Role: Patriot minister who used his pulpit to rally the Dutch Reformed community toward independence

# Bergen County Divided: Loyalties Split In the years leading up to the American Revolution, the colonies were not unified in their desire for independence. Nowhere was this more painfully evident than in Bergen County, New Jersey, where the fabric of community life began to tear along lines that few had anticipated. By 1773, as colonial grievances against British taxation and governance intensified in the wake of the Stamp Act, the Townshend Acts, and the mounting crisis over Parliamentary authority, the residents of Hackensack and its surrounding towns found themselves caught in an agonizing struggle — not only against distant British power but against one another. What made Bergen County's division so wrenching was that it did not pit strangers against strangers. It set neighbor against neighbor, congregant against congregant, and in some cases, family member against family member. The roots of the divide ran deep into the county's religious, ethnic, and economic soil. Bergen County had long been home to a substantial Dutch Reformed population, descendants of the original Dutch settlers who had shaped the region's culture for over a century. This community, centered around the Reformed churches of Hackensack and its environs, increasingly gravitated toward the patriot cause. One of the most influential voices urging them in that direction was Reverend Dirck Romeyn, a Dutch Reformed minister who used his pulpit not merely for spiritual guidance but as a platform for political conviction. Romeyn framed the struggle against British overreach in moral and providential terms, arguing that resistance to tyranny was consistent with the community's faith and values. His sermons galvanized many Dutch Reformed families, giving the patriot movement in Bergen County a spiritual backbone that lent it both emotional power and communal cohesion. On the other side stood many Anglican families, whose religious ties to the Church of England often reinforced their political loyalty to the Crown. These families frequently maintained commercial relationships with New York City, just across the Hudson River, where British authority remained strong and where trade networks depended on imperial stability. For these residents, loyalty to Britain was not merely sentimental — it was practical, woven into the livelihoods and social connections that sustained their families. The proximity of New York City made Bergen County a uniquely contested space, a borderland where British influence could be felt daily and where Loyalist sympathies had powerful material reinforcement. As the crisis deepened, patriot leaders moved to organize resistance and assert local governance. Judge John Fell, a respected Bergen County jurist, took a leading role in this effort, helping to establish and guide the Bergen County Committee of Safety. This body was tasked with coordinating patriot activity, enforcing boycotts of British goods, and monitoring Loyalist sympathies within the population. But the Committee's authority was far from universally accepted. A substantial portion of the county's residents viewed it as an illegitimate body that overstepped its bounds, and town meetings that had once been routine exercises in local governance became heated confrontations where the very definition of loyalty and liberty was contested. The division was further complicated by the experiences of those who had no voice in the political debate yet whose lives were profoundly shaped by it. Enslaved individuals like Sam of Hackensack inhabited this fractured landscape with their own set of fears and calculations. For enslaved people, the rhetoric of liberty that echoed through patriot speeches carried a bitter irony, and the upheaval of war created both dangers and desperate possibilities. Their presence in the historical record, though often reduced to fragments, reminds us that the Revolution's meaning was never singular — it was experienced differently depending on where one stood in the social order. Bergen County's fracture mattered far beyond its own borders. It illustrated a reality that the broader narrative of the Revolution sometimes obscures: that independence was not a foregone conclusion embraced by a united populace but a contested, painful process that divided communities from within. The split in Bergen County foreshadowed the brutal guerrilla warfare that would consume the region throughout the war, as Loyalist and patriot militias raided each other's farms, seized property, and turned the county into one of the most bitterly contested landscapes of the entire conflict. Understanding what happened in Hackensack helps us see the Revolution not as a simple story of colonial unity against British oppression but as a civil war within communities, where the costs of choosing a side — or trying not to — were deeply and personally felt.

Role: Served as chaplain to militia companies mustering on the Green

**Militia Musters on the Green** In the spring of 1775, as news of armed conflict at Lexington and Concord rippled through the American colonies, the residents of Hackensack, New Jersey, found themselves at the center of an increasingly volatile political crisis. Bergen County was no hotbed of unified patriot sentiment. Its population was deeply divided between those who supported the revolutionary cause and those who remained loyal to the British Crown, a fracture that ran through families, churches, and neighborhoods. It was in this charged atmosphere that the village Green at the heart of Hackensack became far more than a simple gathering place. It became a stage on which the drama of revolution and resistance would play out for the duration of the war. Throughout the Revolutionary War, the Green served as the primary mustering ground for Bergen County's militia companies. Local men — farmers, tradesmen, laborers — assembled on the open ground to drill, receive their orders, and prepare to march in defense of the county against British and Loyalist raids. These musters were organized and led by officers such as Major John Mauritius Goetschius, a militia leader who took on the demanding task of transforming ordinary civilians into a functioning military force. Goetschius was responsible not only for drilling the men in the basics of military discipline and tactics but also for maintaining morale in a community where allegiances were uncertain and danger was constant. His presence on the Green lent the musters a sense of order and authority, signaling to patriots and loyalists alike that the revolutionary government intended to defend its claim to power. Spiritual sustenance accompanied the military preparations. Reverend Dirck Romeyn, a local clergyman, served as chaplain to the militia companies mustering on the Green. Romeyn's role went beyond offering prayers before marches. In a community fractured by political loyalty, a minister's public endorsement of the patriot cause carried significant weight. His willingness to stand alongside armed militiamen was itself a political act, reinforcing the moral legitimacy of the revolution in the eyes of those who gathered and those who watched from the margins. Yet the story of the Green cannot be told solely through the actions of its most prominent figures. The musters took place within a society built on slavery, and enslaved individuals like Sam of Hackensack inhabited this same landscape. While the historical record offers limited detail about Sam's specific experiences during the musters, his presence in Hackensack during this period is a reminder that the revolutionary ideals of liberty and self-governance existed in painful tension with the reality of human bondage. Enslaved people witnessed the musters, heard the rhetoric of freedom, and navigated the upheaval of war with their own interests and aspirations, even as the revolution largely failed to extend its promises to them. As the war progressed and the civil conflict within Bergen County intensified, the militia musters on the Green became increasingly fraught. Hackensack's proximity to British-held New York meant that the county was subject to frequent raids, and the men who assembled on the Green knew the risks they faced. They also knew that loyalist neighbors were watching — observing the size and readiness of militia forces and passing intelligence to British commanders across the Hudson. Every muster was therefore both a military exercise and a calculated display of defiance, a public demonstration that the revolutionary government could still command the loyalty of armed men even in contested territory. The significance of these musters extends beyond the local history of Hackensack. They illustrate a broader truth about the American Revolution: that the war was not won solely on famous battlefields but also sustained in countless small acts of organization, resistance, and civic courage carried out in towns and villages across the colonies. The Green at Hackensack was one of many such places where ordinary people chose sides, shouldered arms, and confronted the uncertainties of revolution. In doing so, they helped determine not only the fate of Bergen County but also the outcome of the broader struggle for American independence.

Role: Witnessed the retreat from Hackensack before fleeing British occupation

# Washington's Retreat Through Hackensack By late November 1776, the American Revolution appeared to be collapsing. What had begun with soaring declarations of independence and bold defiance of the British Crown just months earlier now looked like a doomed experiment in self-governance. The Continental Army, battered by a string of devastating losses in New York, was in full retreat across New Jersey, and on November 21, 1776, the ragged remnants of that army passed through the small town of Hackensack in one of the war's most demoralizing episodes. The crisis had been building for months. After the British victory at the Battle of Long Island in August, General George Washington had been forced to evacuate his troops from Brooklyn, then from Manhattan, and then from a series of increasingly untenable positions in the northern reaches of New York. Fort Washington, on the eastern bank of the Hudson River, fell to the British on November 16, resulting in the capture of nearly three thousand Continental soldiers — a catastrophic loss of manpower and morale. Just days later, on November 20, British forces under Lord Cornwallis crossed the Hudson and advanced on Fort Lee, the American post perched on the Palisades of New Jersey. Washington, recognizing that Fort Lee could not be held, ordered an emergency evacuation. The garrison abandoned the fort so hastily that tents, cannons, entrenching tools, and hundreds of barrels of provisions were left behind for the British to seize. From Fort Lee, Washington led his dwindling army southward. The troops crossed the Hackensack River at New Bridge Landing, a strategically important crossing point, and marched into the town of Hackensack itself. What the residents of that community witnessed was not an army in any inspiring sense of the word. The soldiers were exhausted, hungry, and poorly clothed. Many lacked shoes. Equipment was scarce, discipline was fraying, and the entire force moved with the unmistakable urgency of men being chased. Thomas Paine, the political pamphleteer whose earlier work "Common Sense" had helped ignite revolutionary fervor across the colonies, was present among the retreating soldiers. The despair and suffering he observed during this march through New Jersey would later inspire him to write "The American Crisis," the famous essay that opened with the immortal words: "These are the times that try men's souls." For the people of Hackensack, the retreat was a deeply unsettling spectacle. Among those who watched was Reverend Dirck Romeyn, a local minister and patriot sympathizer who witnessed the disintegrating army pass through town before he himself was forced to flee ahead of the approaching British occupation. Romeyn's flight was emblematic of the impossible choices facing patriot-leaning civilians: stay and face retribution from the British, or abandon home and livelihood for an uncertain future. The retreat also touched the lives of those who had no choice in the matter at all. Enslaved people like Sam of Hackensack experienced the upheaval of war within the already brutal confines of bondage, their fates tied to the decisions of enslavers and the chaos of armies moving through their community. The Revolution's promises of liberty remained bitterly abstract for people like Sam, even as the language of freedom echoed through patriot rhetoric. The sight of Washington's broken army streaming through Hackensack's streets shattered whatever confidence remained in the patriot cause for many Bergen County residents. Desertions spiked dramatically, and local militia members — the citizen-soldiers who were supposed to form the backbone of resistance — simply went home. Some residents began hedging their bets, preparing to make peace with British authority. The armed force that had given tangible substance to the Continental Congress's claims of sovereignty was visibly disintegrating, and pragmatic civilians could see no reason to stake their futures on a losing cause. And yet, the story did not end in Hackensack. Washington continued his retreat south through New Jersey, crossing the Delaware River into Pennsylvania in early December. There, in one of the most remarkable reversals in military history, he recrossed the Delaware on the night of December 25, 1776, and struck the Hessian garrison at Trenton, winning a surprise victory that revived the patriot cause from what had seemed like certain death. The despair of the retreat through Hackensack made the triumph at Trenton all the more extraordinary. The darkest moment of the Revolution had passed directly through this small New Jersey town, and understanding that darkness is essential to appreciating how improbable American independence truly was.

Role: Forced to flee Hackensack when British forces occupied the town

# British Occupation of Bergen County In the closing months of 1776, the American Revolution reached a desperate low point. General George Washington's Continental Army, battered after a series of defeats in New York, retreated westward across New Jersey in a grueling withdrawal that left entire communities exposed to the advancing British military. Among the places most immediately affected was Bergen County, and its county seat of Hackensack, which found itself directly in the path of the British advance. What followed was not a brief episode of wartime disruption but the beginning of years of occupation, violence, and profound social fracture that would reshape the community long after the last soldiers departed. When British and Hessian forces swept into Hackensack, the occupation announced itself in the most personal of ways. Soldiers quartered themselves in private homes, commandeering food, firewood, and shelter from residents who had little power to refuse. Churches, institutions that had long served as the spiritual and social anchors of the predominantly Dutch Reformed community, were seized for military purposes. The First Dutch Reformed Church, one of the most prominent buildings in Hackensack, was converted into a prison and hospital, its sacred space repurposed to hold captured patriots and tend to wounded soldiers. The transformation of the church into an instrument of military control was both a practical decision and a symbolic one, signaling to the community that no part of civilian life would remain untouched. For patriot leaders and sympathizers, the occupation posed an immediate and existential threat. Those who could not flee were arrested, and their property was confiscated. Among those forced to abandon Hackensack was Reverend Dirck Romeyn, the minister of the Dutch Reformed Church and a vocal supporter of the patriot cause. Romeyn's flight reflected a broader pattern in which community leaders who had spoken out against British authority now found themselves targeted for retribution. His departure left a visible void in the community, depriving patriots of a rallying figure and underscoring the personal costs that political allegiance could exact during wartime. The occupation also emboldened Loyalist partisans, residents who had remained sympathetic to the British Crown and who now saw an opportunity to settle old scores with their patriot neighbors. The result was a bitter internecine conflict that cut through families, congregations, and longstanding social bonds. Bergen County became what contemporaries described as "neutral ground," a contested zone where neither the British nor the Americans held unchallenged authority. In practice, this meant that the region endured not the orderly administration of a single occupying power but rather a chaotic and often violent struggle between competing factions, punctuated by raids, reprisals, and the constant threat of betrayal. The human toll of this upheaval extended beyond the white patriot elite. Enslaved people in Bergen County, including individuals like Sam of Hackensack, navigated the chaos of occupation within the constraints of bondage. The war created both danger and, in some cases, fleeting possibilities for enslaved people, as the disruption of normal social order occasionally opened paths toward freedom or forced new and harrowing dislocations. Their experiences remind us that the Revolution's impact was felt across every layer of colonial society, often in ways that the grand political narratives of the era fail to capture. The British occupation of Bergen County matters in the broader story of the American Revolution because it illustrates the war's character as a civil conflict as much as a military one. While famous battles and strategic maneuvers have long dominated popular understanding of the Revolution, the prolonged suffering of communities like Hackensack reveals the war's deeper texture. Economic disruption, social disintegration, and sustained violence defined daily life in Bergen County from late 1776 through the war's end. The neutral ground was not a place of safety but a place of perpetual uncertainty, where ordinary people were forced to make impossible choices about loyalty, survival, and the future of their community. Understanding what happened in Hackensack helps us see the Revolution not only as a triumph of political ideals but also as a profoundly painful transformation that remade American society from the ground up.

Role: Minister whose church was seized and desecrated by British forces

# The Desecration of the First Dutch Reformed Church, Hackensack, 1776 In the autumn of 1776, the American cause in New Jersey stood on the edge of collapse. Following the British capture of Fort Lee in November, General Washington's battered Continental Army retreated westward across the state, leaving the communities of Bergen County exposed and undefended. British and Hessian forces swept into the region, and the town of Hackensack—a modest but politically significant settlement along the Hackensack River—fell under enemy occupation. What followed was not simply a military takeover but a deliberate campaign to break the spirit of a community that had become one of the most vocal centers of patriot resistance in northeastern New Jersey. At the heart of that campaign was the seizure and desecration of the First Dutch Reformed Church, an act that would scar the town's memory for generations. The First Dutch Reformed Church was far more than a house of worship. For the predominantly Dutch-descended population of Hackensack, the church served as the social, political, and spiritual center of daily life. Its minister, Reverend Dirck Romeyn, was a passionate supporter of the patriot cause who used his pulpit and his influence to rally his congregation against British authority. Romeyn had helped shape the political consciousness of his community, and the church itself had become a gathering place where revolutionary sentiment was openly expressed and organized. British commanders were well aware of this. When their forces entered Hackensack, they understood that targeting the church would deliver a blow not only to the town's morale but to the infrastructure of resistance itself. Upon seizing the building, British forces converted the church into a military facility, using it variously as a prison and a hospital for their troops. The interior was gutted to serve these purposes. Pews were ripped out, the sanctuary was stripped of its sacred character, and the church records—documents that represented the community's collective memory, including baptismal entries, marriage records, and membership rolls—were scattered and damaged. The building that had once echoed with psalms and sermons now held wounded soldiers and captive men. For the people of Hackensack, many of whom had worshipped within those walls their entire lives, the transformation was devastating. Reverend Romeyn, forced from his church, continued to minister to his congregation as best he could under the chaotic conditions of occupation, but the loss of the physical sanctuary was a wound that cut deep. The desecration also reflected and intensified the bitter divisions that already existed within the community. Hackensack and the surrounding region were not uniformly patriot in sympathy. Loyalist families lived alongside their rebel neighbors, and the occupation empowered those who had remained loyal to the Crown while punishing those who had not. The destruction of the church became a symbol of these fractures, a visible reminder that the war was not only a contest between armies but a civil conflict that tore apart towns, congregations, and even families. Among those caught in this turbulence were enslaved people like Sam of Hackensack, whose presence in the historical record reminds us that the war's disruptions touched every level of the community's social order, including those who had the least power to shape their own fate. In the broader story of the Revolutionary War, the desecration of the First Dutch Reformed Church illustrates how British forces sometimes pursued strategies that, while tactically rational, proved counterproductive in the long run. Rather than subduing the patriot population, the violation of their most sacred communal space deepened their resolve and their resentment. The event became a rallying point, a grievance that patriots cited as evidence of British cruelty and disregard for the liberties they claimed to protect. It reinforced the narrative that the struggle for independence was not merely a political dispute but a defense of community, faith, and identity against an occupying power willing to trample all three. The First Dutch Reformed Church would eventually be restored and reclaimed by its congregation, but the memory of its desecration endured as a powerful chapter in Hackensack's revolutionary history, a reminder that the fight for American independence was waged not only on battlefields but in the everyday spaces where ordinary people lived, worshipped, and defined who they were.

Role: Returned to Hackensack to rebuild the Dutch Reformed congregation and restore the church

**End of the War and Return of the Displaced — Hackensack, NJ, 1783** When the Treaty of Paris was formally signed in September 1783 and the last British troops evacuated New York City on November 25 of that year, the event known as Evacuation Day marked the official end of nearly eight years of warfare on American soil. For the residents of Hackensack and the surrounding communities of Bergen County, New Jersey, however, the conclusion of hostilities did not bring a simple or joyful return to normalcy. Instead, it ushered in a painful reckoning with the enormous human and physical toll that the Revolutionary War had inflicted on a region uniquely scarred by occupation, divided loyalties, and relentless guerrilla violence. Bergen County had occupied a particularly volatile position throughout the conflict. Situated just across the Hudson River from British-held New York City, the area served as a contested borderland where neither Patriot nor British forces maintained consistent control. The result was years of brutal civil war fought not between uniformed armies but between neighbors, families, and former friends. Loyalist and Patriot militias raided each other's farms, burned homes, seized livestock, and committed acts of retribution that left deep and lasting wounds. Many Patriot families had been forced to flee the region entirely during the British occupation, abandoning their properties to the mercy of Loyalist neighbors and occupying soldiers. Those who remained endured constant danger, deprivation, and the erosion of civic and religious institutions that had once anchored community life. When the displaced Patriots finally returned to Hackensack in 1783, the scene that greeted them was one of devastation. Homes had been damaged or destroyed, farmland lay neglected, and the physical infrastructure of the community was in ruins. Perhaps most symbolically painful was the condition of the First Dutch Reformed Church, which had served as the spiritual heart of Hackensack's predominantly Dutch community. During the occupation, the church had been desecrated and repurposed by occupying forces, stripped of its sacred function and reduced to a utilitarian structure. Its degradation stood as a visible emblem of everything the war had taken from the community. Among those who returned to lead the difficult work of reconstruction was Reverend Dirck Romeyn, a dedicated clergyman who took on the formidable task of rebuilding the Dutch Reformed congregation. Romeyn understood that restoring the church was about far more than repairing a building; it was about reconstituting the bonds of community, faith, and shared identity that the war had fractured. His efforts to restore the First Dutch Reformed Church as a functioning house of worship became a powerful symbol of resilience and renewal. Judge John Fell, a prominent Patriot who had served Bergen County with distinction throughout the war — including enduring capture and imprisonment by the British — also resumed civic life, lending his authority and experience to the slow process of reestablishing lawful governance and civil order in a county still seething with old resentments. Yet the return of peace brought no justice or liberation for everyone. Enslaved individuals like Sam of Hackensack remained in bondage, a stark reminder that the Revolution's promises of liberty and natural rights were not extended equally. While white Patriots celebrated their freedom from British tyranny, Black men and women continued to live under a system of chattel slavery that the new nation chose not to dismantle, exposing the profound contradictions at the heart of the American experiment. For Loyalist families, the end of the war brought consequences that were swift and severe. Many faced the confiscation of their property under state laws designed to punish those who had supported the Crown. Social ostracism compounded their material losses, and thousands of Loyalists from the region were driven into exile, resettling in Canada, England, or other corners of the British Empire. Their departure reshaped the demographic and social fabric of Bergen County in ways that would resonate for decades. The story of Hackensack in 1783 matters within the broader narrative of the American Revolution because it illuminates the war's aftermath in all its complexity. The Revolution was not concluded neatly on a battlefield; it ended in communities where the work of rebuilding trust, restoring institutions, and confronting injustice proved just as difficult as the fighting itself. Hackensack's experience reminds us that the cost of war is measured not only in battles lost and won but in the slow, painful labor of learning to live together again — and in the unfulfilled promises that would continue to haunt the new nation for generations to come.