The Disaffection of Rhoda Pew and Murder of James Pew

Antipathy toward Loyalist refugees was raised to a higher level in fall 1777. Monmouth Countians were killed and wounded in combat a month earlier at the Battle of Germantown and, while hundreds of Monmouth militia were there, several Monmouth militiamen were captured and killed in a clash with Loyalists near Shrewsbury. Dozens of Monmouth militiamen captured at the Battle of Navesink remained in prison a half year after their capture. Along the shore, illegal trade flourished between Monmouth’s disaffected and Loyalists on Sandy Hook.

James Pew was a boatman who lived on a midsized farm along the Raritan Bayshore. At some point in 1777, he went over to Sandy Hook and became one of the so-called “London Traders”—disaffected Monmouth Countians who acted as middlemen in the illegal trade between Monmouth County and British commissary officers on Sandy Hook and Staten Island. On November 17, Rhoda Pew, his wife, was indicted by the New Jersey Supreme Court for “voluntarily and unlawfully boarding a sloop of war belonging to the enemy when said sloop was lying off of Sandy Hook." She allegedly spent six days there, likely visiting with her husband.

Rhoda Pew was fined and remained at home in Middletown, but her and husband’s Loyalism was now well understood. She may have requested permission to join him behind British lines. On May 29, 1778, Colonel Asher Holmes was directed by the New Jersey Council of Safety to “send the following women to their husbands in the enemy's lines." Rhoda Pew was one of the four women listed.

The Murder of James Pew

James Pew continued to trade illegally along the Raritan Bayshore where he, according to his wife, “had belonged to one of his Majesty's vessels in the Quarter Master's Department.” On one of his trips, he took some extra time to visit with family in Middletown Township. He was taken prisoner by “a party of rebels.” In 1782, Rhoda Pew wrote about her husband’s fate after he was captured:

[He] was carried to Freehold and put into gaol, where he was kept confined for five days, and then put to death by the sentry, who discharged his musket through the wicket hole [in the cell door], and shot the prisoner through the body while he was sitting on the bench before the fire; he then took another musket, and shot him a second time through the body, the first bullet lodged in the chimney back and the second went into the floor.

When Rhoda Pew learned that her husband was captured, she risked imprisonment by returning to Monmouth County. She went to Freehold “to carry her husband some cloathes.” There, “she found him murdered as described above and his corpse lying on the floor in prison... this deponent further saith that the rebels never punished the murderer."

In a second statement, Rhoda Pew further testified that the murder occurred on November 10, 1778. She was specific about the murderer:

He was Murdered by one James Tilley who was Sentry over the deceased at the time; the Coroner's Inquest brought him (Tilley) in guilty of Willful Murder; that he was confined in consequence thereof, but was released within three or four days afterwards, and is now at large.

Antiquarian accounts further suggest that James Pew was taken while visiting family on the Middletown shore, and that Tilley claimed Pew was trying to escape when he was shot in his prison cell—which seems improbable. An antiquarian source disagrees with Rhoda Pew’s account with respect to the timing of James Pew’s murder—suggesting the murder occurred in fall 1779. There is no evidence to suggest that James Pew was a violent man and we do not know what motivated Tilley to shoot him twice at close range.

James Tilley’s fate is unknown, but there is no evidence of his trial in surviving Monmouth County court records. Similarly, there is no record of Tilley serving in the militia or paying taxes. This suggests that Tilley, to avoid retribution from Loyalists, left Monmouth County shortly after the murder. Or perhaps he changed his name and weathered the rest of the war quietly under an alias.

Disposing of the Pew Family Estate

The disposition of James Pew’s estate after his death became complicated. In November 1779, the New Jersey Assembly received a petition from Wiliam Pew “and others.” The petition argued that:

That the last will & testament of James Pew, deceased, was burned by the enemy in the house of Thomas Henderson, Surrogate for the County, in their passage through this State in the month of June 1778 -- and praying that an authenticated copy of the will, produced to the House, may be confirmed as the last will & testament of James Pew, deceased. Ordered, that the petitioners appear at the next session and present their case, must also advertise their petition, to allow rival heirs the opportunity to present their cases.

A new will was presented to the Assembly on November 26. Presumably, it transferred James Pew’s estate to William Pew. The Assembly passed "An Act to Confirm a Copy of the Last Will and Testament of James Pew, late of the Township of Middletown in the County of Monmouth" in October 1780. William Pew chose not to hold onto the estate. The 300-acre estate was advertised for sale in the New Jersey Gazette in January 1782: “The plantation lies very pleasantly situated by the side of the salt water... a good house and barn.” The vulnerability of the estate to British/Loyalist attack was referenced, “it will be very valuable when the British leave New York.”

Surviving documents do not state why James Pew’s estate was not seized and sold with other Loyalist estates. Perhaps William Pew, who was apparently a good Whig, was seen as a worthy inheritor of the family’s property. Throughout the estate confiscation process in Monmouth County, exceptions to the normal rules were made for the kin of Loyalists.

In April 1782, the hanging of Captain Joshua Huddy led to the court martial trial of Richard Lippincott, the Shrewsbury Loyalist who led the hanging party. Rhoda Pew’s account of her husband’s murder was memorialized on June 9, 1782, as part of that trial (in order to document the abuses committed against Monmouth Loyalists). If not for this trial, James Pew’s murder would have went undocumented and would be forever lost to history.

As for Rhoda Pew, as a Loyalist woman behind British lines, she received nothing from her husband’s estate. She likely lived very modestly in New York as a widow without family wealth to draw down. She was illiterate; she signed the deposition of her husband’s murder with an “X.”

In April 1783, Rhoda Pew left New York for Canada with three children.

Caption: This sketch idealizes the life of Loyalist women behind British lines. Rhoda Pew of Middletown was arrested for visiting her Loyalist husband, exiled to New York, and then widowed after his murder.

Related Historic Site: Museum of the City of New York

Sources: New Jersey State Archives, Supreme Court Records, #37510; National Archives, revolutionary War veterans Pension Applications, New Jersey - James Pew; Minutes of the Provincial Congress and the Council of Safety of the State of New Jersey 1775-1776 (Ithaca: Cornell University Library, 2009) p 243; Testimony of Rhoda Pew, Library of Congress, Richard Lippincott Court Martial, reel 1, #158-65; Transcript of the Court Martial of Richard Lippincott, http://personal.nbnet.nb.ca/halew/Lippincott.html; Edwin Salter, Old Times in Old Monmouth (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1970) p 38-9; The Library Company, New Jersey Votes of the Assembly, November 25, 1779, p 47; The Library Company, New Jersey Votes of the Assembly, September 26, 1780, p 273; The Acts of the Council and General Assembly of the State of New Jersey (Isaac Collins: Trenton, 1784) p151 Archives of the State of New Jersey, Extracts from American Newspapers Relating to New Jersey (Paterson, NJ: Call Printing, 1903) vol. 5, p 370; David Bell, American Loyalists to New Brunswick: Passenger Lists (Formac, 2015).