| Bethlehem Township Prepares |
| Captain Joseph Stout commanded a company of regulars from Hunterdon, in which Samuel Reading and Aaron Lane were Lieutenants. The men of Bethlehem were active in preparations for the war. By the original tally list of the upper regiment of Hunterdon County Militia, we learn that a meeting was held at Abraham Bonnell's in Bethlehem, 19th January, 1775, when the following field officers were elected by ballot: Charles Stewart, Colonel, Philip Grandin, Lieutenant-Colonel, Sidney Berry and Johnson, Majors, and John Taylor and William Hazlitt, Adjutants. Thomas Lowrey was Commissary General for the State from the beginning of the war. When the men first went into service in the spring of 1776, we find Captain William Chamberlain's company going from Amwell; and soon after, the captain being promoted as major, Nathan Stout was made captain and Philip Service and Christopher Fisher, lieutenants. The clothing considered necessary to equip a soldier in that campaign was: 1 felt hat, two-thirds of a dollar; 1 pair stockings, two-thirds of a dollar; 1 pair shoes, one dollar; hunting shirt, one dollar and a third; blanket, two dollars. A colonel's pay per month was $50, lieutenant-colonel's $40, major $32 1/3, captain $7 2/3, and private, $5, and yet the men were expected to send their surplus pay to their poor families. Such was the condition of things when Jacob Johnson left his young wife to serve his country. In this, the first winter of the war, the outrages perpetuated by the British and refugees who overran the state, beggared all description. Letters, written at the time, say that they exceeded the cruelties of Indian savages. Old men and children were cruelly murdered, women were outraged, churches burned, and every species of barbarity and lawless violence that could be conceived, perpetrated. From pp. 100-1 of "Traditions of Hunterdon," by John W. Lequear, originally published 1869-70. |