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The Continental Army moved across the Hudson River from Westchester and wintered at Middle Brook, New Jersey.
Col. Thomas Clark and the 1st Carolina Regiment were posted at Paramus for the winter.
Through March and into May there were skirmishes at Closter, Little Ferry, Weehawken, Paramus, and the English Neighborhood (Leonia).
In May Gen. Henry Clinton and British troops moved up the Hudson and took and strengthened fortifications at Stony Point.
The Continentals moved from Middle Brook to Pompton and by way of Ringwood to the Clove (north of Suffern). Troops under Col. Henry Lee and Baron Johann De Kalb were posted in Suffern
Twice in May and again in June British and Loyalist troops conducted foraging raids into the eastern part of Bergen County, including into Closter and the English Neighborhood.
In July Gen. Anthony Wayne led Rebel troops in an attack on and captured the British garrison at Stony Point.
In August Col. Henry Lee moved his troops from the Clove to an encampment at Paramus and then marched by way of New Bridge and the English Neighborhood to a successful surprise attack on the British fortification at Paulus Hook (Jersey City). During the fall, Virginia troops who were posted in the Clove, together with Gen. John Sullivan and his troops, marched south on Valley Road (Ramapaugh). They foraged as they moved through Bergen County.
In November Gen. Wayne and his troops foraged at Paramus, New Bridge, and south of Fort Lee.
Washington moved the Continental army in November from West Point down Valley Road through Pompton to Morristown.
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Bands of marauders who claimed loyalty to the British, but acted independently of the British military, plundered Whigs most often, but on occasion would also forage and rob Tories.
Two of these Loyalists, William Cole and Thomas Welcher, famous throughout Bergen County for robbery, house-breaking, pocket-picking and horse-stealing, were tried and hanged in April at Hackensack.
The Loyalists replied:
We loyalists do solemnly declare that we will hang six for one, which shall be inflicted on your head men and leaders. And wherever we loyal refugees finds militiamen in arms against us or against any of his Majesty’s loyal subjects, we are fully determined to massacre them on the spot. We embody not with the British army but keeps by ourselves in full companies, chooses our own officers....There is some thousand of us from all the provinces on the continent. (Van Doren, Secret History, 140)
In mid-May 1779 the British and Tories launched a drive into Bergen County extending toward Paramus Church.
The detachment of the enemy that landed in Bergen County on Monday...consisted of about 1,000 men, composed of several different corps, under the command of Col. Van Buskirk. Their path in this incursion was marked with desolation and unprovoked cruel murders. Not a house with their reach belonging to a Whig inhabitant escaped. Mr. Abraham Allen and George Campbell fell a prey to these more than savage men. Two negro women, who were endeavoring to drive off some cattle belonging to their masters, were also murdered. Mr Joost Zabriskie was stabbed in thirteen different places. (Damages by British, NJSL, Hackensack Precinct No. 10 on 3 NJA (2) 391
Samuel Demarest, himself a highly-placed Loyalist, was repelled by the action of Tory raiders in Bergen County. Writing in spring 1779 he described the raids:
as a scene marked by circumstances of savage barbarity....Jersey refugees, - they breathe nothing but fire and sword, and desolations - and those whom an ungovernable and rapacious soldiery have already plundered, they are for utterly destroying....Everything that comes in their way is plunder, and its owner a damned rebel. (3 NJA (2) 426, 428)
The various segments of the Continental Army, often short on food and supplies, also foraged among the residents of the territories through which they passed, including Bergen County.
A member of Gen. Wayne’s staff sent a report on the activities of their troops in the Paramus area in November 1779:
Our Brigade has not been backward on their part in regard to divers irregularities and indecencies. They have indiscriminately stripped the neighbors of their corn, milk, ducks, fowls, etc, etc, and that too even in the sight and under the very noses of the owners. (Johnston to Wayne, Oct. 29, 1779, Wayne Papers HSP)
The friendship of Aaron Burr and Theodosia Prevost grew through 1779.
Gen. Augustine Prevost and Lt. Col. James Marcus Prevost led British troops to a series of successes in Georgia and the Carolinas in 1779. Theodosia Prevost rejected an invitation from her husband James Marcus to join him there.
Aaron Burr studied law in Connecticut, then with William Paterson in New Jersey and finally with William Smith in Haverstraw from 1779 to1781.
