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Take a closer look at the line of tents of the 2nd and 4th Connecticut Regiments. Structures made of brush are visible in front of the line of tents. The structures provided shade for the soldiers and decoration for the camp. 

Image: Museum of the American Revolution, Gift of the Landenberger Family Foundation 

Take a closer look at a group of soldiers in the foreground of the painting. Also notice the lines of tents in the distance with the Hudson Highlands in the background. 

Image courtesy of Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C. 

Take a closer look at the tents of the Massachusetts regiments, visible in the background of the painting. A couple officers’ marquee tents are also visible in this section of the watercolor. 

Image: Museum of the American Revolution, Gift of the Landenberger Family Foundation 

James Davenport’s letter of March 25, 1783, is among the most interesting of this collection, but not because it shares new information about major historical events. Instead, it is a rare, candid account from a Revolutionary soldier that reminds us that these soldiers were also young men. Davenport was recovering from a night of drinking, or, as he wrote, “the Perfumes of the wine ant [ain’t] hardly out of my head yet because I Drinkd a Good Sling this morning.” With his guard down, he wrote to his brother of his hope of “spending some of my Precious time with some clever Moll, especially in the dark part of the day.” As he had written the year before, “it is a fashion among us soldiers to talk so” about young women, but these conversations rarely made it into written documents that allow us to imagine the fireside banter and youthful hopes of young soldiers.

As of 2020, the Museum of the American Revolution has identified 163 women voters named on nine poll lists dated between 1800 - 1807 from across New Jersey. Of these voters, we have compiled biographies of nearly 30 women and free people of color who voted in these elections. These biographies provide a glimpse into the voters’ lives — their families, religions, homes, ownership of property, and roles in their communities. More biographies will be added as our research continues!

Patrick Lockhart of Botetourt County, Virginia, wrote this letter to Virginia Governor Thomas Nelson in November 1781 to ask for state assistance to recapture Jack, who had escaped from prison earlier that year. Lockhart described that Jack was heavily armed and “Threatening Revenge” upon the people who had first imprisoned him. In April of 1781, Jack was arrested, brought to court, and found guilty of trying to start an uprising among people of African descent who would join the British to battle the American Revolutionaries. One day before his planned execution, Jack escaped from jail and White residents of Botetourt County, such as Patrick Lockhart, feared for their lives. Considering this fear, the accuracy of Lockhart’s claims in this letter is unclear.

Courtesy of the Library of Virginia

The second of the two surviving letters of Isaac Davenport was written at the very end of the Valley Forge encampment. Washington’s Continental Army had spent the winter training for a new campaign. As Davenport predicted, the British evacuated Philadelphia – for New York, not Boston – and Washington’s army left Valley Forge within days of this letter. Washington engaged and defeated the British at the Battle of Monmouth in New Jersey on June 28, where Davenport was presumably engaged along with the rest of his unit, the 3rd Dragoons.

Three months after writing this letter, Isaac Davenport was with a detachment of dragoons in Bergen County, New Jersey, north of New York City. Late on the evening of Sept. 27, while encamped in houses and barns, they were surprised by British troops. The event became known as the “Baylor Massacre,” after George Baylor, the dragoon’s commander. Isaac Davenport was killed. He was 22.

In 1967, an excavation uncovered the skeletal remains of six soldiers killed at the Massacre and hastily buried in a tanning vat. One of the skeletons was that of a robust adult male who was fully dressed when he was buried. Scholars believe that the silver buttons and silver neckstock buckle – hallmarked by a Boston silversmith whose shop would have been a convenient place to visit from Dorchester – found with this skeleton suggest that it was that of Isaac Davenport.

In 2018 the Museum of the American Revolution discovered polling records that document for the first time a generation of women voters in early New Jersey. To date, we have discovered 163 women voters on nine poll lists who cast ballots across the state from 1800 to 1807. These lists introduce new stories of the first women voters in the United States – stories of the forgotten women who pioneered the vote.

The poll lists suggest women’s political significance and participation in local, state, and federal elections in early New Jersey. This first in-depth analysis of these nine poll lists from New Jersey refutes any presumption that women in the Early Republic were only passive witnesses and bystanders of the political processes that shaped the new nation.

Not only has the Museum discovered evidence of women voters in early New Jersey, we have also identified the names of at least four free Black male voters on one of the poll lists. While we have yet to confirm the identity of any free Black women voters, the presence of both women and free Black voters on these poll lists reveals the inclusive nature of the electoral system in New Jersey in the first few decades following American independence.