Time now for the 10th installment of We Learn Wednesdays, where I ride my bike to find all of the local historical markers in this county. Seeing things by bike is the ideal way to do it. You learn new roads, you see new things. Counting today’s discoveries I have listed 21 of the 115 markers found in the Historical Marker Database.

The two markers we’ll see today have to do with a very small part of the Revolutionary War. A minor battle took place in this spot in March of 1778. The British were occupying Philadelphia at the time.

It was a harsh winter. Both sides were scavenging the countryside for food. They’d been skirmishing and probing one another for a month. In February 19, General Mad Anthony Wayne led his Continentals through the region looking for supplies. General William Howe had sent a few forces out to harass him. One of them was Lt. Col. Charles Mawhood who had about 1,200 men under his command. He was in a town three miles away, learned about the local militia guarding this bridge (OK, not this modern bridge, but it’s 18th century ancestor) and, ultimately laid a trap.

As we ride here, we’re moving from the American side over to where the British troops were waiting. The British lured the militia across the bridge — and this creek, which had been a natural barrier between the two — and attacked. Other American soldiers arrived just in time to hold off the red coats and prevented a larger calamity. The next day the British crossed the river to the south, moved to the bridge just down from this one and bayoneted 20 to 30 people, including a local judge and British loyalist, but we’ll learn about him later.

Here’s one of the markers you’ll find at this little spot.

Col. Benjamin Holme commanded a militia of about 300 that March. He survived the war, and is buried just three miles away, having died in 1792. This man’s great-great grandson was a minister. He died in Michigan in 1989. The colonel’s great-great-great granddaughter died in Virginia, in 2001.

Holme’s house still stands.

It was built in 1729, looted and burned by the British, again under Mawhood’s command. After the war, Holme rebuilt the home and reclaimed his looted Wagstaff clock, which is now in the custody of the county’s historical society.

Col. Elijah Hand, the grandson of a whaler, has been called Cape May’s forgotten patriot. He would have been 49 during this battle. It was Hand who showed up in time to stop the British attack. And it was Hand who responded to Mawhood’s “or else” letter, which asked the militia to lay down their arms and go home, or else he would attack them all, burn all of their properties and reduce their families to beggars. Mawhood listed the names of 21 patriots, the ones who would be first.

Hand wrote back:

SIR,

I have been favoured with what you say humanity has induced you to propose. It would have given me much pleasure to have found that humanity had been the line of conduct to your troops since you came to Salem. Not only denying quarters, but butchering our men who surrendered themselves prisoners in the skirmish at Quintin’s Bridge last Thursday, and bayonetting yesterday morning at Hancock’s Bridge, in the most cruel manner in cold blood, men who were taken by surprize, in a situation in which they neither could nor did attempt to make any resistance, and some of whom were not fighting men; are instances too shocking for me to relate, and I hope for you to hear.

The brave are ever generous and humane. After expressing your sentiments of humanity, you proceed to make a request which I think you would despise us if we complied with. Your proposal, that we should lay down our arms, we absolutely reject. We have taken them up to maintain rights which are dearer to us than our lives, and will not lay them down, ’till either success has crowned our cause with victory, or like many ancient worthies contending for liberty, we meet with an honourable death. You mention that if we reject your proposal, you will put arms into the hands of the tories against us; we have no objection to the measure, for it would be a very good one to fill our arsenals with arms.

Your threats to wantonly burn and destroy our houses and other property, and reduce our wives and children to beggary and distress, is a sentiment which my humanity almost forbids me only to recite, and induces me to imagine I am reading the cruel order of a barbarous Atila, and not of a Gentleman, brave and polished with a genteel European education.

To wantonly destroy, will injure your cause more than ours—it will encrease your enemies and our army.

To destine to destruction the property of our most distinguished men, as you have done in your proposals, is, in my opinion, unworthy a generous foe; and more like a rancorous feud between two contending Barons, than a war carried on by one of the greatest powers on earth, against a people nobly struggling for Liberty—a line of honour would mark out that these men should share the fate of their country—If your arms should be crowned with victory, which God forbid, they and their property will be entirely at the disposal of your Sovereign. The loss of their property, while their persons are out your power, will only make them desperate; and, as I said before, encrease your foes and our army; and retaliation upon tories and their property is not out of our power. Be assured that these are the sentiments and determined resolution, not of myself only, but of all the officers and privates under me.

My prayer is, Sir, that this answer may reach you in health and great happiness. Given at Head-Quarters, at Quintin’s Bridge, the twenty-second day of March, 1778.

Elijah Hand, Colonel

Hand also survived the war, as did Capt. William Smith. He was the officer who led the pursuit across the creek and fell into the trap. He died in 1820 and is buried about three miles down the road, as are several of the men who died at Quinton’s Bridge. No one knows how many, though, or their identities. The only grave marker there is Smith’s. The marker above is actually on what was Smith’s farmland.

(Mawhood died in Gibraltar, during a siege there in 1780. Apparently it was a gallstone problem.)

And the second marker has to do with the little battle itself.

It was a small thing in the scheme of the war, but apparently the battle of Quinton’s Bridge was the last part of the conflict in this county.

There’s much more to learn. For next week’s installment of We Learn Wednesdays we’ll head upstream to see the next few markers. Miss some of the markers? You can see them all right here. Before that, though, we’ll of course have more Queen videos, a week’s worth of Catober and more!