The Last Days of Colonel Jacob Ford, Jr.

An officer inspecting his troops.

NPS Photo

December 1776 was one of the lowest points of the American Revolution for the Patriot forces. General Washington and his small army had been driven out of New Jersey into Pennsylvania. Four days earlier on Friday the 13^th, General Charles Lee had been captured by a British cavalry patrol in a tavern in Basking Ridge. Most of the New Jersey militia had disbanded and fled in the face of the British invasion. The only Patriot force of any note left in the state were militia from Morris, Essex and Sussex counties under the command of Colonel Jacob Ford, Jr.

The British army controlled New Jersey’s central core running from Elizabeth and Newark through New Brunswick, Princeton, Trenton, to Burlington. Unaware of what Patriot forces might linger on their flanks, the British sent troops into northern New Jersey to investigate.

On the evening of December 17^th, 800 to 1,000 British soldiers ran into Ford’s militia near Springfield, New Jersey. Fighting continued until darkness caused both sides to withdraw. Colonel Ford and his men retreated to Chatham where he wrote to Major General William Heath: “We have Since Sun Set had a Brush with the Enemy 4 Miles below this, in which we have Suffered, and our Militia much Disheartened. They are all Retreated to this place and will in all probability be Attacked by Day Break. The Enemy we have Reasons to believe are Double our Numbers… If in your wisdom you can Assist us we may possably Beat them yet, but without your aide we can’t Stand.” Fortunately for Colonel Ford, the British had no intention to continue the fight and withdrew to Elizabeth. Colonel Ford and the Morris militia returned to Morristown.

On January 4, 1777, the day after the Patriot victory at Princeton, Ford was ordered to move his men further east to Chatham. But while he was at the head of his regiment, “he was struck all at once with a Pleurisy and delirium, he was lifted from his horse and borne off the field as the March began” His regiment continued on as ordered, but a small guard and the regimental surgeon Doctor Timothy Johnes, Jr. [Ford’s brother-in-law] remained behind to care for the colonel at the Ford Mansion.

 

The Ford Mansion, built by Jacob Ford Jr.

NPS Photo

Two days later, General Washington and his army arrived in Morristown with the intension of spending the winter in local homes. General Washington made his headquarters at Arnold’s Tavern on Morristown Green, while one mile away the Ford Mansion had its own guests. Captain Thomas Rodney of Delaware wrote: “Our whole Light Infantry are quartered in a very large house belonging to Col. Ford having 4 rooms on a floor and two stories high.” While Ford suffered upstairs, much of his house was now the quarters of over 40 soldiers who didn’t always make the best house guests. Gabriel Ford recalled that some of the officers: “were sons of some of the leading men of that state – gentlemen by birth, but rowdies in practice. They injured the room very much by their nightly carousals”

Finally on January 10, 1777, Jacob Ford, Jr. succumbed to his illness and died of pneumonia. In a gesture to Ford and the New Jersey militia, General Washington ordered the Light Infantry troops, who occupied the Ford Mansion, to bury Colonel Ford with “the honors of war.” Forty soldiers along with fifes and drums escorted the mourning party to the Presbyterian Church by Morristown Green where Colonel Ford’s grave can still be seen today.