This is the third in a series about Commodore Robert F. Stockton, the Founder of Sea Girt.
Robert Field Stockton was born in 1795. He would grow up to be a naval hero, US Senator, and the richest man in New Jersey. His summer home at the Jersey Shore established an estate he called Sea Girt. To better understand his life I have dug into his family history.
“Omnia Deo Pendent,” -All depends on God. Stockton Coat of Arms
Chapter 3: The Grandfather, The Signer
Richard Stockton, oldest of eight children, born in 1730 became one of the most eloquent gentlemen lawyers in the colony. Educated at the College of New Jersey in Newark, and apprenticing under David Ogden, the pre-eminent attorney in the Jerseys, he had witnessed his father, Judge John Stockton donate land out of their 5,500 acres around the village of Princeton for his college to relocate. Like his father before him, Richard became a trustee at the school, which was renamed Princeton College. He built the family estate, Morven across the road from the school with his wife Annis Boudinot and their six children. Annis was a prolific poet, and her work could be read in the many manuscript books that went around the ‘writing circles’ of the day. She was known for her wit and her command of many genres of poetry. They were known for their fine entertainment and pure-blooded horses.
He was a member of the Royal King’s Counsel of New Jersey, and friendly with William Franklin, New Jersey colonial Governor and son of Benjamin Franklin.
Richard traveled to England in 1766 with his protégé and recent Princeton graduate, and now Edinburgh medical student, Benjamin Rush of Philadelphia. Rush’s sponsor and introducer to Stockton was Benjamin Franklin. Stockton’s father-in-law kept a silver shop next to Franklin’s home in Philadelphia. Annis and her brothers had been educated at Franklin’s Academy.
Through this trip, Rush solidified his relationship with Stockton which was good because Rush was to become his son-in-law. He was a bit radical for the reserved Stockton.
By the time he married Richard’s daughter Julia in 1775, Rush had helped Thomas Paine write “Common Sense”, a pamphlet addressed to the American people that laid out the reasons for independence. It was later called “the most incendiary and popular pamphlet of the entire revolutionary era". A sampling:
“Society is produced by our wants, and government by wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.”
The Stockton visit to England and Scotland served a dual purpose. As a Trustee at Princeton, Richard wanted to convince Scottish Rev. John Witherspoon to move to New Jersey to take over the presidency of the college. He also met with Earls, MPs and Lords friendly to the Colonies to convince them that their continued taxation and suppression of rights without proper representatives in Parliament would lead to war.
His dashing looks and 6’1” frame impressed the women. “I like Mr. Stockton exceedingly. He is certainly the cleverest man I have yet seen from America.” said Ester DeBerdt. While he was in London he attended the Queen’s birthday ball where he was presented to King George III. After the repeal of the Stamp Act, he gave an impressive speech of gratitude directed at the King. In return, Stockton was granted a personal coat of arms and motto: Omnia Deo Pendent — all depends on God. (DSDI1776)
In 18 months he had won the hearts of the upper class but not their minds. He was unable to convince either the King or the Lords to alter their position. He did get Witherspoon and his wife (who had a fear of sailing across the Atlantic) to agree to move to Princeton.
Witherspoon quickly improved the library and facilities at the college and expanded its curriculum. The Reverend’s reputation grew with that of the college. His Scottish heritage would make him sympathetic to the independence movement, and his recent immigration would give credibility to the cause.
Annis’ brother Elias had studied for the bar exam with Richard and then married Stockton’s younger sister. Soon after the couple wed, they took in a young prep school student, Alexander Hamilton, an orphan from Nevis (Elias was from Barbados). Hamilton earned a scholarship for his eloquent writing. He eventually studied at Columbia (then Kings College), before earning fame as a soldier for Washington.
Elias would become President of the Continental Congress and sign the Treaty of Paris, ending the Revolution. He also proposed the November holiday of National Thanksgiving which Washington implemented and is still celebrated.
Richard’s stock back home rose with his reception in England. He declined several offers for political positions; he was turned off by politics. He was appointed to the State Supreme Court. Like many in New Jersey, he preferred a peaceful solution to the crisis, and wrote one last time to Secretary of State Lord Dartmouth in 1774 "a plan of self-government for America, independent of Parliament, without renouncing the Crown."
Unfortunately, Lord Dartmouth and the King insisted that the colonies fall in line, and accept the edicts of Parliament without representation under the threat of force.
Richard and American men of means were forced into a decision. Align with the Crown and uphold the law, or become a revolutionary and risk everything. This would be a civil war as well. Neighbors would be pit against each other. His friend William Franklin chose to break with his father and support King George. In June 1776 Stockton resigned his Royal appointments and joined the Continental Congress. Witherspoon and Benjamin Rush joined him that solemn day in Philadelphia when they put their names to the Declaration of Independence. They pledged “our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor".
Rush later recalled:
“Do you recollect the pensive and awful silence which pervaded the house,” Rush wrote, “when we were called up, one after another, to the table of the President of Congress, to subscribe what was believed by many at that time to be our own death warrants?”
The tension was palpable, as Rush described it, interrupted “only for a moment by Col: Harrison of Virginia who said to Mr. Gerry at the table, ‘I shall have a great advantage over you Mr: Gerry when we are all hung for what we are now doing. From the size and weight of my body I shall die in a few minutes, but from the lightness of your body you will dance in the air an hour or two before you are dead.’”
In August, when Stockton was drafted to be Governor of New Jersey, he deferred to William Livingston. They then wanted him to be Chief Justice, he declined that as well. He was re-elected to the Congress in November.
When hostilities were centered around Boston and upstate New York, Richard traveled to Fort Ticonderoga in New York to inspect the troops. He saw the conditions and lack of quality shoes and appealed to Congress to properly outfit the men. When the action came to New Jersey, he hurried home. As the British approached Princeton, Annis went to the library at the college and retrieved the Whig Society Papers, which she buried in the yard with some of their silver. The documents would have implicated many of their neighbors and friends. She had no time to save Morven’s extensive library, and much of her early poetry and important papers were lost.
Attorney John Covenhoven’s farm was near present-day Glendola, about four miles from the Shore at the head of the Shark River in Hopeville. The Stockton’s hoped its remoteness would keep them safe. Morven as anticipated was raided; the library burned, the furniture broken and the prize animals stolen or driven off. It’s hard to fathom the importance of fine books to people of that era. “I cannot live without books” was a quote attributed to Thomas Jefferson. The loss of the extensive library at Morven would have been the cruelest blow.
In November, 1776 Cyrenus Van Mater reported the refugees in the Covenhoven farm to the British. The Covenhovens and Van Maters were related by marriage. At least three Van Maters later had their land confiscated for joining with the Royalists. Two Van Mater brother’s had built schooners and ran them out of Perth Amboy to trade for tropical goods with the English port on Barbados. Siding with the English may have been an economic necessity.
The Tories dragged Richard and his host from their beds and forced them to walk in night-clothes for thirty miles in a winter rain to a ship at Perth Amboy. They would be taken to the prison ship Jersey in New York, anchored off the site of the Brooklyn Navy Yards. The British routinely tortured and starved patriots. More men would die in prisons in the war than from armaments. The actions appeared to be part of a deliberate extermination policy of the British High Command, and over 10,000 Americans were their victims.
Typically officers and politicians were not treated with the common enemy soldiers and criminals. Stockton was treated very poorly for a man of his stature. He was beaten and significantly weakened in the worst of holes. He endured the conditions for a month in leg irons without a meal. Washington and the Continental Congress appealed for his release shortly before it was granted at the start of 1777.
While there is no evidence of a signed document, Stockton, near death, was pardoned and agreed to sit out the rest of the war. He obliged, and he resigned his congressional position and later swore allegiance to the Continental cause. After his recovery, which took two years, he returned to law practice. Many of his cases involved property crimes of American on American. As an attorney, the lack of due process in confiscation cases was appalling. Personally, the raid on Morven cost him over $1.5 million in today’s dollars.
John Covenhoven was also released. He became a judge in Monmouth, a drafter of the New Jersey Constitution, and one of the founders of the Whig Society of New Jersey. He spent the rest of the war and beyond trying to stop the violence of neighbor on neighbor, and to ensure that those that had continental currency had its value protected.
Richard Stockton died before the war ended at Morven in 1781 at age 50 after a year of suffering neck cancer. He was celebrated as a signer of the Declaration, and his statue is one of two New Jerseyans in honor at the US Capitol in Washington DC.
Trumbull painting of the signing of the Declaration of Independence Library of Congress