Red Bank Battlefield Director Jennifer Janofsky (at right) tells stories about the contributions of men of color during a tour on Sunday, May 18.
Written out of the history books and unmentioned on monuments in the early 1900s, the contributions of African Americans and Native Americans who fought in the Battle of Red Bank will soon be known to all.
During the only Continental Army victory in the battle’s Philadelphia campaign, more than 50 men of color were among the 500-strong soldiers who defended Fort Mercer and routed a Hessian force of 2,000 men on Oct. 22, 1777.
But residents at the dedication of a Red Bank monument in 1906 would not have realized those soldiers were even part of the battle at the fort on the Delaware River waterfront in National Park.
“We have applied to re-do the monument in 2026 and right a wrong,” said Red Bank Battlefield Director Jennifer Janofsky – a history professor at Rowan University – during a Family Day tour on May 18. “We have also applied to be recognized on the New Jersey Black History Trail.”
Janofsky explained that day that she would use the word Black to refer to either African American or Native Americans soldiers.
“There were at least 48 Black participants in the battle and as many as 56,” she noted, citing a study in 2014 by historian Dr. Robert Selig. “They were members of the integrated 1st and 2nd Rhode Island regiments.”
The other troops defending the fort were from the New Jersey militia and the Sixth Virginia regiment and they all worked together – with the help of a French engineer who built a fake wall in front of the fort – to deceive and defeat the larger Hessian force.
Commander Col. Christopher Greene also got advance information on the Hessian force from Jonas Cattell, who was working in Haddonfield and put in jail for violating curfew the day before the battle. That night, he overheard his captors talking about the planned attack on Fort Mercer, and when he was released the next morning, he ran 17 miles through farms and fields to warn the Continental Army.
Greene promptly ordered his soldiers to move cannons threatening British ships on the Delaware River and have them face the Hessians attacking by land. Janofsky said the battle only lasted 40 minutes, leaving 14 Americans dead, while German mercenaries suffered about 377 dead or wounded.
“It was the worse loss for the Hessians in the Revolutionary War,” Janofsky explained, adding that paymaster records show at least two African Americans named Samson and Kilnure – as well as many Irish Americans – helped to build the fort, a massive structure 300 yards long with trenches and moats surrounding it.
Before the battle, Gen. George Washington told Greene that “the fate of the Delaware River is in your hands,” Janofsky pointed out, adding that there were ships all over the river. Many of them were part of the Pennsylvania Navy trying to prevent British ships from bringing supplies to their troops stationed in Philadelphia.
New Jersey and Pennsylvania militia troops were also building dam-like fortifications in the river itself just south of Fort Mercer, using large, pointed wooden spears to keep the supply ships from traveling north.
The next stop on the May 18 tour was the first monument at the battlefield erected in 1829 by members of the two state militias. By that time, according to Janofsky, people who remembered the Red Bank battle were dying, and the first books of American history were being written.
In 1845, journalist Isaac Mickle wrote that there were Black participants in the fight, and 10 years later, abolitionist and journalist William Cooper Nell also recorded the contributoins of those soldiers.
Janofsky pointed out that during the 1800s, there were many Black tourists who visited the battlefield, including many from the historic Mother Bethel AME Church in Philadelphia who honored “the colored men who so nobly defended the City of Philadelphia.”
By the turn of the 20th century, the Red Bank battlefield was in disrepair. After pressure from the Daughters of the American Revolution, the state of New Jersey renovated the site with a park and a new monument.
Tour participants gathered around the obelisk for the final stop of Janofsky’s tour.
“Thousands of people attended the dedication in 1906,” she recounted. “The monument did not make any mention of the Black soldiers. During one of our archaeology digs, we found a pin from the Patriotic Order of the Sons of America.”
The order still exists, but at the turn of the century, they held parades exclusively for Whites, and the Ku Klux Klan was forming a chapter in Woodbury.
The participation of Black soldiers in the Red Bank was almost completely whitewashed in 1927, when historian Frank Stewart denied they were even involved. His book was in every school in Gloucester County and his misconception was part of tour guide speeches at the battlefield until the 1990s, according to Janofsky.
After her tour, John Rees, author of “Don Troiani’s Black Soldiers in America’s Wars, 1754-1865,” gave a presentation to some 30 people gathered outside the historic Whitall House, which Quakers and pacifists James and Ann Whitall had converted into a makeshift hospital to treat the wounded after the battle.
“The Black troops were some of the best soldiers in the world,” Rees maintained. “The Continental Army was integrated. The Black 1st Rhode Island regiment was led by white sergeants and officers, including Col. Greene.”
As the country prepares to celebrate its 250th anniversary next year, there will be a new, refurbished monument at the Red Bank Battlefield that will include the brave men of color who helped defeat England. Janofsky wants the structure to tell the accurate story of how the Continentals decisively defeated the Hessian mercenaries on Oct. 22, 1777 at Fort Mercer in Gloucester County.
