Elizabethtown, New Jersey
Elizabethtown, New Jersey
ELIZABETHTOWN, NEW JERSEY. On 6 January 1777, at the end of the New Jersey campaign, General Sir William Howe ordered the British garrison of the outpost at what is now Elizabethtown, New Jersey, to fall back to Amboy. American combat patrols pressured the retreat and had an engagement with a detachment of the Waldeck Regiment (a unit serving the British). Due to its strategic location, the town was the site of a number of other skirmishes during the war, especially in early 1777, in what came to be known as the "Forage War," during which American forces harassed British and Hessian troops as they scoured the countryside for crops and other supplies.
SEE ALSO New Jersey Campaign.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Fischer, David Hackett. Washington's Crossing. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Lobdell, Jared C. "Six Generals Gather Forage: The Engagement at Quibbletown, 1777." New Jersey History 102 (Fall/Winter 1984): 35-49.
revised by Robert K. Wright Jr.