Joella Clamen presented a slide show at the library about the tavern’s role in the Revolutionary War, among its other history.
As part of its ongoing series to mark the upcoming 250th anniversary of America’s founding, the library hosted a Nov. 18 presentation on the Indian King Tavern.
The grant-funded project “U.S. at 250: South Jersey and the Revolution” is a year-long exploration of area history and its role in the nation’s beginning. The library talk focused on the tavern’s Revolutionary War history.
Joella Clamen, museum interpreter of the historic site, told stories and presented a slide show with historical photos, illustrations and maps to help explain the tavern’s past. Clamen began by noting that the tavern is located on what is now Kings Highway – then known as Salem-Burlington Road – and had an important connection to South Jersey’s first two English settlements.
The tavern was operated by widow Mary Creighton, who got help during the war from her second husband Hugh and two sons. Clamen explained how at the time, the role of tavern keeper was often filled by women, given the job’s focus on homemaking skills.
“You can work from home if you’re running a tavern,” she remarked.
Creighton got financial and other support from Haddonfield to buy the tavern and obtain her license to run it.
“They actually had pretty strong social welfare laws …” Clamen noted. “Taxpayers of the town put money into a group called the Guardians of the Poor, who then had to support impoverished people. So it’s really not in anyone’s interest for a widow who’s in a vulnerable situation and might have fallen into poverty. It’s actually in everyone’s interest for her to be gainfully employed.”
Clamen also noted that some of the tavern’s workers were enslaved and pointed to the impact slavery had on social standing at the time, though the borough’s largely Quaker population was against it.
“If you did not have a plan to free them (slaves),” she said, “then you could be what was called disowned from the meeting.”
Quakers who supported the revolution were also disowned, given the religious group’s pacifist stance on war.
“They not only said that they didn’t want people from their religious committee to bear arms, they said, ‘We don’t support this revolution,’” Clamen related.
She also noted that Haddonfield was chosen as the revolutionary government of New Jersey’s headquarters – after the imprisonment of the British-appointed leadership – but there are no records of why. A room at the tavern, however, became the location for the young government’s meetings.
“This is why some people say New Jersey became a state there,” Clamen related.
The revolutionary government eventually left the borough after the British took control of Philadelphia in the fall of 1777, so its headquarters wouldn’t be close to enemy troops. But Haddonfield’s role in the revolution did not end there: When enemy soldiers left Philadelphia later in the conflict, they marched through the town to retreat.
Following the war, Quakers who were disowned by their church continued to practice their religion and became the Society of Free Quakers in Philadelphia.
Clamen also addressed how Haddonfield native Timothy Matlack Jr., son of one of the tavern’s first owners, was known for his penmanship, so he was chosen to create a handwritten copy of the Declaration of Independence.
“So when somebody tells you, ‘Thomas Jefferson wrote the declaration,'” Cleman pointed out, “yeah, but he didn’t hand write the declaration.”
Clamen ended her talk by discussing how the tavern became a museum in 1903, after the Daughters of the American Revolution lobbied the state to buy the building. It has been a museum since, with a bronze plaque outside to commemorate its important role in the Revolutionary War.
