British and Continental Soldiers Pass Through Allentown

George Washington’s bold attack on the Hessians at Trenton on Christmas, 1776, changed the course of the war. For the first time, the British were defeated and the surprise attack set both armies in motion. The armies would soon meet again at the Battle of Princeton on January 3. In between, detachments of both armies passed through Allentown, on the western edge of Monmouth County.

At this time, Allentown and surrounding Upper Freehold Township was loosely controlled by an embryonic Loyalist regime, more or less led by Commissioner John Lawrence. The arrests and property confiscations of the Loyalist insurrection took a toll on Allentown. On December 27, when a regiment of Hessians entered the town, they found it largely empty. The reputation of the Hessians for brutality likely induced Allentown’s residents to flee. Captain Johann Ewald wrote: “In the afternoon, the march continued to Allentown where the corps arrived in the evening and took up quarters in devastated and abandoned houses, which numbered about eighty.”

Ewald’s commander, Colonel Carl von Donop, used Allentown as a base to gather up and reorganize the recently defeated Hessians. On the 27th, he wrote General Wiliam Knyphausen, the commander of German troops in America, that "I have organized all the escaped men from the Rall brigade and made up a force of two hundred and ninety-two men."

Von Donop worried that “my ammunition has run low, only about 9 bullet cartridges to a man,” but still thought Allentown’s location at a key crossroads made it an ideal place to camp. "This place is so situated that I intend to get through it to anywhere from here." With a Delaware Continental regiment only four miles away at Crosswicks, von Donop left Allentown for Hightstown on the afternoon of December 28. Historian David Hackett Fisher noted that the Hessians brought 150 wagons of supplies with them when they entered and left Allentown. This would have been the largest baggage train ever brought through Allentown—until the British Army’s baggage train in the days preceding the Battle of Monmouth.

The Delaware Continentals followed the Hessians and moved into Allentown on December 29. Captain Thomas Rodney was not among the first of his regiment to enter Allentown, but he described the activities of his regiment’s vanguard as it entered Allentown. Before dawn, the Continentals turned the tables on the Loyalist insurrectionists. Rodney wrote:

This morning, about sunrise we set out to reinforce the troops that went forward last night. We marched on through Allentown without stopping, about half a mile beyond, met the troops returning with about 30 bullocks and 5 Tories.

Later that day, the Delaware troops shot and killed Isaac Pearson, the former town clerk, now a Loyalist, of neighboring Nottingham Township (Burlington County). Pearson was being sheltered by Upper Freehold Loyalists. The local Loyalists escaped but Pearson was not so fortunate, “In the afternoon was brought in the body of Isaac Pearson, who being found in the house with other Tories that were taken, fled off."

Rodney described Allentown: “A little village of wooden houses, indifferently built on both sides of the road, at a mill, about 4 miles from Crosswicks." And he described a distasteful first encounter with the newly-arrived Captain Francis Wade of Pennsylvania. Wade had arrived with orders to set up a Quartermaster office at Allentown. Rodney called Wade "a vain blustering man."

Rodney and the Delaware Continentals would stay at Allentown until January 2. While there, Rodney talked with Upper Freehold Whigs who were recently abused by the insurrectionists. He wrote:

Jersey will be the most Whiggest [sic] colony on the continent: the Quakers declare for taking up arms. You cannot imagine the distress of this country. They [British and Loyalists] have stripped everybody almost, without distinction - even of all their clothes, and have beat and abused men, women and children in the most cruel manner ever heard of.

It is possible that the locals exaggerated the brutality of the conduct of the insurrectionists, as there are no documents that detail beatings from the Upper Freehold Loyalists. It is also possible that Rodney was conflating accounts from Upper Freehold with accounts from western New Jersey, where Hessian soldiers engaged in numerous acts of brutality.

Not all of the locals were bitterly divided. One of Allentown’s leading merchants, Richard Waln, though a Quaker pacifist, supported the Loyalist insurrection. This did not stop him from selling goods to the Continentals on December 31.

On December 31, much of the Delaware regiment went to Cranbury to gather supplies and intelligence. During their absence, a Pennsylvania regiment under Lt. Colonel Francis Gurney moved into town. The officers of the two regiments nearly came to blows that evening. Rodney wrote:

When we returned to Allentown, my quarters were full of militia [Pennsylvania Flying Camp] and there was no place to sit or lie down. I went to the door of the room, which was now occupied by three Pennsylvania field officers and politely requested to let us come in and sit by the fire, but they sternly refused. I told them we had no other place to go and if they would not admit us willingly they must defend themselves, and thereupon drew my sword.

But the Continental officers were able to reach an accord, after which "we spent the rest of the night in great festivity... with good wine and ready dressed provisions." Gurney’s men would soon march for Freehold where they would clash with and defeat Monmouth County’s new Loyalist militia.

Francis Wade would act as Continental Quartermaster at Allentown for several months. His relationships with the people of Monmouth County would be no better than his relationship with Thomas Rodney.

Caption: 1777 map shows the roads between New York and Philadelphia. Note the location of Allen’s Town (Allentown) at the confluence of roads from Trenton and Philadelphia.

Related Historic Site: Battle of Princeton State Park

Sources: Thomas Rodney, Diary of Captain Thomas Rodney, 1776-1777 (Wilmington: Delaware Historical Society, 1888) p 26; Thomas Rodney, Diary of Captain Thomas Rodney, 1776-7 (Wilmington: Delaware Historical Society, 1888, p 27; John Fabiano, Allen's Town, New Jersey: Crossroads of the American Revolution, unpublished manuscript in the collection of the Allentown Historical Society, p 31; John Fabiano, Allen's Town, New Jersey: Crossroads of the American Revolution, unpublished manuscript in the collection of the Allentown Historical Society, p 25. 28; Johann Ewald, Diary of an American War (New Haven: Yale UP, 1979), 55; David Hackett Fischer, Washington's Crossing (NY: Oxford UP, 2004) p260, 344; New Jersey State Archives, Revolutionary War, Manuscripts Coll., box 2, #9, #12   and William S.  Stryker, Battles of Trenton and Princeton, pp. 398-400; George Ryden, Letters to and from Caesar Rodney, 1756-84 (Philadelphia: U of Penn Press, 1933) p 152; David Fowler, Egregious Villains, Wood Rangers, and London Traders (Ph.D. Dissertation: Rutgers University, 1987) p 79; Thomas Rodney, Diary of Captain Thomas Rodney, 1776-7 (Wilmington: Delaware Historical Society, 1888, p 27; John Fabiano, Allen's Town, New Jersey: Crossroads of the American Revolution, unpublished manuscript in the collection of the Allentown Historical Society, p 31