Parsippany Not Quite the Same as Gen. Washington or Gov. Livingston Would Have Remembered It

The Morristown Council on Tourism celebrates each April Morris County’s role in the American Revolution with Revolutionary Times, a weekend of activities that reflect the importance of the early history of our area. 

The annual celebration will be held this weekend with activities that include reenactments, museum activities, lectures and other events. 

In Parsippany, Livingston Benedict House, the refuge home of Gov. William Livingston, will be open on Saturday and Sunday from 1 to 4 p.m.

A blacksmith and a weaver will be on site to demonstrate their crafts, children can make small candles, and 11 costumed reenactors will portray people who lived in the house at various times.

This program is free, but donations are accepted.

If Gen. George Washington or Gov. Livingston could visit Parsippany-Troy Hills today, it is likely that he would not know where he was. It’s hard to imagine our town as a wilderness, with dirt roads bordered by stone walls, only wide enough for horses and wagons. Take away the modern stores, the schools, most of the buildings, the electric lines, the cable TV, cell phones, anything modern, most of what we know as daily life.

Troy Brook, which runs from Intervale, down through Troy, was here during the Revolutionary War. It is why Parsippany is here because water power was important for iron forging.  

Beverwyck Road, from Lake Hiawatha to Route 10, follows the same route as it did then. French and Continental armies often traveled that path between Morristown and West Point. Parsippany Road led between Morristown and Boonton, the original town, the site of which is now at the bottom of the Jersey City Reservoir. Boonton Forge on the Rockaway River produced iron for nails, horseshoes, pots and cannonballs.

Percipany (as it was spelled then) was a small group of houses near the road that would become Route 46, leading up through the Troy Meadows from Newark. Troy included a small group of houses on South Beverwyck Road and one of the largest plantations in New Jersey, the 2,000-acre Beverwyck Plantation.

Beverwyck was at the corner of Beverwyck and Route 46, where the Park and Ride lot is currently. Troy Forge produced iron for the cannonballs of the Continental Army.

Morristown was one of the 10-largest cities in the colonies, an important refuge for the army in winter camp at Jockey Hollow, protected from the British army by the mountains and the forests.

What was it like, living in a state where war was being waged?

New Jersey’s position between New York and Philadelphia made it the location of many battles in the early years of the Revolutionary War.

Although there were no actual battles in Morris County, farmers constantly feared a raid on their fields for apples, or chickens or grain by soldiers from either army. Officers were often quartered (put up) in private houses, since there were very few taverns.  

If the head of the household was in the army, women had to run the farms and plant, raise and store all the food for a family for the winter, in addition to weaving cloth, making clothes and blankets, candles and soap, butchering cows and sheep and pigs. The only source of heat in winter was wood fires, so wood had to be chopped and piled.

The winter of 1779-80 was particularly brutal. There were eight blizzards in the month of December. The Continental army of 12,000 men was quartered in Morristown, in Jockey Hollow. They built their own cabins from logs, and many arrived there with no shoes or wool socks. 

A Parsippany woman, Rhoda Farrand, traveled the nearby towns in a wagon and gathering socks for the army. Local women knitted more than 100 pairs of socks for the army and received personal thanks from Gen. Washington.

New York was occupied by the British army, and prison camps  for captured Continental soldiers were located there. A special permit from the governor was needed to travel there. Many local people had relatives that lived in New York and did not see them until the war ended.

In some familes, there was disagreement and division about the wisdom of separating from Great Britain.  People who sympathized with the English were called Loyalists, or Tories. The Tories in Parsippany lost their property at the end of the war, among them were members of the Bolwsby family and John Hutchinson, whose family house still stands across Interstate 80 from Pathmark Plaza.

At the end of the war, citizens on both sides of the conflict had lost most of the value of what they owned. The cost of the war was enormous in both life and monetary value.

The Revolutionary War remains one of the longest wars in U.S. history, and one of two fought on American soil.

One of every 20 free white men in the United States at that time was killed in the war, either in battle or by illness.

For a full list of this weekend's activities, visit www.morristourism.org,  www.nps.gov/morris.org or www.revolutionarynj.org.