Hopewell and Honest John Hart

Leaving Princeton is like leaving a different world, the homes that surround this amazing town are some of the most magnificent homes you could find anywhere.  The word I like to use to describe them is Palatial (and yes this is a real word, I use it all the time even though my wife did not believe that it was). The further out into the country side of New Jersey you can really see why people love this part of the state, it really is amazing, far away from the Tank Farms and large cities that surround the New Jersey Turnpike.  My last destination for the day (and yes we are still talking about my original mini tour that i started talking about two posts ago) was Hopewell, and more specifically the grave site of John Hart, my third signer of the day.

Hopewell is a old town, dating back as far as the first recorded land purchase of 30,000 acres of land by Daniel Coxe around 1691.  Coxe was the Royal Governor of what was then West Jersey and his aim was to attract settlers from as far off as New England and sell them the land with what could really be called a scam.  Gullible settlers were lured to the area with promises of fertile plain land and vast open areas, instead they got woods and wilderness, hardly great farming land.  However, despite this set back, settlers moved into the area, making it their home, and one of the most prominent families of the time was the Stout family (bet you thought I was going to say Hart family, stay with me, John is coming).  The Stout family help to organize the Old School Baptist Church in 1715, which at the time was refereed to simply as the Baptist Meetinghouse.  This is where John Hart comes into the story, in 1747 Hart donated a plot of land to the Baptists of Hopewell, this land was used to actually build the church structure which still exists today.

Honest John as Hart's friends called him was a popular man, and served some political position since 1750, first as a Freeholder for Hunterdon County and then in the New Jersey Colonial Assembly.  In 1776 he was selected to represent New Jersey at the Second Continental Congress and it was during this time that he voted on and then signed the Declaration of Independence. After signing the Declaration, Hart was a wanted man by the British, and in December 1776, just before Washington made his historic crossing of the Delaware River and successful attack on Trenton, Hart was told the British were coming for him (was Honeyman involved here?  Who is Honeyman?) and Hart fled into the nearby Sourland Mountains and hid in a cave.  The British and the Hessians raided Harts farm looking for him, they tore the farm up but did not destroy it contrary to the email story I mentioned last post!  After the battles of Trenton and Princeton when the British had been forced from the area Hart returned home.

In 1778 Hart invited Washington and the Continental Army to encamp on his farm like any good Patriot should, and so twelve thousand men camped on his fields during the prime growing season!  And that my friends is the brief history of Honest John, we drove through the little town and found the cemetery, however this time we didn't stop, there really wasn't any point, and so with that I pointed the car south and drove home.  So this ends my Wednesday mini tomb tour that really didn't happen (damn snow), I think that I drew this out long enough.

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Referenced

Ege, Ralph 'Pioneers of Old Hopewell' Race & Savage, Hopewell, NJ, 1908. 
Griffiths, Thomas Sharp 'A History of Baptists in New Jersey' Barr Press Publishing Company, Hightstown, NJ, 1904.
Valis, Glenn 'John Hart Signer of the Declaration of Independence' www.doublegv.com/ggv/jhart.html

Wednesdays and Richard Stockton!

If you ask almost anyone, I am sure that they would tell you that their favorite day of the week is Saturday.  For me however, my favorite day of the week is Wednesday, hump day, or as I like to call it, home day!  Wednesday's are my scheduled day off from work, and the day that I get to stay home with my two amazing munchkins and have fun!

So last Wednesday we were home as usual, we had played some games, watched some TV, eaten lunch and the kids had both taken naps and we were all bored.  We had been inside all day, so I decided we needed to get out.  I got the munchkins into their coats, hats and car seats and we went out on our own mini Tomb Tour.  I live just outside of Princeton in a township called Hamilton, so I thought I would drive out to Princeton and see if I could visit the resting places of some signers of the Declaration of Independence.  So we drove the Victory Trail (the route Washington took from Trenton to Princeton in the early morning of January 2, 1775).  Our first stop was at the Stony Brook Meeting House, and it was here that I realized the flaw in my plan.  

In the past week, we have had a large amount of snow and places like churchyards, cemeteries are not high traffic areas and out of respect, no one is going to shovel or plow them.  The Stony Brook Graveyard was no exception and was covered in at least 2 inches of snow that had slightly melted and refrozen into a perfect ice sheet that sparkled like diamonds in the late day sun.  However, this also meant I could not enter the graveyard, and so I will have to leave Richard Stockton for another day.

Richard Stockton is a very interesting man, especially if you believe all those "The Price They Paid" emails we all receive around the Fourth of July.  According to that fanciful myth "Five signers were captured by the British as traitors and tortured before they died"(1)  Wow, these men must be all be martyrs right? Well it is true that five signers were captured during the entire time of the Revolution, none of these men however died while British prisioner.  Richard Stockton is the only signer who was taken as a prisoner because he was signer.  He was captured by Loyalist Militants while staying with friends in monmouth County, and taken to Perth Amboy where he was transferred to New York's Provost Jail.  (Kiernan Page 94)  Stockton was treated badly but he was not tortured, he was forced to recant the Declaration and sign a Loyalty Oath to the King.  He later recanted the King's Oath and signed a Loyalty Oath in front of the Continental Congress on December, 1777.  Poor Richard did not live out the revolution and died of cancer in 1781. (Kiernan Page 95)  

So back to me, and my two kids at the Stony Brook Meeting House, we left here, drove past the Clark House and the Princeton Battlefield and into Princeton, our destination, the Princeton Cemetery.  And this is where I will leave this for now.  As usual, Like our Facebook Page at www.facebook.com/tombtours, Follow Us on Twitter and Instagram @tombtours and of course email me any time at tombtours@gmail.com.

Referenced

1.  www.snopes.com/history/american/pricepaid.asp

Kiernan, Denise, and Joseph Agnese. Signing Their Lives Away: The Fame and Misfortune of the Men Who Signed the Declaration of Independence.  Philadelphia: Quirk Book, 2009.  Print.