The Trial of Joseph Leonard

As discussed in prior articles, one of the primary reasons that Monmouth County’s government remained non-functioning long into 1777 was the theft of the county’s records. The Monmouth County Clerk, Kenneth Anderson, was denied access to the county’s records by Joseph Leonard, the county clerk under the pre-Revolutionary government. Then the records disappeared under mysterious circumstances during the Loyalist insurrections of December 1776. They were apparently never recovered.

Given this, it is no surprise that Joseph Leonard was one of the first people summoned by the newly-chartered New Jersey Council of Safety. On April 10, 1777, Leonard responded to the Council’s summons “setting forth that I am suspected of being dangerous to the present Government.” Leonard declined the summons:

I am extremely sorry that I cannot attend so punctually as I am very unwell with a rash & fever at present - I enclose a certificate signed by the principal officers of the militia that my character stands in a very different light [than Council has heard] and hope this will convince your Excellency & Council that I am not the man they represented.

Leonard also summarized a recent conversation between him and Kenneth Anderson:

He [Anderson] thinks it was his err that I am summoned, by refusing to give an order to Mr. Wardell [Henry Waddell] for the papers belonging to the Clerk's office, but if Mr. Anderson remembers, he never read me his commission or any order for me to deliver them. The next time he applied to me for them, he likewise informed me they [the records] were removed, which surprised me.

Leonard suggested that he had “no intention of secreting any part of the office.” He promised to support Anderson in locating missing records, and helping him in office.

The New Jersey Council of Safety gathered additional information on Leonard’s conduct and, doubting Leonard’s account of events, referred him to the New Jersey Supreme Court. It appears that Joseph Leonard was the first Monmouth County man arraigned before New Jersey’s Supreme Court. In the case, State v Joseph Leonard of Middletown, Leonard was charged with "Joining the Army of the King of Britain." The trial dates are confusing in surviving documents, but it appears that the arraignment occurred in 1777, while the majority of the trial was conducted in 1778.

The Supreme Court, presided over by Chief Justice Robert Morris of New Brunswick, heard several witnesses testify against Leonard including Lt. Col. Aucke Wikoff, Sheriff Nicholas Van Brunt, and Middletown Township (Tax) Collector James Wall. These men likely testified about Leonard’s role in the Loyalist insurrection. The Court also heard from Jonathan Stout (who would become a Loyalist and have his estate confiscated in 1779) and Joseph Murray (an ardent Revolutionary who would be murdered by Loyalists in 1780). Stout and Murray were men of modest standing and were likely fact witnesses who personally observed Leonard cooperating with the British during the Loyalist insurrection.

Leonard had witnesses testify in his favor. Most notable among them were two militia officers, Thomas Seabrook and Joseph Stillwell, and Samuel Bray, a strong supporter of the Revolution. Other witnesses in his favor included Edmund Harris, who was arrested in early 1777 and convicted of political crimes, and George Harrison, a small farmer who appears to have weathered the war as a neutral. Again, the exact contents of the witness testimony is unknown, but it is probable that Seabrook and Stillwell testified to Leonard’s good character and perhaps his recent good conduct. Harris and Harrison might have been witnesses to specific actions taken by Leonard (presumably in support of the new government).

However, what is most interesting about the list of men who testified in State v. Leonard is the men who did not testify. Kenneth Anderson, the county clerk who attempted to recover the county records from Leonard, and Henry Waddel, the militia officer accused of helping conceal the records, did not appear at the trial. Surviving documents do not explain why they did not testify.

Joseph Leonard was found guilty of cooperating with the British on December 10, 1778. Though the case was tried through the New Jersey Supreme Court, it was a jury trial. It was noted that the jury reached its decision immediately "without going into the jury box." Leonard’s sentence from Chief Justice Morris is not listed in surviving documents.

Parallel to the trial, Leonard faced additional troubles. After initially evading his summons, Leonard appeared before the New Jersey Council of Safety where he took a loyalty oath to the New Jersey government. He was released on bond on August 20, 1777. In Middletown’s 1778 tax ratables, Leonard’s estate was listed as 193 acres with eight head of livestock. Eight livestock is a surprisingly low number for a man of Leonard’s stature. This raises the strong possibility that many of Leonard’s livestock were taken from him by David Forman, who was given authority to impress livestock from disaffected farmers living near the shore in the spring of 1777.

If Leonard was jailed it was not for long, and he became disaffected again. In 1781 he was arrested and brought before the New Jersey Supreme Court a second time on November 1, charged with illegally trading with the British. Specifically, he was accused of having "a quantity of cyder with the intention, then and there, to falsely & traitorously convey the same cyder to the subjects and troops of the King of Great Britain." The outcome of this case is unknown.

As for Henry Waddle, who purportedly helped Leonard remove Monmouth County’s records, he eventually went before the New Jersey Council of Safety. He took an oath before the Council and was released. The lenient treatment from the Council of Safety did not spare Waddle from other difficulties during the war. He lost livestock (likely impressed away from him) and reportedly felt a need to flee to British-held New York for some time. Waddle became an Episcopal minister. After the war, he spent his final years leading the Christ Church in Shrewsbury.

After Joseph Leonard’s trial, the New Jersey Supreme would continue to hear cases about the political crimes of Monmouth Countians. The court’s purview confusingly overlapped with the purviews of the New Jersey Council of Safety and Monmouth County’s episodic Courts of Oyer and Terminer, the first of which was held in January 1778.

Caption: Robert Morris was the first Chief Justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court. The court’s purview included trying New Jersians, such as Monmouth County’s Joseph Leonard, for political crimes.

Related Historic Site: New Jersey State Museum

Sources: New Jersey State Archives, Bureau of Archives and History, Manuscript Collection, Manuscripts, box 1, #62; New Jersey State Archives, Supreme Court Records, #36642-36644; Middletown Township Tax Ratables, 1778, New Jersey State Archives; New Jersey State Archives, Supreme Court Records, #36642-36644; Henry Waddle to New Jersey Council of Safety, New Jersey State Archives, William Livingston Papers, reel 4, April 11, 1777; Henry Waddle to William Livingston, Carl Prince, Papers of William Livingston (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1987) vol. 1, pp. 302, 305; Michael Adelberg, Biographical File, at Monmouth County Historical Association Library, Freehold, New Jersey.