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Massacre at Hancock's Bridge Picture
This is the
235 anniversary of a bloody massacre that took place at Hancock's Bridge in New Jersey on March 21, 1778. R.G. Johnson first published an account of the siege in his book An Historical Account of the First Settlement of Salem in West Jersey in 1839. In Johnson's book he wrote:

MASSACRE AT HANCOCK'S BRIDGE.- That night the murdering party being selected, went, as they were directed, in boats down Salem creek to the river - thence to Allaway's creek - thence up the same to a suitable distance from Hancock's bridge, where they were to land, and being favored by the darkness of the night, were to attack the picket in the house in which they were stationed as their headquarters, and put every man to death they found there. In that house, the property of Judge Hancock, were he, Charles Fogg, a very aged man, Joseph Thompson and - Bacon, all Quakers; a few others besides the guard, composed of a full company of men, were those persons in that house on that ill-fated night, all wrapt in sleep, worn down the watching, nature exhausted, and many of them doomed to sleep the long sleep of death. The hellish mandate was issued at head-quarters - "Go - spare no one - put all to death - give no quarters." These refugees, only to be associated with their brethren, the imps of the infernal regions, did their best, and glutted their worse than savage passions in the innocent blood of their unoffending neighbors. They killed and desperately mangled, with fiendish ferocity, such whom they saw writhing under the severity of their wounds, and thus destroyed more than two thirds of all who were within the house.

The actual number of victims who died in the massacre is not known. As late as 2007, research was still being done to determine who was either wounded, escaped, or murdered.

In remembrance of the massacre, Colonial Sense wants to bring you two stories written by Mary Sherrerd Clark in 1905 which gives account on the battle preceding the massacre which lead to the Hancock's Bridge Massacre.

Source: Overview by Bryan Wright

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