Summer25Web - Flipbook - Page 32
A TAVern TAle
Phone: (908) 638-8558
Toll-Free: (800) 476-7466
Fax: (908) 638-8233
customerservice@groendyke.net
www.groendyke.net
l AUTOMOBILE INSURANCE
l HOMEOWNERS INSURANCE
l FLOOD INSURANCE
l BUSINESS INSURANCE
l CONTRACTORS INSURANCE
l LIFE
& HEALTH INSURANCE
295 County Road 513
Califon, NJ 07830
port. These networks extended eastward to Abraham Van Horne9s White House Tavern
along the Old Great Road (today9s Route 22), and further east still to Springfield, where
Reverend James Caldwell, Assistant Deputy Quartermaster General, supplied militia and
Continental soldiers with shoes, rations, and equipment. This was a war fought on roads
and rivers as much as on battlefields4and Bonnell9s Tavern sat squarely at the crossroads.
The Bonnell name surfaces again in Connecticut Farms (today Union), where another
Bonnell lived across from the Caldwell Parsonage, near the very spot where a Revolutionary War cannon still stands today. In June 1780, tragedy and devastation followed.
On June 7th, British and Hessian forces attacked Connecticut Farms. During their retreat,
Hannah Caldwell, wife of Reverend Caldwell, was shot inside her home by a British soldier. The parsonage was looted and burned. The church was destroyed. Towns were put
to the torch. Two weeks later, on June 23, the British struck again4this time toward
Springfield. Reverend Caldwell, played a direct role aiding the troops and militiamen, providing Watt's hymnal, using the pages for wadding, which had run out, needed to shoot
their muskets.
What followed was one of the most decisive4and least remembered4victories of
the Revolutionary War in New Jersey. As British forces pushed inland, American militia
and Continental troops made a stand on the hills above Springfield. Among them were
Colonels Abraham Bonnell, Joseph Beavers, and all four regiments of the Hunterdon
County militia, bringing one of the few artillery pieces available for defense. They held
the high ground. They endured, but by day9s end, Springfield lay burned, Caldwell9s second
church was put to the flames4but the American line held. The British retreated and
never returned to New Jersey in force. General Washington wrote of the victorious militia,
