RYAN: Starting this summer, America is celebrating an important milestone: the semi-quincin …semi-quince…SEMI QUINN CEN….ACK!...the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
RYAN: When it comes to important events in the American Revolution you have your Boston Tea Party and the Battle of Yorktown…and other song names from the musical Hamilton.
RYAN: But in fact New Jersey was THE MOST IMPORTANT colony in America’s fight for independence. There were over 600 battles, skirmishes and acts of war in New Jersey; today there are over 150 historic sites to explore. No other state comes close.
RYAN: And with America’s big birthday coming up - every small New Jersey town is clamoring to claim a piece of that history for themselves. Across the state towns are highlighting battlefields, armories, hometown heroes and local legends that link them to the events of the revolutionary war.
RYAN: Not to be outdone…Clinton, N.J. has its own revolutionary era claim to fame: they collected the BOATS.
[BOATS WATERFALL]
RYAN: And according to some locals, were it not for THESE BOATS, General George Washington could not have won the war. That’s a legacy as big as it gets.
RYAN: Welcome to Hometown History, a series about the iconic places and events that make a town someplace people call home..
And today we’re celebrating America’s 250th year of independence, achieved in no small part due to the small but mighty acts of courage of the people who lived in Clinton.
[THEME END]
RYAN: This is the final episode of Season 2 of Hometown History. So this week, we’re going to spice things up a little bit. Because the idea for this episode came directly from the curious mind of our producer Katie Feather - so we wanted to bring her into the recording booth to talk about it.
RYAN: Hi Katie! Welcome to my voiceover session….
KATIE: Thanks! It’s cozy here.
RYAN: Comfy cozy. So why are we talking about boats and the Revolutionary War. And what does this have to do with Clinton?
KATIE: Yeah - so when we were identifying the stories we wanted to cover in Season 2 on Clinton, we knew this 250th anniversary of the American Revolution was coming up. So I asked Clinton residents “What were people in this area doing during the American Revolution? What’s YOUR claim to fame?” And they were like “Oh yeah! We’re the boats people. We collected the boats.”
RYAN: Huh. Yeah I feel like I need more context because I don’t know what boats these guys are talking about.
KATIE: Well, allow me to remind you of a famous painting…currently hanging in the Metropolitan Museum of Art…called “Washington Crossing the Delaware.”
This 1851 painting by Emanuel Luetze depicts a fictional scene based on a real event: a small fleet of colonial era soldiers crammed into rowboats, oars and limbs akimbo, crossing an icy river. It’’s coming back to you now, right?
RYAN: Yup, yup, I can see it clearly in my mind now.the guy had his leg up on the boat.
KATIE: So this river crossing is part of a period in history books called “The Ten Crucial Days” - which took place between December 25th, 1776 and January 3rd 1777.
RYAN: Huh, ok. Right around Christmas time. A little holiday surprise attack I’m guessing?
KATIE: Right, exactly. The story you hear in history class is that Washington takes strategic advantage of the fact that it’s winter, it’s just after Christmas - the British and their troops do not expect to engage in any battles at this moment. They’re just hunkered down in New Jersey, waiting for the weather to get warm. Maybe imbibing a little, feeling jolly and merry.
RYAN: As one does during the holiday season.
KATIE: Right, a tale as old as time. So their guard is down. And so Washington chooses this moment to bring his small group of soldiers across the icy Delaware river from Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and he attacks the British at Trenton. And over the course of ten days he’s turned the tide of the American Revolution. They catch the British off guard and manage to win back much of New Jersey with just this small army of soldiers.
RYAN: So it’s a David and Goliath story. So, ok, but I didn’t hear any mention of boats.
KATIE: I know right? But remember I said they have to come over from Bucks County PA, and to do that Washington has to cross the Delaware River.
RYAN: And it's hard to cross the river without BOATS!
KATIE: Yup!
RYAN: Wow, so small you almost MISS that detail.
KATIE: Yeah, and getting back to the point of this podcast, that's what was so interesting about what Clinton residents said they were known for. Most people I talked to were so proud of the fact that this place was known for “collecting the boats”...it was a little humorous to me. It’s like bringing plates and napkins to the party. Like, so what? It’s such a minor detail that it’s not even worth a mention.
RYAN: Wow, Katie that’s a bit harsh!
KATIE: I know, I know. But that’s what I thought AT FIRST. But then I took a step back and I was like - wait, where DO the boats come from?
RYAN: Yeah…if you think about it, this is much harder to do in 1776 than it is in 2025. These are probably heavy boats, maybe they’re spread out for miles up and down the river. It’s probably a much bigger task than we realize. So, did you find out more about it?
KATIE: Yes, BUT it wasn’t easy. Like we just mentioned, in most historical accounts of the “Ten Crucial Days” the “collecting of the boats” doesn’t even merit a mention.
But, like rowers making their way through an icy river, we kept heaving and hoeing, until eventually we found maybe the one person in New Jersey who can tell us about the boats: local historian and author William L. Kidder, also known as Larry.
LARRY: And obviously living right on the Delaware River…I got very interested in it in the boat and how they were used and where they came from and all of that. And I found out. In my research, there's just a lot of bad information floating around out there.
RYAN: Haha, “floating”. Nice pun Larry.
LARRY: Long story short….that’s a 300 page book.
KATIE: Larry is actually writing a book about the events of December 1776 - and in fact does give special attention to the boats.
LARRY: Ferry boats are used to go across the river, right? Okay, Durham boats are used to go up and down the river. They are the Mack trucks of their day.
RYAN: Durham boats…I’ve never heard of those before. What do they look like?
KATIE: Yeah I hadn’t heard of them either. But the name comes from the Durham ironworks, which were located on the Delaware River. And like Larry said they’re like the Mac truck of boats because they were created to carry really heavy stuff like iron.
LARRY: So the Durham boats had partial decks, they weren’t open like a canoe. They were anywhere from 40 to 65 feet long. They were eight feet roughly wide and they also had boards running along the side of the ship hat you could walk on from stem to stern with all the cargo in between. And we know that the boats were made to move given propulsion by men walking on those boards with long poles stuck in and then pushed into the bottom of the river.
KATIE: Anybody that had something big and heavy to move was going to be using these Durham boats. So these are privately owned commercial boats. Your average farmer didn't have one. You know, your average blacksmith didn't have one.
LARRY: Because not only did you need the boat, you needed a crew. These are not the kind of thing you can just get in and row. it takes a five man crew and they got to be strong and they got to know how to deal with these boats in the water and deal with the current, you know, and things like that.
RYAN: Wow, ok so already this sounds like a much harder task than we realized cause it sounds like these boats are HUGE and someone has to go around and gather them for Washington’s crossing.
KATIE: Yeah and then you have the problem of…where do you find these boats? Are soldiers just going door to door saying “Hey do you have any durham boats?” But according to Larry finding the boats was actually kinda the easy part….
LARRY: Remember that life at that time is a lot more open than it is today. You know, your neighbors a whole lot better, you know, your neighborhood, you know, your town. Everybody knew what everybody else had. Particularly if you're using a Durham boat, you know, cause they, they were somewhat unusual.
KATIE: So these militiamen would go to the guy who owned the Durham boat - probably someone who had a fair amount of money and a business, and they would just…you know, take it.
RYAN: Just..take it.
KATIE: I mean, the boat owner might offer it if he's a patriot and say, Hey, I know you guys need this, you know, get it back to me later. People who were more loyalist might say, Hmm, I don't really want to give it to you, but if you take it, you better pay me for it. You know, give me an IOU or something if you don't have the cash so that I can get it later. But Larry says a lot of them were just taken.
RYAN: Okay. So people from Clinton…or what would come to be known as Clinton cause it's not actually called that yet…they are the ones who ran around collecting these boats?
KATIE: Well, there’s actually one guy who gets all the credit for collecting the boats here in Hunterdon County…
RYAN: Just one?!
KATIE: Yup..and his name is Daniel Bray.
RYAN: Bray…as in, John Bray who helped found Clinton.
KATIE: Yeah I didn’t dig into the genealogy there but it’s very likely he was a relative.
But Daniel Bray is known as the hero who collected the boats for Washington. When people in Clinton say they’re known for the “boat collecting” they’re referring to Bray here.
Daniel Bray was born in 1751 in Kingwood Township near Baptistown, and he was a lieutenant in the Second Regiment of the Hunterdon County New Jersey Militia - which by the way had their headquarters at the old Bonnell Tavern, right here in Clinton.
RYAN: Ahhh ok so it’s all coming together now. Daniel Bray, Boats, hometown hero.
KATIE: Yup. But what’s strange is this boat collecting story first appears about 100 years after Washington's crossing. In the early 1900s you start to see some newspaper articles calling Daniel Bray an “unsung hero” of the American Resolution. This guy named Joseph F. Fulsom writes a whole poem called “The Ballad of Daniel Bray.”
And all these stories say essentially the same thing: they claim that Daniel Bray was given orders directly from Washington to round up the boats along the New Jersey side of the Delaware River and hide them on Malta Island. Some accounts say that Bray did this secretly, under cover of darkness, some say he did it alone, other accounts say he enlisted the help of two men. But in every instance Bray is the hero of the story. Like for example, I’m going to have you read this passage from a news article that was written in 1903.
RYAN: It was Bray who made it possible for Washington to win the battle of Trenton. But for his indomitable pluck and energy in gathering, under most adverse circumstances, the flotilla of small craft that bore the tattered troops across the ice-filled river, the Hessians could not have been smitten hip and thigh on that memorable Christmas morning, which marked a turning point in the great struggle for liberty.
RYAN: Wow…really amazing if true.
KATIE: Yeah, if true being the key phrase here, but we’ll get to that in a second. So this story gets circulated around and in 1931 the state memorializes Bray with a plaque at his gravesite in Rosemont NJ. And as recently as 1960 a portion of Route 29 in Hunterdon County gets renamed the “Daniel Bray Highway” in his honor.
RYAN: Ok but it sounds to me like this story isn’t entirely accurate… Because for one, how could one man round up all these Durham boats, which were big and heavy and required a whole crew to move?
KATIE: I wondered the same thing. So I asked Larry Kidder to help clear this up for me…
RYAN: What did he say? Daniel Bray didn’t really collect the boats?
KATIE: No, he did collect boats…but he was part of a much larger operation.
LARRY: I know that in not just in Clinton, but around all around New Jersey, um, he gets a lot of press, you know, for being the guy who saved the day, so to speak, but collecting these boats right before the crossing, you know, well, Um, it's, it's one of those things It's, it's, it's been distorted.
Daniel Brain was part of, was a small part of a very large operation. He wasn't the operation. There were other militia companies helping also. Somebody decided they wanted Daniel Bray to be the guy who thought up this whole thing and boy, he's the hero for Washington, you know.
RYAN: Right…this happens a lot with historical research…a lot of details get blurred, some facts get misstated or left out. Whenever you see a narrative that’s like “this one guy was solely responsible for these events” you should question whether that’s really true or not.
KATIE: Yeah, in this case the truth was probably stretched from the very beginning. Theres reason to believe that those early articles on Daniel Bray were based on some things written by Bray’s own son and grandson based on just stories that had been passed down in the family. So from the get go there's a very good reason why Daniel Bray is made out to be the hero of this story.
RYAN: Ahhh I see, they were like “Grandpa told me it was true!” So Bray didn’t collect the boats on his own then...
KATIE: No he didn’t…and you know, since we’re punching holes in the whole Daniel Bray story..I had another question about something that didn’t really line up.
RYAN: Oh really?
KATIE: Yeah,...so if Daniel Bray is collecting boats for Washington’s crossing from Bucks County into New Jersey…why is he collecting boats on this side of the river?? Why wouldn’t Washington ask his men to collect boats on the Pennsylvania side?
RYAN: Yeah…that does seem weird.
KATIE: And this is where the whole “collecting the boats for Washington” story really breaks down.
RYAN: Awww geez.
KATIE: But in order to understand what’s going on here, Larry had to back up and explain what exactly was happening during December of 1776.
RYAN: Ok, cool. Story time!
TRANSITION
KATIE: In the months leading up to December 1776, Washington is losing badly to a much larger, confident British army in New York.
LARRY: The British…They went to New York, uh, really convinced they're going to win this because they put together the largest military expeditionary force. That they'd ever sent anywhere in the history of Great Britain… we're talking in the thirties thousand for military guys. And we're talking at least that many or more, you know, on the ships…that huge force that went to New York, um, is going to be countered by Washington…He's going to bring the troops down from Massachusetts and try to protect New York from this expeditionary force. And that's going to lead to the series of battles in the fall of 1776 Battle of Long Island, then the Battle of Harlem Heights, the Battle of White Plains. Okay, that goes from August to the very end of October …and Washington loses every time. the British just take over…
KATIE: By early November Washington’s army is disintegrating, and so he decides his best course of action is to retreat. Washington leaves more than half of his remaining troops in New York with General Charles Lee, and takes the rest with him across the Hudson river and into New Jersey.
But General Howe, Commander of the British forces, has his eye on New Jersey too…
LARRY: General Howe, decides that … he wants to take over towns in the northern eastern counties of New Jersey. In other words, the areas right across the Hudson River from where he is in New York City and that area, because at that time, New Jersey in that area was totally farmland.
LARRY: It was the garden state. Okay. And he needed food for all of these huge numbers of troops that he had, and he didn't have enough. He was already. bringing food over from England because he needed food so badly. But if he couldt ake control of the farms in northeastern New Jersey he'd get more food locally.
LARRY: He could also use the small villages and the farmsteads with their barns and whatnot to house troops for the winter. So it was going to be winter quarters in northeastern New Jersey, as well as a supply source
KATIE: So the British cross into New Jersey right on Washington’s heels. And throughout the month of November they chase Washington’s rag tag group of soldiers down through the state. In the meantime Washington is calling for backup.
LARRY: he kept telling, particularly Lee, bring your troops over and join with mine, and then maybe we can stand up to these guys….Every time he stopped, like at Newark or, uh, New Brunswick, he was hoping, that's as far as I'm going to have to go and General Lee's troops are going to come and support me.
LARRY: Well, General Lee didn't want to do that. General Lee wanted to be the top commander. He wanted to embarrass the heck out of Washington. So he just found one reason after another why he couldn't, uh, come across the river and help Washington.
LARRY: So that's why Washington, uh, on December 1st is thinking, I got to get to Trenton. I got to get over the river and I got to prevent the British from following us because they're going to want to take Philadelphia.
KATIE: Washington starts heading west from New Brunswick into Hunterdon County towards the Delaware River on December 2nd…just a few days later the British arrive in the city. And then….they stop.
LARRY: They had decided from the beginning of the month, that was all the further they were going to go. If they got to New Brunswick, they had more than enough of northeastern New Jersey to have for the winter. So, Cornwallis had specific orders from Howe, Do not go. Go beyond, uh, New Brunswick. Okay.
KATIE: So for the first time during their retreat, Washington has some time to come up with a plan to keep the British from pursuing him into Pennsylvania.
LARRY: Okay, so this is really the first gathering of the boats story.
RYAN: Wait…did he say the first gathering of the boats story? As in more than one?
KATIE: Yeah, the FIRST TIME George Washington needs to gather the boats is in the first week of December. And he wasn’t attacking the British, he was retreating from them.
LARRY: he ordered a Colonel in the Pennsylvania Continental Line, Colonel Richard Humpton, um, he ordered him to go ahead to Trenton ahead of the army and secure boats at the two Trenton ferries at that time. And collect boats so that there would be more than just the normal couple of ferry boats there so that he could get his army and all their equipment and all the equipment and provisions and whatnot … across
KATIE: But Washington doesn’t want to just get across the river. He wants to keep the British from following him.
LARRY: George Washington also wanted to make sure that every darn boat on the Delaware River got collected and taken over to Pennsylvania so that when the British followed him to Trenton, they couldn't come after him. So, long story short, he sent orders to enough different people, uh, To cover about 20 miles north of Trenton and 20 miles south of Trenton and get all the boats off the river.
RYAN: Wow, so many boats!
KATIE: Yeah, and once Washington and his forces have retreated safely to Bucks County, they don’t just stay there. They go back and forth across the river for like the whole month of December. They’re spying on the Hessian soldiers, trying to find out what they’re up to. They send out small groups of soldiers to harass the British at their camp. They’re just like, bugging them.
LARRY: But what it did was to make the British believe that this was going to go on all winter. We're going to have boats come across all winter harassing us. We've got to be alert. We've got to have troops out there to make these guys go back across. But that's what we should expect. So when you read in a book that Washington wanted to surprise the Hessians on that night of December 25th. Yeah, he did, but an attack was not the surprise because the British had been attacked every day.
RYAN: So what’s Daniel Bray’s role in all this?
KATIE: Actually, he’s part of a third boat collecting story.
RYAN: What!?
KATIE: Yeah…remember how General Washington was calling on General Lee for backup, but Lee didn’t want to come down from New York and help? Well…Lee finally brings his forces to join up with Washington around December 20th…but now Lee’s forces have to cross the Delaware River…
RYAN: And they need boats…
KATIE: Exactly…so this is likely when Lieutenant Daniel Bray got involved. They collected boats so that General Lee and his troops could cross the Delaware River and join Washington’s forces ahead of the planned attack on the British on Christmas morning.
RYAN: So Daniel Bray actually collected the boats for General Lee…not Washington.
KATIE: Right, and to be fair we’re not the first people to have said this. Even the historical literature associated with the Bonnell Tavern, where the Hunterdon 2nd Militia and Daniel Bray was based, says that these boats were collected for Lee. But that’s a fairly recent understanding of the history…for decades the story was that Dainel Bray singlehandedly collected the boats for Washington’s crossing on December 25th.
RYAN: Hmmm…so…do we still consider Bray a hero? Cause I’m trying to figure out where Daniel Bray fits into this story of the Ten Crucial Days now that we have a more accurate picture…like, he didn’t singlehandedly save the country from the British or whatever that poem said, but he’s still part of the story of this larger group of New Jersey militiamen.
KATIE: Yeah, and Larry was very adamant that this is not a demotion of Daniel Bray or a criticism of the people in Hunterdon who are proud of the legacy of the boat collecting. Bray and other men in the Hunterdon’s 2nd regiment were actually really important to the success of the Ten Crucial Days in ways that even Washington himself didn’t see.
Because as Washington is retreating across New Jersey, he’s getting frustrated with New Jersey militiamen who are just abandoning him to go back home. Every time he stops he loses more troops because they just think this is the end, they’re retreating, they’re going to surrender any day now..
LARRY: Washington just gets really frustrated with these guys and complains bitterly about how the New Jersey guys won't support him. Well, one thing he doesn't know about are people like Daniel Bray. This is why I don't want to push him aside at all. Daniel Bray represents to me, uh, New Jersey militiamen, of which there were dozens, uh, but still, uh, I think very highly of them, who tried to help out Washington in any way they could.
They formed volunteer companies, or they tried to reform their former company as best they could, and then just do something to help Washington. And when they got the orders from, uh, Governor Livingston or whatever to get these boats across the river to Pennsylvania and collect them at places like Frenchtown for General Lee's troops to use. That was how they were helping Washington as militiamen.
RYAN: I love that…so justice for Daniel Bray. He didn’t save the war for the Americans but he represented New Jersey, and Hunterdon County well.
KATIE: Yeah, exactly.
RYAN: This is such an interesting story. And its similar to what we’ve experienced reporting and telling stories for this podcast. In so many cases,what's been written down isn’t exactly what happened.
KATIE: Yeah, and that's partly why Larry is writing this book. To make sure this updated boat collecting story gets out there.
RYAN: But how do we know THAT story is the correct one?
KATIE: Well, we don’t…
LARRY: That's 1 thing that history is. I won't say history is always changing, but the understanding of history is always changing because new stuff comes to light.
This episode was written and produced by Ryan Ross and Katie Feather. It was mixed and edited by Katie Feather. Our theme music is La Danse Timide by Howard Harper-Barnes. Special thanks to William L. Kidder. He’s the author of several books on the events of the American Revolution, including “The Ten Crucial Days: Washington’s Vision for Victory Unfolds.” Additional information for this episode comes from the blog Goodspeed Histories, by Marfy Goodspeed.
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