British and Loyalist Attack Monmouth County Salt Works

When the American Revolution started, the British Navy blockaded American ports. As a result, the new nation experienced a severe salt shortage (essential to food preservation). The Jersey shore was thinly-populated and poor before the war; its sandy soil was ill-suited for farming and the inlets were dangerous and too shallow for large vessels. However, New Jersey’s shallow tidal inlets were ideal for salt making and a dozen salt works sprung up on the Monmouth shore within a year.

These salt works were vulnerable to British-Loyalist attack. The importance of salt and protection of the salt works was discussed by New Jersey Governor William Livingston and General George Washington. Livingston wrote in September 1777: “the scarcity of salt is a serious consideration, and has been industriously perverted by our internal enemies.” He lobbied for bills to support and protect the salt works. Washington deemed the protection of the salt works important enough to grant Colonel David Forman a temporary reprieve from joining the Continental Army in the defense of the Delaware River:

Am very sorry to hear that the information you have heard on the intent of the enemy to destroy the salt works upon the coast of Monmouth County will divert you from coming to the reinforcement of the Army; but these works are so truly valuable to the public that they are certainly worth your attention.

The salt works were also on the minds of American Loyalists eager to punish their former neighbors and disrupt the Continental Army’s food supply. On January 1, 1778, an anonymous Loyalist from Shrewsbury wrote about the salt works owners and their salt works:

A great many of them pretend to be friends of the King--perhaps they have sent some provisions to New York and got four times as much as they could get at home, and then they think they can make salt freely & call themselves friends of the Government, but you will judge whether or not they are friends of their own pockets... You know that these works stand near the waterside, that 200 men might destroy them all.

Historian Arthur Pierce, who studied the New Jersey shore during the American Revolution estimated that the salt works may have produced 2,000 bushels of salt a month at their peak. The most productive salt works on the Jersey shore in April 1778 were the Union Salt Works on the Manasquan River (in present day Brielle). An antiquarian source claims the Union Salt Works contained "no less than one hundred houses" each with 6-10 copper pans and kettles. The largest house was said to be the property of the Continental Congress and was valued at L6,000. Surviving original documents do confirm these details.

The only force assigned to defend the salt works was David Forman’s under-sized Additional Regiment, which Forman, in a blatant conflict of interest, used in 1777 to construct the Union Salt Works. In the resulting scandal, Forman lost command of his regiment; it was sent to the Continental Army campa at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania in late March 1778.

The Attack on the Monmouth County Salt Works

It was not long before an attempt was made to raze the salt works. The New Jersey Gazette reported on a raid made by roughly one hundred New Jersey Volunteers and forty British regulars:

The enemy landed on the south side of Squan Inlet, burnt the salt works, broke the kettles; stripped the beds of some of the people there, who I fear wished to serve them; then crossed the river and burnt all except Derrick Longstreet's. The next day they landed at Shark River and set fire to two salt works... one of the pilots was the noted Thomas Okerson.

The report further noted that the raiding party went in three large boats and a war-sloop commanded by Captain Henry Collins of the Royal Navy; they landed at Manasquan on April 5. Captain Boyd Potterfield of the British Army led the landing party, which faced no significant opposition. Potterfield sent his commander, General Henry Clinton, a lengthy report on the raid on April 7:

The 5th, about 3 o'clock in the morning, we weighed and at 8 o'clock we anchored off Squan Inlet; after reconnoitering the place from the vessels, we landed at about one hundred yards distance from a salt work, which we immediately destroyed. We then proceeded and most completely demolished a very considerable work on the right of the Inlet, which belonged to the Congress, and is said to have had six thousand pounds--likewise some of the contiguous, but of less consequence—after completing the above, we reimbarked without opposition.

Potterfield continued:

The same day in the afternoon we anchored off Shark [River]; we landed a party to examine the country, but the wind coming from the eastward occasioned a very high surf, and made it necessary in the opinion of Capt. Collins to re-embark, as he apprehended it would increase, and render it impracticable to get the boats off. We immediately & with some difficulty re-embarked & proceed to the Hook. The dispatch that was necessary in destroying the works prevented our taking an exact account of everything; but there was at least one hundred houses, each containing 8 to 10 kettles and boilers (a great part of which were copper) for the purpose of making salt. We also destroyed a great quantity of beef and bacon, mostly dried, & a great deal of ready-made salt. We likewise destroyed a sloop partly loaded with flour belonging to Boston & a quantity of grain, which we found on the beach.

A week later, the Loyalist New York Gazette corroborated this account, but suggested a larger raiding party of "200 of the King's troops." New York’s other Loyalist newspaper, the Gazette and Weekly Mercury, also reported on the raid, adding a detail on the limited damage at Shark River: “The wind coming eastward occasioned such a high surf, they were under necessity of re-embarking, which prevented them from demolishing the salt works there that the rebels had at that place.”

After the Attack

On April 15, the Pennsylvania Ledger reported on a storm that compounded the damage:

The late storm has destroyed many of the small salt works on our shore--with all the salt in them. The night tide was several feet higher than has been known before--a considerable number of horned cattle were drowned on Long Beach and other places. The Long Beach is almost wholly leveled, with but little more than a sand bar left. The furniture has floated out of the rooms of some houses that flood low on the waterside. The inhabitants never saw so distressing a time.

The Ledger further reported that the raid and storm had destroyed 100 salt work buildings and further “destroyed immense quantities of salt, beef, salted hams, sides of bacon, corn and hay." However, the high surf at Shark River “prevented them [the raiders] from demolishing those works."

On April 9, Colonel Samuel Forman, commanding the Monmouth County militia at Toms River, wrote of the raid and suggested that the Monmouth militia offered some resistance: "15 Mounted militia” under Asher Holmes harassed the raiders’ departure at Shark River. Forman also noted that two booty-laden boats capsized as the raiders hastily rowed into the rough surf. However, Noah Clayton, a militiaman at Tinton Falls, offered a different perspective on the militia’s role:

While we lay there, an express arrived stating that the Tories had burned the Squan River salt works, and [we] immediately marched in pursuit of them, but they got into their boats and made their escape, and we returned to the Falls again.

News of the raid prompted letters from the leading Continental Army officers near the shore—Colonels David Forman (recently stripped of the regiment assigned to guard the salt works) and Israel Shreve (who gained Forman’s men and now had responsibility of protecting the shore). On April 7, Forman, who had predicted an attack on the salt works, wrote Shreve:

I gave orders to the troops to march and were to have gone this morning. Yesterday evening the enemy had landed and destroyed the Union & other salt works; altho' the militia on duty in Shrewsbury had immediately marched to their assistance, they could not get down timely to save them - Col [Samuel] Forman and myself immediately set off in the night and after giving all the necessary orders came down to Toms River and there immediately set off in the assembled militia to reinforce the guard stationed for the protection of [Thomas] Savadge's and other works… They [the raiders] will in all probability return as soon as the militia are discharged.

Forman noted that he had left some men under Captain Thomas Marsh Forman at Toms River with the militia to protect the large but non-productive Pennsylvania Salt Works. Shreve then wrote George Washington, exaggerating the size of the raiding party and requesting reinforcements:

This moment I received Intelligence that the Enemy has Landed at Squan between 600 & 1000 men, and Distroyed [sic] all the Salt works in that Neighborhood. If your Excy should think proper to send more troops to this Quarter, with Artillery, I Beg for the Jersey Compy of Artillery, at present commanded by Capt: Lt Seth Bowen.

Washington did not send Bowen’s company, but forwarded Shreve’s note to the Continental Congress with a cover note of his own: "The enclosure, NJ 2, is the copy of a letter from Colonel Shreve of the Second Jersey Battalion, containing an account of the destruction of the salt and salt-works at Squan." That same day, Washington directed that the men from Forman’s regiment who had just arrived at his camp at Valley Forge to return to New Jersey (under Shreve) where they could be temporarily used to protect the shore. Concurrently, the New Jersey Legislature authorized raising two companies of State Troops (militia paid by the state to serve continuously) to protect the shore.

This would be Potterfield’s only foray into Monmouth County, but Henry Collins would lead an even larger raid (against Egg Harbor at the southern tip of present-day Ocean County) six months later. The salt works on Falkinburg Island in Little Egg Harbor were one of his targets. On learning of Collins’s attack, John Cooper, owner of the salt works, wrote his manager:

I have just learned that there is an expedition going in towards Egg Harbor and I understand you have a quantity of salt there. I hope you will think as I do and remove it as soon as possible for, depend on it, the works will be destroyed and there should be no time lost.

Collins’s Loyalist guide, Lt. Thomas Okerson, would participate in additional raids, including one a year later that razed his home village of Tinton Falls.

Related Historic Site: Valley Forge National Historical Park

Sources: William Livingston to New Jersey Assembly, in Carl Prince, Papers of William Livingston (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1987) vol. 1, p 173, 182-4; George Washington to David Forman, Neilson Family Papers, box 1, folder: Rutgersania, Rutgers University Special Collections; Anonymous Loyalist, quoted in Arthur Pierce, Smugglers' Woods, (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1960) p 228-9; The Library Company, Pennsylvania Ledger, vol. 2, Oct. 1777-May 1778; William MacMahon, South Jersey Towns (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1973) p 304; The Revolutionary Salt Works of the New Jersey Coast (Trenton Past Times Press); The Revolutionary Salt Works of the New Jersey Coast (Trenton: Past Times Press, 1923) pp. 41-42. John Barber, Henry Howe, Historical Collections of New Jersey (New Haven, Connecticut: n.p., 1868) p351; Edwin Salter, History of Monmouth and Ocean Counties (Bayonne, NJ: E. Gardner and Sons, 1890) p 422-3; Harry B. and Grace M. Weiss, The Revolutionary Salt Works of the New Jersey Coast (Trenton: Past Times Press, 1933) pp. 41-42; The Library Company, Pennsylvania Ledger, vol. 2, Oct. 1777-May 1778; Online Institute for Loyalist Studies, www.royalprovincial.com: University of Michigan, Clements Library, Henry Clinton Papers, vol. 33, item 15; Monmouth, Page in History (Freehold: Monmouth County Bicentenial Commission, 1976) p 33; Archives of the State of New Jersey, Extracts from American Newspapers Relating to New Jersey (Paterson, NJ: Call Printing, 1903) vol. 2, p 160; William Smith, Historical Memoirs of William Smith: From 26 August 1778 to 12 November 1783 (New York: Arno, 1971) p 371; Israel Shreve to George Washington, The Papers of George Washington, Revolutionary War Series, vol. 14, 1 March 1778 – 30 April 1778, ed. David R. Hoth. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2004, pp. 420–421; David Forman to Israel Shreve, April 7, 1778, University of Houston, Israel Shreve Papers; George Washington to Congress, George Washington, Official Letters to the Honorable American Congress Written During the War between the United Colonies and Great Britain (Boston: Manning & Loring, 1796) v 2, p245; National Archives, Revolutionary War veterans Pension Applications, New Jersey - Noah Clayton.