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Explore the Revolutionary War years by clicking on the images above. You will find maps of military routes
and actions across New Jersey and New York and read quotes of the people involved.
See how these events affected the people at
Bergen County was a major continually contested area throughout the American Revolution. Here we can look back and get real insights into the process and costs involved in attaining independence. There were differences of opinion and allegiances among citizens, competing militia companies, and frequent incursions by both British and German soldiers on the one hand and by Continental forces on the other.
As the war approached and throughout the struggle there were divisions between settlers of Dutch and German dissent, among the Dutch themselves, between those who had close economic, military and ideological links with England and those who found colonial status a disadvantage or as a mark of inferiority. Divisions reached into villages, neighborhoods and even families.
Through most of the war the British presence in strength in New York City gave them almost continual control of the southern part of Bergen County (now Hudson County) and an ability to send forces northward. In the very north of the county, at the edge of the mountains, along the Ramapo River the rebels had almost complete control and an ability to send forces southward. For those in the middle, in much of present day Bergen County, there was from 1776 into the early 1780s almost continual guerrilla-like warfare.While Bergen County and northern New Jersey were not flashpoint areas in the growing disputes between England and its North American colonies, there did develop, amidst much neutrality and a lack of attention, groups who spoke out strongly for and against the actions of the mother country in the years just preceding the Declaration of Independence.
(Map of area from NYC and lower Bergen to Ramapo Valley and Hudson highland forts)
Sources
Becica, John. The Revolutionary War in Ho-Ho-Kus: Military Encounters Hoppertown/Paramus, 1776-1781, Ho-Ho-Kus: Ho-Ho-Kus 300th Anniversary Committee 1998.
Bergen County Historical Society Papers: Revolutionary War Round Table Papers, Bergen County Historical Society, 1960
Bischoff, Henry. Mahwah and the Ramapo Valley in the American Revolution, Mahwah: Mahwah Tricentennial Committee, 2000
____________ and Mitchell Kahn, From Pioneer Settlement to Suburb: A History of Mahwah, New Jersey, 1700-1976, South Brunswick: A. S. Barnes, 1979
Bogert, Frederick. Paramus, A Chronicle of Four Centuries, Paramus, 1961.
______________. The Revolutionary Years, 1776-1783, Vol. III, Bergen County, New Jersey: History and Heritage, Hackensack: The Bergen County Board of Chosen Freeholders, 1983.
Erskine, General Robert, Revolutionary War Maps, New York Historical Society
Fitzpatrick, J. C., ed. The Writings of George Washington, 39 vols., Washington, 1931.
Heusser, Albert, The Forgotten General: Robert Erskine, F. R. S. (1735-1780), Paterson: The Benjamin Franklin Press, 1925
Keesey, Ruth. Loyalty and Reprisal: The Loyalists of Bergen County, New Jersey and Their Estates, Dissertation, Columbia University, 1957.
Leiby, Adrian. The Revolutionary War in the Hackensack Valley, New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1962. The most complete study and documented source of the Revolutionary War in Bergen County.
Lomask, Milton. Aaron Burr: The Years from Princeton to Vice President, 1756-1805, New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1979.
Papers of George Washington, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
Web Site Credits
Text, a compilation of printed materials - Henry Bischoff
Associated researchers - Alec Hurst, John Becica, and Richard Lenk
Reviewer of text - David Whieldon
Designer - Yvette Lucas
Technicians - Nick Giglio, Andrew Loh and Dannielle Unger
