First Moves Made to Stop Illegal Trade from Monmouth County

Even before the British Army landed on Staten Island and Sandy Hook in early July 1776, Monmouth Countians were trading with British ships in New York Harbor. In December 1775, the Shrewsbury Township Committee of Observation wrote “that suspected persons are buying up wheat in order for transportation and actually have sent off a vessel loaded with wheat.” The Committee worried that the vessel was headed for the British Army, so it:

Therefore it is resolved that the Colonel order a party of militia to be ready to secure such vessel or vessels until such time as the Committee are well assured and satisfied that the rules of the General Congress are not transgressed and that all such exportations  are not for the use of our enemies.

Just a month later, illegal trade between Monmouth County and British ships in New York Harbor was observed by Lord Stirling in January 1776. The illegal trade almost certainly expanded with the arrival of 25,000 hungry British soldiers and commissary officers willing to offer specie for fresh provisions.

The Monmouth County militia, though dysfunctional in much of the county, was the primary check against the burgeoning illegal trade. Middletown militiaman, Jacob Lyle, recalled that his first duty was to “guard the King's Highway, so called, that led from Sandy Hook to Philadelphia... and to prevent [the enemy from] getting supplies from the residents of New Jersey." Other militiamen recalled performing similar service.

The first arrests made by the militia are described in the July 29 minutes of the New Jersey Convention (the state legislature):

Jacob Wardell, Joseph Wardell and Peter Wardell, persons apprehended by a detachment of Monmouth militia on account of furnishing provisions to the enemy, were brought before the house and witnesses examined.

The next day, the Convention fined Jacob Wardell £28 for the costs of detaining and transporting him and his kin; Joseph and Peter Wardell were discharged after posting £500 bonds for their future good behavior.

The illegal trade between Monmouth County and British traders apparently grew in the second half of 1776 as British battlefield victories emboldened disaffected Americans. On October 10, the Continental Congress requested that New Jersey Governor William Livingston assign a militia company to protect the Pennsylvania Salt Works at Toms River and another company “to be stationed at or near Shrewsbury to intercept or put a stop to the intelligence said to carried on between the Tories and Lord Howe's fleet." Interestingly, when Governor Livingston acted on this directive, he called out a company of Burlington militia to perform the task:

You are hereby directed to detach one company of fifty men from the battalion under your command to be stationed near Shrewsbury to intercept and put a stop to intelligence said to be carrying on between the Tories and Lord Howe's Fleet. It is the express requisition of Congress that this be immediately done.

The decision to send in Burlington County militia is almost certainly a reflection of the Governor determining that a Shrewsbury militia company could not be trusted to police illegal trade in which some of those same militiamen were likely participating.

In November 1776, the New Jersey Supreme Court heard its first case related to a Monmouth Countian engaging in illegal trade with the British. John Corlies of Rumson (in Shrewsbury Township) “did voluntarily & unlawfully aid, assist and help certain persons to send & convey provisions, to wit, eight quarters of beef, to the enemies of this state.” That same month, Colonel David Forman of Manalapan (Freehold Township) led a campaign against Loyalist insurgents which included impounding livestock from the disaffected and others living along the shore to prevent the animals from being exported to the British.

While the efforts to restrain illegal trade with the British in 1776 may have punished or quashed the efforts of a few individuals, it was clearly unsuccessful. By April 1777, illegal trade with the British was flourishing again. On April 18, George Washington wrote the Continental Congress’s Board of War about an illegal trading ring that involved Lawrence Hartshorne and Obadiah Bowne of Shrewsbury, in cahoots with New York merchant John Murray:

Bowne and Hartshorne, near Shrewsbury in Monmouth County, purchased Continental Money in N. York at a great discount, carry this money to Philada and there buy Flour &ca under pretence of Shipping it to the Foreign Islands, but send the Vessels to N. Yk [New York]. As those persons are well known in Philada [sic] they may easily be detected.

Owen Biddle of Congress’s the Board of War responded to Washington on April 21:

The mischievous practices of the Murrays of New York & Hartshorne and Bowne of Shrewsberry, is what we had some reason to suspect but never before had it in our power to detect them. John Murray lately left this City, we shall use our endeavours to apprehend him and bring him to justice—Bowne & Hartshorne reside at Shrewsberry if they could be apprehended by orders of your Excellency, perhaps it might deter others from such Practices in future—we shall give orders to the Naval Officer to scrutinize the destination of all Vessels agreeable to your Excellency’s recommendation.

On April 26, Washington revealed the difficulty of catching illegal traders: "As I have no proof of Hartshorne and Bowne’s ever having been concerned in the practices I mentioned in my last, I cannot apprehend them. I gave you the hint, that if the thing should have been so, and they should return to Philada again upon the same errand, you might keep a watchful Eye upon them.”

Other Monmouth Countians traded in the shadows and under aliases. William Hartshorne, alias Thomas Meadows, maintained a relationship with a New York Loyalist under the alias of John Steady: “It gives me great pleasure to renew our former acquaintance and correspondence and if any narrow souled scoundrel will say that by doing so I act a traitor or transgress any just law, he lies in his throat.” Hartshorne promised to find out about a quantity of tar that Steady had purchased but feared that it was lost. He discussed a mutual friend, (under the alias “Thom Druid”) and noted a shipment of materials to New York carried by "Burke, Prevost & c., we find it has happily got over."

At least one trader felt no need to operate in the shadows. Colonel Samuel Forman, wrote of confronting Edward Williams about trading with the enemy. Williams responded, "I have a right to make the best market I can for it [his salted pork] and as to disaffection, thou must judge as thou pleases."

On the British side, direct evidence of illegal trade from Monmouth County is fragmentary because it was frequently conducted through Loyalist intermediaries (so-called “London Traders”). One such example is a receipt issued from Captain Garrett Keating on June 4, 1777. Keating was the senior Army officer at Sandy Hook at the time. He issued a receipt for 34 lbs. of soap, 20 lbs. of tobacco "for the men under my command." The receipt was issued to Lt. Samuel Taylor of the New Jersey Volunteers, formerly of Shrewsbury, who was also stationed at Sandy Hook at the time. The supplies were nearly certainly acquired by Taylor from disaffected traders in Monmouth County.

Perspective

By the middle years of the war, the illegal trade was so prolific that it earned the derisive nickname of “the London trade.” London Traders were middlemen who went from Staten Island and Sandy Hook to the Jersey shore where they picked up goods from disaffected farmers and ferried those goods into British lines. The New Jersey Supreme Court tried cases 245 against Monmouth Countians between 1776 and 1784. The majority of those cases (126) concerned charges related to crossing enemy lines or supplying the enemy. In a prior study, the author demonstrated that Monmouth County’s disaffected gained wealth during the Revolution at a greater rate than the general population. Specifically:

Total Population (n=1,251)

42% gained land

47% gained livestock

Disaffected Population (n=272)

60% gained land

53% gained livestock

*Analyzed population limited to Monmouth Countians in tax lists in both 1778-1779 and 1783-1784. Land gainers acquired at least 25 acres of land. Livestock gainers added at least two head or horse or cattle.

This provides powerful evidence of the profitable and widespread scope of the London Trade.

Related Historic Site: Sultana Education Foundation (Chestertown, MD)

Sources: Proceedings of the Committees of Freehold and Shrewsbury, Proceedings of the New Jersey Historical Society, First Series, 1846, pp. 192-3; Revolutionary War Veterans' Pension Application of Jacob Lyle of New York, National Archives, p45-6; Franklin Ellis, The History of Monmouth County (R.T. Peck: Philadelphia, 1885), p138-9; Lorenzo Sabine, Biographical Sketches of Loyalists in the American Revolution (Boston: Little, Brown, 1864) vol. 2, p 592; Journals of the American Congress, (Washington, DC: Way and Gideon, 1823) vol. 1, p538; William Livingston to Colonels of the Burlington County Militia, Massachusetts Historical Society, William Livingston Papers, Minutes, Lord Stirling; Hartshorne Family Papers, MCHA, box 2, folder 19; New Jersey State Archives, Supreme Court Records, #34552; The Papers of George Washington, Revolutionary War Series, vol. 9, 28 March 1777 – 10 June 1777, ed. Philander D. Chase. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1999, pp. 198-199, 213-215, 270–271; Dennis P. Ryan, "Six Towns: Continuity and Change in Revolutionary New Jersey, 1770-1792" (Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1974) p 187; New Jersey State Archives, Dept. of Defense, Loyalists Collection, New Jersey Volunteers, box 3, uncataloged #4; New Jersey Supreme Court Records, microfilmed at the New Jersey State Archives; Michael Adelberg, “Destitute of Almost Everything to Support Life: The Acquisition and Loss of Wealth in Revolutionary Monmouth County, New Jersey,” in The American Revolution in New Jersey, ed. James Gigantino (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2015).