Ours (Freehold: Moreau Brothers, 1932) p 163; William Nelson, Austin Scott, et al., ed., New Jersey Archives (Newark, Trenton, Somerville, 1901-1917) vol. 5, p 194; David Brearley to William Livingston, Carl Prince, Papers of William Livingston (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1987) vol. 4, pp. 139-40; William Horner, This Old Monmouth of Ours (Freehold: Moreau Brothers, 1932) p 162; Library of Congress, Rivington's New York Gazette, reel 2906, January 20, 1781; Royal Gazette (Georgia), February 8, 1781; Howard Peckham, Sources of American Independence: Selected Manuscripts from the Collections of the William L. Clements Library  (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978) p 562; David Fowler, egregious Villains, Wood Rangers, and London Traders (Ph.D. Dissertation: Rutgers University, 1987) p 252; Elizabeth Tilton to Guy Carleton, David Library of the American Revolution, Great Britain Public Records Office, British Headquarters Papers, #5097; Peter Stout, Affidavit, David Library of the American Revolution, Great Britain Public Records Office, British Headquarters Papers, #9154, 9177; Rutgers University, Special Collections, Loyalist Compensation Applications, Joseph Williams, Coll. D96, PRO AO 10/20, reel 7; Rutgers University, Special Collections, Loyalist Compensation Applications, Clayton Tilton, Coll. D96, PRO AO 10/20, reel 7 and AO 13/112, reel 10; New Jersey State Archives, Dept. of Defense, Revolutionary War, Numbered Manuscripts, #4100.