The Battle of Conkaskunk

In general, the larger Loyalist raids into Monmouth County were well documented in newspapers. These include the raids against Manasquan/Shark River and Middletown Point in 1778, and Shoal Harbor/Tinton Falls and Shrewsbury/Tinton Falls in 1779, each of which were documented in one or more newspapers. These raids were printed in newspapers because the raiders were not turned away and, as a result, carried off captives or considerable plunder. This fired local witnesses to document the raid and send their accounts to newspaper publishers.

By 1780, however, the Monmouth militia, particularly along the Raritan Bayshore, was more formidable than prior years, and state troops provided a core of full-time soldiers camped on the military frontier. In June 1780, a large Loyalist party came off Sandy Hook and landed at Conkaskunk (present-day Union Beach) on the Raritan Bayshore. While they initially gathered up a considerable number of livestock, they soon met stiff resistance.

Three militiamen and one state troop who participated in the “Battle of Conkaskunk” recalled the engagement in their post-war pension applications. Adam Stricker was serving in the state troops under Captain Moses Shepherd in 1780. He recalled being in an engagement near Sandy Hook “in which he and his company took 48 prisoners, 14 horses and a large quantity of household provisions which the enemy had plundered.” (The number of prisoners is likely exaggerated.) 

Stricker’s company “lost but one man, named Thomson, who was shot through the brains while standing close to the deponent.” He further described:

In a skirmish at Conkaskunk with a party of British & Tories who came over for the purpose of carrying off cattle & horses, at which time he received a musket ball in the shoulder, by which he was stunned & thus mowed down - that Daniel Walling was near him at the time & assisted him to rise, the British party had got four wagons of household goods & had collected five hundred head of cattle [likely exaggerated], the whole of which we recovered from them, with the exception of a calf they killed.

A comrade, Joseph Dorsey, claimed to have seen ten Loyalists "lying in a heap on board their vessel."

Solomon Ketchum (arrested a year earlier for illegally trading with Loyalists) served with the Middletown militia that day. He wrote that:

He was at a skirmish at Conkaskunk in Middletown with the refugees from New York, thinks under Captain Shepherd [Moses Shepherd] when one Strickland [Adam Stricker] was wounded and one Walling was wounded with a ball in the throat, which injured him but slightly, the ball being spread in its force.

Daniel Hendrickson of Middletown (not the militia colonel of the same name) was also with the militia that day. He wrote that he was "in a battle at Conkaskunk in which a considerable body of British & refugees who had been out stealing cattle & were defeated and drove off, and the cattle with which they had taken were rescued."

David Hall, living in Middletown Township at the time, wrote the most revealing recollection of the “Battle of Conkaskunk” which, he noted, “perhaps may be regarded as a skirmish.” He further wrote:

The enemy were estimated to be 1,500 in force. They landed at Conkaskunk Point... they marched up to a place called Hedges' farm where they were met by our troops, the company of Captain Walling being the first to attack them. The enemy had a company of Negroes with them commanded by a black fellow whom they called Colonel Tye. The fight with the enemy was severe and they long and obstinately contested the field. The blacks in particular were very fierce and determined, many were killed on both sides. The sergeant of his, Captain Walling's company, Vanderhoff, was shot thru the body but survived. The enemy had to pass a long causeway with thick woods on either side. In those woods, our militia was posted and they cut the enemy down by scores and finally succeeded in driving them off. The enemy came from their shipping and from Staten Island on a plundering party but they failed in their purpose. The militia rallied from all parts of the adjacent country and did their duty like veterans.

Hall exaggerated the size of the Loyalist party, but other details from his account are likely accurate and revealing. By writing that the party came from Staten Island, Hall was indicating that the raiding party included New Jersey Volunteers (Loyalist regulars), who were based on that island. Hall also noted that militia and state troops were able to hold off the larger enemy party because of their placement in the woods with the enemy vulnerable on a “long causeway.” This presumably negated the enemy’s superior number of men.

Most interesting is Hall’s discussion of Colonel Tye and his irregulars who would soon earn the nickname, “the Black Brigade.” Hall described the African Americans as a “company” (a unit of roughly 50 men) who were “very fierce and determined” during the fight. Prior articles have mentioned small numbers of African Americans participating in Loyalist raids, but the Battle of Conkaskunk is the earliest mention of either Tye or a large number of African American Loyalists acting as a unit. After the Battle of Conkaskunk, Tye and his men continued raiding on their own, while the increasingly dispirited New Jersey Volunteers, generally, stayed in camp on Staten Island and Sandy Hook.

There is only one Loyalist reference to the Battle of Conkaskunk. Predictably, it casts the battle in a very different light.  On May 16, the prominent Loyalist, William Smith, recorded that "the rebels yesterday, noon, [were] near the Light House, 500 strong, but went off [when] the armed vessels prepared to fire on them." From New York, Smith learned about the Battle of Conkaskunk as a defensive action that turned away an attack on the increasingly permeable British defenses at Sandy Hook.

At the Battle of Conkaskunk, the enemy was turned away without captures and the raider’s plunder was recovered. So, the engagement was never reported in newspapers. Pension accounts are prone to exaggerations and they are often murky on dates and commanding officers—that is the case here. But because five participants (in four pension applications submitted in two states) recorded aspects of the Battle of Conkaskunk, there should be little doubt that the event occurred even if the details in particular accounts are open to debate.

Thoughtful compilations of the battles and skirmishes of the Revolutionary War, including those of David Munn and Howard Peckham, do not include the Battle of Conkaskunk. But those compilations are newspaper-centric and many local events went unreported in newspapers. Perhaps the most important lesson learned from the Battle of Conkaskunk is that many local events are knowable only when reviewing the widest variety of surviving sources. Other Revolutionary War events in Monmouth County certainly occurred that are lost to history.

Related Historical Site: Sandy Hook Lighthouse

Sources: National Archives, Revolutionary War Veterans' Pension Application, Solomon Ketchum of NY, www.fold3.com/image/#25013139; National Archives, Revolutionary War Veterans' Pension Application, Daniel Hendrickson of NJ, www.fold3.com/image/#23340856; National Archives, Revolutionary War Veterans Pension Applications, New Jersey - Adam Stricker; National Archives, Revolutionary War Veterans' Pension Application, David Hall of NJ, www.fold3.com/image/#21865954; William Smith, Historical Memoirs of William Smith: From 26 August 1778 to 12 November 1783 (New York: Arno, 1971)  p 265; Howard H. Peckham, ed, The Toll of Independence: Engagements and Battle Casualties of the American Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974); Munn, David, “The Revolutionary War Casualties,” The Jersey Genealogical Record, vol. 55, (September 1982).