By F. Lawrence Fleming
Allow me to tell you about Grandpa, who lived in an old house on a farm in the Cedar Grove neighborhood of Toms River, New Jersey. Grandpa and Grandma were not really my grandparents; they were just this elderly couple, friends of my parents, with whom I stayed from time to time while I was attending elementary school. I confess that I didn’t actually know what their surname was when I was a kid. Grandpa and Grandma was what they had told me to call them. (My parents must have mentioned the surname from time to time, but it seems like it went in one ear and out the other.) I’m telling you about Grandpa now because it was he who first got me interested in family history; he got me interested in my own family history, but also in other families’ family history.
That house in Cedar Grove, known locally as the Dave Marion House, was a very old house. Grandpa told me that it dated back to before the American Revolution, and by the look and feel of things inside and outside of that house, I had little reason to doubt him. The house had its own extensive library of old books, for example. Grandpa had me carefully go through all of these books, one by one, in order that I might find the oldest book in the library. I eventually found it; I remember that it was a book about the cultivation of flax that had been published in 1720—I remember because I’d had to ask Grandpa if he knew what flax was. I also found two books that were hollowed out. They looked like ordinary old books until you opened them up. Grandpa said that inside those two books was where jewels and gold coins had been hidden in Revolutionary times.
The original owner of the house had been a certain David Marion, who, Grandpa said, was a diehard Loyalist during the Revolution. All those old books in the sitting room had been his. David’s younger brother Francis, on the other hand, was a devoted Patriot; as a matter of fact, he was a very famous Patriot, the one who had earned himself the nickname “Swamp Fox.” Grandpa didn’t know much about the adventures of David Marion, but he knew all the more about the adventures of Francis Marion, the Swamp Fox, who I found to be a wonderful, swashbuckling character—the inventor of guerilla warfare, a great hero of the American Revolution, and a very worthy role model for an eight-year-old boy, although one that was very hard to live up to in the 1950s. I could hardly get my fill of stories about him. Grandpa had two old books about the Swamp Fox, so he knew all the stories. How fortunate I was to be staying in Francis Marion’s old family home in Toms River.
While staying at the Dave Marion House, I acquired another direct link to the days of yore in Toms River. The old Applegate cemetery was about a half-hour’s walk from the house. Grandpa took me there the first time, but afterwards I would go there on my own, meandering amongst the gravestones, trying to discern the weather-worn epitaphs and the dates of birth and death.
Grandpa explained to me that the Applegate family had acquired the Marion estate after the Revolution. It would seem that David Marion, extremely disappointed in the outcome of the war, had settled his affairs in New Jersey, had sold his house and farm, and had moved back to dear old England. One of the first things that Jacob Applegate did upon acquiring the Marion estate was to set aside a couple of acres of his land for a cemetery where the family could bury its dead. (Old Mr. Applegate was the first person to be buried in his own cemetery. He was born in 1723, and he had fought against the British during the Revolutionary War. Grandpa showed me Jacob Applegate’s grave.) Grandpa said that the Applegates had intermarried with the other founding families of Toms River, and so a stroll through the Applegate cemetery was like taking a walk in the village of Toms River in the years before the Revolutionary War. And so I swallowed this bait that Grandpa had proffered with hook, line, and sinker. On subsequent visits to the graveyard, I tried to memorize the family names other than Applegate that were chiseled into the tombstones. I still remember some of them to this day. Cook, Irons, Johnson, Wilbur, Wainwright, and Potter seem to have been the most memorable names. Let me tell you; I was inescapably hooked on history. I told Grandpa that I was thinking of writing a book about the Revolutionary War. “One day,” he said. “Maybe one day. Don’t be in a hurry.”
A couple of years ago, I was considering a trip to Toms River, and so I began to search the Internet looking for any information I could find concerning the Dave Marion House in Cedar Grove. I found nothing at all on the Internet. According to the Maps app at google.com, there is no such house in Cedar Grove. I called my sister and asked her about the house. She said that she believed the house had been demolished when the former Marion property was subdivided into dozens upon dozens of residential building lots. That wonderful house with all its antique inventory; and the fierce sandstone lions that guarded the entrance to the estate; the immaculately maintained front lawn with its sculpted cedar trees and its marble fountain that never spouted any water; the garden, and the apple orchard where my dog was buried—all of this had been erased from the face of the earth. I was appalled. How was it possible that such an undeniably historic house could be demolished, almost at the snap of the fingers, and with no notice of the event being taken in the local newspaper and no protests being registered with the relevant authorities of the township. I felt that someone should be made to pay for this dastardly deed, and so I began to prepare my case for the prosecution by brushing up on my knowledge of the American Revolution. I learned, however, that General Francis Marion, the Swamp Fox, did not have a brother named David. His older brothers were Benjamin, Isaac, Job, and Gabriel. These five boys were all born and raised in South Carolina. and none of them had ever been in New Jersey. Grandpa, that wonderful old rascal, had made up the story about the Loyalist David Marion and his Patriot brother Francis. I still think that it was a good story, but at long last I have realized that it wasn’t a true story.
There was, however, a historical person named David Marion who had owned the house and farm in Cedar Grove—yes, once upon a time, but not quite that long ago. David Marion Graves was a very successful burlesque performer, songwriter, and impresario from New York City who bought the old Applegate farm as a vacation residence in 1906. Dave Marion died in 1934, and he and his wife Agnes are buried in a cemetery in Toms River—so too are Grandpa and Grandma, by the way. (And no, the old Applegate farmhouse was probably not built as long ago as before the Revolutionary War, but certainly as long ago as before the Civil War. It really was a dastardly deed to tear it down.)
Upon learning about Dave and Agnes Marion, I realized that Grandpa must have had some personal connection to them. In the census of 1920, Grandpa, 20 years old at that time, is enumerated as having the occupation of farmworker; therefore, I consider it very likely that he had worked the farm for Mr. Marion, possibly having started this work as a teenager. (Grandpa had dropped out of school in the sixth grade.) This is all a rather bold assumption on my part; I have found no definitive proof that this is actually true, and I have tired of looking for the proof, but whatever the case may actually have been, I do know for a fact that Grandpa acquired ownership of the house and farm in 1935 from Clifford Graves, Dave Marion’s eldest son, who was then administrator of the David Marion Graves estate. How did Grandpa ever afford it? Maybe his English father helped him with the financing, or maybe his French-Canadian mother-in-law, who, in the 1950s, was still living in that part of the house that was nearest the apple orchard—an ancient and very mysterious lady, of whose presence in the house I was aware, but whom I never got to meet face-to-face. Of one thing I am sure, however: Grandpa had held the previous owner of the house in very high esteem. He told me that absolutely everything in and about the house was exactly the same in 1956 as it had been on the very day he took over the estate. I realize now that Grandpa, in his younger days, must have been the custodian on Dave Marion’s country estate. Why did he not tell me stories about David Marion Graves, who was just as interesting and inspiring a character as General Marion, the Swamp Fox?
I have done a considerable amount of research concerning Dave Marion. He was immensely popular as a comedian and a song-and-dance man on the Columbia burlesque circuit, from the late 1880s until the decline of higher-class burlesque performance in the 1920s, when cinema became all the rage instead. David Marion Graves was born in 1864, the son of David and Mary Graves of New York City. I can tell you that David Sr. was very much against his son’s choice of becoming an actor, a choice that David Jr. had apparently made at the tender age of sixteen. David Jr’s father and mother were fishmongers, and we may suppose that they wanted their son to be a fishmonger too. David Sr., however, lived long enough to see his son’s name in lights. Both of Dave Marion’s sons, Clifford and Harold Graves, followed their father into the theatrical profession. (Their stage names were Cliff and Harry Marion.) Dave Marion’s great-grandfather was Issachar Graves (1755-1800), a private in the Continental Army who fought at the Battles of Saratoga in 1777. His 3rd great-grandfather was the mariner Thomas Graves, who arrived in Salem, Massachusetts Bay Colony, aboard the George Bonaventure in 1629, but decided to return to England in 1652 in order to serve the newly-established Commonwealth of England. He was raised to the rank of rear admiral by Oliver Cromwell in 1653, and he was afterwards blown to smithereens at the helm of the HMS St Andrew during a naval battle with the Dutch off the coast of Holland at Scheveningen. I could tell you other stories about Dave Marion and his family, but this is not really the time or the place. Suffice it for me to add that Dave Marion was also very popular in Toms River, his adopted hometown, mostly, it would appear, because of his sincere concern for the effective preservation of local history. Around the time he first acquired the Applegate farm, he proposed the creation of a park in downtown Toms River (present-day Huddy Park) which would commemorate the local militia’s valiant but hopeless defense of Toms River during the infamous Loyalist attack on the 24th of March in 1782. David would appear to have quickly become a passionate local historian, even though he was essentially an outsider in Toms River. How had he known about the Battle of the Blockhouse? He was from New York City, for Pete’s sake.
David was also a passionate bibliophile. All those old books in the library? They had not been the books of David Marion, brother of the Swamp Fox; they had been the books of David Marion Graves, who was known to his many theatre-loving admirers as Snuffy the Cabman. I have this sneaking suspicion that old Snuffy bequeathed some of his enthusiasm for local history to the young man who actually worked the estate, who actually farmed the farm and gardened the gardens, the man whose wife kept the old house spick and span. It’s true; Grandpa did brazenly tell stories he must have known to be untrue. At other times he made bold assumptions about history that he couldn’t possibly have supported with the help of generally acknowledged historical facts. But I forgive him for these shortcomings. All he really wanted to do, I think, was to color in some of the dazzling blank spaces in history. This is not always possible to do without overstepping the bounds of academic propriety. Believe me; as a protégé of Grandpa, and thereby, perhaps, even of Snuffy—at least, when it comes to matters of history—I am very aware of the ever-present danger of simply going too far in one’s attempts to entertain others with good, well-rounded stories of bygone days.
The danger of getting carried away is particularly acute as I now prepare to give you an account of some of the people who originally populated the village of Toms River and the township of Dover. There are so many blank spaces that beckon to be filled in, so many graves that lack a proper memorial. What we know, or rather, what we think we know concerning these early citizens of Toms River and Dover Township comes almost entirely from the writings of Edwin Salter (1824-1888). Mr. Salter was a very conscientious amateur historian who always endeavored to support the assumptions he made concerning history with the proper documentation. Nevertheless, practically every local informant he consulted with concerning the history of Toms River had been a grandchild of one of these original citizens.
“Of course I know what my grandfather did during the war,” one very old informant named Mr. Robbins said in 1870. “He was a private in the Monmouth County militia. He was shot in the face by a Refugee scoundrel back in ‘82.”
“Can you prove to me that he really took part in the Battle of the Toms River Blockhouse, Mr. Robbins?” Mr. Salter asked with some apprehension. “I mean, do you still have his war pension papers, perhaps?”.
“I don’t have to prove anything!” the old man retorted, furrowing his brow. “When I was a boy, my grandfather himself told me that he was there, and he had a big scar on his face to prove it. I had no reason to doubt him, nor should you.”
(Here is perhaps the right opportunity in which to pay tribute to the [professional] historian Michael Adelberg’s project, Celebrating the 250th Anniversary of the American Revolution in Monmouth County, sponsored by the Monmouth County Historical Association at https://www.monmouthhistory.org/. In my opinion, this is historical narration at its best, and although all the primary and secondary sources that support the narrative are painstakingly accounted for, it’s still not boring. How does he do it? As for me, my biggest wish is to succeed in entertaining others. I love history, but I am not a professional historian; I am not a scientist. Therefore, my adherence to academic protocol is not always one hundred percent.)
A settlement on the Toms River is first mentioned by name in an advertisement that was published in the New Jersey Gazette in 1779: “200 acres of pine land, well timbered, about two miles below Toms River Bridge.” During the years immediately following the Revolution, Toms River Bridge was a village that was referred to in numerous land surveys, for example, in June of 1787: ”42.88 acres. South of the Raritan River; On the North side of Toms River; Toms River Bridge; Dover Township; Monmouth County. Two Tracts: 30 acres; and 12.88 acres.” According to the Dover Town Book 1783-1861, however, a resolution was made at the town meeting of 3 April 1799 that the village of Toms River Bridge would thenceforth be known as the village of Washington.
In April of 1799, George Washington was alive and, to all appearances, relatively healthy—at least, he seemed healthy right up to his rather sudden death from epiglottitis complicated by excessive bloodletting in December of that year. He had retired from the office of presidency in March of 1797 and was living the quiet life of a wealthy landowner in Virginia. Your guess is as good as mine as to what may have prompted this sudden change of the village name from Toms River Bridge to Washington. It’s true; a placename such as Toms River Bridge does not roll comfortably off the tongue unless it is actually the name of a bridge, but then, neither does the placename of a village unimaginatively called Washington. (I would have suggested a name like “Luker’s Ferry,” in honor of the man who, in effect, founded the village when he built a house on the bank of the south branch of the Toms River in 1747 and started a ferry service across the river, but then, I wasn’t around to do any suggesting in those days.) Fortunately, the resolution of 1799 was never actually enforced. The village continued to be referred to in land surveys as Toms River Bridge as late as in 1830, by which time, however, the village seems to have been referred to colloquially as simply “Toms River,” which I find does roll nicely off the tongue, but probably due to the sheer force of habit.
Where exactly along the river was the bridge of Toms River Bridge situated, and when was it first constructed? A probable site for this bridge, or rather, these two bridges, can be made evident by means of a satellite map of downtown Toms River. The likely site of these bridges is on South Main Street, at the western end of Huddy Park, between the intersection at Water Street and the intersection at Herflicker Boulevard:
A quick look at the NJDEP map of historically filled areas in Toms River shows the amount of change to the riverbed that has been caused by infill at the mouth of the Toms River:
The exact historical location of the two bridges is made more evident on the A. P. Irons 1878 map of Toms River:
The original log bridge that spanned the branch of the river at the northern end of Shreve’s Island (later Gowdy’s Island, nowadays Huddy Park Island), which is called Schenck’s Bridge in 18th-century documents, was constructed in about 1750 at the instigation of Abraham Schenck (1720-1790) of Bushwick, Long Island. Mr. Schenck subsequently had a gristmill built, probably just a short distance downstream from this bridge, a mill which he shortly afterwards sold to Daniel Randolph of Allentown, New Jersey. This simple beam bridge would have had a span of about forty feet. It has, of course, been rebuilt many times since 1750.
The eponymous Toms River Bridge at the southern end of the island was constructed at some point in time between 1761 and 1775. Almost certainly a single-span beam bridge, this bridge would have had an impressive span of over seventy feet. In about 1840, the Toms River Bridge gave way under the weight of a heavy coal wagon and was replaced with a covered lattice-truss bridge, the only such bridge ever built in Monmouth/Ocean County. In the 1870s, the town’s unique and much-admired wooden bridge was replaced—under considerable protest from the villagers—with an iron girder bridge that was detested as much as the former bridge had been admired. The nondescript present-day concrete bridge was built in 1913.
In around 1745, a man named Daniel Luker (b. ca. 1700) acquired a large tract of pineland along Wrangle Brook, a tributary of the Toms River, either from Thomas Penn (1702-1775) or Richard Penn (1706-1771), sons of William Penn (1644-1718), the founder of the Province of Pennsylvania. Anyone who has ever been to the Pine Barrens of New Jersey will understand at once that farming and animal husbandry were not at all on Daniel Luker’s mind when he made this acquisition. Arable lands lay to the north and the south of the Toms River estuary. The Toms River itself, however, along with all its tributaries, rises in the vast pinelands to the west of the estuary, which in the 17th and 18th centuries were almost entirely mosquito- and leech-infested cedar swamp—not exactly the best place for homesteading. What Mr. Luker was actually interested in was to exploit the only valuable resource in the pinelands of Monmouth County that people were aware of in those early days, namely, Chamaecyparis thyoides, or the Atlantic white cedar.
The demand in colonial America for building material cut from white cedar was almost insatiable. The clapboard siding on houses was made from cedar. Roofing shakes were split from short logs of cedar. Beams and rafters were hewn from white cedar. Floorboards were sawn from cedar. And the planking on rowboats, whale boats, sloops, and schooners was fashioned from cedar. Fencing was constructed from slender rails of split cedar. And the best thing about the pinelands in Monmouth County when it came to logging was undoubtedly the circumstance that the best stands of white cedar grew along the watercourses, which facilitated the transport of logs out of the swamps.
Daniel Luker and other likeminded colonists knew exactly what they were doing. Let others do the farming. The owners of pinelands could buy all they needed for their daily subsistence with the money they earned from logging.
Daniel would appear to have come to Shrewsbury Township from the city of Philadelphia at some point in time before 1741, the year in which there is record of him purchasing a tract of land from the surveyor James Lawrence. Daniel had married Hester Van at Christ Church in Philadelphia on 24 October 1726. Oddly enough, he does not seem to have originally been from Pennsylvania. (He is the only person bearing the surname “Luker” on record in the state of Pennsylvania prior to the year 1850.) So where was he from? The only other person bearing the Luker surname at the time of Daniels marriage that I am aware of is a certain William Luker of Elizabethtown, New Jersey, who was, with very little doubt, a grandson of Mark Luker (1605-1676) of London, who arrived in the Massachusetts Bay Colony aboard the HMS Griffin in September of 1634. (There is, however, no evidence whatsoever of any familial connection between William Luker of Elizabethtown and Daniel Luker of Philadelphia—apart from the surname.) One source claims that Mark Luker had been the son of a London merchant by the name of Benjamin Luker. I have searched the records of 16th- and 17th-century London without finding reference to any Benjamin Luker; as a matter of fact, I have found reference to only two people in London who bore the Luker surname during the aforementioned period of time. George Luker, according to church records, was buried in Chiswick Cemetery in the London Borough of Hounslow on the 29th of June, 1701. According to this burial record, Mr. Luker had been the son of the surgeon John Luker, who had his practice in the exclusive London neighborhood of Bishopsgate Street. Were these two men members of Mark Luker’s family in London? Was Dr. Luker the father of Mark Luker? Whatever the case may have been, concede the possibility that Daniel Luker had immigrated directly to Philadelphia from London prior to his marriage; that he was possibly related to Mark Luker, although perhaps not a direct descendant; and moreover, that he had first come into contact with the sons of William Penn when he came to Philadelphia around the year 1724.
(With the risk of seeming somewhat of a bore, I nonetheless feel that I should reiterate here that the fairy story of Thomas Luker, the proposed father of the aforementioned Daniel, who supposedly started a ferry service on the Toms River at the very turn of the 18th century, and then married an Indian princess, and afterwards dressed like an Indian and lived in a wigwam at 40 Main Street, Toms River, New Jersey, is indeed nothing but a fairy story.)
It was hardly ever Daniel’s intention to work his newly-acquired landholdings by the sweat of his own brow. Indentured servants were just too easy to come by, especially in a port city such as Philadelphia, where the supply of indenture contracts offered up for sale could often exceed the actual demand for laborers. The workers he could recruit in this manner could fell the trees, drive the logs down the river, and then manhandle the logs out of the estuary and onto wagons or, in wintertime, onto sleighs, some logs destined for manual processing by axe and froe at the lumber yard on the north bank of the river, other logs destined for transport to the nearest sawmill to be cut into planks. Daniel himself would be the overseer of all operations and, of course, the collector of all profits made from said operations.
In a land survey of 1747, reference is made to the dwelling of Daniel Luker on a bank of the Toms River. This dwelling was very likely situated at a natural ford of the river that was anciently known as the “riding over place,” where the stream was, and still is, split into two slender branches by a large island in the middle of the river. (This island is nowadays part of Huddy Park in downtown Toms River.) This was the only place along the Toms River where logs that had been driven downstream could be diverted by means of a log boom to the low banks of the island where they could be hauled out of the water with the help of draft mules and then manhandled onto wagons. Before a bridge was constructed across the branch of the river at the southern end of the island, Daniel Luker ran a ferry, probably to facilitate the transport of logs to the various sawmills in the area. His dwelling at “Luker’s Ferry,” which according to a survey executed by John Lawrence in 1754 was “situate on the first Southerly Branch of Tom’s River in Shrewsbury Township in Monmouth County in the Eastern Division of New Jersey,” was possibly the first of the twenty or thirty houses that would be built between the years 1747 and 1782 at this bend of the river. While Daniel Luker’s house, along with four or five others, would appear to have been built on the southernmost bank of the Toms River, many other houses in the village were undoubtedly situated in a tight cluster on the northernmost bank of the river, that is to say, in the present-day Water Street/Main Street area of downtown Toms River.
I should like to point out to you at this stage in my blogpost that I cannot prove my history of Toms River, thus far, is altogether true. I have not found any primary sources, or even secondary sources, that unequivocally confirm my theory that the logging and processing of white cedar was the backbone of the economy in those areas that were immediately adjacent to the Pine Barrens. In my defense, however, I should also like to point out that the people in these areas had little else to make a living from. Logging and the processing of logs into building material was about all there was. I think this should be evident from the rather large number of sawmills that were constructed in these areas, beginning as early as in the 1740s. Weirs were constructed across the Toms River and across every one of its tributaries, and also across every tributary of the Toms River estuary, in order to create wheel-races for the operation of sawmills.
In 1775, Toms River was such a quiet, almost nondescript village that even some of the people in the surrounding townships of Freehold, Shrewsbury, and New Stafford had never heard of it. Toms River first came to the attention of a much wider part of the world following the Loyalist raid on the village in 1782, and the series of events that led to the infamous destruction of the village has a very well-defined initiating event: the establishment of the Pennsylvania Salt Works at Coates Point in 1776.
In the late spring of 1776, Thomas Savadge (d. 1779), a merchant/entrepreneur from Philadelphia, convinced the Pennsylvania Convention to financially support his proposal for a saltworks, a saltworks to be established on the western shore of Barnegat Bay in New Jersey. Mr. Savadge had told the delegates that he expected to produce more than a million pounds of salt per annum. With grant money in his purse, he travelled to Toms River, where he met with a local landowner and businessman named James Mott, who agreed to sell to him a substantial parcel of salt meadows at Coates Point, the most suitable location in the area for establishing a saltworks. It would appear that Mr. Mott had also agreed to supply the firewood that was necessary for heating the boilers—for a price, of course. Mr. Mott would almost certainly have convinced other residents of Toms River to support this fledgling enterprise in any way they could. Salt was one of those commodities that were in short supply, due to the British Navy’s very effective blockade of all the major colonial ports. There was surely money to be made from this enterprise, and from just a minimal investment.
In March of 1777, the Naval Board of Pennsylvania sent the armed schooner Delaware to Toms River for the purpose of protecting the Pennsylvania Saltworks from British frigates and Loyalist privateer vessels. The ship remained anchored at Toms River until July when its captain and crew were relieved from guard duty by a detachment of the Pennsylvania Militia.
By November of 1779, the government of Pennsylvania had finally realized that financing, and then providing protection for, a saltworks in New Jersey that produced no appreciable amount of salt was a lost cause, and so the former Pennsylvania Saltworks was sold to a private citizen of Burlington County for the tidy sum of $15,000. The thankless assignment of protecting the saltworks, and with it the village of Toms River, fell to the local militia, some members of which had built homes in Toms River. Surprisingly, the saltworks at Coates Point, once under private ownership and management, began to actually produce salt. By this time, however, the British Navy’s blockade of colonial port towns was no longer effective, mostly due to the French Navy’s intervention in the war following the 1778 Treaty of Alliance; and therefore, the price of imported salt had fallen drastically.
In November of 1780, the residents of Toms River petitioned the New Jersey Assembly for a company of State Troops to be stationed in the village in order to protect people and property from attack by Loyalist Refugees and Pine Robbers. A small company of 30 men under the command of Captain David Imlay of Allentown was sent to Toms River in response to this petition. Captain Imlay had a house built for himself and his family in Toms River in 1781, and, we may assume, also a barracks of some sort in which to accommodate the men of his company.
In December of 1781, the residents of Toms River again petitioned the New Jersey Assembly, this time requesting that a new company of State Troops be raised to relieve Captain Imlay and his thirty odd twelve-months men, whose terms of enlistment were coming to an end. (It is important here to point out that by this time England had already lost the war. It was just a matter of time before the Treaty of Paris would finally be ratified [3 September 1783], officially ending the armed conflict between England and the newly-established United States of America. In my opinion, it would have been a wiser move to leave the responsibility of protecting the village to the local militia, most members of which were permanent residents of Toms River.) The petitioners had requested that Captain Joshua Huddy of Colts Neck be chosen as commander. This was a mistake—once again, in my opinion. Captain Huddy was well-known to Loyalists as a founding member of the Association for Retaliation, a vigilante Whig organization that had in effect been outlawed by the Continental Congress. Choosing Captain Huddy as commander of the troops that were being sent to guard Toms River was like waving a red cape in front of the Board of Associated Loyalists in New York. Some Loyalists believed that it had been Joshua Huddy who himself had fixed the noose around the neck of Loyalist Stephen Edwards when this man was executed as a spy in September of 1777. Moreover, Captain Huddy was known to have done more than his fair share of privateering, and for the British military authorities, Toms River was considered one of the most infamous privateering ports in colonial America, a scourge of London Traders and Loyalists alike. The Board of Associated Loyalists was probably not going to accept this change of guard in Toms River without taking some sort of action to countermand it.
Captain Huddy and his 25-man company of State Troops arrived in Toms River in February of 1782. They’d only had about a month in which to get settled when a 120-man strong raiding party of Loyalists and Loyalist sympathizers attacked the village. Captain Huddy and some of the men under his command managed to barricade themselves in the blockhouse for a last stand, firing at the Loyalists from inside, but they soon ran out of ball and powder, and so they were forced to surrender. Some of Huddy’s men had been killed before they could climb inside the blockhouse; others were murdered as they climbed out of the fortification following their surrender. The survivors had their hands bound behind their backs and were led away from the continuing mayhem as prisoners of war. The raiders then demolished the blockhouse. The bridge was spared, apparently, but the tavern, the barracks, the gristmill, the wharf-side salt warehouses, and almost all of the family dwellings at the north end of the bridge were burned to the ground.
The following is an article published in the Loyalist newspaper New York Gazette a few days after the raid on Toms River:
On Wednesday, the 20th instant, Lieut. Blanchard of the armed whale-boats, and about eighty men belonging to them, with Capt. Thomas and Lieut. Roberts, both of the late Buck’s County volunteers, and between thirty or forty other refugee Loyalists, the whole under the command of Lieutenant Blanchard, proceeded to Sandy Hook, under convey of Captain Steward Ross, in the armed brig Arrogant, where they were detained by unfavorable winds until the 23rd; about twelve o’clock on that night, the party landed near the mouth of Tom’s River, and marched to the block house, at the town of Dover, and reach it just at day light. On the way, they were challenged and fired upon, and when they came to the works, they found the rebels, consisting of twenty-five or six twelve-months men and militia, apprised of their coming, and prepared for defense. The post into which they had thrown themselves was about six or seven feet high, made of large logs, with loop holes in between, and a number of brass swivels on top, which was entirely open, nor was there any way of entering, but climbing over. They had, besides the swivels, muskets with bayonets, and long pikes for their defense. Lieutenant Blanchard called on them to surrender, which they not only refused, but bid the party defiance; on which he immediately ordered the place to be stormed, which was accordingly done, and, though defended with obstinacy, it was soon carried. The rebels had nine men killed in the assault and twelve made prisoners, two of whom are wounded. The rest made their escape in the confusion. Among the killed was a Major of the militia and two captains and one Lieutenant. The Captain of the twelve-months men [Joshua Huddy] is among the prisoners, who are all brought safe to town. On our side, two were killed: Lieut. Iredell of the armed boatmen and Lieut. Inslee of the loyalists, both very brave officers, who distinguished themselves on the attack, and whose loss is much lamented. Lieut. Roberts and five others are wounded, and it is thought some of them in a dangerous way.
The town, as it is called, consisting of about a dozen houses, in which none but a piratical set of banditti resided, together with a grist and saw mill, were, with the block house, burned to the ground and an iron cannon spiked and thrown into the river. A fine large boat (called Hyler’s boat) and another boat, which the rebels used to make their excursions on our coast, were brought off. The appearance of bad weather and the condition of our wounded, being without either a surgeon or medicines, induced the party to return, where they arrived on the 25th.”
I should not do justice to the Loyalists who were with me, without expressing the highest prohibition of their behavior and spirit through the whole service; and I beg leave to mention the very great obligation I am under to Captain Ross for his advice, attention to the convoy, and, in a particular manner, for the politeness and tender treatment of the wounded while onboard his brig.
Capt. Ross has likewise mentioned in his report the Loyalists, during the service, paid every attention, and were willing to assist in every point.”
Only about a dozen houses? In my estimation, this estimate clearly concerns the number of houses that were clustered at the north end of the bridge, that is to say, the number of houses that were actually destroyed during the raid, and not necessarily the total number of family dwellings in Toms River. Unfortunately, this article is often cited as proof that there were only about twelve to fifteen family dwellings in all of Toms River, and because these were mostly burned to the ground, one can truly speak of the razing of Toms River. The Dover Town Book—1783-1861, however, reveals that the town council’s annual meeting was held, as was apparently the custom, in the village of Toms River in March of 1783, and in the minutes of this meeting nothing is mentioned of the residents not having anywhere to reside, which would have been a topic of some importance if the entire village had been burned down twelve months earlier.
In January of 1767, a group of residents in the southeastern part of the Township of Shrewsbury had petitioned the Provincial General Assembly that their area should be separated from the existing township. As far as I am aware, the document itself has not survived; therefore, it is mostly a matter of speculation as to what may have prompted the petition in the first place. A response from the General Assembly to this petition came very quickly in the form of a legislative act, ratified on 24 June 1767, an act by which the Township of Dover was established. I think it is important to realize that there was only one settlement of any significance in this newly created township, namely, the village of Toms River Bridge.
I would like to suggest that the village that had been founded at both ends of the bridge over the Toms River in the 1750s had expanded during the 1760s and 1770s to encompass adjacent areas to the north and to the south; northward along the old road to Freehold, and southward to the shore of the Toms River estuary. Such an expansion would have created the need for a local government run by local citizens, that is to say, Dover Township. I would therefore like to assert that there had to have been quite a few more family dwellings in Toms River than about a single dozen.
I would also like to suggest that immediately following the Loyalist raid of 24 March 1782, the citizens of Dover Township pooled their economic and social resources and began to rebuild the homes that had been lost. The township certainly had the resources to build a dozen houses within a timeframe of twelve months. This is why the problem of procuring homes for the homeless is never addressed in the minutes of the Dover Township’s town council. By 1783, the village of Toms River had not just survived, it had been rebuilt and renewed; it had actually begun to flourish. As a matter of fact, the citizens of Dover Township never again came into physical jeopardy until the Toms River Chemical Company (later the Ciba-Geigy Corporation) started operations in 1952 at an industrial site on the Toms River and covertly began to discharge toxic processing waste into the river and into the groundwater. This attack was more underhanded and nefarious than the one in 1782, mainly because it specifically, although unwittingly, targeted the children of Toms River.
So much for the history of Toms River. What I have always wished to figure out is who the people who are buried under the oldest tombstones in Toms River cemeteries actually were—where they were from, what they did, and who their living descendants might be. This is not that easy to figure out, and the results of my endeavor should be taken with a generous pinch of salt. The family histories that I am about to present in this last part of my blogpost are really suggestions meant to inspire further research rather than cut and dried genealogy. All dates of birth and death are only approximate. I shall proceed to list the names that I have found in historical documents relating to the early history of Toms River in alphabetical order, starting with:
Abiel Akins (1720-1797): He was Justice of the Peace in Toms River. He is also said to have been the owner and manager of a tavern at the south end of the Toms River Bridge. Edwin Salter suggests that Abiel’s wife’s name was Patience, but I think this is a mistake. Patience Howard was married to a blacksmith named James Akin (1728-1817) of Quaker Hill, New York. Abiel does seem to have been married, however, because he appears to have had a son named William, who had succeeded him as a member of the Dover Town Council. William Akins (b. ca. 1750) was married to Lucretia, daughter of Jacob Applegate (1725-1818). Abiel Akins was, by the way, blatantly accused by Samuel Forman, commander of the Monmouth County Militia, of fleeing from the battle at Toms River in 1782. True or not? I don’t think so, I think he just arrived too late to the battle to take part in it, but, of course, we’ll never know for sure.
Samuel (b. 1757), James (b. 1762), John (b. 1763), and William (b.1767) Allen were all sons of Samuel Allen (1731-1790), a substantial landowner along the Manasquan River. Samuel Jr. was a captain in the Monmouth County Militia during the Revolutionary War, and he is quite famous for exploits that he both was and was not responsible for. James, John, and William appear to have all resided along the Cedar Creek estuary, south of Toms River. These men all served as members of the Dover Township town council in the early 1800s. James Allen was killed in the War of 1812, and is buried in the Wooley/Gravelly Cemetery, in present-day Brick Township, New Jersey. The family history of the Allen brothers of Dover Township goes back to a certain Edward Allen (1633-1696), who came from England and settled in Hartford, Connecticut. Latter-day descendants of the brothers would include John Allen (1779-1871) and his son Captain Isaac Allen, both of whom are buried in Riverside Cemetery in Toms River.
Jacob Jeremiah Applegate (1723-1818) is buried in Cedar Grove Cemetery in Toms River. His father is believed to have been a certain Bartholomew Applegate of Middletown, New Jersey; his mother, according to Applegate family tradition, was a part-Lenape woman named Mary Esther. His great-great-grandfather was, without any reasonable doubt, Thomas Applegate, one of the original (1645) patentees of Flushing, Long Island, who had emigrated from England, first to the Netherlands, and afterwards (ca. 1634) to the Massachusetts Bay Colony, from which he was soon banished. He resettled in Rhode Island, and finally in New Amsterdam. When this Thomas Applegate’s great-great-grandson Jacob came to Toms River is not known; however, he was married to Esther Irons in 1753, and Esther had been born in Toms River in 1732; thus, it seems reasonable to conclude that Jacob Applegate first came to Toms River sometime before 1750, possibly as early as in about 1740. “Ebeneezer Applegate’s old sawmill,” mentioned in a land survey of 1761, would probably have first been established by Ebeneezer’s father, Jacob Applegate. (Ebeneezer Applegate was born in 1770.) In 1775, Jacob and two of his sons, Bartholomew (b. 1757) and Daniel (b. 1759), were enlisted as privates in Captain John Cook’s company of Monmouth County militia. Bartholomew—and probably Daniel—continued to serve in the militia from 1776 until 1779. It is not known if any of these men took part in the defense of Toms River in 1782. (The historical facts of this matter become muddled due to the circumstance of Jacobs younger brother, Daniel Applegate (b. 1729) of Freehold Township, also having a son named Daniel. According to his Revolutionary War Pension application, it was this Daniel, son of Daniel, who was captured by the Loyalist raiders in 1782. He was apparently serving in the company of State Troops that was commanded by Captain Huddy.) Jacob Applegate of Toms River (Cedar Grove) was elected Constable of Dover Township in 1783, 1788, 1790, and 1791. He had nine sons and at least thirty-five grandsons, which is a good enough excuse for not giving a comprehensive account of his descendants. In Toms River cemeteries, there are graves of more than 500 people named Applegate.
George Cook (1748-1808): George Cook probably had a house in Toms River, one of those which were burned to the ground by Loyalists in 1782, but one that I believe had been rebuilt by March of 1783. George was a son of Nicholas Cook (1715-1785) of Freehold Township, New Jersey, who was possibly a son of Benjamin Cook (1683-1750) of the Isle of Wight in Virginia. (Cook genealogy in early colonial America is too complicated and contradictory to make head or tails of. Quite obviously, there were several families named Cook that emigrated from England to the American colonies in the 17th century.) George was a lieutenant in the Monmouth County Militia. He was present at the Battle of Germantown and at the Battle of Monmouth. He was in the vicinity of the bridge in Toms River on the 24th of March, 1782, but arrived at the Blockhouse too late to be of any use in its defense. His brother, Major John Cook, was killed while surrendering. George was first married to Margaret —- (b. 1750), who died as a young woman. He then married Parthenia Walker, who would outlive him by five years. He and Parthenia had two sons who both seem to have died at a relatively young age. Fifty-five people named Cook lie buried in Toms River cemeteries, but none of these people would appear to have been descended from the early Cook family of Freehold Township, New Jersey. (This early family has a graveyard of its own in Millstone Township, which is southwest of the town of Freehold.
John Coward (1728-1777): He is an important man in the history of Toms River. John owned extensive tracts of pineland along the Toms River. He had a sawmill built on the North Branch of the Toms River at some point in time before 1762. He engaged in the logging and lumber business in partnership with James Randolph and Tobias Hendrickson. (Incidentally, James was married to John’s daughter Deliverance, and Tobias was married to John’s daughter Rebecca.) Although John lived in Freehold Township, he would probably have had a dwelling of some sort in the village of Toms River. He was a son of the Rev. John Coward (1704-1760) of Middletown, New Jersey. His grandfather was the mariner Hugh Coward (1680-1725), who was born in Somersetshire, England, but who died in Staten Island, New York, after having undertaken many voyages back and forth across the Atlantic. John was married to Mary Cox (1725-1812). They had two sons, John Coward (1754-1795), who seems to have lived in his father’s house in Toms River, and who was the father of six sons; and Samuel Coward (1759-1777), a private in the Continental Arm at the time of his death. John’s brother was Joseph Coward, who had enlisted in Count Polaski’s Independent Legion, and who was one of the few survivors of the Osborn Island Massacre in October of 1778. The Joseph Coward on whose property the Ocean County Courthouse was built in 1850 was probably a great-grandson of the John Coward who died in 1777.
James Dillon (b. ca. 1720, d. after 1762) was from Salem County, New Jersey. Nothing is known concerning his ancestry. He was married to Mary Dillon (possibly a second cousin) in the town of Salem in 1739. He purchased land along the Toms River, north of the village, from John Coward in 1762. I think we may safely assume that he built a house on this land, although there is no record of a “Dillon house” north of Toms River. James and Mary had two sons and two daughters. John Dillon (b. ca. 1740, d. after 1787) was the eldest son. While an officer in the Monmouth County Militia, he was captured and imprisoned by the British Army in 1776. Upon his release in 1778, he returned to Toms River and, along with his old militia comrade in arms, Lt. Joshua Studson, he obtained a letter of marque from the Continental Congress, allowing him to operate as a privateer. His younger brother, William, seems to have already been active in privateering at this time, probably without a letter of marque. William was convicted of armed robbery in June of 1778, and he was sentenced to hang. Following his unexpected reprieve by Governor William Livingston, his privateering seems to have turned to outright piracy. He is reputed to have run contraband cargoes along the New Jersey coast from Great Egg Harbor to the ships of London Traders lying at anchor in Lower New York Bay at Sandy Hook. As far as is known, neither John Dillon nor his brother had any sons. On the other hand, the descendants of Mary Dillon Wilbur, daughter of James Dillon, continued to use their old surname as a personal name for several generations. Thus, we have James Dillon Wilbur (1766-1845), Dillon Wilbur (1769-1841), James Dillon Wilbur (1797-1877), John Dillon Wilbur (1803-1882), Dillon Wilbur (1806-1896), Ivins Dillon Wilbert (1816-1897) (A different spelling of the surname, but definitely the same family.), James Dillon Wilbert (1845-1925), Ivins Dillon Wilbert (1853-1942), and John Dillon Wilbert (1879-1946). (Very much o a mystery is the James Dillon who lies buried in Saint Andrew’s Graveyard in Mount Holly, New Jersey. This James Dillon was a captain in the 2nd Regiment, New Jersey Line, of the Continental Army from 1776 to 1780. Taking his date of birth into consideration, and also the fact that he had enlisted in New Jersey, might induce one to surmise that he was a son of James Dillon of Salem, New Jersey. Certainly, there is nothing that links him to either of the other two Dillon families in Colonial America [in North Carolina and Virginia]. I fear his story is a sad one. According to their tombstones in Mount Holly, Captain Dillon died 1 September 1780, his wife Catherine died 25 July 1780, and his son Thomas died 9 December 1780 at the age of four months and seventeen days.)
Jacob Fleming (1750-1818): To start off with, Jacob Fleming is not my family’s Revolutionary War hero. That would be too much of a coincidence. We do have such a hero, but he served in the Continental Army, and despite having the same surname, he was not related to the Flemings of Monmouth County, New Jersey. Robert Fleming (1742-1821), my ancestor, was from Bennettsbridge in County Kilkenny, Ireland, while the Monmouth County Flemings hailed from County Tyrone, Ireland. Jacob Fleming was a captain in the Monmouth County Militia. His brother Stephen (1750-1821), who was not really his twin, except in the sense of Irish twin, was also a captain in the militia. The brothers had a farm in Colts Neck, New Jersey, but as they were both stationed in Toms River, it is not unlikely that they shared a house in that village. On 24 March 1782, Captain Jacob Fleming and two other officers, Joshua Huddy and Daniel Randolph, were captured by the Loyalist raiders following the surrender of the Blockhouse, and they were afterwards imprisoned in the hold of a British ship that was anchored in New York Harbor. (There is no record of Stephen Fleming being present in Toms River at the time of the raid.) Joshua Huddy was executed on the 12th of April, 1782. Immediately following this execution, Jacob Fleming and Daniel Randolph were released from custody in a prisoner exchange. Jacob and Stephen’s father was Joseph Fleming (1719-1776) of Shrewsbury; their grandfather was Stephen Fleming (1690-1755) of Manasquan, who had immigrated to the Province of East Jersey from County Tyrone in Ireland. Captain Jacob Fleming was married to Sarah West (1750-1813). They had five sons: James (1773-1857) and Joseph (1773-1828) Fleming, who were identical twins; Stephen Fleming (b. 1775), Jacob Fleming (born in 1782, the year of the raid on Tom River), and John Fleming (b. 1785). Captain Stephen Fleming (b. 1750) was captured by the British at the Battle of the Navesink in 1777, and he subsequently spent fifteen months in the notorious Sugar House Prison in New York Citywas married to Anna Thompson Morris, the widow of John fore being released on parole in August of 1778, after which he broke his parole on Long Island and rejoined the militia in Monmouth County, New Jersey. He was married to Anna Thompson Morris, the widow of John Morris of Toms River. They had three sons: Stephen, James, and John. (Stephen moved with his family to Mason, Kentucky, at around the turn of the nineteenth century. He and about fifty other people who had the surname Fleming are buried in Mason County cemeteries.) In addition to Stephen Fleming (b. 1690), who settled in Manasquan in Monmouth County, New Jersey, four other Flemings from County Tyrone in Ireland emigrated to the Province of New Jersey during the eighteenth century. Four brothers: Samuel (1707-1790), Thomas (1750-1784), Andrew (1717-1777), and William (1720-1795) Fleming, emigrated from Cookstown, County Tyrone, to the Province of New Jersey in 1751. These brothers all settled in what was then Hunterdon County. (Taken together, they had twelve sons.) Fleming has always been a fairly common surname in the state of New Jersey. The earlist grave marker is from 1766 in the Bethlehem Presbyterian Churchyard, namely that of Martha Fleming (b. 1695), who was the mother of the four brothers who emigrated from Ireland in 1751. (The father of this family, Malcolm Fleming (b. 1681), had died in Cookstown in 1722.) There are 300 later Fleming grave markers in Hunterdon and Warren Counties, and 169 in Monmouth and Ocean Counties.
Daniel Griggs (b. 1725 d. after 1779) was involved with Thomas Savadge and James Mott (and others) in the establishment of the Pennsylvania Saltworks at Coates Point. He was a merchant, a shipowner, and a tavern keeper. Along with his tavern, he even owned a house in the village, close to the north end of the bridge. Both of these properties would have been destroyed in 1782. The fate of the owner, however, is not known. The final mention of him in historical records is in a public notice about a meeting which was to be held on 13 May 1779 at the house of Daniel Griggs at Toms River. Although the name of his wife is not known, Daniel appears to have had a son: Benjamin Griggs (1748-1824), who was married to Eleonor Lane, daughter of Captain Cornelius Lane (1722-1792) of Middletown, New Jersey. Benjamin and Eleonor had four sons. John the eldest son, was born in Sussex County in northernmost New Jersey in 1777, which shows that the couple had probably relocated from Toms River sometime in the 1770s. Three more sons were born in Essex County: Aaron, Daniel, and George. The father of Daniel Griggs (b. 1725) must have been John Griggs (1710-1758) of Gravesend, Long Island, who is recorded as having died in Monmouth County, New Jersey. This John Griggs was a son of Benjamin Griggs (1680-1768) of Gravesend, Long Island, who was a son of John Griggs (1662-1728), also of Gravesend, who was a son of either John or Joseph Griggs, who were the sons of Thomas Griggs (1600-1646), who immigrated to Roxbury, Massachusetts Bay Colony, from England in 1638.
Tobias Hendrickson (1740-1811) of Freehold Township was the business partner of James Randolph and John Coward. He was married to Rebecca, daughter of John Coward. Tobias was a lieutenant in the Monmouth County Militia under the command of Captain John Stout. Daniel Hendrickson, also an officer in the militia, was his brother. He even had a twin brother named John, concerning whom I have not found any further information. Tobias was a son of Guisbert Willemse Hendrickson (1703-1777) of Cape May County, New Jersey, and Elizabeth Polhemus (1710-1788). His great-grandfather was probably Jacob Hendricks (1642-1696), who was born in the Netherlands, but who died in Cape May County. Tobias and Rebecca had several sons, one of whom, Joseph Hendrickson, was taken hostage by the Loyalist raiders in 1782. It would seem that he was only fifteen years old at the time. Joseph survived his captivity, and he was married to Elizabeth Forsythe in 1796. Afterwards, the couple moved to Bordentown, New Jersey.
David Imlay (1754-1803) was a captain in the Monmouth County Militia. He was commander of the New Jersey State Troops stationed in Toms River during the year of 1781. He was guarding the western end of the bridge in Toms River when the Loyalist raiders unexpectedly entered the village from the south in 1782. He did not take part in the defense of the blockhouse, partly because it was already surrounded by the enemy, but possibly also because he believed that the Loyalists had set a price on his head for the extra-judicial killing of one of theirs by a posse of militiamen that he had organized and commanded in late 1781. David had married Abigail, daughter of Abiel Akins, in February of 1780. At the time of the Loyalist raid, they had a son who had just turned two years of age—yet another good reason to choose retreat instead of self-sacrifice. David’s father was William Imlay (1723-1791) of Allentown; his grandfather was Robert Imlay (1693-1754) of Freehold Township; and his great-grandfather was Peter Imlay of Aberdeenshire, Scotland, who immigrated to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1660. William E. Imlay, David’s nephew, was a member of the Dover Town Council from 1794 until 1801; Abiel Imlay, David’s son was a member from 1826 until 1830. Interestingly, there are two David Imlays who are buried in Riverside Cemetery in Toms River: David Imlay (1823-1912) and his son, David Imlay (1855-1943). They must have been related to David Imlay (1754-1803); the unanswered question is how they were.
Garrett Irons (1759-1834), Bartholomew Applegate (1757-1846), and Isaiah Weeks (?) were, according to a very muddled local tradition, posted on guard duty at the Pennsylvania Saltworks in the late evening of 23 March 1782 when the whaleboats of Loyalist marauders were rowed to shore at Coates Point, about five miles from Toms River. According to this tradition, Pvt Weeks shot and killed the officer in the lead boat, and afterwards the three young militiamen were sent adrift in the bay in a rowboat without oars. The resourceful soldiers pulled the seats from the rowboat, and using these as paddles, they made their way back to shore. The biggest problem with this tradition is that the only evidence of Isaiah Weeks ever having existed is the DAR marker planted in Cedar Grove Cemetery claiming that he did. Garrett and Bartholomew, on the other hand, did actually exist. It’s not farfetched to explain their absence in Toms River during the Loyalist raid by suggesting that they had really been ordered to guard the saltworks. There is also a tradition in Toms River of Garrett Irons running nonstop all the way to the village in order to warn the garrison there of the approach of the enemy—a Paul Revere without a horse. The saltworks at Coates Point would, of course, have been destroyed before the raiding party continued on, by forced march, to the village. In any case, Pvts Irons and Applegate survived the tribulations of war and lived to be old men. Garrett was married to Hester, daughter of Jacob Applegate. They had two sons. Garrett’s brother, John, was married to Hannah, daughter of Edward Wilbur and Mary Dillon Wilbur. John and Hannah had eight sons. Garrett and John’s father was James Irons (1732-1761) of the village of Toms River; their grandfather was James Irons (1711-1761) of the town of Shrewsbury; their great-grandfather was Samuel Irons (1679-1720) of Norfolk, Massachusetts; and their 3x great-grandfather was Matthew Irons (b. ca. 1615), who immigrated to the Massachusetts Bay Colony from England in 1630. And by the way, there are 250 graves of people named Irons in Toms River cemeteries.
John Jeffrey (1729-1794) was a member of the Monmouth County Militia in 1782, but his name is not listed among those who took part in the defense of Toms River during the Loyalist raid. His father, Francis Jeffrey (1684-1761) had owned land just south of the village; thus, it is likely that the family had a house in the village itself. John was married to Elizabeth Irons in 1759. They had a son, William Jeffrey (1771-1849), who was several times elected to the Dover Town Council. John’s grandfather was Francis Jeffrey (1654-1695) of the town of Shrewsbury; his great-grandfather was the William Jeffrey who settled in Salem, Massachusetts Bay Colony, in 1628.
Ephraim Jenkins (1726-1782), a captain in the Monmouth County Militia, was killed in the battle of the Toms River Blockhouse. He is something of a mystery. Local tradition in Toms River asserts that his house in the village was one of those that were burned down, and that Ephraim’s wife and children were thereby left destitute. We don’t know the name of his wife or the names of his children. We do know that Ephraim was commissioned captain in Colonel Asher Holms’ battalion on 14 June 1780. His father was Job Cooke Jenkins (1699-1757) of East Greenwich, Kent, Rhode Island; his grandfather was Zachariah Jenkins (1651-1722) of North Kingstown, Rhode Island; and his great-grandfather was John Jenkins (1626-1684) of Sandwich, Barnstaple, Massachusetts Bay Colony, whose father, John Jenkins, had arrived at Plymouth in 1635 aboard the HMS Defence. Isaac Jenkins (1781-1858) of Tuckerton was probably a son or a nephew of Ephraim Jenkins. Other than Isaac Jenkins, there are only relatively recent graves for people with the surname Jenkins in Toms River cemeteries.
Benjamin Johnson (1710-1784): “Benjamin Johnson, just before the war and probably during the war, lived in the north or northeasterly part of the village [Toms River]. A person of the same name had a dwelling house on the south side of Toms River, towards Sloop Creek, in 1741, some thirty years before the war.” (Edwin Salter, A History of Monmouth and Ocean Counties etc. [1890], p. 235.) Johnson is one of the more difficult names to research for the genealogist—for rather obvious reasons. A land survey of 1764 refers to Benjamin Johnson’s cedar swamp on the north side of Goose Creek, or Toms River. There seem to be no military records that concern this man. The only clue as to his parentage would appear to be a 1709 conveyance of unappropriated land from Robert Burnet to Benjamin Johnson (perhaps the father of Benjamin) in Freehold Township. His wife’s name would appear to have been Sarah, according to the will of Benjamin Johnson of Dover, which was proved on 23 March 1784. His three oldest sons, John, Daniel, and William, were members of the Dover Town Council in the 1790s. Ezekial and Benjamin Johnson, also members of the town council during this period of time, would appear to have been sons of Luke Johnson, perhaps the brother of Benjamin.
Benjamin Lawrence (1754-1810) of Toms River was a lieutenant in the Continental Army from 1776 to 1780. After the war he was appointed judge at the Court of Common Pleas in Dover Township. He was married to Euphemia Barton. Their son was Joseph Lawrence (1780-1838), who also became a judge in Dover Township. Joseph had three sons, Benjamin (1803-1881), Joseph (1808-1870), and James (1810-1890), all of whom were members of the Dover Town Council during the nineteenth century. Benjamin Lawrence’s father was John Lawrence (1704-1767); his grandfather was Benjamin Lawrence (164-1748) of Middletown, New Jersey; and his great-grandfather was William Lawrence (1630-1701), who immigrated to Long Island, New York, from England, but eventually resettled in Middletown.
Daniel Luker (b. ca. 1700, d. after 1767): The only thing we can say with surety about Daniel Luker’s life before he first came to Shrewsbury Township in about 1740 is that he married Hester Van in Philadelphia on 24 October 1726. He was very probably related to Mark Luker of Newport, Rhode Island (d. 1676), although not necessarily a direct descendant. Daniel and Hester had two sons who married two women who would appear to also have been siblings, namely, Daniel Luker, who married Amy McDaniel on 8 December 1760; and Thomas Luker, who married Grace McDaniel on 6 August 1759.
James Mott (1734-1823) of Middletown, New Jersey: Although James Mott did not himself live in Toms River, he was nonetheless the money and much of the brains behind all that was going on in Dover Township in the 1770s, that is to say, the development of a more profitable local logging and lumber enterprise and the establishment of saltworks in the area around Toms River. His business partners were his father, James Mott Sr., and his brother Gershom. The Mott family’s business connection to Dover Township was initially established by James’ sister Huldah’s marriage to Joseph Salter, an influential landowner in and around Toms River. James Mott remained unmarried. He was commissioned a captain in the Monmouth County Militia in 1775. He was a member of the New Jersey General Assembly from 1776 until 1779. His father, James Mott (1707-1787) of Middletown, was a major in the militia. His grandfather was Gershom Adam Mott (1653-1733), who was originally from Long Island, New York, but had resettled in Middletown. His great-grandfather was Adam Mott (1621-1689), who had immigrated to Long Island, New York, from England.
Joseph Page (1727-1819) of Upper Freehold Township was apparently born and raised in Chesterfield Township, New Jersey. His father and mother, Edward Page and Rebecca Vanhagen, Quakers from Pennsylvania, were married in Chesterfield Township in 1726. (Edward Page was possibly/probably a great-grandson of the John Page of Watertown, Massachusetts who had immigrated to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630 aboard one of the ships in the Winthrop Fleet.) Joseph Page was married to Margaret Robins (1743-1814), a sister of the Moses Robins who was grievously injured during the Loyalist raid on Toms River in 1782. Joseph is listed in taxation records as millwright and tavernkeeper. In 1758, he acquired ownership of a large island on the western shore of Barnegat Bay, an island that would become known as “Page’s Island” (i.e., the present-day Cattus Island County Park in Toms River). During the Revolutionary War, Page’s Island was used as a convenient hideout for privateer vessels, which would lie in wait in Mosquito Cove for any British ships that might attempt to enter Barnegat Bay by means of the treacherous Cranberry Inlet on the opposite shore. Mosquito Cove was also the location of a saltworks that was established in 1779 by James Randolph of Toms River. Joseph Page and his wife survived the perils of war, and in 1797 they moved back to Pennsylvania with most of their family. Only their eldest son, Timothy, who had purchased Page’s Island from his father, remained in Toms River. Timothy Page (1763-1840) had served in the Monmouth County Militia from 1778 (as a fifteen-year-old) until 1781. He would also seem to have served as crewman on various privateer vessels. He was married to Mary Coward (1768-1853), daughter of Thomas Coward of Upper Freehold Township, in 1786. They had ten children: five sons and five daughters. Four of their sons would eventually move with their families to the state of Illinois. Only Joseph Page (1792-1860) with his wife and six children would remain in Toms River (Dover Township). (Timothy and Mary Page are both buried in the Old Methodist Cemetery in Toms River.) Joseph Page and Ann Thompson Page had four sons and one daughter, who died as an infant. It would appear that Joseph Page purchased a section of the John Robinson farm (immediately to the north of Dillon’s Creek) in about 1840 and had a house built on this property in 1841—the very same house, by the way, where I was born one-hundred and seven years later. (The reason why I am indulging somewhat in the history of the Page family of Island Heights, New Jersey, should be apparent. Please excuse me.) John C. Page, the second son in the family, married Henrietta, daughter of Joseph Applegate and Margaret Luker, in 1850. (Captain John Page dropped dead in his tracks of a heart attack at the front of his house in 1860.) Joseph Applegate, the father of Henrietta, was a grandson of Jacob Applegate (1723-1818) and Margaret Luker, the mother, was a granddaughter of Daniel Luker (1729-1760). Captain John C. Page’s eldest son was John C. Page Jr. (1856-1929), also a sea captain, who was married to Laura DeVault (1860-1946) of Gloucester City, New Jersey. Their son was Parker Freeman Page (1887-1966), whose only son, Edward William Page (d. 1979), was married, but had no children.
James Randolph (1730-1781) was born in Princeton, New Jersey. He was married to Deliverance, daughter of John Coward, one of his two business partners from Toms River. James’ father was Isaac FitzRandolph (1701-1750) of Stoney Brook, Princeton. His younger brothers were Daniel (1732-ca. 1800) and Benjamin (1737-1791) Randolph. All three brothers were involved in the logging and lumber trade. The Speedwell sawmill in the pinelands west of Toms River was established by James Randolph in 1770, and the addition of a furnace and a forge to the establishment was made by Benjamin Randolph in 1773. The grandfather of these brothers was Benjamin FitzRandolph (1663-1746) of Stoney Brook in Princeton; and the great-grandfather was Edward FitzRandolph (1607-1684), who immigrated to the Massachusetts Bay Colony from England in 1630 aboard one of the ships in the Winthrop Fleet. James Randolph is said to have had a house in Toms River, one of the houses that were destroyed in March of 1782. James himself was abducted from Toms River by Loyalists in 1781, and he was subsequently imprisoned in the notorious Provost Prison in New York City, where he died (or was murdered) in that same year. Daniel Randolph, a captain in the Monmouth County Militia, was captured following the surrender of the Toms River Blockhouse in 1782, and he was subsequently held imprisoned in the hold of a ship in New York City Harbor until a prisoner exchange was implemented after the execution of Joshua Huddy. Benjamin Randolph, who was a gifted cabinetmaker, moved to Philadelphia in about 1762 and established a very successful furniture-making business on Chestnut Street, in the present-day Philadelphia neighborhood of Old City.
Moses Robins (1732-1794) of Upper Freehold Township was shot and seriously injured in the Battle of the Toms River Blockhouse. Adding insult to injury, his house in Toms River was burned down. He survived his wounds, and is said to have been the first to rebuild his house. He was married to Anne Ansley, and they had one son, Moses Robbins (1786-1875), who eventually moved to Ohio, and then to Indiana. His father was Joseph Robins (1710-1780) of Upper Freehold Township; his grandfather was Moses Robins (1679-1744) of Woodbridge, New Jersey; and his great-grandfather was Daniel Robinson (1645-1714), who immigrated to Boston in 1652 aboard the HMS John and Sarah.
John Rogers (1746-1824) lost his house in Toms River in 1782. He is not known to have taken part in the fighting. He was married to Abigail Woodmansee, and they had three small children in 1782. His father was John Rogers (1708-1770) of Burlington, New Jersey. He had four sons and at least seven grandsons. John is buried in the Rogers family cemetery in Bayville, New Jersey, where many of his descendants are buried as well.
Joseph Salter (1732-1820) of Freehold Township was an influential landowner in and around Toms River. (He may have had a house in the village of Toms River that was destroyed in 1782.) He was commissioned a lieutenant colonel in the Monmouth County Militia in 1775, but resigned this commission that same year, possibly because of his growing sympathy for the Loyalist cause. He was first married to Sarah, daughter of Samuel Holmes, with whom he had a son, William Salter. Following his wife’s death in childbirth in 1757, he married Huldah, daughter of James Mott (1707-1787) and Huldah Holmes (1709-1784), Sarah Holmes Salter’s first cousin. Joseph and Huldah had two sons, Richard (1757-1812) and James (1760-1835), and six daughters. Joseph was a son of Richard Salter (1699-1763) and Hannah (1697-1757), daughter of Elisha Lawrence (1666-1724) of Gravesend, Long Island. His grandfather was Richard Salter (1660-1728), born in England, but who had probably immigrated to Gravesend, Long Island, by about 1680, and later resettled in Freehold Township, New Jersey.
John Stout (1728-1791) of Middletown was a captain in the Monmouth County Militia. He was married to Ruth Ellison, and it would appear that they had a house in Toms River, possibly one of the houses that were destroyed in 1782. John had two sons, Daniel and John, both of whom served in their father’s company of the militia. John Jr. died of unknown causes in 1778, but Daniel lived to the age of eighty-five. He and his wife Anna had nine daughters, but no sons. Daniel’s grandfather was James Stout (1715-1754), whose father was James Stout (1694-1731), whose father was David Stout (1667-1734), whose father was Richard Stout (1615-1706), who emigrated from England to Gravesend, Long Island, in 1643, and married Penelope, the famous heroine of American folklore, who was reputedly captured by Indians following a shipwreck, and then horribly mutilated by them and left for dead. According to this story, two Indians of a somewhat more benign disposition found her hiding in a hollow tree, nursed her back to health, and afterwards delivered her to the Dutch settlers on Long Island, where she met and married Richard Stout.
Jacob Tilton (1747-1827) was a landowner along the Jake’s Branch of the Toms River, and also along Kettle Creek, northeast of the village of Toms River. He was a captain in the Monmouth County Militia from 1779 to 1782, charged with the duty of guarding the Pennsylvania Saltworks from attacks by British and Loyalist armed forces. Captain Tilton resided in a house situated at the mouth of Jake’s Branch, about four miles south of the village of Toms River; thus, although he had been called out by a militia courier at the time of the Loyalist raid in 1782, he arrived in the village too late to be of any service in its defense. (There was little left to defend.) Jacob Tilton was married to Charity, daughter of Jacobus Hegeman, who was a direct descendant of the Adriaen Hendricksen Hegeman who emigrated from Amsterdam in the Netherlands to the town of Flackebos (present-day Flatbush in Brooklyn) in New Amsterdam. Jacob and Charity had five sons and twenty grandsons. Jacob’s father was John Tilton (1715-1780) of Middletown, New Jersey, who was a direct descendant of the William Tilton who emigrated England to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1637. Forty-five people named Tilton are buried in the Silverton Cemetery near Kettle Creek.
John Wilbur (1760-1838) of Toms River was married to Elizabeth, daughter of David Lippincott (1732-1768) of Freehold Township, in 1784. John was a son of Edward Wilbur (1730-1828) and Mary, daughter of James Dillon (1720-1762). It seems most likely to me that they lived in the house that John’s grandparents had built, which was situated about three-quarters of a mile to the north of the village of Toms River. This house was not destroyed in 1782, probably because it was situated too far from the bridge. John Wilbur, who was a private in the Monmouth County Militia during the Revolutionary War, was standing at his guard post north of the village, probably close to his home:
One John Eldridge and David Dodge were stationed sentry on the road about seven or eight hundred yards from my and Kinsey’s station; about daylight or a little after, we heard the enemy advancing by the noise they made in walking, and in a minute or two I heard the sentry hail them and fire. I retreated with Kinsey toward the blockhouse, he in advance of me. When I arrived at the blockhouse, I found that it was surrounded by the enemy and Kinsey was killed on the outside of the blockhouse; I did not attempt then to enter, but retreated across the bridge where I met Captain Brown, a sea captain, and George Cook. Dodge & Eldridge did not get in, the brother of George, whom I met on the bridge, was also killed before he got into the blockhouse; after the alarm of the advance of the enemy, myself and John Eldridge, and one Joseph Parker, were all who made their escape. [The preceding quotation is an excerpt from John Wilbur’s application for a Revolutionary War veteran’s pension.]
John Wilbur’s grandfather was James Wilbur (1704-1745) of Freehold Township; his great-grandfather was James Wilbur (1675-1718), whose father was probably Samuel Wilbur (1622-1678) of Portsmouth, Rhode Island, whose father was Samuel Wilbore (1595-1656), who emigrated from England to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1633. Samuel Wilbore was banished from Boston in 1638 due to his religious dissidence. He resettled in Rhode Island, where he founded the town of Portsmouth.
Elizabeth Lippincott Wilbur’s grandfather was David Lippincott (1704-1762) of Freehold Township, whose father was Richard Lippincott (1675-1723) of Shrewsbury Township, whose father was Remembrance Lippincott (1641-1723) of Shrewsbury Township, whose father was Richard Lippincott, who emigrated from England to Rhode Island in about the year 1640.