New Jersey

Eat, Drink, Be Merry and Join the Revolution New Jersey was the "Crossroads of the American Revolution," and its colonial taverns were havens for Patriots and Loyalists alike to debate the political question of independence and even plan much of the Revolution itself. Taverns were the social and political centers of colonial society and the Garden State had a myriad of establishments that played prominent roles in the founding of the nation. Taverns became recruitment stations for colonial militias and provided a meeting place for local committees of safety. George Washington used them as headquarters and safe houses for his spies and local troops. Discover the intoxicating history of the driving force in the fight for freedom, the colonial tavern in New Jersey.

A Fabulous Fable of the Supernatural Kind

The saga of the Morristown ghost has been told around campfires and dinner tables in Morris County for generations. Local legend claimed British Loyalists secretly buried stolen Patriot treasure on Schooley Mountain as they fled the oncoming forces of George Washington during the Revolutionary War. Years later in 1788, a former school teacher from Connecticut, Ransford Rodgers, convinced local prominent Morristown families that a ghost was protecting the true location of the treasure and he alone could exercise it. Little did the victims know, Rodgers was perpetuating an elaborate hoax and eventually extorted large sums of money from the embarrassed local elite. The tale has been recounted in various sensational pamphlets and publications ever since, leaving behind a mystery of what is true or myth.

Author Peter Zablocki separates fact from fiction in the story of the great Morristown ghost hoax.

During the American Revolution, Great Britain hired thirty thousand German troops to fight rebellious colonists. Five thousand of those troops marched across New Jersey from Princeton and Trenton all the way to the northern tip of Sussex County. Though popular legend would cast them as cold and vicious mercenaries, many were prisoners of war with little choice. Stories of their exploits still circulate in New Jersey, from the headless Hessian of the Morristown Swamp to the mysterious Ramapo Mountain people. Join author Pete Lubrecht as he navigates the myth of Hessian troops in New Jersey to separate fiction from fact.

The Delaware Bay area was a pivotal battleground during the Revolutionary War. Follow along with this history of the Cape May Navy and its part in the War for Independence.

The Delaware Bay during the Revolutionary War was vital for trade and home to a host of armed conflicts between British vessels and American privateers. Cape May County captains in their light, fast vessels captured dozens of British merchant ships off the Atlantic coast. At the Battle of Delaware Bay, Lieutenant Joshua Barney aboard the Hyder Ally overcame massive odds and defeated the British warship General Monk. Colonel Elijah Hand, local hero of the skirmish at Quinton's Bridge, took his military talents to the seas, where he dueled with Tory privateers. Still in his twenties, Yelverton Taylor captured the Triton with hundreds of Hessian soldiers on board. Authors James P. Hand and Daniel P. Stites chart the exciting history of the Cape May Navy in the War for Independence.