New Jersey Volunteers Drift into Other Loyalist Units

As discussed in prior articles and the author’s prior research, approximately six hundred Monmouth County Loyalists joined the 1st and 2nd Battalions of the New Jersey Volunteers in 1776 and 1777. The trajectories of these battalions were mostly unhappy. The 1st battalion was surprised and routed by Continental Troops at their camp on Staten Island in fall 1777 and the 2nd battalion suffered through a difficult march across New Jersey 1778 and gradual decline after that. Both battalion commanders—Elisha Lawrence and John Morris—became mired in controversies and lost their commands. As they lost men, both battalions consolidated into battalions originating from northern New Jersey.

Monmouth Countians in the King’s Rangers

One of the reasons that the ranks of the New Jersey Volunteers thinned was that their original recruits became dispirited and moved to other Loyalist units. The movement of Monmouth County Loyalists out of the New Jersey Volunteers and into other Loyalist units began in 1779. The earliest surviving record of Monmouth County Loyalists serving elsewhere appears to be a September 28, 1779, troop return of Major Robert Rogers’ Rangers.

Rogers was a frontier fighter during the Seven Years War. In 1776, he offered his services to George Washington but was turned down. Offended, he raised a Loyalist corps from New York that became the Queen’s Rangers, but he left that unit. While in Nova Scotia in 1779, he received permission to raise a new Loyalist corps, the King’s Rangers. He recruited Loyalists from other units who were dispirited or denied their preferred rank as units consolidated. At least four Monmouth County officers (Captain John Longstreet, Lieutenant John Throckmorton, Ensign John Robins, and Ensign Joseph Beers) joined Rogers. The Monmouth men were first stationed with Rogers at Fort St. John in Quebec but would soon return to New York.

Captain Samuel Hayden of the New Jersey Volunteers was not from Monmouth County, but there were many Monmouth Loyalists serving with him when he co-led the punishing raid of Tinton Falls in June 1779. By fall 1780, Hayden left the New Jersey Volunteers to command a company in the King's Rangers. Hayden’s August and December returns at New York include several Monmouth Countians (or probable Monmouth Countians): Lt. Throckmorton, Ens. Robins, Ens. Beers, Sgt. Alexander Campbell, and privates: Joel Bedell, Peter Crawford, Jonathan Bailey, John Williams, James Cottrell, Francis Bailey, Alexander Scoby, and John Gibbons. The enlistment dates of these men were as early as June 1, 1779, but May 26, 1780 was the most common date of enlistment.

A 1782 return of Loyalist forces lists the King’s Rangers with two companies, one of which had a significant Monmouth County contingent. The officers are all Monmouth Countians: Capt. John Longstreet, Lt. Thomas Okerson, and Ens. Eleanor Taylor. Longstreet’s listing as a company captain this late in the war is curious because, in his own postwar Loyalist compensation application, he wrote of needing to retire from active service in the King’s Rangers because he was unable to raise enough men to lead a company.

Irregularities like this one followed Longstreet throughout the war. Prior to the war, he straddled sides, commanding a company of New Jersey militia nominally loyal to the New Jersey Provincial Congress but known as the ”Tory Company.” He led his company to Sandy Hook and joined the British Army in July 1776, Longstreet apparently left his men and stayed in Monmouth County in 1777 to sell off much of his estate. When he left again for New York, his wife stayed home on a 25-acre estate in Freehold. She became the center of the ”Red House Controversy” in which local officials sought to keep Mrs. Longstreet on the estate despite it being forfeited to the state and sold at auction. Longstreet joined the King’s Rangers in 1779 but left before the end of the war due to an insufficient number of recruits. William Taylor, an attorney in New Jersey’s illusory Loyalist government, testified against Longstreet at war’s end. Taylor asserted that Longstreet "is not of good character."

While most of the rank and file from the King’s Rangers were from New England, about ten Monmouth Countians were enlisted men in the King’s Rangers. In addition to the nine men in Hayden’s company, Sergeant John Horner of Upper Freehold, according to his postwar Loyalist compensation of application, went into Roger’s Rangers in 1779. Private John Martin is noted in a genealogical source as being from Monmouth County.

Stephen Davidson, a historian of the Loyalists who settled in Canada at war’s end, wrote that “when the N.J.V. consolidated the number of battalions from six to four, a number of officers found themselves without companies.” He further noted that “Hayden's Company [in the King’s Rangers] was formed from men of Old Monmouth County, New Jersey.”

Davidson noted that Hayden’s company of Rangers went to Canada in the middle of 1782. They were likely the first Monmouth County Loyalists to relocate to Canada. There, the Loyalists “guarded rebel prisoners on a prison ship in Halifax Harbour.” They remained in Canada until the Rangers were disbanded at the end of 1783.

Monmouth Countians in Other Loyalist Units

As discussed in another article, about twenty Monmouth County Loyalists, led by John Taylor and William Stevenson, left the New Jersey Volunteers to join Patrick Ferguson’s American Volunteers in the Carolina Campaign in 1780. They suffered terrible defeat at the Battle of King’s Mountain. There is no reason to think these men returned to the New Jersey Volunteers.

Dozens of Monmouth County African Americans agitated for freedom before the war and then left Monmouth County to join the British. Loyalist combat units were segregated, but the Black Pioneers were a corps of laborers that included many New Jersey African Americans. The “Black Brigade” was an unofficial partisan corps based at Sandy Hook to illegally trade with and raid Monmouth County. It was led by a man known as Colonel Tye, who was likely a slave from Shrewsbury Township before the war. The Black Brigade is discussed in another article.

Still other Monmouth County Loyalists left the New Jersey Volunteers for a British-tolerated vigilante group, the Associated Loyalists. Three companies of Associated Loyalists were commanded by Monmouth Countians, at least one of whom, Captain Thomas Crowell, had been an officer in the New Jersey Volunteers.

Not every Monmouth Countian quit the New Jersey Volunteers. A cohort of Monmouth County Loyalists stayed in the New Jersey Volunteers through the end of the war. 1782 troop returns show several Monmouth County officers stayed in the unit, anchored by 68-year old Major Thomas Leonard. Lt. Colonels Lawrence and Morris continued to be listed in troop returns even though they had both been stripped of their commands. They were likely listed because they were drawing provisions and pensions. Lawrence, as documented by historian Tood Braisted, remained an active Loyalist, even without a formal command.

Related Historic Site: Fort St. John (Quebec)

Sources: Offer List, Great Britain, Public Record Office, Headquarters Papers of the British Army in America, PRO 30/55/2335; Mary Beacock Fryer, Rolls of the Provincial Corps, Canadian Command, American Revolutionary Period, (Toronto: Dundurn Press, 1981) pp. 99-105; New York Public Library, Collection: Great Britain-Army-Provincial Forces, 1783, item 1044; United Empire Loyalists, Loyal Directory: http://www.uelac.org/Loyalist-Info; Jones, E. Alfred. The Loyalists of New Jersey, (Newark, N. J. Historical Society, 1927) p 101. Gregory Palmer, Biographical Sketches of Loyalists of the American Revolution (Westport, Conn. and London, 1984), p 401.  Rutgers University Special Collections, Great Britain Public Record Office, Loyalist Compensation Claims, D96, AO 13/18, reel 5.