 During
the years 1777 and 1778 when George Washington was conducting
operations against the British in New Jersey, including the battles of
Princeton and Monmouth, the furnaces at Oxford
and Andover were put to use casting cannon balls in their pig beds.
Transporting these to the Patriot army became a task fraught with
danger as drovers and rivermen sought to elude British patrols and
Loyalists alike. A number of these cannon balls were discovered around
1870 near the cast house of Oxford Furnace and are now in the State
Museum at Trenton. During one of the renovations of Shippen Manor
in Oxford, a bundle of papers covering the years 1741 to about 1800
were discovered in an excellent state of preservation. One such paper
was the first hand account of John Castner’s delivery of cannon balls
to General Washington in Morristown.
The typical route for
delivery was for cannon balls to be loaded on flat boats at Foul Rift
on the Delaware River in what is now White Township. One such delivery
was ambushed by riflemen on the Pennsylvania shore at Easton, killing
two of the three boatmen and leading to the scuttling of the boat and
its shipment by the attackers. When word of the attack got back to
Oxford from the surviving boatman John Ostrom, John Castner was
assigned the task of delivering a cart load of cannon shot to General
Washington in Morristown via an overland route. According to his
report, his horse and cart loaded 500 pounds of two or three pounders,
plus a half-ton of six pound shot.
Because of the large number
of Loyalists and “trimmers” (those whose loyalty shifted from side to
side depending upon circumstances) in Hackettstown, Castner elected to
take a route which led him over what is now Tunnel Hill (Route 31) to
the Pahatcong [sic] Valley and on to the Musconetcong River. This most
likely took him to present day Mansfield Township along Route 57. From
there, he crossed the River and headed to Long Valley and thence to
Chester, Mendham and finally Morristown.
In the course of his
travels, Castner reported being accosted in the Pahatcong Valley by a
man with a “fowling-piece” which misfired, and whom Castner
subsequently killed with one of the small shot used as a bludgeon.
Along the Musconetcong near Hackettstown, Caster stopped at the
farmhouse of a friend to rest and eat. Then he proceeded under cover
of darkness to follow a mountain road to Long Valley which took most of
he night. In the morning he was accosted by two drunks who had
apparently slept in the woods, but after sharing a jug of “rank apple
whiskey” with them, they were left even less capable of doing him harm,
and he went on his way.
Nearing Chester, John Castner stopped
near the home of another friend, Bill Whitman, who was in the logging
business. Whitman decided to join Castner as a guide to see him safely
to Morristown via a new road Whitman had cleared. Nearing
Morristown, the pair were accosted by a mounted British patrol armed
with pistols and swords. Their attempt to outrun them with the cart
led to a broken axle and their horse downed in the traces of the broken
vehicle. With Castner’s rifle and Whitman’s shotgun, they were able to
take refuge behind the cart and hold off the patrol until a Patriot
patrol which heard the gunfire managed to kill or capture members of
the British foragers. The soldiers managed to fashion a skid for the
broken wheel and escorted the shipment the short distance to Morristown.
In
this skirmish, Caster reports that he was wounded in the shoulder and
when reaching the Encampment, General Washington greeted the two
travelers and had his own surgeon see to Castner’s wound. After a
recovery period in Morristown, he was given a captured British horse
and saddle for his return to Oxford and was paid the value of his
destroyed cart in gold.
Caster ends his story, “And so I
got back to Oxford without further adventures and have written this
relation, so that those who come after me may understand the troubles
and perils their ancestors suffered in order that they might enjoy
‘Life Liberty and Happiness,’ and that they should thank God who
brought me safe and sound through all these dangers.” - John Castner, June 25, 1777
This story is adapted from an article by George S. Humphrey,
published in the February 23, 1941 issue of Second Presbyterian
Church’s "The Bulletin." This weekly newsletter edited by the Reverend
A. G. Yount, Ph.D., has become an important source of historical
information for Warren County and the State of NJ.
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