The Special Relationship

At Sandy Hook, New Jersey is  the Halyburton Memorial:

Sandy Hook is a finger-like peninsula extending north towards New York City, separating Raritan Bay from the Atlantic Ocean.  Location of a lighthouse and several actions during the Revolutionary War, it was also the embarkation point for British General Henry Clinton in the withdrawal across New Jersey following the Battle of Monmouth.

As the British were evacuating American nation following the peace treaty, on December 31, 1783, Lieutenant Hamilton Douglas-Halyburton and twelve or thirteen British crewmen (sources vary) went in search of a group of deserters.  Reports indicate a blizzard enveloped them, and they all died.  They were buried in a mass grave on Sandy Hook, where Halyburton's mother caused a monument to be erected.  Their graves were vandalized; discovered years later, their bones were relocated to Brooklyn and in 1937 the present memorial was erected by the Civilian Conservation Corps.

Like the grave of Cornet Geary in Flemington, or the grave of  Lt. Col. Henry Monckton, killed at Monmouth, the American landscape remains the final resting place for these tree British officers.  Each gravesite is marked and respected, despite the fact that the war was so bitter and desperate.

Those who doubt, or fail to understand, the deep links between the United Kingdom and the United States would do well to visit these places.

The Haunted Revolution

Perth Amboy, New Jersey, is an underappreciated place.  It has the Proprietary House, reportedly the only colonial governor's mansion still "intact." William Franklin, the illegitimate son of Ben Franklin, was the last British colonial governor for New Jersey, and lived here.  Its city hall is also reported to be the oldest in continuous use in the United States, its current version dating to 1767 in essential form.  There are those who contend that Franklin continues to "live" there. 

Nearby is St. Peter's Church, which graveyard was damaged in June 1776 by British cannon fire from its ships in Raritan Bay.

A municipal worker, helping ready the city hall for the holiday season, told me this is where the nation was born.  The city was the capital of the province of East Jersey, and in the city hall, New Jersey became the first state to ratify the Bill of Rights.  Across from the city hall is Market Square, a park that features an arch in honor of the Bill of Rights.  It was refreshing to find a spontaneous expression of pride from a local, and an appreciation of the this place's significance in the national story.  In a way, the ghosts of the past continue to live in such concourse.