Stephen Kemble: A Jersey Boy in the British Army

           Stephen Kemble, the fifth child of Peter Kemble and his first wife, Gertrude Bayard, was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey in 1740.  Related to influential and politically powerful families of New York, the Kembles remained loyal to the British during the Revolutionary period.  Stephen attended college in Philadelphia and accepted an ensign commission in the British Army, joining the 44^th Regiment of Foot in 1757.  The following year his sister, Margaret, married a British lieutenant on the rise – Thomas Gage – who had been recruiting for the British Army in New Jersey.  

           After fighting with William Howe at Ticonderoga during the French and Indian War, Kemble was promoted to captain of the First Battalion of the 60^th Regiment.  In 1759, Thomas Gage, was promoted to general, and after the surrender of the French, Gage was named military governor of Montreal. In 1761, Gage was promoted to major general, and, after the Treaty of Paris ended the war, Gage was informed he would act as commander-in-chief of the British forces in America. Kemble would profit from the rise of his brother-in-law. 

 In 1772, Kemble was named Deputy Adjutant General of the Forces in North America. Now a major in the British Army, Kemble was at the side of one of the most powerful men in North America. Kemble traveled to England the following year, meeting with King George. In 1774, Gage was named governor of Massachusetts, arriving in Boston in May.  Relatively well-received by the people of Boston initially, Gage’s vigorous defense and enforcement of the series of British laws passed to punish the people of Boston and Massachusetts quickly made him an enemy of the people.  Kemble was with Gage in Massachusetts when the opening shots of the war were fired in April 1775.  Gage was replaced by William Howe in the fall, and Kemble was demoted, though he remained loyal, due to his close relationship with Howe and his familial connections. 

Kemble continued to serve under Howe, and then General Henry Clinton, in New Jersey and Philadelphia, in 1776 and 1777. In June 1778, shortly before the British Army evacuated Philadelphia, Kemble was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel of the 1st Battalion of the 60th Foot.  He resigned his position in October 1779, however, when Clinton refused to promote him. 

Kemble was not out of service for long.  He soon resumed his position as Lieutenant Colonel of the First Battalion of the 60^th Regiment, and fought in the Caribbean and Central American against the Spanish, where, at one point, he held a temporary command of brigadier general. After an attempt in Nicaragua ended in disaster, Kemble went to England, where he was promoted to Colonel in 1782 and sent to Grenada.  In 1786, after being placed under the command of an officer of inferior grade at Quebec, Kemble retired from the British Army. 

 In 1788 he returned to New Brunswick, New Jersey, for a short time, but soon returned to England.  In 1805 he sold his property in England and returned to live in his old home in New Brunswick, where he remained until his death in 1822.  He is buried at Christ Episcopal Churchyard in New Brunswick.

Source: The Kemble Papers, vol. I, 1773-1789. Collections of the New York Historical Society, 1883.

The Capture of the "Blue Mountain Valley"

On 21 January 1776, the New York Committee of Safety learned of a British transport in distress off the coast of Sandy Hook, New Jersey.[i]  Near five o’clock on the morning of the 22^nd, William Alexander, Lord Stirling received word of the troubled ship through a letter from the Committee and immediately set off for Amboy.  Described in the letter as “A galley-built ship” of between three and four hundred tons, it had “yellow sides, blue quarter-boards, with the trophies of war painted on the quarter-boards” and “six three-pounders on the quarter deck” with about twenty men on board,[ii] capturing the ship would be a blow to the British and make for a rich prize.  Upon receiving this news, Stirling immediately set out for Amboy.  Upon arriving there, he seized a pilot boat, and by two o’clock in the morning on the 23^rd he set off with about forty men.  As he pushed off, three other boats from Elizabethtown, with about 120 men under the command of Colonels Elias Dayton and Edward Thomas, joined him.  The men set off for the British ship, which was about six leagues[iv] from shore, southeast of Sandy Hook.  By 10 o’clock in the morning the colonials had boarded the Blue Mountain Valley, commanded by Captain James Hamilton Dempster, without opposition.  Stirling gave command of the ship to a Mister Rogers, a sea captain.  Due to contrary winds, it took until the 26^th for the ship to come in to shore.[v] 

The Blue Mountain Valley arrived at Elizabethtown Point where Lord Stirling and his troops placed it under guard until the New York Committee of Safety was able to take it under their care.  The captain and crew - numbering at least sixteen men - were given parole in the town.  The ship, which had sailed from London on 13 October 1775, carried coal, porter, and various foodstuffs, and was destined for the British soldiers in Boston.[vi]  Instead of assisting the British, the ship and its cargo were sold at public auction by the Americans on 18 March 1776.[vii]

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[i] A pilot had apparently captured a man from the transport and reported back information about the ship to the New York Committee of Safety (American Archives Series 4, Volume 4, “New York Committee of Safety to Lord Stirling,” 21 January 1776, 796).  Sandy Hook is a narrow strip of land that projects northward from the Jersey coast, towards New York City, covering the southern end of New York Bay.  The main ship channel ran almost east to west, close to the northern end of the Hook.  This land was the only solid ground approaching the Harbor where fortifications within cannon range could be established. Whoever commanded Sandy Hook, therefore, commanded the entrance to New York Harbor.  Though it is probable that fortifications existed at Sandy Hook as early as 1680, it is certain that it was fortified by the British by the spring of 1776 (The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence.  Alfred T. Mahan, D.C.L., LL.D., Captain, US Navy.  Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1913, 65; and Sandy Hook and the Land of the Navesink.  Samuel Stelle Smith.  Monmouth Beach, NJ: Philip Freneau Press, 1963, 18). 

[iv] The actual distance of a league varied over time and location.  In English-speaking countries it is generally estimated to be about three miles.

[v] Naval Documents of the American Revolution Volume 3, 1775-1776.  Ed. William Bell Clark.  Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1968, 959; and History of Elizabeth, New Jersey, Including the Early History of Union County.  Rev. Edwin F. Hatfield.  New York: Carlton & Lanahan, 1868, 422.

[vi] In the same letter as above, Ogden wrote that the Manifest, dated 30 September 1775, showed “107¼ chaldrons of coal, 30 bundles of hoops, 100 butts of porter, branded—‘Calvert,’ 225 bags of beans, 156 sacks of potatoes, 10 casks sour-krout, 80 live hogs, and 35 empty puncheons, for water,” shipped by Mure, Son, and Atkinson, of London.  (History of Elizabeth, New Jersey, Including the Early History of Union County.  Rev. Edwin F. Hatfield.  New York: Carlton & Lanahan, 1868, 423).

[vii] Documents Relating to the Revolutionary History of the State of New Jersey. Vol. I.  Extracts from American Newspapers. 1776-1777.  ed. William S. Stryker.  Trenton: The John L. Murphy Publishing Co., 1901, 68.

The Campaign of 1779-1780

            As the French mobilized to move against the British, the face of the war changed.  Not only did the British have to worry about fighting in North America, but now they would also have to be prepared to fight the French, Spanish and Dutch in Europe, the Caribbean and elsewhere. 

Although the Americans attacked Nassau in the Bahamas in 1776 and again in 1778, they were too weak to capture and hold the town.  The American navy was also too weak to be a real threat to the British (Savas, 166).  To the British, these attacks were minor annoyances. Now that the British were fighting a world war, they had to focus more men and supplies elsewhere.  This did not stop the campaign which had begun in the southern colonies from progressing however.

The British took Savannah, Georgia from the Americans in December 1778.  As 1779 dawned, Clinton, believing the people of the south to be indifferent, decided to make an attempt to subdue Georgia and move north into South Carolina (Mackesy, 338).  Small engagements were fought in Georgia in February and March before the Americans retreated from the state (Savas, 208). 

In April 1780, the British moved to take Charleston, South Carolina, a major port city garrisoned by about 7,000 Americans.  If Clinton was successful in taking the city, he would have a beachhead established for pacifying the remainder of the Carolinas.  Victorious at Charleston, the British gained the port city and about 7,000 prisoners, plus materials, etc. (Mackesy, 341).  Established in the Carolinas, Clinton’s forces began fanning out across the state.  Smaller battles were waged over the following months, until the armies met in mid-August at Camden.  The American defeat here effectively placed South Carolina and Georgia firmly under the control of the British.  The control, however, would be short-lived.

A large part of the British force in the south, now under Cornwallis (Clinton went back to New York), was composed of Loyalists, who gave the campaign “the murderous character of a civil war” (Mackesy, 344).  Cornwallis wished to move north into North Carolina, assuming that his Tory militia could maintain control in South Carolina.  Unfortunately for Cornwallis, a force of about 1,000 men was defeated by an American force made up mostly of frontier men at Kings Mountain in South Carolina in October.  With this American force now threatening his rear, and the people of North Carolina less than enthusiastic at his presence, Cornwallis ended his North Carolina offensive and proceeded back to South Carolina.

Despite the entrance into the war of the French and Spanish the British looked to be in control of the war in North America.  The American army was on the run, and the French seemed too inept to threaten the British on the American coast.  A most fortunate victory by a band of frontiersmen at Kings Mountain turned the tide of the war in the Americans favor, and demoralized the British army, closing 1780 in much the same way 1776 and 1777 were closed.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Mackesy, Piers. The War for America 1775-1783. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964.

Savas, Theodore P. and J. David Dameron. A Guide to the Battles of the American Revolution. New York: Savas Beatie, 2006.

Wood, W.J. Battles of the Revolutionary War, 1775-1781. Chapel Hill: Da Capo Press, 2003.

January 27th

On 27 January 1777, the British and Hessians, under General Alexander Leslie and Colonel Carl Emilius von Donop ventured into New Jersey on a foraging expedition. The force, numbering two hundred men of the light infantry, four hundred men of the English regiments, the Grenadier Battalion Linsing, fifty horse and Capt. Johann Ewald with fifty Jaegers, marched toward Samptown (present-day South Plainfield). Near Quibbletown (present-day Piscataway), the Americans attacked the party several times, but could not prevent the enemy from foraging. Captain Ewald claimed "a few men were killed and wounded on both sides." (1)

(1) Diary of the American War: A Hessian Journal. Capt. Johann Ewald, Trans. & ed. Joseph P. Trustin, New Haven, Yale Univ. Press, 1979, p. 52.