The Hanging of Stephen Edwards

By September 1777, Monmouth County’s Revolutionaries and Loyalists had been in conflict for more than a year. The civility of the early months—in which there were arrests and property confiscations, but no violence—gave way to individualized acts of intimidation and violence at the end of 1776. Armed clashes began in 1777, resulting in combat deaths, long term imprisonments in horrible jails, and scattered acts of gratuitous violence, looting, and arson. But entering September, Monmouth County’s local war had not climaxed to the ultimate act of government-endorsed violence—no Monmouth Countian had been executed. That would change with the capture of Stephen Edwards.

The Capture of Stephen Edwards

Stephen Edwards was from a middling family that lived near Eatontown in Shrewsbury Township. There is no documentary evidence about his early life and Loyalism. However, by 1777, he was likely part of George Taylor’s Loyalist militia. He was living behind British lines and likely remained in contact with disaffected Monmouth Countians. He returned to Monmouth County during some of Taylor’s incursions.

According to a number of local and antiquarian accounts, in September, Taylor sent Edwards into Monmouth County to distribute British recruiting materials. Edwards was staying at his parents’ house when Captain Jonathan Forman arrived with an armed party. Edwards dressed in a nightgown and feigned being an infirmed woman. Forman searched the house and found a soldier’s boots containing an order signed by Taylor—ending the ruse.

Jonathan Forman brought Edwards to Freehold where David Forman (a colonel in the Continental Army and general of the New Jersey militia) was raising men to march to Pennsylvania to support the Continental Army in the defense of Philadelphia.

The Hanging of Stephen Edwards

Using authority allegedly granted to him by George Washington, Forman convened some kind of impromptu tribunal that he chaired. Stephen Edwards was determined to be an enemy spy. It was well known that spies such as Nathan Hale of Connecticut had been hanged by the British. Edwards was sentenced to death and promptly hanged, presumably on October 15. Forman justified the hanging in a letter to Washington that same day:

One of my scouts fell in with & took a Tory refugee who had declared his attachment to the Crown early on in our dispute - on search the Gentleman, we found in his pocket a direction to make himself acquainted with the situation of our Army - I immediately ordered a court to call for his tryal [sic] - the fellow confessed to sd paper, and [said] that it was given him by Col. Taylor, the court sentenced him to be hung, which was executed today.

Forman’s authority to convene such a tribunal and impose a death sentence is doubtful, but he often exceeded his authority. If Edwards was acting under the orders of a British-commissioned officer, he should have been recognized as a prisoner of war and been imprisoned rather than hanged. Starting in 1778, Governor William Livingston would pardon about half of the men given death sentences in the Monmouth County courts. Forman’s quick hanging of Edwards denied the Governor of this opportunity.

Further, Forman reportedly refused to allow Edwards a last visit with his parents who had traveled to Freehold. At the time of the tribunal, Forman was in the process of raising men for dangerous duty with the Continental Army and a crowd was gathering in Freehold for the county’s annual election. Given these exceptional circumstances, it is probable that the Edwards hanging had a performative element to it. Public hangings of notorious Pine Robbers drew celebratory crowds to Freehold later in the war.

While many of the details of the Edwards capture and hanging offered above are from antiquarian sources, they are consistent with facts offered in original sources, including Forman’s own letter excerpted above. Another source is the testimony of William Corlies, a Shrewsbury Loyalist, who spoke about Edwards in 1782. He said:

Edwards was taken out of his bed at his own house and carried to Freehold; the following day he was brought to some kind of trial, and the day following executed. The offense alleged against him was said to be his having some papers [from George Taylor] found in his pocket.

Robert Lawrence, a squire whose daughter, Mary Leonard, ran afoul for Forman further corroborated Forman’s use of extra-legal tribunals: "David Forman do himself a court martial… without following the rules of either martial or common law."

Two Loyalist newspapers reported on the hanging of Edwards. The more accurate of the accounts was printed in the New York Gazette:

Stephen Edwards, an inhabitant of Shrewsbury… was in consequence of some form of private information, surprised and apprehended by a party of rebel light horse at Shrewsbury a few hours after he landed, going to visit his wife and children. He was with great exultation and triumph hurried up to the rebel headquarters at Freehold, where David Forman, by a kind of court martial, had him tried, condemned and executed in two days.

The report concluded: "It will shock the reader" that Edwards was “denied a final visit with his grief stricken family,” but he "behaved to the last moment with a coolness and a steadiness most heroic."

The New York Gazette & Weekly Mercury published a less accurate report of the hanging of Edwards:

We hear from Shrewsbury that a very young man, very inoffensive in his behavior except in being a friend to the Government, was last week hung up at his father's door, without ceremony, by one Forman, who calls himself of Major, for no other crime than attempting to bring off to this place a few cheeses to this town, where he had been forced to take up his abode; after he had hung for several hours, it was with the utmost difficulty that the relentless murderer could be prevailed upon to indulge his father to permit him to bury his body.

In November, the New York Gazette, reported on Forman’s removal as a general in the New Jersey militia and, incorrectly, suggested that the hanging of Stephen Edwards was at cause:

We are informed that General David Forman has been removed of his command as a General in the Rebel Army, in consequence, it is said, of a memorial preferred against him by the inhabitants of Monmouth County, New Jersey, which expressed their abhorrence for the monstrous and deliberate murder of Stephen Edwards of Shrewsbury. The wife of Mr. Forman has ever since the above atrocious act been in a state of distraction.

Stories about the hanging of Stephen Edwards, no doubt, reverberated within the Loyalist refugee community. The Edwards hanging was discussed several times in April 1782 during the court martial of Richard Lippincott (Monmouth Loyalist) for having hanged Captain Joshua Huddy (Monmouth Revolutionary). It was one of a dozen “Acts of Cruelty and Barbarity” enumerated by Loyalists to demonstrate the villainy of Monmouth’s Revolutionaries.

Further, Loyalists claimed that Captain Huddy played a direct role in killing Edwards. Josiah Parker, for example, testified "that in the year 1780, he took Joshua Huddy prisoner… Huddy did then confess that he had been concerned in hanging Stephen Edwards… he had fixed the rope around Edwards's neck." As much as any other early-war incident, the hanging of Stephen Edwards set the precedent for the kidnappings and murders that characterized the later-war in Monmouth County.

Caption: This sketch shows the hanging of British officer, John Andre, in New York in 1780. Stephen Edwards, the first Loyalist executed in Monmouth County, was hanged from a similar gallows in 1777.

Related Historic Site: Nathan Hale Homestead (Coventry, CT)

Sources: Franklin Ellis, The History of Monmouth County (R.T. Peck: Philadelphia, 1885), p205; Edwin Salter, History of Monmouth and Ocean Counties (Bayonne, NJ: E. Gardner and Sons, 1890) p 182-3; Edwin Salter, Old Times in Old Monmouth (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1970) p 6; United Empire Loyalist Association, Loyalist Trails 2017-11, March 12th, 2017 (https://uelac.ca/loyalist-trails/loyalist-trails-2017-11/#StephenEdwards); David Forman to George Washington, Library of Congress, George Washington Papers, Series 4, reel 44, October 10 - 16, 1777; Robert Lawrence, Memorial, New Jersey State Archives, Bureau of Archives and History, Manuscript Coll., State Library Manuscript Coll., #129; Library of Congress, Rivington's New York Gazette, reel 2906; Archives of the State of New Jersey, Extracts from American Newspapers Relating to New Jersey (Paterson, NJ: Call Printing, 1903) vol. 1, p 479; Library of Congress, Rivington's New York Gazette, reel 2906; Deposition, Josiah Parker, Great Britain, Public Record Office, Colonial Office, CO 5, v105, reel 8, #709.