By June 1776, Americans were hotly debating whether or not to declare independence from Great Britain. While a consensus for independence was emerging in large parts of the Thirteen Colonies, there were regions where significant minorities, and even local majorities, opposed independence. Monmouth County was one of those regions.

In a time period before public polling, the best tool available for sensing public opinion were petitions to the state legislature (in June 1776, New Jersey’s legislature was the Provincial Congress). Different records of the Provincial Congress convey slightly different totals, but the most comprehensive source suggests that Monmouth Countians authored roughly half of New Jersey’s anti-independence petitions that were sent to the Provincial Congress. 

We can infer that the question of independence was well-settled in the counties that sent zero petitions. The large number of Monmouth County petitions suggests a deeply divided population in which individuals felt compelled to go on record with their opinions.  In total, it appears that Monmouth Countians authored seventeen petitions to the Provincial Congress over a five week period—eight favoring independence and nine opposed. The sentiment of these petitions by township is in the table below:

Unfortunately, the contents of most of these petitions are lost. The minutes of the Provincial Congress briefly summarizes the contents of the petitions. The brief petition summaries contain information on additional topics beyond independence. For example, a June 12 petition from Monmouth County opposing independence also asked "that none of the militia may be taken out of that county, as it lies so exposed to hostile invasion." This brief statement tells us that Monmouth Countians felt vulnerable to being on the front lines of the expected British invasion, with little to defend them but their own militia. For these petitioners, their vulnerability was a motivation to oppose independence. 

It appears that only one of the June 1776 anti-independence petitions still exists. In this petition, the petitioners acknowledged: "We daily experience and sincerely lament in common with our fellow inhabitants, the calamitous consequences of the present unhappy controversies with Great Britain.” However, the petitioners suggested that destruction from the coming war would outweigh any potential benefit of independence:

We trust, Gentlemen, that you will have the honor, the interest, safety, and welfare of your native country too much at heart to subject this once flourishing and happy province to the reproachful and calamitous consequences of an avowed separation... We are convinced that settlements of separation and independence must not only be highly impolitic, but may be of the most dangerous and destructive consequences. 

The 47 petition signers are an interesting mix. Several would become Loyalists—including John Taylor—who would serve as a county commissioner for administering loyalty oaths during the Loyalist insurrections of December 1776. Two signers, Morford Taylor and John Van Mater, would flee to the British in the coming weeks. One signer, Timothy Scoby, would become a Loyalist partisan who would be sentenced to death by a Monmouth County court later in the war. Other signers, such as Revaud Kearney, would weather the war at home, but remain disaffected from the new American government. And most interesting, two of the signers, Thomas Wainwright and Hendrick Vanderveer, would become leaders in the Revolutionary movement. In 1777, when the Monmouth militia was re-organized and purged of its Loyalist-leaning officers, they would become a captain and lieutenant respectively. 

The Monmouth Countians who were most vocal in composing and gathering signatures for the anti-independence petitions eventually paid a price for doing so. When New Jersey’s Provincial Congress adopted a new constitution free of British control on July 2 and the Continental Congress declared independence on July 4, these men were now effectively enemies of their country.  John Wardell of Shrewsbury gathered signatures for one petition. The former judge of the courts would be arrested in November 1776, appointed a commissioner for administering British loyalty oaths during the Loyalist insurrection of December, and then arrested again in 1777.   

The case of William Taylor, as summarized in his postwar Loyalist Compensation Application, provides an even better example of the fate of the men who led anti-independence petitions. Taylor was the son of John Taylor of Middletown, one of the county’s wealthiest men, and the county sheriff through the 1760s. Under Royal Governor William Franklin, William Taylor was the Surrogate of the Monmouth County Courts, a patronage position from which he drew a salary and prestige. As the votes for independence drew closer, Taylor "prevailed upon a great majority of the inhabitants of the Country to sign a counter petition [against independence] and William Taylor, himself, delivered them to a member of Congress." Shortly after the Declaration of Independence, Taylor was confronted and summoned to sign a Loyalty oath, which he refused to do. 

Taylor would lay low in Middletown for the next few months where he quietly organized a Loyalist association and waited for the right opportunity to support the British Army. His association was broken up in November and Taylor had to flee to the British at Sandy Hook ahead of a party of Monmouth County Continentals led by David Forman. Many of Taylor’s followers were captured and ultimately jailed in far-off Frederick, Maryland. Taylor became an officeholder in Royal Governor William Franklin’s government-in-exile in British-held New York City. He was captured in May 1778. Taylor moved to England at war’s end.

Related Historic Site: National Archives (Washington, DC)

Sources: Jones, E. Alfred. The Loyalists of New Jersey, (Newark, N. J. Historical Society, 1927) p 215. Gregory Palmer, Biographical Sketches of Loyalists of the American Revolution (Westport, Conn. and London, 1984), p 851; Minutes of the Provincial Congress and the Council of Safety of the State of New Jersey 1775-1776 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009) pp. 470-4; Franklin Ellis, The History of Monmouth County (R.T. Peck: Philadelphia, 1885), p135-8; Larry Gerlach, Prologue to Independence: New Jersey in the Coming of the American Revolution (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1976) p 335; Minutes of the Provincial Congress and the Council of Safety of the State of New Jersey 1775-1776 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009) p 451; Peter Force, American Archives: Consisting of a Collection of Authentick Records, State Papers, Debates, and Letters and Other Notices of Publick Affairs (Washington, DC: U.S. Congress Clerk's Office, 1853), 5th Series, vol. 6, p 1618; Monmouth County Historical Association, Articles File: "Local Facts about the American Revolution Made Public"; Jones, E. Alfred. The Loyalists of New Jersey, (Newark, N. J. Historical Society, 1927) p 241. Gregory Palmer, Biographical Sketches of Loyalists of the American Revolution (Westport, Conn. and London, 1984), p 906. Rutgers University Special Collections, Great Britain Public Record Office, Loyalist Compensation Claims, D96, AO 13/112, reel 12.