A Site of Memory: Christ Church, Middletown, and the Execution of the Enslaved

Christ Church, Middletown, Historic American Buildings Survey.
Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

The current campus of Christ Church Middletown is built on top of the former town execution site, which was also the location of the original Middletown jail.[1] This kind of association was typical in churches of this era that were connected with the elite members of society, many of whom held positions of authority in government including as judges,[2] sheriffs,[3] Colonels,[4] etc. The connection with the organs of the local “justice” system were viewed as salutary, even as those systems enforced slavery,[5] allowed rape of slaves,[6] and protected enslavers from the consequences of their actions.[7]

The leadership and elite members of Christ Church, Middletown were certainly among the most connected members of the town and, by extension, with this system of “justice.” In its earliest life, the Church was given land by men fully enmeshed in the plantation economy of the time. Rev. Alexander Innes was one of these,[8] as was William Leeds, a “wealthy planter” who gave a huge glebe donation.[9] In fact the endowment from the Leeds gift was still paying the priest’s salary at Middletown as late as the 1920s.[10]

There were at least four executions of enslaved people at Middletown that show the operative dynamics of this system of relations between Anglicans, the enslaved, and the administration of “justice” is reported by many historians,[11] but among them the former rector of Christ Church, Middletown, Ernest W. Mandeville. He writes:

As early as 1691, four negroes, Jeremy, Tom, Mingo, and Caesar, were tried for murder in the county court house, which was located just back of the jail… and executed [at] the present site of the Episcopal Church. Their cruel and horrible sentence read: ‘That their right hands should be cut off and burned to ashes, in a fire before their eyes, after which they were to be hanged by the neck until they were dead, Dead, DEAD,’ after which their bodies were to be burned to ashes. Tradition states that the hanging took place… in front of the jail.[12]

The particular crime that Jeremy was accused of was the murder of Lewis Morris, of Passage Point,[13] the cousin and business partner of Col. Lewis Morris, the committed Anglican who went on to become governor (and who at this time was head of the local council). Morris had been killed in retaliation for his murder (and possibly rape) of a woman he enslaved,[14] a crime which the New Jersey courts had declined to investigate in spite of petitions from other enslaved people.[15] The punishments meted out to the four executed men were obviously meant to serve as a statement designed to inspire terror in other enslaved Black people, and prevent further rebellion. Elite Anglicans were intimately involved in this act of “justice” and in enforcing the brutal system of enslavement that supported their plantation economy. 

            That Christ Church, Middletown was built on the site shows that, at the time of construction, the association with such history was viewed as a positive aspect of the site choice, or at the very least, an inoffensive one.

Jolyon G. R. Pruszinski, Ph.D.

Reparations Commission Historian

Episcopal Diocese of New Jersey

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[1] Ernest W. Mandeville, The Story of Middletown: The Oldest Settlement in New Jersey (Middletown, NJ: Christ Church, 1927), 101.

[2] E.g. Episcopal judge Jacob van Wickle.

[3] E.g. Anglican sheriff of Monmouth County, William Nichols. 

[4] E.g. the influential and politically connected Col. Lewis Morris.

[5] Sheriffs in New Jersey sought to catch and return escaped slaves. For instance, see the runaway slave advertisement published by Monmouth County sheriff William Nichols in The Pennsylvania Gazette on July 4, 1729 (republished in Richard B. Marrin, ed., Runaways of Colonial New Jersey: Indentured Servants, Slaves, Deserters, and Prisoners, 1720-1781 [Westminster, MD: Heritage Books, 2007], 268).

[6] As evidenced in parish registers at the time. The parish register of Christ Church Shrewsbury shows evidence of baptisms of 4 “bastards” and 12 “mulatto” “servants,” suggesting impregnation by Anglican heads of household. Parish register of Christ Church, Shrewsbury, N.J. See also Robert M. Kelley, “Slavery Evidenced in the Parish Register,” Christ Church Shrewsbury (January 2019): https://christchurchshrewsbury.org/?page_id=3459.

[7] As the following episode will demonstrate.

[8] Mandeville, The Story of Middletown, 102.

[9] Mandeville, The Story of Middetown, 104-105. Profits from glebes at this time were almost without exception the product of the use of enslaved labor.

[10] Mandeville, The Story of Middetown, 55.

[11] Some of the accounts vary in some details from Mandeville’s, including the date of the execution, the names of the enslaved, and the crime of Morris’s they were seeking to avenge. See, for instance, Graham Russell Hodges, Slavery and Freedom in the Rural North: African Americans in Monmouth County, New Jersey, 1665-1865 (Madison, WI: Madison House, 1997), 23; Franklin Ellis, History of Monmouth County New Jersey (Philadelphia: Peck, 1885), 299-400; Henry C. Reed, “Chapters in a History of Crime and Punishment in New Jersey,” (Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University, 1939), 126.

[12] Mandeville, The Story of Middletown, 52.

[13] A location within nearby Shrewsbury.

[14] Daniel J. Weeks, Not for Filthy Lucre’s Sake: Richard Saltar and the Antiproprietary Movement in East New Jersey, 1665-1707 (Bethlehem: Lehigh University Press, 2001), 113.

[15] Hodges, Slavery and Freedom in the Rural North, 23.

Tinton Falls African Burial Ground: A Site of Memory

Stone marker at Tinton Falls African Burial Ground. Photo J. Pruszinski.

An engraved stone at the Tinton Falls African Burial Ground[1] states the following:

 

ENSLAVED BLACKS, BROUGHT TO LEWIS MORRIS’S IRONWORKS IN 1675, WERE BURIED IN THIS AREA. THE BLACK PEOPLE ON MORRIS’S TINTON MANOR ESTATE WERE THE LARGEST POPULATION OF ENSLAVED BLACKS IN EAST JERSEY FOR NEARLY A CENTURY.

 

A nearby wooden plaque reads:

 

            BURIAL GROUND

This area was a burial ground for enslaved African-Americans who worked at Lewis Morris’s Ironworks in the 1670’s. The Tinton Manor Ironworks was the first in New Jersey, relying on water power from the falls, local supplies of bog iron, and the labor of slaves buried here. Although no grave markers remain, the site is a reminder of our community’s early history and must not be forgotten.

 

There are no other markers for this site, but many things to remember.[2]

The Lewis Morris referenced in the engraving at the burial ground was the uncle of the man who would later become Governor of New Jersey. That younger Morris was the earliest prominent lay booster of the Anglican Church in New Jersey. He was named for his uncle, who had moved to the American colonies from Barbados to care for the young Lewis when his father died. When he emigrated, Morris’ uncle was sure to capitalize on the plantation land grants available in New Jersey for those who brought slaves, bringing at least forty enslaved Black people in 1677.[3] This enabled his accumulation of the 6000-acre Tinton Falls estate where the burial ground is located. There he established a bog-iron works, mill complex, plantation, and manor that, by 1690, enslaved at least sixty-seven Black people.[4] The younger Lewis Morris inherited his uncle’s holdings when he died in 1691. His own accounting of the number of enslaved Black people on the estate at that time was approximately double the number officially recorded in the will.[5]

The iron works was located on Pine Brook, the stream immediately adjacent to the burial ground. The enslaved people, through whose enslavement Morris’ vast wealth was produced, were forced into “backbreaking labor”[6] on the manor. In that place “a sawmill turned timber culled from the thousands of acres of surrounding forest into lumber for use in the manor and for export to New York markets. A gristmill produced flour from the acres of wheat, rye, barley, oats and corn.”[7] The enslaved “planted, tended and harvested these crops,” not unlike “the difficult field labor they [had] performed in the sugar cane fields of Barbados… the enslaved men were forced to work long hours and days with just enough sustenance to keep them going.”[8] Their “rudimentary shelter” involved sleeping on a “dirt floor with hay or straw.”[9] And the “most… dangerous and heavy-duty work for making the valuable bar iron [on the estate] was done by” the enslaved.[10]

The younger Morris accumulated great wealth through enslavement and heavily supported the Church of England as a “staunch patron” and “shining light,”[11] according to church historian Nelson Burr. Morris contributed to the establishment of St. Peter’s (Perth Amboy)[12] and Christ Church (Shrewsbury),[13] St. Michael’s Church (Trenton), and even attempted to establish the Church of England through the New Jersey legislature.[14] He was an early member of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG) in New Jersey, served on the first vestry of Trinity Church (now known as Trinity Church, Wall Street), and ultimately became governor of the Province of New Jersey. He was one of the most influential lay Anglicans in New Jersey during the colonial period and may have been the most prolific enslaver in the American colonies at the time.[15] And lest we think that the Morrises’ practice of enslavement was somehow enlightened by a significant moral sensibility, we should note that his cousin (and business partner) of Passage Point, also named Lewis Morris,[16] was murdered in 1696 in revenge for killing one of the Black people he had enslaved.[17] The baptism records of the enslaved during this period in Monmouth County similarly show that Anglican “masters” regularly raped the women they enslaved.[18]

Jolyon G. R. Pruszinski, Ph.D.

Reparations Commission Research Historian

Episcopal Diocese of New Jersey

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[1] 750 Tinton Ave., Tinton Falls, NJ 07724.

[2] Some of the following material is drawn from Jolyon G. R. Pruszinski, Anglican Slavery in New Jersey (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2025).

[3] John Robert Strassburger, “The Origins and Establishment of the Morris Family in the Society and Politics of New York and New Jersey, 1630-1746,” (PhD diss., Princeton University, 1976), 67. See also Hodges, Slavery and Freedom in the Rural North: African Americans in Monmouth County, New Jersey, 1665-1865 (Madison: Madison House, 1997), 9.

[4] Dean Freiday, “Tinton Manor: The Iron Works,” Proceedings of the New Jersey Historical Society 74 (1952): 250-61. There were “60 or 70” enslaved Blacks there according to George Scot, The model of the government of the province of East-New-Jersey (Edinburgh: John Reid, 1685), 128-129. See also Hodges, Slavery and Freedom in the Rural North, 9.

[5] Rick Geffken, Stories of Slavery in New Jersey (Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2021), 47.

[6] Geffken, Stories of Slavery in New Jersey, 48.

[7] Geffken, Stories of Slavery in New Jersey, 48.

[8] Geffken, Stories of Slavery in New Jersey, 48.

[9] Geffken, Stories of Slavery in New Jersey, 48.

[10] Geffken, Stories of Slavery in New Jersey, 48.

[11] Nelson Burr, The Anglican Church in New Jersey (Philadelphia: The Church Historical Society, 1954), 8, 216.

[12] William McGinnis, A History of St. Peter’s Church in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, 1686-1956 (Woodbridge, NJ: Woodbridge, 1956), 21.

[13] George Keith, A Journal of Travels from New-Hampshire to Caratuck on the Continent of North-America (London: Joseph Downing, 1706), 34, 46; David Humphreys, An Historical Account of the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, to the Year 1728(London: J. Downing, 1730), 57.

[14] Burr, The Anglican Church in New Jersey, 157, 10.

[15] The mine at Tinton Falls accounted for approximately half of the enslaved Black population of Monmouth County at the time (Hodges, Slavery and Freedom in the Rural North, 12).

[16] Passage Point was a location within Shrewsbury. 

[17] Daniel J. Weeks, Not for Filthy Lucre’s Sake: Richard Salatar and the Antiproprietary Movement in East New Jersey, 1665-1707 (Bethlehem, PA: Lehigh University Press, 2001), 113.

[18] The parish register of Christ Church Shrewsbury shows evidence of baptisms of 4 “bastards” and 12 “mulatto” “servants,” suggesting impregnation by Anglican heads of household. Parish register of Christ Church, Shrewsbury, N.J. See also Robert M. Kelley, “Slavery Evidenced in the Parish Register,” Christ Church Shrewsbury (January 2019): https://christchurchshrewsbury.org/?page_id=3459.

Anglican and Episcopal Slavery in New Jersey Pilgrimage Guide

The Reparations Commission has developed an educational pilgrimage resource for those who would like to learn more about the history of the diocese with respect to slavery.

For those wishing to follow the pilgrimage the full guide can be found HERE.

Marlpit Hall, Middletown: A Site of Memory

Figure 1: Marlpit Hall, photo by Jolyon Pruszinski,
taken with permission of the Monmouth County Historical Association.

Marlpit Hall[1] is a well-preserved Middletown, New Jersey colonial-era residence which was owned by Edward Taylor and his descendants. It is now operated as a Museum by the Monmouth County Historical Association. Taylor and his family were Anglican and Episcopal enslavers who were part of the leadership of the Christ Churches of Middletown and Shrewsbury for decades. Interpretive materials at the exhibit state that 

 

“from Edward Taylor’s purchase [of the property] in 1771 until at least 1832, the Taylor family of Marlpit Hall… had an unbroken chain of slave ownership. The men, women, and children who worked on the family’s farm fields, grist mill, and inside the house itself helped to maintain the Taylor family’s lifestyle.” 

 

The exhibit at Marlpit Hall, which is entitled “Beneath the Floorboards: Whispers of the Enslaved at Marlpit Hall,” rightly focuses on the experiences of the people enslaved by the Taylors. Among these were at least ten for whom Marlpit itself was their primary residence, including York, Tom, Mary Ann, Elizabeth Van Cleaf, William Van Cleaf, Hannah Van Cleaf, Matilda Leonard, Clarisse Leonard, Ephraim Leonard, and George. 

Figure 2: Quarters of the enslaved at Marlpit, photo by Jolyon Pruszinski,
taken with permission of the Monmouth County Historical Association.

Figure 3: The kitchen at Marlpit, photo by Jolyon Pruszinski,
taken with permission of the Monmouth County Historical Association.

 

            One of the Anglican priests mentioned in the exhibits here at Marlpit Hall is Thomas Thompson, who served in New Jersey for about five years in a number of congregations in Monmouth County. While he did baptize some enslaved Black people (including at least one person he himself enslaved), he also was a staunch defender of slavery, writing a well-known treatise in defense of the trade. He wrote this treatise on the heels of his service as the chaplain to the slave trading company based in Cape Coast Castle off the coast of West Africa, a post he took up immediately following his service in New Jersey. 

            Another Anglican mentioned in the exhibit is the influential Lewis Morris, who contributed to the founding of multiple churches in New Jersey and would later become governor. He owned the iron works at Tinton Falls, where he enslaved over sixty people. As the exhibit states, “The enslaved labor working at Tinton Manor provided the template for Monmouth County’s budding slave society.” 

The exhibit also mentions Morris’ cousin and business partner (also named Lewis Morris) who had been killed in the 1690’s by two enslaved men (Jeremy and Agebee). They were avenging Morris’ un-punished abuse and murder of a Black woman he enslaved.[2] Christ Church, Middletown is built over the site where Jeremy and Agebee were executed.

It is perhaps unsurprising, in light of their treatment by Episcopal enslavers, that enslaved African-Americans often did not ultimately affiliate with the Episcopal church. Rape of enslaved women by White male heads of household (and their sons) was common, and it is not unlikely that Matilda Leonard’s designation as “mulatto” in exhibit documents evidences this reality. She went on to marry Rev. James Simmons of St. James African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church in Matawan. (Note: the African Methodist Episcopal Church is not part of The Episcopal Church, and was formed in response to mistreatment of African-Americans by the Episcopal Church).

Figure 4: Detail of exhibit showing the house where St. James AME Church, Matawan first met,
with (probably) Matilda Leonard pictured, photo by Jolyon Pruszinski,
taken with permission of the Monmouth County Historical Association.

The Marpit Hall exhibit provides excellent information about the history of slavery in New Jersey, material evidence of the lived experience of slavery for those who were enslaved at Marlpit, and documentation of the lives of their Anglican and Episcopal enslavers.

As you take the tour, and as you look around the beautiful home, remember the words of U.S. Senator Theodore Frelinghuysen who, in 1824 said “survey... your comfortable habitations, your children rising around you to bless you. Who, under Providence, caused those hills to rejoice and those valleys to smile? ... Remember the toils and tears of black men”[3] and women. 

Jolyon G. R. Pruszinski, Ph.D.

Reparations Commission Research Historian

Episcopal Diocese of New Jersey

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[1] The address is: 137 Kings Hwy.; Middletown, NJ 07748; Museum is open Fri-Sun 1-4pm. Other times for groups by appointment. See also: https://visitnj.org/marlpit-hall; https://www.journeythroughjersey.com/sites/marlpit-hall/; https://www.app.com/story/news/history/2021/10/20/middletown-marlpit-hall-slavery-exhibit- shackles/8507793002/.  

[2] See Weeks, Not for Filthy Lucre’s Sake, 113.

[3] As quoted in Gigantino, The Ragged Road to Abolition, 189.

Perth Amboy Ferry Slip: A Site of Memory

The ferry slip at Perth Amboy hosts a UNESCO port marker as a site of memory associated with the Middle Passage of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Perth Amboy served as the primary port of entry for ships bringing enslaved persons from Africa and regularly hosted a slave market.

Figure 1: Perth Amboy ferry slip plaque (front), photo Jolyon Pruszinski

 

Figure 2: Perth Amboy ferry slip plaque (back), photo Jolyon Pruszinski

The text of the marker reads:

 

            Enslavement and the Trans-Atlantic Human Trade: 

 

Near this site enslave Africans disembarked at Perth Amboy, the principal port in eastern New Jersey. During colonial times, numerous slave ships such as the Catherine, William, Africa and Sally were present in Raritan Bay, sending their captives upon the city pier – now the present-day site of the Historic Ferry Slip. In one day alone, the Catherine arrived with 240 enslaved people, leaving 17 dead at sea, and depositing 130 survivors in Perth Amboy.

In Africa, traders captured approximately 24 million children, women and men, half of whom died on the march to coastal prisons or within the prisons awaiting transport across the Atlantic. Chained and tightly packed in dark, filthy, stifling hot cargo holds, 12 million endured ocean crossings that often took months. During these voyages, known as the Middle Passage, 2 million people died from disease, malnutrition, dehydration, abuse and suicide.

African slavery in New Jersey began with the early Dutch settlement named New Netherland. Ideally suited as a maritime port of entry, Perth Amboy, the colonial capital of East Jersey, was an arrival location for ships during the trans-Atlantic human trade. Because the colony of New Jersey imposed no tariff on the importation of captive Africans, many traders disembarked their human cargo at this location, avoiding taxation while supplying buyers in New Jersey and other colonies.

In 1790, New Jersey’s enslaved African population was 11,423. It was the last Northern state to adopt gradual emancipation in 1804. By 1854, the Eagleswood section in Perth Amboy became a major station of the Underground Railroad. Slavery was not completely abolished until 1865[1] by the adoption of the 13^thAmendment to the U.S. Constitution.

In 2019, Perth Amboy was designated a “Site of Memory” by the UNESCO Slave Route Project.

 

Anglicans and Episcopalians were intimately involved in the legal establishment of slavery in New Jersey, in defending the trade, and in profiting from enslavement.

One of the most recent instances of Episcopal engagement with the slave trade in Perth Amboy occurred in 1818 in connection with the Van Wickle slave ring. As many have documented elsewhere,[2]  Van Wickle was one of the most notorious enslavers during the period of gradual abolition in New Jersey. As a Middlesex County Judge he facilitated the illegal trafficking out-of-state of well over one hundred African-Americans who were either already free in New Jersey, or who would have become free under gradual abolition. They were permanently enslaved in the south through Van Wickle’s actions. Public outcry shut down the operation of the ring in late 1818, but not before Van Wickle had convinced the other lay leaders of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Spottswood to defend his actions in print.[3] Van Wickle managed to orchestrate the sailing of one last ship of enslaved persons out of Perth Amboy, late in 1818, after public pressure on the ring had already begun to mount. On October 26, 1818 the ring smuggled forty-eight people[4] out of Perth Amboy aboard the Schoharie. These are their names from the shipping manifest: 

 

William M. Clare, 25; John C. Marsh (of New York); John C. March (on board); Jafe Manning, 21; Robert Cook, 17; Ben Morris, 22; Sam Prince, 19; Sam Peter, 30; George Phillips, 18; James Thompson; Edward Gilbert, 22; Dan Francis, 20; James, 15; Charles, 19; Susan Wilcox, 36; Nelly, 18; Betsey Lewis, 28; Jane Clarkson, 23; Eliza Thompson, 21; Jane Cook, 15; Ann Moore, 29; Julian Jackson, 21; Jane Smith, 33; Peggy Boss, 21; Mary Harris, 21; Sally Cross, 20; Rosanna Cooper, 22; Mary Simmons, 18; Hannah Jackson, 18; Hanna Crigier, 18; Harriet Silas, 15; Fanny Thompson, 14; Elizabeth Ann Turner, 16; Susan Jackson, 20; Hanna Johnson, 20; Hannah, 18; Cane, 22; William Stone (New York); Jack, 22; Lewis, 22; Peter 14; Frank, 21; Caleb Groves, 50; John, 21; Collins, 35; Othello, 16; Anthony Fortune, 21; Joseph Henricks, 19; Jane, 23; Susan 21; Lena, 38. 

 

Van Wickle was never even indicted for his crimes.

Jolyon G. R. Pruszinski, Ph.D.

Reparations Commission Research Historian

Episcopal Diocese of New Jersey

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[1] This is an inaccuracy in the site marker text. Slavery was not fully abolished by the 13^th Amendment because the text of the amendment specifically allowed slavery as a legal punishment for a crime.

[2] See the various primary sources and public history project related to Van Wickle and the slave ring listed in Jolyon Pruszinski, “Jacob Van Wickle (1770-1854): Middlesex County Judge, Notorious Enslaver, and Respected Episcopalian Lay Leader,” DNJRJR, September 18, 2023.

[3] Again, see Pruszinski, “Jacob Van Wickle (1770-1854)” DNJRJR, September 18, 2023.

[4] Documented at https://lostsoulsmemorialnj.org.

Sandy Hook: A Site of Memory

One of the most notorious Episcopal enslavers during the period of gradual abolition in New Jersey was Middlesex County Judge, and long-serving church warden of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, Spotswood, Jacob Van Wickle. Culminating in 1818, he orchestrated an illegal slave-trading ring that resulted in the fraudulent removal out-of-state of well over one hundred enslaved African Americans, some of whom had formerly been free and had been kidnapped by the agents of the ring. Many scholars and public history projects have sought to document his actions,[1] and documentation of his Episcopal affiliation and leadership has been made previously on the DNJRJR, including the efforts of fellow church leaders to deny any illegal behavior.[2] On March 10, 1818 the first ship carrying individuals trafficked by the ring set sail from Sandy Hook, New Jersey.[3]

Figure 1: Sandy Hook, NJ from Mount Mitchill Scenic Overlook, photo by Jolyon Pruszinski

The ship manifest of the Mary Ann documents[4] the names and ages of those thirty-nine individuals kidnapped or trafficked under false pretenses and sold south into permanent slavery: 

 

Peter, age 15; Simon (age unknown, a free person); Margaret Coven (age unknown, a free person); Sarah, age 21; Dianna, age 7 months; Rachel, age 22; Regina, age 6 weeks; Hager, age 29; Roda, age 14; Mary, age 2; Augustus, age 4; Flora, age 23; Susan, age 7 months; Harry, age 14; James, age 21; Elmirah, age 14; George, age 16; Susan Watt, age 35; Moses, age 16; Lydia, age 18; Betty, age 22; Patty, age 22; Bass, age 19; Christeen, age 27; Diannah, age 9; Dorcas, age 1; Claresse, age 22; Hercules, age 2; Lidia, age 22; Harriett Jane, age 3; Bob (no age given); Rosanna (no age given); Claus (no age given); Ann (no age given); Rosino, a child; Jenette (no age given); Charles, a child; Elias, a child; Robert, a child.

 

Van Wickle was never indicted for his actions.

Jolyon G. R. Pruszinski, Ph.D.

Reparations Commission Research Historian

Episcopal Diocese of New Jersey

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[1] Some excellent documentation of primary sources related to Van Wickle and the slave ring are available through the Rutgers University Scarlet and Black Research Center which hosts New Jersey slavery records. See “Jacob Van Wickle (1770-1854)” at https://records.njslavery.org/s/doc/item/1284, accessed September 26, 2023. See also Francis Pingeon, “An Abominable Business: The New Jersey Slave Trade, 1818,” New Jersey History 109.3 (1991): 15-35; James J. Gigantino, II, “Trading in Jersey Souls: New Jersey and the Interstate Slave Trade,” Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies 77.3 (2010): 281-302; Calvin Schermerhorn, The Business of Slavery and the Rise of American Capitalism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015), 69-80; Graham Russell Gao Hodges, Black New Jersey: 1664 to the Present Day (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2019), 79; and Gigantino, The Ragged Road to Abolition, 157-160. See also the presentation from the Lost Souls Memorial Project (“Inside the Van Wickle’s Slave Ring: ‘Exposing a Scene of Villany’” at https://lostsoulsmemorialnj.org/wp-content/uploads/Inside-Van-Wickles-Slave-Ring.pdf, accessed September 25, 2023); the material published by the East Brunswick Historical Society (“Van Wickle and Morgan Slave Ring Leaders East Brunswick, NJ (1818)” at https://purehistory.org/van-wickle-and-morgan-slave-ring-leaders-east-brunswick-new-jersey-1818/, accessed September 26, 2023); “The 1619 Project” article by Anne C. Bailey, “They Sold Human Beings Here,” New York Times, February 12, 2020 at https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/02/12/magazine/1619-project-slave-auction-sites.html, accessed September 26, 2023; the Rutgers University Scarlet and Black Research Center article “Removal to Louisiana: The Van Wickle Slave Ring,” at https://scarletandblack.rutgers.edu/archive/exhibits/show/hub-city/removal-to-louisiana, accessed September 26, 2023); Regina Fitzpatrick “New Jersey State Archives Van Wickle Slave Ring Free Digital Collection,” at https://www.njstatelib.org/news/vanwickleslaveringcollection/, accessed September 26, 2023; and the State of New Jersey, “Documents at the New Jersey State Archives relating to the Van Wickle Slave Ring,” at https://www.nj.gov/state/darm/WebCatalogPDF/VanWickle/VanWickleTableOfContents.pdf, accessed September 26, 2023.

[2] Jolyon Pruszinski, “Jacob Van Wickle (1770-1854): Middlesex County Judge, Notorious Enslaver, and Respected Episcopalian Lay Leader,” DNJRJR, September 18, 2023.

[3] Sandy Hook can be viewed from Mount Mitchill Scenic Overlook in Atlantic Highlands, NJ: www.monmouthcountyparks.com. Take Rte. 36 / Ocean Ave east to jug-handle signs for “Red Bank / Scenic Road.” Follow signs for the park.

[4] Also to be found at https://lostsoulsmemorialnj.org.