Stories of New Jersey Part 10

This vessel, which was called the "Blue Mountain Valley," had met with rough weather, and, having been badly damaged, was lying off Sandy Hook, waiting for a.s.sistance from two British men-of-war then in New York Harbor.

But Lord Stirling, who was stationed not far from the coast, and to whom the situation of the vessel became known, determined that, if possible, he would get to this valuable storeship before the enemy's men-of-war could reach her. So, with a number of the regular soldiers under his command, and some volunteers from the neighborhood, he put out to sea in some small craft, one of them a pilot boat. The English vessel had for her defense six guns, and was what is called an armed transport, but Stirling's men carried only ordinary muskets. However, they boldly attacked the vessel, and bearing down upon her as if she had been a column of infantry, in spite of the cannon and guns of the crew, captured her.

As soon as this victory had been won, Lord Stirling had all sails set; and the "Blue Mountain Valley" waited no longer for the men-of-war to come to her a.s.sistance, but sailed away for Perth Amboy, which was in possession of the Americans. Here she was found to be a most valuable prize, although Lord Stirling was sorry, as he afterwards stated when he made his report to Congress, that her cargo was not arms, instead of coal and provisions.

Lord Stirling fought well in the battles of New Jersey. At Monmouth he especially distinguished himself by the way in which he managed the artillery which was under his command; and it is said that the enemy were amazed to find batteries so splendidly handled in the ranks of the Americans, who were not supposed by most British officers to be possessed of great military ability, although the erroneousness of this supposition was gradually impressed upon their minds as the war went on.

Our n.o.bleman, however, had given another proof of his ability to adapt himself to military circ.u.mstances. When Washington and his army were wintered at Morristown, there was an evident desire among the British commanders to attack him at that place, and there was constant danger of an advance from the forces about New York. Lord Stirling was with the troops under General Greene, defending the princ.i.p.al approaches to Morristown on the east, and he very often had fights and skirmishes with British detachments sent out to reconnoiter the country, or to break into the American lines.

At one time a very large force, led by Clinton, advanced towards Morristown; and this was believed to be a serious and determined attempt to attack Washington, whose army was in a pretty bad plight, and not at all prepared to fight large bodies of well-appointed troops. Lord Stirling, with the other officers of the regular army, aided by forces of militiamen greatly excited by atrocities which had been committed by the British troops in the neighborhood, made a determined stand in the region of the "Short Hills," and a battle was fought near Springfield. Although the American forces were not able to defeat the British, they so hara.s.sed them, placing themselves in all the pa.s.ses through which it was necessary to advance, that at last the Redcoats gave up the attempt to reach Morristown, and retired to Elizabeth.

Throughout the war, this gentleman with the grand house, the park, the deer, the splendid carriages, the butlers, and the hairdressers, fought as earnestly and as patriotically as if he had been a st.u.r.dy farmer who had left his cornfield for the battlefield, with an old blunderbuss over his shoulder. Not only was he a good soldier, but he was a trustworthy friend to the cause of the Colonies and to General Washington; and it is said that it was through his means that the conspiracy among some of the officers of the army against General Washington, of whom they were jealous, was discovered and broken up.

Officers of the army were frequently quartered at his house at Basking Ridge, where they found most delightful company; and in every way our American lord did what he could for the cause and the people who were defending it. His t.i.tle was generally recognized; and Washington, who was very particular in regard to matters of rank and social propriety, always called him "my lord." He was said to be a fine-looking man; in fact, he and Washington were of more imposing and dignified appearance than any other officers of the American army.

Of course, as he was a very notable person among the Continental officers, the British were very anxious to capture him. In 1781, when he was in command of the Northern Department at Albany, this design of the enemy came very near being carried out, but was frustrated by the faithful services of one of those good women who were continually turning up in colonial history. A servant girl in the family of a house near Albany, where Lord Stirling was staying, had been visiting her parents during the day, and had there heard a plot of the Tories of the neighborhood to capture Lord Stirling. Being of a patriotic disposition, she told her mistress of the plot as soon as she got home; and when in the night a large body of the enemy came to the house, they were met with a surprise.

Lord Stirling had not gone out of town without taking with him a guard of dragoons; and these men, instead of being quartered at a distance, as the Tories evidently supposed they would be, had all been brought into the house; and when the attack was made in the night, the bullets and pistol b.a.l.l.s which whizzed and whistled from that ordinarily peaceful mansion astonished the Tories, who fled.

But although Lord Stirling did so much for American independence, he did not live to enjoy the fruits of it, for he died in Albany, while still in command of the Northern Department. After his death, the estate at Basking Ridge was sold, and payment for it was made in Continental money, which afterwards became of almost no value; so that for this fine property, it might be said, his family received nothing but a pile of badly printed paper. The mansion and the deer park and the emblazoned carriages are gone and forgotten; but the brave soldier, who gave up all the pleasures of a lordly position for his country, will live in history.

MOLLY PITCHER.

At the battle of Monmouth, where Lord Stirling so distinguished himself for the management of the artillery, another person of an entirely different station in life, of different nationality, and even different s.e.x, played a very notable part in the working of the American cannon on that eventful day.

This was a young Irishwoman, wife of an artilleryman. She was of a different disposition from ordinary women, who are glad enough to hide themselves in places of safety, if there is any fighting going on in their neighborhood. Molly was born with the soul of a soldier, and, although she did not belong to the army, she much preferred going to war to staying at home and attending to domestic affairs. She was in the habit of following her husband on his various marches, and on the day of the Monmouth battle she was with him on the field.

The day was very hot. The rays of the sun came down with such force that many of the soldiers were taken sick and some died; and the constant discharges of musketry and artillery did not make the air any cooler. Molly devoted herself to keeping her husband as comfortable as possible, and she made frequent trips to a spring not far away to bring him water; and on this account he was one of the freshest and coolest artillerymen on the ground. In fact, there was no man belonging to the battery who was able to manage one of these great guns better than Pitcher.

Returning from one of her trips to the spring, Molly had almost reached the place where her husband was stationed, when a bullet from the enemy struck the poor man and stretched him dead, so that Molly had no sooner caught sight of her husband than she saw him fall. She ran to the gun, but scarcely had reached it before she heard one of the officers order the cannon to be wheeled back out of the way, saying that there was no one there who could serve it as it had been served.

Now Molly's eyes flashed fire. One might have thought that she would have been prostrated with grief at the loss of her husband, but, as we have said, she had within her the soul of a soldier. She had seen her husband, who was the same to her as a comrade, fall, and she was filled with an intense desire to avenge his death. She cried out to the officer not to send the gun away, but to let her serve it; and, scarcely waiting to hear what he would say, she sprang to the cannon, and began to load it and fire it. She had so often attended her husband, and even helped him in his work, that she knew all about this sort of thing, and her gun was managed well and rapidly.

It might be supposed that it would be a very strange thing to see a woman on the battlefield firing a cannon; but even if the enemy had watched Molly with a spygla.s.s, they would not have noticed anything to excite their surprise. She wore an ordinary skirt, like other women of the time; but over this was an artilleryman's coat, and on her head was a c.o.c.ked hat with some jaunty feathers stuck in it, so that she looked almost as much like a man as the rest of the soldiers of the battery.

During the rest of the battle, Molly bravely served her gun; and if she did as much execution in the ranks of the Redcoats as she wanted to do, the loss in the regiments in front of her must have been very great. Of course, all the men in the battery knew Molly Pitcher, and they watched her with the greatest interest and admiration. She would not allow any one to take her place, but kept on loading and firing until the work of the day was done. Then the officers and men crowded about her with congratulations and praise.

The next day General Greene went to Molly,-whom he found in very much the condition in which she had left the battlefield, stained with dirt and powder, with her fine feathers gone and her c.o.c.ked hat dilapidated,-and conducted her, just as she was, to General Washington. When the commander in chief heard what she had done, he gave her warm words of praise. He determined to bestow upon her a substantial reward; for any one who was brave enough and able enough to step in and fill an important place, as Molly had filled her husband's place, certainly deserved a reward. It was not according to the rules of war to give a commission to a woman; but, as Molly had acted the part of a man, Washington considered it right to pay her for her services as if she had been a man. He therefore gave her the commission of a sergeant, and recommended that her name be placed on the list of half-pay officers for life.

Every one in the army soon came to hear of the exploit of Molly Pitcher, and it was not long before she was called Captain Molly. The officers of the French regiment on the American side were particularly pleased with this act of heroism in a woman, and invited Molly to review their troops; and as she walked down the long line of soldiers, nearly every man put a piece of money in the c.o.c.ked hat which she held in her hand.

This was the last battlefield on which Molly Pitcher appeared, but it had not been her first. Not long before, she had been with her husband in Fort Clinton when it was attacked by a very large force of the British. After a vigorous defense, the Americans found that it was impossible to defend the fort, and a retreat was ordered. As the soldiers were rushing out of the rear of the fort, Molly's husband turned away from his gun, threw down his match,-a piece of rope soaked in combustible substances, and slowly burning at one end, which was used in those days for discharging cannon,-and ran for his life. Molly prepared to follow him; but as she saw the glowing match on the ground, and knew that her husband's gun was loaded, she could not resist the desire to take one more crack at the enemy. So she stopped for an instant, picked up the match, touched off the gun, and dashed away after her husband. The cannon which then blazed out in the face of the advancing British was the last gun which the Americans fired in Fort Clinton.

Molly did not meet with the reward which was accorded so many other Jersey women who were of benefit to their State and country. She died not long after the close of the war; and if she had known that she was to be famous as one of the heroes of the Revolution, there is no doubt that she would have hoped that people would be careful to remember that it was a man's service that she did to the country, and not a woman's.

But Captain Molly was not the only Jersey woman who was willing to act a man's part in the War for Independence. Among those of whom there is historical mention was Mrs. Jinnie Waglum, who lived near Trenton. At the time when Washington was arranging to march upon Princeton, she was visiting her friend, whose husband was the landlord of The True American Inn, just out of Trenton; and this tavern was Washington's headquarters at the time. In this way Mrs. Jinnie heard of the intended advance; and she also heard that there was no one in the American forces who knew the country well enough to conduct the army from Trenton to Princeton by any route except the highways, on which the advance would be observed by the enemy.

She therefore sent word to Washington that she would guide the army if he wished, and that there was no one who knew the country better than she did. Washington was a man who had sense enough to avail himself of good service whenever it was offered; and when he had made inquiries about Mrs. Waglum, he was perfectly willing to put his army under her guidance, and very glad indeed that she had offered her services.

When a woman acts the part of a man, it is not surprising that she likes to look like a man; so Mrs. Jinnie put on a soldier's coat and a soldier's hat, and, mounting a horse, she headed the Continental army, commanded by Washington. This was a proud position, but she was equal to it; and on she rode, with all the cavalry and the infantry and the artillery and the general and staff following behind her. She took them along by Sand Town and Quaker Bridge, by roads over which she had often traveled; and the American army reached Princeton in good time for the battle which took place next day.

THE MORRISTOWN GHOSTS.

In the early days of American history there was in New Jersey, as well as in New England and other parts of the country, a firm belief in the existence of witches and ghosts. Of course, there were people who knew enough not to put faith in supernatural apparitions and magical power; but there were so many who did believe in these things, that it was often unsafe, or at least unpleasant, to be an ugly old woman, or a young woman in not very good health, for it was believed that into such bodies the evil spirits delighted to enter.

Nearly all the older towns had their ghost stories, their witch stories, and their traditions of hidden treasure, guarded by spirits of persons who had been murdered, and buried with the gold in order that their spirits might act as a charm to frighten away anybody who should presume to dig in those spots. In Burlington were two great trees which were regarded with admiration and fear by many of the inhabitants. One was a large willow tree, which was called the Witches' Tree, around which these horrible spirits were supposed to dance on many a wild night. Another was the Pirates' Tree, a great walnut, under the roots of which many of the inhabitants firmly believed that the famous Blackbeard and his band had buried many pots of gold, silver, and precious stones; and these pots would have been dug up had it not been for the fear that the spirit of the savage pirate, who had been buried with the treasure, would have been the first thing to meet the eyes of the sacrilegious disturber of the pirate treasure vault.

There are other ghost stories of other places in New Jersey; but Morristown, some years after the close of the Revolution, took the lead of all the other Jersey towns as a scene of ghostly performances.

For years back many of the people had been convinced that an occasional witch had appeared among them, getting into the churns and preventing the b.u.t.ter from coming, breaking the legs of sheep in jumping over the fence, causing their horses to become suddenly mysteriously sick, and making themselves obnoxious in various ways. But it was not until the year 1788 that New Jersey ghosts determined to go regularly into business at this place.

Supernatural occurrences of this period attracted a great deal of attention, not only in the town itself, but in the surrounding country; and an account of what happened in Morristown during the time that the spirits were holding their visitations at that place is related in an old pamphlet published in 1792, written by an anonymous person who had no faith whatever in ghosts, but who had a firm belief in the efficacy of long words and complicated phraseology. We will take the story from this old pamphlet.

For a long time there had been a tradition that a vast treasure was buried on Schooley's Mountain, or, as it was then spelled, Schooler's Mountain, which was at that time a wild and desolate region more than twenty miles from Morristown. It is said that there were two gentlemen of the place who were particularly strong in their belief in this treasure, and they felt sure that all that was necessary in order to obtain it was to find some man who had knowledge of the habits and customs and requirements of the spirits in regard to treasures. Having their minds on this subject, it was not long before they heard of such a man. This was Mr. Ransford Rogers, a schoolmaster in Connecticut, who knew many things, and who pretended to know many more. He really did understand something about chemistry, was very ingenious and plausible, and had been frequently heard to say that he was not afraid of spirits, and was able to call them up, converse with them, and afterwards cause them to disappear. This was exactly the man needed by the two gentlemen of Morristown, and they went to Connecticut to see him.

When the business of the visitors was made known to Rogers, he was delighted, for here was an opportunity to get into a good business, which would probably be infinitely more pleasant than teaching. So he gave up his school and came to Morristown, being under contract to the two gentlemen to do what he could to induce the spirits to reveal the place of the concealed treasure in Schooley's Mountain. But as it would not do for a stranger to come into the town and hang out a sign, stating that he was a spirit raiser, it was necessary for Rogers to pretend that he had come on other business, and so he took charge of a small school outside of the town, but gave the greater part of his time to investigating the minds of the people of Morristown, in order that he might find out what he could do in the way of duping them; and in the words of the old writer, he found that this would be a good place for the "marvelous exhibitions which he was able to facilitate with the greatest alacrity."

Of course, he was not at all willing to begin business with the support of only two persons, and the first thing he did was to gather together as many men as possible who really wished to be rich, and who were willing to be governed by him in regard to the way in which they should go about obtaining the vast h.o.a.rd buried far away in the mountain. After a time he succeeded in getting together as many as forty men, who all thoroughly believed in his honesty and in his ability to take them out to Schooley's Mountain, to call up the spirits who guarded the treasure, to induce them to turn it over to them, and then to vanish peaceably, without offering to molest or harm any one.

But it was a long time before Rogers was ready to lead his company on the great quest. There were many, many things that had to be done before they could start, and he soon found that he was not able to work out his great scheme alone; so he went back to Connecticut and got another schoolmaster, to whom he divulged his secret, and brought him to Morristown, and the two together went into the spirit business with great energy and enterprise. Night after night the company of treasure seekers met together, sometimes in a dark room, and sometimes out in the wild, lonely fields, close to black forests, and out of sight and hearing of human abodes.

Rogers was a chemist; and he frequently went out to one of these lonely meeting places in the afternoon and prepared a mine, which he exploded during the midnight meetings, and thus created a great wonder and terror among his followers. When they were indoors, there would be knockings and strange voices heard coming through the cracks; these voices proceeding from the other schoolmaster, who covered his mouth with what the writer of the pamphlet calls "a superficial machine," probably a bit of tin with a hole in it, which so disguised his voice that it was not recognized.

When they were out of doors in the black night, they would sometimes see a ghost flit about under the trees at the edge of the woods; and the second schoolmaster, well wrapped up in a sheet, seems to have made as good a ghost as could have been found anywhere. There were many supernatural performances, and among them was a great act, in which each one of the members of the company lay flat on his face in the field with his eyes shut, holding in one outstretched hand a sheet of paper. This was done in the hope that the spirits would write their instructions on the paper. Mr. Rogers knelt down with the others and held his paper; but it was not a blank sheet like the others. When this performance was over, all the papers were shaken together, and then they were drawn out one by one; and judge of the surprise and awe of all present, when one of them would contain some writing,-generally in a beautiful hand, such as could only be expected from a supernatural being (or a schoolmaster),-which would be found to be instructions as to what must be done.

The most important of these directions ordered that before any march could be made toward Schooley's Mountain, or any definite directions given in regard to the whereabouts of the treasure, each member should pay to the spirits, through Mr. Rogers, who would kindly act as agent, the sum of twelve pounds. And, moreover, this must not be paid in the paper money then current in New Jersey, which was called "loan money", and which would not pa.s.s outside of the State, but in gold or silver. When every member had paid in his twelve pounds, then the party would be led to the place of the treasure.

When they found out what they had to do, each man went to work to try, if possible, to raise the twelve pounds; but Rogers soon saw that it would be impossible for some of them to do this, as specie money was so hard to get, and he reduced the sum, in some cases, to six or four pounds. He was a good business manager, and would not try to get out of a man more than that man could pay.

Not one of the people engaged in this affair had the slightest idea that Rogers was deceiving them. It is not likely that any of them were people of much culture or means; and it is said that some of them went so far as to sell their cattle, and mortgage their farms, in order to get gold or silver to pay to the good schoolmaster who was generously acting as a mutual friend to both parties. But what were these sacrifices compared to the treasure they would obtain when at last they should be permitted to dig up the buried h.o.a.rd on Schooley's Mountain!

It was now winter, and of course they could not start on the expedition in bad weather; but meeting after meeting was held, and it was at last definitely promised that the expedition should go forth from Morristown early in May. On the first of that month, they all gathered at midnight in the lonely field, and there was a terrible scene. There were more fireworks and explosions than usual, and one of the spirits appeared at the edge of the wood greatly excited, stamping his feet, and rushing about under the trees; and when Rogers went to see what was the matter,-for of course none of the others would dare to speak to a spirit,-he found that the supernatural beings with whom they had so long been in communication, and who were now scattered about in all parts of the woods, were very angry and incensed because they had become aware that some of the party were unfaithful, and had divulged the secrets which had been made known to them. They were so thoroughly indignant, in fact, that they refused to go on with the affair for a time, and announced that the expedition to Schooley's Mountain would be postponed until they were positively certain that every man who was to go there was the sort of man who would never let anybody into the awful, soul-dazzling secret which would be divulged. So they must all go home, and wait until this important matter could be satisfactorily arranged.

Strange to say, they all did go home, and waited, and not one of them suspected Rogers.

The schoolmaster had obtained a good deal of money, but he had not enough. So, in less than a month, he started another company, this time a small one, and began to go through his performances with them. But he soon found he could not make much money out of five men, and he began to get a little braver, and thought he would try what he could do with the better cla.s.s of people in Morristown; and, having discovered that a very good ghost could be called up by means of a white sheet and a "superficial machine", he dressed himself up one night, and made a supernatural call upon a gentleman in good standing in the church. When he had appeared at the bedside of this good man, he told him all about the treasure of Schooley's Mountain, and, if he wanted some of it, how he might obtain it.

The gentleman, having never seen a ghost, supposed, of course, that this was an authorized apparition, and became greatly interested in what was told him. The next day, according to directions, he went around among his friends in the church, and soon formed a considerable company, who all believed, that, if they did what they were told to do, they could go to Schooley's Mountain and become immensely wealthy.

They did a great many things that they were told to do: they met in dark rooms, as the other party had met; they went out into a lonely field at midnight; they held out papers to be written on; and, more than that, they conducted their meetings with prayer and other solemnities. And they all promised to pay twelve pounds in gold as an earnest of their good faith in the spirits, and to deliver the money to that great miracle worker, Mr. Rogers, who would remit it to the spirits.

The schoolmaster found it necessary to be more mystical and weird in his dealings with this second party than with the first. He did a great many strange things which savored of magic and alchemy. Among other things, he got some fine bone dust, which he a.s.sured his followers was the dust of the bodies of the spirits who were to lead them to the treasure; and a little of this, wrapped up in a paper, he gave to each one of them, which they were to keep secret, and preserve as a magical charm.