Vital History: What Two Generations of a Loyalist Family

Reveals About the American Revolution.

Donald Sherblom, Ph.D. President,

The 1759 Vought House, A Revolutionary War Loyalist Homestead

For a generation, historians have moved beyond narratives of great men and

major events and begun telling stories of ordinary people and marginalized groups.

This “history from the bottom up” gives a broader perspective on the past. It often

draws on first person accounts, journals, letters, wills and other documents. When

we narrow the scope of our attention from the broad sweep of events and zoom in to

a single person’s lived experience, occasionally, especially in a journal or a letter, a

personality may shine through and we recognize a human voice, a particular person

to whom we can relate. For a moment, the past is reanimated; it doesn’t seem so

distant or irrelevant.

This focus on the lived experience of a particular person, a family, or a

community of believers, is vital history: vital because it examines how lives were

lived and because it can reanimate the past for present-day readers. Unlike

sweeping accounts told by a single omniscient narrator, vital histories inject diverse

and conflicting perspectives on historic events. Our imagined past is no longer a two

dimensional image of another time and place but a three-dimensional landscape. It

looks different from distinct perspectives, a lot like our present reality. In a sense,

vital history provides two optical tools, a magnifying glass, which shows people and

events in finer detail, and a prism, which shows a diverse array of perceptions.

The topic of this paper, two generations of a Loyalist family in Hunterdon

County, is vital history in the tradition of “history from the bottom up” but also a bit

of “history from the other side,” from across the spectrum, a different locus in the

lived experience of 18th Century New Jersey. What can a vital history of one Loyalist

family over two generations add to our understanding of the American Revolution?

We’re all Patriots today, so we tend to forget our founding fathers and

mothers were Loyalists, even very late in the crisis. We sometimes forget the conflict

was about preserving the rights of Englishmen, rights which had become more

robust in the new world but were British rights nonetheless. Also, American

colonists weren’t just fighting for ideals; they fought to promote their own interests

in territorial expansion and free trade. They were not to be hemmed in by the

Proclamation Line of 1763 or the mercantilist Navigation Acts. In short, our 21st

Century Patriotic hindsight obscures our appreciation of how people at the time saw

the developing colonial crisis.

This account of the Vought family helps us understand how diverse perceptions

of the colonial crisis developed. It begins with the early 18th Century and “reading

history forward,” as Brendan McConville advises, seeks answers to the question:

why did Christoffel and John Vought risk their lives and property for the Loyalist

cause in June of 1776, when so many in New Jersey remained undecided? We don’t

have letters or diaries to tell us exactly what motivated Christoffel and John Vought

but we know enough about this family’s social identity, their traditions and new

world experiences, their material interests and core ideals to shed light on this

decision. (McConville 2006)

There are two sides to every decision: the perception or assessment of the

problem and the choice of action. The familiar way to model decision-making

imagines a rational actor maximizing gain. This neglects the more complex and

historically significant aspect of every decision, the actor’s perception or worldview.

Rather than assuming they held a 21st Century worldview, I attempt to understand

the Vought family’s lived experience and worldview for insights on why they became

champions of the Loyalist cause.

In this paper, I look at the Vought family’s role in disputes over church

governance and over rights to land which presaged divisions of the 1770’s. I also

examine what the home built by Christoffel Vought might tell us about this family’s

social identity. Although centered on the crisis of 1776, our story necessarily begins

with Christoffel Vought’s parents Simon & Christina Voght and their 1709

immigration in pursuit of land and liberty.

Prelude: Land and Liberty

Simon and Christina Voght lived in a Germany composed of principalities, in a

region known as the Palatine. This region of fertile soil and hard-working peasants

was attractive to feudal lords hoping to gain territory and increase their tax base.

Over decades of nearly continuous wars fueled by religious belief and shifting

alliances among nations and lords, armies had swept through their Palatine village

foraging and destroying crops. In 1708 a small group of Palatine Lutherans

petitioned the English Queen Anne that they had “lost all their property in the time

of the ravages committed by the French, and that they were in absolute want, and

requesting that they might be transferred to her Majesty’s colonies in America.” (Ver

Planck 1907:3) The small group sent to America in 1708 was dwarfed by the next

year’s exodus, which included Simon and Christina Voght.

In 1709, as thousands of Palatines camped in tents outside London, the English

began to turn back arrivals. Almost all Catholics had been sent back from the start,

but now even Protestants were returned and told to spread the word that no more

emigrants would be welcomed. This left the question of how to absorb the refugees

camping outside London. Some were sent to Ireland or to remote parts of England

“to provide a ready supply of hard and menial labor. Some were shipped to Jamaica,

the West Indies and a few to North Carolina but the largest group, numbering

approximately 3,000, was sent to New York.” (Hunter 2005:3-17)

Robert Hunter, the new governor of New York and New Jersey, (for whom

Hunterdon County is named) brought this group of Palatines to produce ship masts,

ship timbers, and tar along the Hudson Valley. The purpose was to secure supplies

needed to maintain British naval supremacy. The Palatines were to work off their

passage as indentured servants on the manor of Robert Livingston, who was

commissioned to provide food until they could establish themselves. They agreed to

an indeterminate bondage with the promise that they would receive 40 acres, free

from taxes or quitrents for seven years.

Faced with financial hardships, Hunter first bound out many children to

neighboring English farmers then had Livingston cut rations for women and

children. Many settlers resented “working like hired hands instead of being treated

like landowners.” (Roeber 1998:9) Some were patient, trusting the Queen would not

keep them in this condition. “But the guiding spirits among the settlers pointed to

what Hunter contemptuously dismissed as ‘pretended rights’; they had not come to

America merely to ‘earn our bread’. ‘We came to America to establish our families –

to secure lands for our children on which they will be able to support themselves

after we die’.” (Roeber 1998:10)

Early in 1712, hundreds of families escaped and occupied the land they’d been

promised and, after getting permission from the Mohawks to remain, built a series of

villages in the Schoharie Valley. Governor Hunter did not immediately pursue them.

He had more pressing concerns. The naval supply project had not produced as

expected and the Tories now in control of Parliament withdrew support for policies

of the previous Whig government. Finally, in September 1712, Robert Hunter

withdrew his support and set the Palatines free to hire themselves out if they could

find work. With winter approaching and no provisions, many went hungry.

Palatines were reported to be eating tree leaves and boiling grass. (Hunter

2005:3-22)

When Governor Hunter finally called for a leader of the dissident Schoharie

Valley settlers to account for their actions, he was told they were “loyal to the

monarch of Great Britain, but the Governor had failed in his obligation to sustain

them and had told them to shift for themselves.” (Roeber 1998:11) Liberty would

come from the self-sufficiency gained on land Queen Anne had granted. The

promise of land and liberty had drawn Palatines from post-feudal Germany in 1709

and they believed legitimate authority would continue to protect “their privileges as

German subjects of the Crown.” (Roeber 1998:12)

By the 18th Century, European peasants were no longer legally bound to the

land but the class structure had not yet been significantly altered by the emergence

of a “middle class” of merchants and tradesmen. The opulent lifestyle of the nobility

was still supported by a large hereditary class of poor peasants supported. Quitrents

and taxes “were such a burden for the citizenry that the Palatine concept of personal

‘freedom’ reflected the desire for protection of property and crops from over-

taxation.” For Palatines, liberty arose from owning land which made them self-

sufficient. It was a privilege protected within society, guaranteed by the sovereign.

(Hunter 2005:3-8)

This differed significantly from the British-American ‘natural law’ concept of

liberty which imagines individuals as originally free of constraints ‘in a state of

nature’. This difference would come to the fore in the New Jersey land riots a few

decades later, but now these Palatines were set free to shift for themselves. Simon

and Christina Voght were among a group of Palatine immigrants who settled in New

Jersey, held the first recorded Lutheran worship service in this province and built a

vibrant congregation and community called New Germantown.

Church Governance: Authority versus Autonomy

A small number of Palatines had somehow escaped the fate of those on

Livingston Manor. Simon and Christina Voght were among some 350 Germans who

remained on Governor’s Island off the tip of Manhattan, where they’d landed when

their ship arrived in 1710. When the naval supplies project finally collapsed, about

50 Palatines, including the Voghts, made their way to settle along the Millstone near

the Raritan River in New Jersey.

In August 1714, Simon, Christina, and dozens of Palatines gathered with a

Lutheran minister, Justus Falckner, who had come all the way from New York City to

celebrate a worship service for these recent immigrants and to baptize their infants,

including Simon and Christina Voght’s son Johannes Christopher, born a few

months earlier. (Wittwer 1984) Their son, whose name was usually spelled Vought,

was known as either Christopher or by the German variation, Christoffel. He usually

referred to himself simply as Stoffel.

The worship service where Christoffel Vought was baptized reaffirmed these

Palatine’s Lutheran identity among the British, Dutch and Africans in the new world.

This Lutheran service established a vibrant congregation “upon the Raritans.” By

the late 1720’s part of this congregation, including the Voght family moved north and

west along the Raritan Valley into Hunterdon County, to sparsely settled lands

within the 100,000 acre Great Tract owned by the West Jersey Society, a group of

absentee stockholders.

Palatines were drawn to the Great Tract by seemingly available land with soils

similar to the Palatine, where limestone was part of “the fertile ‘Loess’ soils for which

the area is famous.” This land in Hunterdon County was also “the closest available

expanse of unsettled land

to which they could

relocate as a group.

Although the tract had

already been surveyed out

to others, as anonymous

absentee landlords its

owners had relatively

limited representation in

the colony.” (Hunter

2005:3-33) Here they

settled as a community

called New Germantown

(today’s Oldwick, NJ) and

began to clear and cultivate land and construct houses.

Lutheran congregations were scattered over hundreds of miles; with but few

ordained ministers, lay leaders played a very large role. When Reverend William

Berkenmeyer arrived in 1725, he “found the church’s problems “originated in an

erroneous notion that ‘every congregation is permitted to defend its own doctrine

and views’ . . . . Berkemeyer’s German text singled out subjective, individual opinion

as a defective concept, one that neglected to heed the objective norms by which

‘right’ and ‘justice’ were established.” (Roeber 1998:14) He unified Lutheran

Churches “into a kind of presbyterial system.” (Bonomi 2003:76) With Justus

Falkner’s death in 1723, the need for ministers in New York and New Jersey became

acute.

The New Germantown congregation’s formal “call” for a minister was finally

answered in 1734, when the newly ordained John Augustus Wolff arrived. Those

who signed this call were to provide a parsonage and salary for as long as the pastor

served, usually for life. But the congregation soon became dissatisfied with Wolff’s

performance and his behavior. Wolff was not a compelling public speaker and was

unable to preach without reading from notes. He was also considered difficult. He

quickly married Maria, Simon and Christina Voght’s eldest surviving daughter. But

their marriage was rocked by violent arguments.

His professional and personal failings led the congregation to renege on his

salary and seek his dismissal. “At first Simon Voght was very supportive of his son-

in-law and went to great lengths to support him in his difficulties with the

congregation. Voght gave up his position as a church deacon because he could not

support efforts of the congregation to dismiss Wolf.” (Hunter 2005:3-38) He also

made several trips to Hackensack and to New York, traveling hundreds of miles to

consult with Berkenmeyer.

Berkenmeyer sided with Wolf in defense of church authority and the conflict

resulted in a lawsuit. After “years of court disputes and acrimony” Henrich Melchior

Muhlenberg, the senior Lutheran pastor in America, as asked to intervene.

Muhlenberg insisted that “the original agreement between pastor and congregation

was actually a ‘call,’ although it had been turned by the disputants into a secular

contract.” (Roeber 1998:345 n.45)

During this test of central authority and local autonomy, the “difficulties

between Augustus Wolf and his wife, Maria became so extreme that even his most

powerful and closest ally, Simon Vogt, turned against him.” Friends of Wolf got him

to suspect Maria “of having committed adultery with [Peter] Kastner’s Negro in the

open field.” “Simon Vogt…became enraged . . . he too beat up Pastor Wolf with a big

stick and chased him out of the house when he came the first time to get his wife

back again.” (Hunter 2005:3-38) The dispute finally came to an end when a new

minister, John Albert Weygand answered the call, which Christoffel Vought signed,

to replace Johannes Wolf in 1748. After his marriage to Cornelia Traphagen in 1749,

Christoffel became patriarch of the Vought family.

Simon Voght’s support of church authority against the autonomy of local lay

leaders parallels the Schoharie Valley leaders’ response to Robert Hunter that the

liberty, the self-sufficiency they sought would be fulfilled by legitimate authority.

Ironically, this caused the Schoharie dissidents to disobey Governor Hunter to gain

the lands and liberty promised by the monarch. A similar relationship to authority

informed Simon Voght’s support of Berkenmeyer and Pastor Wolff over fellow lay

leaders in his own congregation, at least until Wolff’s disparaging of his daughter’s

character dramatically altered Simon’s sense of loyalty. Questions of authority and

autonomy would arise again with the New Jersey land riots in the 1740’s and with

calls for independence in the 1770’s.

New Jersey Land Riots

In 1742, Willliam Allen, one of the wealthiest men in Philadelphia, paid £300

sterling for 3,100 acres in the West Jersey Society’s Great Tract in Hunterdon. Here

Allen and partner Joseph Turner would build two iron works, one in today’s High

Bridge another about two miles west, on the Spruce Run. This large tract

encompassed all the resources needed for charcoal-fired iron works: several iron ore

mines were nearby, the vast acres of woodlands would meet an insatiable need for

charcoal, readily available limestone would provide a flux, and the two rivers had

sufficient flow to power bellows at the furnace.

There was one problem. Allen found that “several hundred families had settled

on the land.” (Horowitz 1966:194) These settlers “claimed title as the ‘earliest

inhabitants to the parts occupied’.” To operate the forge, colliers would need to cut

and burn many acres of woods for charcoal. “This led to ejectment suits and a series

of riots and disorders.” (Boyer 1963:234)

When they moved to Hunterdon, the Vought family stepped into a century-long

controversy over who held valid land titles in New Jersey. This conflict sprang from

the Duke of York’s original grant of New Jersey lands to court favorites Lords

Berkeley and Carteret and a simultaneous grant by Richard Nicolls, the Duke’s agent

in America, of Elizabeth Town and Newark to settlers in 1644. “This simple case of

overlapping authority created New Jersey’s most enduring property title

dispute.” (McConville 1999:13)

Attempts to enforce the proprietors’ rights by collecting rents or evicting

settlers led to decades of legal wrangling and riots. Shortly after Simon Voght and

family moved onto this land, absentee landlords in the West Jersey Society decided

to take action against squatters and instructed its lawyers to eject intruders on the

vast Society lands and sell whatever remained. (Horowitz 1966:189)

“In 1735, at the request of his father, who was agent for the Society, Lewis

Morris Jr. went several times to the tract to take leases from the settlers.” He

convinced 98 families to sign leases. A ‘Christopher Vecakt’ is listed as renting 200

acres from the West Jersey Society. (Race 1895:2,3). “In the end, 97 other

individuals, almost all Germans, agreed to sign.” (Hunter 2005:3-35)

West and eastern Jersey were owned by different proprietary companies. By

1745, the East Jersey Proprietors were discovering that individual trespass suits were

expensive and with many anti-proprietor farmers in the jury, often unsuccessful.

James Alexander, one of the largest land owners and attorney for the East Jersey

Proprietors, proposed the solution of taking their case to a higher court, the

Chancery Court. In 1745, the proprietors filed the Elizabeth Town Bill in Chancery

Court, where Governor Lewis Morris, a major proprietary landowner, would himself

decide the merits of the East Jersey Proprietors’ case.

Since the gentry controlled the judiciary, “we have not yet had any justice,

neither could we expect any” squatters in Hunterdon wrote. (McConville 1999: 117)

As the Chancery case began, “the first of many riots occurred. On 19 September

1745, Samuel Baldwin was arrested for trespassing when he was sorting logs on his

land. The prisoner was taken to the jail in Newark. That same day Baldwin was

rescued from the Essex county jail by about one hundred fifty men who wielded

clubs, axes, crow bars and other cudgels.” (Horowitz 1966:67)

Over the next few years, jailbreaks and riots, sometimes drawing crowds of over

200, were organized in East Jersey. Violence also flared in Somerset and

Hunterdon. (McConville 1999:162,163) “From the epicenter of Newark Township,

acts of collective violence quickly spread from the New York border south to Trenton.

Hundreds of yeomen engaged in violence against the colony’s gentry, their clients

and tenants, and royal officials.” (McConville: 2004:454)

In the decade following 1745, the term ‘clubman’ became synonymous with

‘rioter’, illustrating “how self-imposed limits on collective action operated. Land

claimants refused to carry guns or swords, even when they knew their opponents

were armed.” (Purvis 1986:215) Similar to the militia or a posse, these clubmen were

citizens protecting their community, not outlaws and not yet disloyal subjects taking

up arms, simply the people acting against a perceived injustice and tyranny.

Limited collective violence to protect a community from unjust actions of the

King’s agents had a long-established basis in English common law, so “instances of

popular disorder became prima facie indictments not of the people, but of authority.

In 1747, for example, New Jersey land rioters argued that ‘from their numbers,

Violences and unlawful Actions’ it was ‘to be inferred that . . . they are wronged &

oppressed, or else they would never rebell agt. the Laws’.” (Maier 1991:22)

The conflict between Newark and Elizabeth Town settlers and the East Jersey

Proprietors widened the rift between American landed gentry, whose land titles

flowed from Royal sovereignty, and ordinary immigrant settlers who would often

claim that “property was the product of labor and possession.” (McConville 1999:3)

This idea that unimproved land in a ‘state of nature’ becomes private property when

someone invests their own labor in clearing fields and raising buildings matched the

Whig political philosophy of John Locke, as expressed in his 1690 Second Treatise

on Government:

. . . every man has a property in his own person: this no body has any right to

but himself. The labour of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are

properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath

provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it

something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property.

As Elizabeth Town associates tried to secure rights to lands in West Jersey

gained through purchase or from settlement, they organized tenants on the Society’s

Great Tract. In 1747 a “compact was drawn up in which the settlers agreed to stand

by one another in defense against the Society. Those refusing to join in the

agreement would be dispossessed by the others.” (Wacker 1975: 359,361) With this

agreement, the resistance in Hunterdon County’s Great Tract became more

organized and in 1749, riots broke out. “Especially subject to the riots was the

portion of the Great Tract consisting of 3,100 acres leased to Allen and Turner in the

Vicinity of Spruce Run. The wood lots which were being cut over to provide fuel for

the iron furnace built by Allen and Turner was claimed by squatters who had

previously settled on the tract. The clearance of land for agricultural use obviously

reduced the timber available for charcoal manufacture, one basic raw material for

the iron industry.” (Wacker 1975:361)

The manager of the Union Iron Works, Colonel John Hackett and his men

arrested several squatters on the land claimed by Allen & Turner. While they were

jailed in Trenton, a club-wielding mob gathered, attempted to break them out, but

failed. The clubmen then attacked the forge itself and succeeded in “pulling down

and destroying of the Furnace and Develling House.” (Boyer 1963:236)

The leveled furnace was rebuilt and sporadic resistance continued. As late as

1754, squatters attacked workers cutting timber for the furnace. Finally, Allen and

Turner “were able to reach an agreement with the Elizabeth Town claimants so that

they could have a test case to determine proper titles. The agreement ended their

complaints and although no final decision was reached, they were happy with just

the quiet.” (Horowitz 1966:195) There was also a judgment against other settlers on

the West Jersey Society’s land. “The losers, on their attorney’s advice decided to

accept the verdict.” Some leased or purchased land from the Society, others moved

west. (Horowitz 1966:162) Contests over rights to New Jersey’s land were also

eclipsed by the onset of war.

In 1753 the perennial global contest between France and Britain erupted into

the Seven Years War. In North America, the French maintained a thinly settled arc

of military and trading posts from the St. Lawrence through the Ohio valley to the

mouth of the Mississippi. The French sought to keep British colonies hemmed in

along the coast. American settlers from the thirteen colonies and before them

speculators such as the Ohio Company sought control of these same lands. Plentiful

cheap lands were the key to wealth for empires, for land speculators, and for settlers.

For the French and their Indian allies, this vast expanse west of the Appalachian

Mountains was their home and a source of great wealth from fur trading.

In what the Americans called the French and Indian War, British troops and

colonial militia sought to displace the French and their Indian allies from these lands

to the west, especially the Ohio Valley. With the onset of war, settlers along the

Delaware River and those 15 miles to the east, in the village near the Union Iron

Works, faced a new threat in Indian attacks. But within a few years, as Britain’s war

fortunes improved, with the riots ended, the West Jersey Society decided to sell off

lands. James Alexander had acquired rights to 10,000 acres and in 1759 Christoffel

paid £712, 10s, to Alexander’s estate for 285 acres “very conveniently situated” near

the Union Iron Works, “where there is a ready Market for all Kinds of Produce, &c. . .

” as an advertisement in the Pennsylvania Gazette read.

Anti-proprietor organizing and land riots were precursors to protest mobs and

the Sons of Liberty two decades later. Abraham Clark, a leader of the Elizabeth

Town clubmen, signed the Declaration of Independence. (McConville, 1999:215) As

in other colonies, New Jersey “leather apron” workers and rural farmers often

engaged in menacing crowd actions which propelled the continent towards rebellion.

The New Jersey land riots came to an end in Hunterdon County but the extent and

limits of royal sovereignty on the American continent remained to be settled. When

thirteen American colonies finally repudiated British sovereignty in 1776, Christoffel

Vought and his son John became important leaders among local Loyalists.

The Vought family’s worldview informed their actions, from Simon Voght’s role

in a bitter conflict within the Lutheran Church and Christoffel’s readiness to comply

with the proprietors’ claims in the land riots, to John and Christoffel’s fateful

decision two decades later to cast their fate with the British during the American

Revolution. But the cultural milieu of colonial New Jersey also influenced the

Vought family. This is seen in the impressive stone home built in 1759, which reveals

much about how they lived and what was at stake, both in terms of their material

wellbeing and perhaps also their ideals when the American Revolution landed at

their doorstep.

An Impressive Stone Home

When Christoffel bought 285 acres of limestone-rich farmland in 1759, he and

Cornelia Vought finally

attained the freeholder

status for which his

parents had migrated a

half century earlier. The

house he built sits today

on Grayrock Road at the

entrance to the Clinton

Township Middle School.

________________________________Michael J. Margulies

This impressive stone home shows the Vought family’s leading status within colonial

Lebanon Township (now Clinton Township). Its architecture also displays the

Vought family’s experience in the cultural crosscurrents of colonial New Jersey:

both the “bank house” construction and the decorative patterns of the ceilings draw

on the Vought family’s German heritage. Yet the gable-end chimneys and center hall

are typical of genteel mid-18th Century British and American homes, revealing an

acceptance of style trends within the larger trans-Atlantic culture.

The Vought family’s new house was the prize of fifty years of farming in the

American colonies. Many early German homes had just two first floor rooms, a large

‘stove room’ (used as a living, dining, and bed room) on one side of a central chimney

with a smaller kitchen on the other side. In contrast, the Vought House was both

larger and more refined; a center hall separates first floor living and entertaining

rooms from the private sleeping areas.

Vought House: The front four rooms are original. The 1830 addition re-

oriented the house to face the new Grayrock Rd. Michael J. Marguiles

The Ceilings

The most important architectural refinement in the Vought house is overhead:

This may be the only house in the United States with four mid-18th Century

Germanic decorative plaster ceilings. Two similar ceilings were removed from the

deteriorating Hehn-Kerchner house in Pennsylvania and reconstructed at the

Dupont Winterthur Museum. But we know of no other home with four similar

ceilings still in place.

We know these are original ceilings in part because the materials used in this

“wattle and daub” construction are consistent with the era and because the house

was framed to carry the tremendous load of these thick ceilings. First, battens were

run between the floor joists and twigs were carefully woven above and below these

battens to form a net for the mud and plaster. After the hay, mud and plaster was

daubed into the wattle of woven branches, the entire ceiling was troweled smooth.

The artisan then created the three geometric designs and the unique snake

design we see today, nearly 250 years later! The design were not applied to the

plaster but formed directly into the outer layer of plaster, probably using a wooden

jig with a guide arm and a molding-shaped edge to carry the desired shape around

the ceiling.

These ceilings and their geometric designs are impressive examples of

craftsmanship in 18th Century rural New Jersey.

The wattle behind the plaster became visible when a water leak in 2006 caused a portion of

one ceiling to fail, after 247 years. Donald E. Sherblom

The most unusual of the designs implanted in Christoffel Vought’s new ceilings

was the serpent that snakes along the center hall from the rear to the front of the

house where it recoils back toward the attic stairway. The obvious association for

this image, the personification of evil in Adam and Eve’s fall from grace, would be an

austere emblem to confront visitors. A redemptive biblical association might be the

story of Moses and the brass serpent (Numbers 21, 4-9). It’s also possible the design

simply fit the space, serving an artistic not allegorical purpose. In any case, this

snake lay overhead when the local militia came to arrest Chrisoffel in 1776 and

remains there today.

Three other ceiling patterns are similar to the ceilings recovered from the 1750

Hehn-Kerchner house and installed at Winterthur Museum. Both the Christoffel

Vought and the Hehn-Kerchner ceilings are not as ornate as those found at Mount

Vernon or several other homes of wealthy colonials, which display the newer, ornate

Baroque styles.

Although they share many of the basic shapes seen in Baroque plaster ceilings

of the era, the Hehn-Kerchner and Vought ceilings display simplified motifs found in

early 18th Century German-American decorative and folk arts. These ceilings are

interesting as German-American folk art, both an expression of their heritage within

the diverse cultural milieu of 18th Century New Jersey and as emblems of this

family’s growing social status. (Hunter 2005:4-103)

Christoffel and Cornelia Vought lived in this house less than two decades, from

1759 to 1776, but they prospered. Christoffel expanded their farm with the purchase

of an adjoining 203 acres and another 2,000 acres in New York before the

Revolution. Items auctioned by the Patriots in 1778 provide a glimpse of how the

Reflected ceiling designs, Vought House Michael J. Margulies

family lived. The house had a valuable “good clock” and four beds with bedding and

linens. A variety of other household and kitchen furniture included a chest of

drawers, two dining tables and a tea table. Before the sale, “a considerable part of

their property [was] plundered & embezelled by the American Army–and others–

which never fell into the hands of the Commrs,” but even this partial list portrays a

very comfortably furnished colonial-era home. (Great Britain Public Record Office:

434-435)

This home’s design, its decorative ceilings and its furnishings indicate it

belonged to a prosperous family. By the time of the Revolution, the Vought

homestead had become a very productive farm, providing a large marketable

surplus. They had 25 acres of meadow which supported 50 sheep, somewhere

between 25 and 56 cattle, and 25 hogs. They tilled 165 acres to grow wheat and corn,

with the rest of the land still in timber. The family had at three working horses, a

black saddle horse, probably two more saddle horses, four good breeding mares and

four colts.

A tally of one harvest included 30 tons of hay, 400 bushels of wheat with

another 50 acres in the ground, and 200 bushels of Indian corn. The nearby village

of charcoal colliers, miners, and iron forgers at the Union Iron Works, including

forty slaves and a greater number of indentured and wage workers, provided a ready

market for much of the Vought farmstead’s produce. Allen and Turner kept a

company store since their ironworkers “cannot Spare time to run about the Country

to buy Flour & Provisions & the Necessary Cloathing for their Families.” (Bezis-Selfa

2004:127)

This large farming enterprise would have required more than family labor. We

don’t yet know if the Vought family produced their farm surplus through wage labor,

indentured workers or enslaved labor. The advantage of wage employment is that it

could be seasonal, providing labor in the busy months with no burden to feed and

house extra workers in the winter.

On the other hand, indentured and slave labor provided a higher level of

exploitation. By signing an indenture or purchasing a slave, a farmer could nearly

double his farm’s productivity with recurring costs limited to food and shelter.

Indentures were contracts for a limited period while slavery was compulsory for life

and inheritable. A large number of people labored as slaves in homes and on farms

in 18th Century Hunterdon.

Allen and Turner were Philadelphia slave traders and held enslaved laborers at

the Union Iron Works. At the time of the Revolution, New York City had more slaves

than any city other than Charlestown, South Carolina. Slave labor was fairly

common in New Jersey, in rural farming communities as well as cities, where

Africans composed up to 20 percent of the population. (Berlin 1998, Hodges, 1999)

In response to 1804 legislation, over 240 families throughout Hunterdon

registered children born to one or more of their enslaved women. This provides us

with an incomplete but perhaps surprising measure of slavery in 18th Century

Hunterdon. The Vought family had servants when transported to Nova Scotia, and

the family graveyard in New York appears to have markers for slaves, so they may

have used enslaved workers on their farmstead in Lebanon Township. The use of

slave labor on this farm after the Revolution has been documented. (Sisser, 2004:9)

1709-1759-1776

After a half century of striving, the Vought family’s great success and prosperity as

Hunterdon County landowners would last less than two decades. Sometime in the

early 1770’s possibly once his daughter was married and after John Vought married

Mary Grandin in 1772, Christoffel Vought “in consequence of his old age made over

his personal property” to John Vought, who took over running the farm. (Ver Planck

1907:10) Simon and Cornelia may have moved to a Grandfather’s House a few feet

from the main house then occupied by John and Mary Vought. (Hunter 2005:4-68)

The purchase of an adjacent 203 acres to the north transformed the Vought farm

into a 488-acre plantation.

On Saturday April 9, 1776, John and Mary Vought hosted the wedding of Jane

Grandin and Jonathan Furman at this well furnished and uniquely decorated large

stone house set back from the Great Road. That day’s joyful celebration was among

the Vought family’s last tranquil moments in this house. The fragile serenity of this

community was about to be shattered. (Sisser, 2004:4)

Just a few weeks before, General Howe had abandoned Boston, which had been

surrounded and under siege by the Continental army. As the British troops sailed for

Nova Scotia many hoped this would be the end of war, that Parliament would come

to its senses and allow self-rule within the empire. But if not, the next port of call

would likely be New York City. Tensions in New Jersey were high. The Patriot’s

Provincial Congress had largely usurped powers of the General Assembly and would

soon arrest the royal governor, Benjamin’s son, William Franklin. (Fischer, 2004:10)

Why a Loyalist?

Thomas Jones, the Vought family’s neighbor to the east, operated a public

tavern at his home along the Great

Road. From 1763 to 1775,

Christoffel and John Vought signed

license applications in which they

testified to the need for a public

house and that Thomas Jones kept

his in good order. The Voughts

signed the application below just

two weeks after the war began with

skirmishes between ‘minute men’

and British troops searching for weapons at Lexington and Concord.

But over the next year, with tensions rising throughout the colony, the

neighborly friendship between the Vought family and Jones became strained. The

final break came late on the night of Monday, June 24th 1776, when, as Thomas Jones

described it, John Vought and a mob of two dozen men

came to the House of this Deponent Armed with Clubs & fell upon John Shurts

Junr. near his back Door with their clubs in a furious manner This Deponent upon

hearing sd Shurts Cry Murder run up the Cellar Kitchen Stairs with his loaded gun

by which time a number of the Above Named Persons had got into the Entry

This Deponent then sat his Gun by and attempted to relieve sd Shurts by pulling

them away, upon which John Voaght Swindle & others Struck this Deponent with

Militia Captain Thomas Jones’ Tavern on Beaver

Avenue, in today’s Clinton Township

Clubs, who then took his gun & told them that if they did not leave the House and

cease striking him he would blow their Brains out

They answered Gd Dam him he presents his Gun at us, & twisted it out of his

hands & beat him on the head & sundry parts of his body w’ their Clubs & said

Dam by whig kill him out of the way This Deponent broke from them . . . hot into

his house & locked the Door and fled up Stairs

They Immediately broke Open the Outside Door & Several Inside Doors in Search

of this Deponent threatened to kick his wife if she did not tell them where he was

who answered she did not know & Cryed out don’t kill me you have killed my

husband This Deponent further Saith that they pursued his Wife & Children out of

Doors & he heard the Children Screaming & Crying you have killed my dady don’t

kill me.

This Deponent saith the Insurgents then went off & his wife then informed him

the Barr door which had been locked was broke open & his pocked Book & Money

was Stole upon which this Deponent with the help of his Wife got down stairs &

found sd Barr Door Pen & upon Examining the Drawer Missed his Pocket Book in

which he had that Morning put Twelve pounds just & one dollar & in which this

Deponent’s wife informed him she had put Seven pounds proclamation money

which pocket Book & Money this Deponent firmly believes the Afforesaid

Insurgents or some one or more of them Robbed him off & further this Deponent

sayeth not. (Hunterdon County Miscellaneous Records, quoted in Hunter 2005

pp. 3-45 & 3-47)

This was a peculiar encounter indeed – kids running through the yard crying

out “you’ve killed my daddy don’t kill me,” the severe body blows and the stolen

money. It was a violent assault, yet the attackers left their guns at home. The use of

cudgels, not guns, was similar to the New Jersey land riots Christoffel Vought had

witnessed in the mid 1740’s and 1750’s. Similar to the land riots, this raid was meant

to harass and intimidate but not kill Thomas Jones. When a vastly outnumbered

Jones raised his gun against the rioters, their response was “Gd Dam him he

presents his Gun at us.”

As clubmen had a generation before, this mob acted to preserve legitimate

authority in their community against a usurping power, in this case, New Jersey’s

extra-legal Provincial Congress. After all, Captain Jones was the revolutionary.

These loyal citizens had grown increasingly alarmed as the Provincial Congress

superseded the General Assembly and Governor William Franklin.

Since May 1775, the Provincial Congress, with representatives from each

county, had begun to organize the resistance, raising taxes, and organizing a militia.

A year later, Governor William Franklin “knew his days as governor were numbered .

. . . So, hoping to take advantage of the latent Loyalism within the province and the

imminent arrival of a British peace commission, the governor summoned the

General Assembly.” (Gerlach 1975:32)

The Provincial Congress countered this with a vote on June 14th that the

Governor’s summons not be obeyed. They declared Franklin an “enemy of the

liberties of this country” and ordered he be taken into custody. Three days before

the raid on Jones’s Tavern, Governor Franklin appeared before the Provincial

Congress and challenged their authority, saying he would not cooperate “with those

who ‘presum’d to usurp the Government of the Province,’ he refused to answer any

charges or questions but instead challenged the authority of the Provincial

Congress.” (Gerlach 1975:33) With the governor’s arrest, the Provincial Congress

had fully displaced royal authority and was mobilizing the militia to defend New

York and New Jersey from the anticipated British fleet.

As John Vought later testified, at first he dared not declare his sentiments, but

when the militia company drawn from the Union Iron Works refused to turn out for

training, John Vought and Joseph Lee, who managed the Iron Works, were blamed

for this company’s refusal to take up arms against the government and were “ill-

used.”

On June 19, five days after they arrested Governor Franklin, the Provincial

Congress called on John Vought to appear before them and account for this refusal

to turn out. This request may have precipitated the mob action, for on the day he

was to appear, John Vought, Joseph Lee and a mob of two dozen Loyalists attacked

Thomas Jones at his Tavern.

As Todd Braisted notes, in the spring of 1776 many remained on the sidelines.

Even “one of the war’s most successful Loyalist partisans, James Moody of Sussex

County at this time ‘remained on his farm a silent, but not unconcerned, spectator of

the black cloud that had been gathering, and was now ready to burst on his devoted

head’.” Yet Christoffel and John Vought made an early and daring decision to

oppose the predominant Patriots and this set their fate. (Braisted 2007)

Arrest at the Vought House

“They started about sundown . . . from White

House and marched quietly and noiselessly to

Lebanon arriving there about midnight. Having

surrounded the house with his men, [Colonel

Fredrick] Frelinghuysen [who was in command] went to the door and rapped

with the hilt of his sword. In a moment a back window was thrown open and the

man they sought jumped out in his night shirt but ran into the arms of one of the

men who at once threw him down and had him bound.”

“They then went into the house in search of something to eat. In the cellar

they found a boiled ham and some bread and butter with a barrel of Methiglen

which was soon tapped and some of the men had the bees buzzing in their heads

all day and even at night fall. went with the party who accompanied the Tory to

Trenton and lodged him in the jail for safe keeping”

[Cornelius Messler’s war service record,

Hunterdon Historical Newsletter 1978:7]

Christoffel and John were arrested and held for a few days at Trenton then

released on bail either on July 7th or on the 8th when the Declaration of Independence

was proclaimed from stairs above their cell. They were ordered to appear before the

Provincial Congress, where charges were read and each fined 100 pounds. In the

months following their attack on Jones’ Tavern, their notoriety grew, giving them a

leading role among local Loyalists.

Loyalists were especially numerous in Hunterdon County. When Patriot

Governor Livingston complained about the baneful influence of Loyalists being

detained at the Union Iron Works—Pennsylvania’s former Royal Governor John

Penn and Chief Justice Benjamin Chew—he wrote “Of all Jersey, the spot in which

they are at present is the very spot in which they ought not to be. It has always been

considerably disaffected and remains so, notwithstanding all our efforts, owing, we

imagine, in part to the interests, connection, and influence of Mr. John Allen, [a son

of William Allen] brother-in-law of Mr. Penn . . . ” (Livingston letter to John

Hancock, Oct. 4, 1777)

Hunterdon County was bitterly divided over the question of independence.

Colonel Thomas Lowry served in the militia and his son-in-law, Thomas Skelton,

who owned the Flemington home later called “Fleming Castle” joined the British. It

may have been an overstatement to say northern Hunterdon was “the very spot”

where Loyalists were in great numbers “of all Jersey,” an area “considerably

disaffected” but it’s no coincidence that three of Hunterdon Couny’s five

Revolutionary-era museum homes, Solitude House at the Union Iron Works,

Thomas Skelton’s house, and the Vought homestead, were confiscated from

“disaffected” Loyalist owners and auctioned by the Patriots during the war.

Why did Christoffel and John Vought choose to fight against independence, to

take up arms as Loyalists? Present-day Americans typically explain Loyalists as

motivated by material interests and Patriots as motivated by ideals. However,

people on each side acted both from personal gain and fundamental belief, and

it is often difficult to disentangle which prevailed.

Interests

The Vought family had little to gain from a political upheaval, and a lot to lose:

The newly enlarged 488 acre plantation, impressive stone house and excellent barns,

the crops and livestock they’d worked so hard to attain. Their property and position

might be at risk in a new social order.

But material interests were hardly decisive. Far wealthier men favored

independence. Most of the Revolutionary leaders were landed gentry such as

Washington and Jefferson, who derived their wealth from the enslaved workers on

their plantations or the tenants who worked their Manors. New Jersey’s

Revolutionary Governor was William Livingston, of Livingston Manor.

The Commander of Revolutionary forces in New Jersey, the man preparing to

defend New York City, William Alexander, who claimed the title Lord Stirling, was

the son of the largest landowner in New York and New Jersey, James Alexander. On

the other side, many of the colony’s wealthiest men, such as the owners of the Union

Iron Works, Philadelphia merchants William Allen and Joseph Turner, remained

loyal to Britain.

More importantly, like Patriots, Loyalists came from all levels of the

hierarchical social order. Material interests might help explain who favored or

opposed democratic equality in post-colonial America, but not allegiance in the War

for Independence.

Ideals

During the attack on Jones, the clubman apparently used the term Whig:

“Dam by whig kill him out of the way.” The Vought family’s beliefs and ideals

probably inclined them toward the Tory cause and against local Whigs.

Conflict between Whigs and Tories had defined British politics since the 17th

Century civil war. Tories supported the monarch’s divine right to rule and the

Anglican Church as an established church, one supported by taxes and in turn

supportive of the existing political order. Whigs also revered the King but insisted

on religious freedom. And in contrast to a divine right to rule, Whigs thought

governments legitimate only when they protected the inherent or “natural” rights of

citizens. This concept of individual rights pre-existing government became the

cornerstone of American political culture.

Whigs were often members of dissenting churches, those largely governed by

congregations, such as Dutch Reformed, Baptists, and especially Presbyterians, and

were opposed to establishing an official religion. Calls for an Anglican bishop in

America were considered a threat to religious and political liberty. Presbyterians

were so staunch in their support some saw them as the driving force of the

Revolution, a simplification not completely off the mark. (Cody 1975:12)

Many Whigs in Britain were sympathetic to American efforts to protect their

liberty, even if they did not support outright rebellion. Lord Admiral Howe was a

political Whig who accepted this command on condition that he was also

commissioned to negotiate peace.

American Patriots, men like Thomas Jones and land rioter Abraham Clark,

came to believe only independence could preserve their rights as Englishmen in

America, were considered Whigs. As the conflict escalated, on each side people

made decisions, sometimes brave choices, determined in part by their belief system.

Social Identity

Personal belief systems and material interests are usually both formed within

the web of family, religious congregation, community and market relations. The

Vought family’s social identity would have determined their material interests,

reinforced their ideals, and provided crucial allies in their contest with local Patriots.

We know enough about the family’s social identity to shed light on their precipitous

decision to take up arms as Loyalists.

As Palatines, they probably remained thankful for the escape to land and liberty

bestowed by Queen Anne in 1709. The Vought family did not experience the more

oppressive aspects of life at Livingston Manor which disillusioned some Palatines

regarding the British. But since they bought 2000 acres in that area, they may still

have had ties to that Palatine community. And it’s possible they distrusted William

Livingston, the Patriot governor of New Jersey and son of the second Lord of

Livingston Manor. According to the dissident Palatines, Governor Hunter had

forfeited his authority by keeping them on Livingston Manor and not providing the

land and liberty promised by Queen Anne.

Also, the Germanic ‘positive’ concept of liberty ran at odds with the British

‘negative’ concept of individual liberty which informed and legitimated the rebellion.

The Vought family may have feared the Whig’s concept of natural rights which

appeared to undermine the social order necessary for positive liberty. Christoffel’s

role in disputes over land in New Jersey was consistent with the notion that land

ownership came not from improving land found in a ‘state of nature’ or from

purchase from original owners or natives, but from the sovereign. These ideas are

similar to Tory thought.

The Lutheran pastor Henry Melchoir Muhlenburg agonized for two years over

“the moral dilemma posed by revolution against a Christian monarch.” Muhlenberg

like the Voughts was a Loyalist when independence was declared but later became

enraged by Hessian soldiers plundering New Jersey and “eventually saw the defense

of property as justification for rebellion.” He and his sons, who also ministered at the

Zion Lutheran Church in New Germantown, eventually became leading Patriots.

(Roeber 1998:304)

But in June 1776, with a second generation German on the British throne and

Hessian troops on their way to assist in restoring order, and prior to the occupation

of the Jerseys, Christoffel and John, like Pastor Mulhenberg, supported the British

monarch.

Christoffel and Cornelia’s daughter Christiana had married a Lutheran

clergyman but their son John, was married to Mary Grandin by an Episcopalian

minister. They worshipped at an Anglican church on Staten Island. John and

Mary’s religious faith probably differed little from the Lutheranism of Simon Voght,

in supporting church authority over local congregations. In short, the Voughts

probably shared Tory sentiments on church and state.

Given the acres of wheat and corn they cultivated, their milk cows, hogs and

sheep, they almost certainly supplied produce for Allen and Turner’s Iron Works,

which probably employed over a hundred workers including about forty enslaved

Africans. To invest in livestock and spring planting, farmers like the Vought family

would take loans from wealthy merchants, such as William Allen, to be repaid at

harvest. Either of these economic ties would reinforce a sense of common cause with

owners of the Iron Works, where John also trained with the militia company. When

they fled rebellious Hunterdon and joined the New Jersey Volunteers, Joseph Lee, a

manager at the Iron Works was commissioned Captain and John served as his

lieutenant.

These business and military ties would have conformed with their social

deference to William Allen. Deference was the prevalent 18th Century expectation

that those on a lower social rung would defer to the judgment of their ‘social

superiors’. As chief justice of Pennsylvania from 1750-74 and one of the most

prominent local landowners, William Allen’s views would probably have had

significant influence on John Vought and other local Loyalists.

William Allen had successfully delayed passage of the 1763 Stamp Act. He had

written against the Currency Act of 1764 and agreed with many of the colonies’

complaints about the tightening of mercantilist policies in the Navigation Acts. In

1774, Allen’s The American Crisis, was published in Great Britain offering a plan for

colonial reconciliation. He even provided cannonballs to New Jersey’s Patriot

government prior to 1776. But when the colonies declared independence his Loyalist

sympathies came to the fore and William Allen sought refuge with British troops.

Christoffel Vought had been appointed to Lebanon Township's Committee of

Correspondence in March 1774. New Jersey’s political landscape changed quickly

over the next two years. By 1776, John and Christoffel’s interests, ideals, and

emerging social identity as Loyalist leaders motivated them to organize the attack on

Jones’s Tavern, an action which brought their arrest by the militia.

The American War

For the first year, the war had gone reasonably well. In April 1775, British

troops searching for munitions were confronted by Minutemen at Lexington and

Concord and harassed on their retreat to Boston. Washington’s new Continental

army laid siege to Boston. In June 1775, the battle for Breed’s Hill (or Battle of

Bunker Hill) was a defeat for the Colonists but cost the British dearly and showed

that American troops would stand and fight. Another defeat for the colonists was the

campaign to conquer Quebec and bring it into the war, which was repulsed outside

Montreal. But after Fort Ticonderoga on Lake Champlain had fallen to Ethan Allen,

Patriots hauled that fort’s cannons to Dorchester Heights overlooking Boston Harbor

in March of 1776. With this, General William Howe realized Boston was indefensible

and ordered its evacuation.

The British sailed for Halifax, Nova Scotia. The colonists had ended the

occupation of Boston but this victory opened a new and dangerous phase of the war.

If the British parliament did not stop the war, there was little doubt New York City

would likely be their next destination. Surrounded by navigable rivers, New York

City would be almost impossible to defend against the world’s greatest naval power.

With control of New York and the Hudson River, the British could isolate New

England from the rest of the colonies.

As the Declaration of Independence was being read aloud in towns across New

Jersey, the British fleet appeared off the southern tip of Manhattan. The harbor was

said to look like a forest of ship masts. British troops debarked on Staten Island,

which offered an overwhelmingly loyal population and strategic command of the

narrows into New York harbor. From this secure operational base, General William

Howe and his brother Lord Admiral Howe began regaining control of New York City.

An army of twenty thousand drove Washington’s army from Long Island at the end

of August. The British retook the New York City on September 15. By the end of

November both Fort Washington in Manhattan and Fort Lee on the New Jersey side

of the Hudson had fallen to the redcoats.

When British troops poured into New Jersey, General William Howe

“empowered New Jersey’s attorney general under the Crown, Cortland Skinner of

Perth Amboy to raise a brigade of six battalions for service during the war. With the

British now within the province (or state), recruiting became much easier.

Gentlemen of known ability and influence were selected to raise the battalions, and

they in turn nominated the junior officers to recruit the men.” (Braisted, 2007)

At the beleaguered Patriot army retreated across New Jersey, Washington’s

leadership was being challenged by General Lee, who tarried despite Washington’s

urgent pleas to move his troops to join Washington’s. In the middle of December,

General Lee was captured in Basking Ridge, when he and a dozen of his guard stayed

overnight at a Tavern a few miles from his army.

As winter approached, Washington’s defeated army was melting away, with

men deserting and leaving as their enlistments ended. Thomas Paine was with the

disintegrating army in retreat across the Jerseys, and wrote of this desperate time in

the American Crisis:

These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine

patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that

stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. . .

All that Howe has been doing for this month past, is rather a ravage than a

conquest, which the spirit of the Jerseys, a year ago, would have quickly

repulsed, and which time and a little resolution will soon recover.

I shall not now attempt to give all the particulars of our retreat to the Delaware;

suffice it for the present to say, that both officers and men, though greatly

harassed and fatigued, frequently without rest, covering, or provision, the

inevitable consequences of a long retreat, bore it with a manly and martial

spirit. All their wishes centred in one, which was, that the country would turn

out and help them to drive the enemy back.

The War for Independence was now at its lowest ebb. In November, Howe

proclaimed protection and a pardon for anyone signing a declaration of allegiance to

the crown. Three thousand residents quickly signed for protection papers. On

December 9th Patriot forces escaped across the Delaware River in boats collected by

Captain Thomas Jones and the Hunterdon militia.

That’s when Christoffel and John Vought and Joseph Lee collected the 55 to 85

Loyalists they’d recruited from Hunterdon County to join the British in putting down

the rebellion. They set out at night and rode to meet the British at New Brunswick.

They were intercepted by the Hunterdon militia at Two Bridges, where the North

and South branches of the Raritan River come together, in present-day Branchburg.

A “distinguished Tory named Christopher Vought, or Voke, led on a large

body of Refugees and Tories from Lebanon in Hunterdon . . . attempting to make

their way to the headquarters of the army then at Brunswick. They were

discovered by Dr. Jennings, and he made it known to Capt. Lane, and the

Co[mpany] was immediately called out with Capt. Jacob Ten Eyck’s Comp’y to

intercept them; fell in with them at the 2 Bridges, junction of the N. and S.

branches of the Raritan; had a fight with them. Wm. Van Syckle of our Co[mpany]

was wounded in the head; they [blank] and ran to a fording place near Cornelius

Van Derveer’s mill on the N. Branch, where they crossed and made their way

toward Brunswick. Ten Eyck’s Co[mpany] took one prisoner, who was mounted,

and Capt. Ten Eyck took his horse” [Pension Application, in Gerlach 1975:356]

That their action was so quickly discovered by Patriots shows that although

20,000 British and Hessian troops occupied the Jerseys, those areas not directly

under British control remained contested. (Veit, 2008) This Battle of Two Bridges

shows that, “rebel authorities generally knew what was going on in their

neighborhoods, and significantly, that they had effective local military assets to

employ against counter-revolution.” (Lender 2002:33). The Jerseys were occupied

but Patriot partisans remained active and the militia able to confront Loyalists.

While General Washington was over into Pennsylvania before the Battle of

Trenton and Princeton there were a great many Tories along the Musconectong

Hills and along the upper part of Hunterdon and Morris Counties. We kept watch

for them. My Lieutenant William Vliet had leave when that neighborhood, got

information that a company of about 56 Tories had made up under Lee and

Vought two distinguished Tories to go down in the night to join the British at New

Brunswick. Vliet came on got ahead of them gave me information and alarmed the

militia and with 3 other men way laid and fired on them in a wood near the

Readington Meeting House in the night. I came up with a number of militia and

we took 17 of them and I sent them under guard to General Washington.

[Pension Application, in Veit, 2008]

Starting with incidents like this skirmish at Two Bridges, the wish Tom Paine

had just voiced, “that the country would turn out and help them to drive the enemy

back,” began to be realized. In the weeks after Washington’s army escaped to

Pennsylvania the Hunterdon militia began to strike back against British occupation

of the Delaware Valley. They harassed foraging parties, couriers, and other easy

targets. This “Hunterdon rising” strained the British and Hessian garrisons and set

the stage for Washington’s victory at the end of the year. (Fischer 2004: 194-6)

Washington’s surprise return across the Delaware River on Christmas and his

rout of the Hessians at Trenton turned the tide of the war. It raised rebel spirits,

caused the British to rethink strategy and enticed financial support from the French,

who paid for much of the supplies and troops deployed at Saratoga in October 1777.

Their victory at Saratoga secured the Patriots a military alliance with France which

proved crucial in winning the siege of Yorktown.

After the Battle of Two Bridges, Joseph Lee, the Voughts, and their four or five

dozen Loyalist recruits made their way to Brunswick, where they remained while

organized into companies. “One item not to be had at this time was a uniform. The

British had not made provision for the thousands of Loyalists that would join them

until far too late. Therefore, the first uniforms to reach them would not be ready

until April 1777. This uniform, the only one worn by the 6th Battalion, would consist

of a smart green regimental coat with white lapels, cuff and collar, white wool

waistcoat and breeches, brown leggings and drill trousers.” (Braisted 2007)

Some battalions of the New Jersey Volunteers served with Redcoat regiments

in major battles, such as the Battle of Monmouth. The 6th Battalion, in which John

Vought served, primarily had supporting roles like protecting the garrison

established on Staten Island.

In the spring of 1779, the Vought family’s large stone house, barn, and 285

acres, “165 acres in tillage, 25 acres of meadow and the rest timber” was confiscated

by the Patriot government, as was the adjacent 203 acres. In April 1779, both parcels

were sold at auction at Thomas Jones’ Tavern. It seemed that after seventy years in

the new world, the Vought family’s two decades as freeholders had come to an end.

The war that cost the Vought family their large productive farm ended with the

1783 peace treaty. In New York, tens of thousands of Loyalists, Hessians, and British

troops evacuated the city; in September the Vought family embarked on the Ranger,

which sailed for Nova Scotia where they would live for the next eight years. The

ship’s return lists Mr. Vought (Christoffel) and Captain (John) Vought, a woman

(Mary) three children above 10 years, (probably Christiana, Eleanor and nephew

George Young) and two children under 10 (Philip and Christopher) and two servants

(possibly slaves). (Cole and Braisted 2007)

By the spring of 1792, the Vought family discovered their New York lands had

not been confiscated by the Patriots. The American War was long over. The thirteen

rebellious colonies had finally forged a national constitution and George Washington

was serving his first term as the nation’s President. John Vought decided to take his

family back to these United States, to the land outside Albany that Christoffel bought

two decades bearlier as an inheritance for both his children.

An American Family

In July 1776, American Patriots declared the self-evident truths “that all men

are created equal, endowed by their creator with unalienable rights.” Designed to

unite American colonists against an overwhelming military power, the Declaration of

Independence contained deliberate omissions: “Slavery was not condemned and

equality was not defined, nor could they be without disrupting the common cause of

1776. And yet Jefferson’s soaring vision gave these ideas room to grow, and that

great process became the central theme of American history.” (Fischer, 2008:A22)

The revolution inspired by these self-evident truths did not end when the

British evacuated New York City in 1783. The War for Independence was but the

first of many struggles to gradually transform the largely aristocratic, slave-holding,

and exclusively male power structure of thirteen rebellious states into a unified

democratic nation.

The proper limits to liberty, equality, and republican government were key

issues in ratification of the national constitution and, decades later, in the Civil War

which bound the states together and finally freed enslaved Americans. The contest

over liberty and equality and the role of government has continued for centuries.

The suffrage movement gained white women the right to vote in 1920.

Although violently resisted, in recent decades the civil rights movement finally

restored voting rights to African Americans and dismantled state-sponsored

segregation. In the struggle for liberty and equality against entrenched power and

social privilege, the brave spirited dissent of Patriots over the past two and a half

centuries has brought remarkable progress in fulfilling the radical ideals of 1776.

Amid the turmoil that swept Hunterdon County, New Jersey in early 1776,

Christoffel and John Vought chose to defend the existing political and social order,

first as clubmen, then as armed soldiers. The son that Mary Grandin and John

Vought named Christopher Vought was born just months before the British

evacuated them all from Staten Island to Nova Scotia. With the family’s return from

exile, this Christopher Vought grew up and fought against the British in the War of

1812, sometimes called the second war of independence. Others among this family’s

descendants fought and died for the Union during the Civil War.

It would carry us far beyond the historic significance of this stone house and

events of the Revolutionary era to detail this family’s contribution to America’s

progressive social revolution over the past two and a half centuries. In any case,

Americans have been on both sides of the continuing debates and conflicts over

extending liberty and advancing equality since the Declaration of Independence was

first read aloud.

The builder of the 1759 Vought house, Christoffel Vought the Loyalist, passed

away in 1809 a full century after his parents had left the Palatine. This immigrant

family’s story is an unusual variation on a major theme in the making of this diverse

nation. The efforts of Simon and Christina, who journeyed in search of land and

liberty and helped build a new community in New Germantown, the fateful choice of

Christoffel and John, this family’s subsequent repatriation and deep roots in

America have all transformed these first few Palatines into an extended and

distinctly American family

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