Red Bank Battlefield (Fort Mercer)
The Whithall House
Cannon Balls
Here's one of these "cheveaux de fries"
One of the spikes
Anchors
The Whithall House.
In 1748, Quakers Ann and James Whitall established a 400-acre plantation at Red Bank along the Delaware River. This bustling plantation included fruit orchards, a lumberyard, a shad fishery, livestock and a ferry. In 1777, American forces in the Revolution constructed Fort Mercer immediately north of the house. In October that year, Continental forces inflicted heavy losses on Hessian soldiers. Whitall’s house served as a field hospital during the battle.
This family was a simple Quaker family whose life was disrupted by the Union forces taking over their home and property in the name of war. The fort no longer stands,but some of the remnants allow us to visualize its presence.
Archealogical Finds
The back of the house.
Here's a map showing how the Hessians attacked the fort from three fronts.
A scale model of the Fort Mercer. Outside the walls of the fort was a moat, spikes and bramble of tree limbs to impede any attack.
A Memorial to the man the fort was named for and the battle that was fought here.
The Delaware River
Gullies that were probably part of the moat
If you're wondering what the Hessians were doing in the American Revolution, Yahoo says:
Hessians is the generic name that the Colonists gave to soldiers from the German Principalities that fought for the British during the American Revolution. There are a couple of misunderstandings involving them. Although they were portrayed as mercenaries by the Colonists, the soldiers themselves were merely following orders. Their Princes and Petty Kings, the men who those regiments belonged to, did indeed get paid for their service, but the soldiers themselves didn't. Secondly, the soldiers were not all from Hesse, which was the small southern German state that the name came from. In fact, the regiments came from all over Germany. It was simpler, however, to lump them together under the title Hessian. The British, by the way, hired the regiments, because they had a relatively small army, and they felt they had to leave some of their own army at home to protect against a possible French or Spanish invasion. So in order to have enough troops to fight a protracted war in the colonies, they had to hire expensive German regiments.
Stone mile markers were brought here from the road leading to Cooper's Ferry.
No comments:
Post a Comment