On this day in 1776, General Washington and the Continental Army secured their crucial strategic and material victory at Trenton, New Jersey after crossing the icy Delaware River.
When the Continental Army returned to camp on the Pennsylvania side of the Delaware River, soldiers were exhausted. They had marched and fought for two straight days through rain, snow, sleet, and hail.
The Continental Army and militias crossed the Delaware to New Jersey three times: December 25, 1776, crossed back, and crossed again December 30, 1776 and stayed for the winter.
From a high school friend:
It changed my family's history, too! My 5x great grandfather was a Hessian soldier captured at the Battle of Trenton just after Washington crossed the Delaware. Instead of returning to Germany, he ended up staying in the new U.S., even enlisting in the U.S. Army and fighting in the War of 1812 when he was in his 50s. He survived that, too, and lived until his late 80s on a farm that is now Moravian Academy. He's buried at the church at 191 and Hecktown Rd, where my husband and I were married.
But that's just one thread on my maternal grandfather's side. One that my cousin and I thought was cool was on our maternal grandmother's side. That side has people who founded NYC -- Huguenots who were exiled from France, ended up in Amsterdam, and came over with the first ships that settled New Amsterdam, Harlem, Brooklyn, and Albany. Anyway, some ended up on farms in NJ, and we found a document that shows our 4x and 5x great grandfathers were paid for being in the Revolutionary War. The older one took supplies to Washington at Morristown; the younger one, his son, was so young (12 years old!) Then my cousin noticed his job title: Drummer. Now when I see that classic painting of the boy carrying a drum in the Revolutionary War, I wonder if that's him the artist was depicting. 12! Can you imagine??
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