♪♪ ♪♪ From NJ PBS Studios, this is NJ Spotlight News with Briana Vannozzi.

Hello and welcome to a special edition of NJ Spotlight News.

I'm Briana Vannozzi.

As America celebrates its 250th anniversary, we're looking back at the Revolutionary War history that unfolded right here in New Jersey, and the stories still coming to light.

Tonight, we'll hear about the women whose courage and sacrifice fueled the fight for independence, and meet the students helping call attention to Black soldiers whose service has too often been left out of the larger story.

Plus, we'll visit Trenton, where one tour guide is bringing to life the battle that changed the course of the war.

And stop at Princeton Battlefield, where archaeologists are still finding history right beneath their feet.

That's next.

Major funding for NJ Spotlight News is provided in part by NJM Insurance Group, serving the insurance needs of residents and businesses for more than 100 years.

Here's a piece of New Jersey history that's largely been left out of the textbooks.

As the state and country celebrate America's 250th anniversary of the revolution, the Princeton Battlefield Society partnered with a group of students in Trenton to research Black soldiers who fought in the critical battle there and the outsized role those soldiers played in helping the U.S.

gain its independence.

Raven Santana has that story.

- It was here on this battlefield that the fate of the revolution was decided.

And we're hoping that today, you get a chance to relive some of that.

- It was here nearly 250 years ago, the Continental Army under the command of George Washington secured a pivotal victory over British forces at Princeton, marking their third triumph in just 10 days.

During my visit, Ben Strong, president of the Princeton Battlefield Society and trustee Mark Herr gave me a tour of the historic site.

They showed me the grounds where reenactments of the battle took place and the rural farmhouse known as the Clark House, which stood at the heart of the fighting and was later used as a hospital for wounded soldiers during the battle.

- Here at the Princeton Battlefield Society, we have begun our 250th anniversary efforts and part of that effort is to pay attention to the common soldiers, or as we like to refer to them, the men without shoes.

The generals get all the attention.

They had the boots, they had the horses, they had the cloaks.

The grunts, the GI Joes, the men who are marching in the ranks were frequently underfed, underclothed, and didn't have shoes.

- Among the soldiers who fought at Princeton on January 3rd were at least 14 Black men from various states.

The little is known about their individual stories or experiences.

- Their lives, their service, their courage, their sacrifice and what they did here, the details of their service.

We want to bring that to life.

We want to make that part of the fabric of American history because America's history belongs to all Americans.

And in order to tell a full picture of the Battle of Princeton and by extension the American Revolution, you need to tell everyone's story and you need to tell it in a detailed fashion.

And that's what we're doing here.

- In an effort to identify these Black soldiers and highlight the vital role they played in Washington's Army, the Princeton Battlefield Society is partnering with Foundation Academy Charter School in Trenton, a free public charter school serving more than 1,100 students in grades K through 12, to launch the Man Without Shoes research project.

One of the projects that we are embarking on for the next two years is to find them.

Depending on which historian you want to cite, as many as 5 to 25 percent of the American Army were Black soldiers.

Some of them were free Blacks, some of them were slaves who fought in their master's places.

But here at Princeton, we know that at least 14 men who fought were Black soldiers and one Black Marine.

The work is always difficult when you're trying to make somebody alive who ultimately in history is dead.

- Casey Scott, a student success team social worker at Foundation Academies, acknowledges that researching these unidentified soldiers will be a challenging task.

However, she notes that the students are eager, engaged, and ready to take it on.

My students are always connected because it's Black history, point blank period.

You're looking at about 50 plus students, all different ages, so you're looking at easy from 7th grade to 12th grade, just really different perspectives, different unique talents coming to the table and breaking up the project in ways where each student or each group of students will get an individual so that they will learn and embody that individual.

They will be the expert of one of the 14.

- Scott is leading the project alongside high school teacher Isiah Jones.

Jones believes that the newly uncovered research about Black soldiers' presence during the pivotal battle will help Black students see themselves reflected in American history and recognize their place in its narrative.

I stand that as teaching the students about how to research, how to access databases and trying to connect this to like resources like Trenton Free Public Library that has tons of resources and also making sure things are kept in the historical perspective.

And I think, you know, learning the contributions of their ancestors will help them, you know, have more pride in American history as well as their own history.

July 4th is one of the most important dates in our nation's history, but Christmas night also holds a special significance.

It's the night that General George Washington turned the tide of the Revolutionary War and set the stage for his eventual victory over the Hessians, the Germans fighting for the British.

And it all happened in our state's capital.

Ted Goldberg took a tour in Trenton, where a key piece of the history comes to life.

- Look at this guy's got a hot dog.

- Ralph Siegel is great at pointing out interesting stuff on the streets of Trenton.

- They don't realize the battlefield is still here.

The streets are still here exactly as they were.

Well, not this one in particular, but the other ones were.

- Siegel's tour of Trenton is part of Patriot Week, an effort to help teach New Jerseyans not just where to find statues of hot dog vendors, but more about the important role their state played in the Revolutionary War.

- Washington's goal is to be in Morristown.

The red boxes represent two brigades.

He's gotta get these pieces off the board, and that's the Battle of Trenton.

- Siegel starts his tour by setting up his characters, including George Washington.

44 years old, superb horseman, the height of his powers.

And what happened after the famous crossing of the Delaware, when Washington's ragtag army scored a shocking win over German troops?

- The tactics in the Battle of Trenton is to deprive the enemy of a fair field of battle.

So these Germans come marching out into the street, artillery fire, they march back, and here comes the barbarian horde charging at them.

(yells) And they're like, they don't even know who these guys are.

- Washington's approach shattered the German defense and led to a huge momentum shift in the war.

- Artillery fire coming down the street and he pulls back and he sees instantly what Washington's doing.

Deprive the enemy of a fair field of battle.

That cannonball comes out of a six pounder, fully loaded and fired at about 700 miles an hour.

It's about the speed of sound.

And it's skipping down the street to pry the enemy of a fair field of battle.

By spring, the British would have come in and cleaned up, and we would not be standing here talking about the United States of America.

- Patrick Murray is one of the state's esteemed political pollsters and a board member of Crossroads of the American Revolution, a group working with New Jersey Historical Commission to improve the state's historical sites ahead of 2026.

New Jersey's planning on a series of celebrations honoring the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

- It's going to take some money to invest in some of the museums that we have in the area, kind of bringing them together in a cohesive kind of brand so everybody understands how important these all were and how they all work together.

- When they did the Declaration of Independence, a writer comes to the courthouse steps and reads the Declaration of Independence out loud.

- Siegel also does tours of Gettysburg, and he enjoys teaching people about American history.

- I'm glad people come to it, and I'm happy to be able to kick it off.

- And bringing light to battles that don't get the lion's share of attention.

- Very much overshadowed.

They pay all attention to Jockey Hollow in Morristown.

National Park Service, Miss Trenton went up there and established the first historic park in the United States in Morristown.

They should have done it here.

New Jersey's revolutionary history isn't just about battlefields and generals.

Women helped carry the fight for independence, serving, sacrificing, and enduring the trauma of war in ways that are still too often overlooked.

Treasures of New Jersey revisits their stories in "Grit and Grace, Revolutionary Heroines."

Take a look.

- Just about any war, most certainly the Revolutionary War, isn't successful without the help of women.

- You needed them to do your laundry.

You needed them to cook for you.

You needed them to nurse you, to maintain your health and well-being.

- Women were actually participating and actively doing things to move the war effort along.

- In the war, it wasn't just soldiers.

It was these vast mobile communities that comprised of women and children and families, of soldiers and officers alike.

I do think it's important to recognize these women as veterans, even though in this time period, they weren't considered part of the Army.

( singing ) - When history looks back at the women in the Revolutionary War, they are almost always referred to as Molly Pitcher, and never more famous than at the Battle of Monmouth.

- The levels of the story changed over time.

There were women with the American Army.

It goes back to it was a Paul Martin soldier at the battle who saw a woman at a cannon.

She would have been bringing water to the soldiers because in order to fire a cannon, you'd need to cool it down in between rounds.

If you don't cool it between rounds, it's gonna blow up in your face.

- Mary Hayes was coming in with water and she noticed that her husband had fallen and she decided to man that cannon and was even spoken about by Joseph Plumb Martin, who recalled seeing her have a cannonball shot through her legs and actually, like, took out a piece of her lower petticoat, but just acted like nothing happened and kept going.

- Molly's a nickname for Mary, and "pitcher" because she's bringing water in a household pitcher.

Now, that doesn't make any sense whatsoever.

She would have been using what's called a camp bucket.

So her names should not be Molly Pitcher.

It should be Mary Bucket.

It is loosely based off of two women, and that's Mary Hayes, who is from the Battle of Monmouth, and Margaret Corbin.

Margaret Corbin's husband fell at Fort Washington.

He was an artillery man, and she decided to man the cannon in his place.

The stories and the legends grew through word of mouth, and that's how Molly Pitcher came to be.

- In 1822, the government was giving out land grants and pensions to widows of soldiers, and there was a bill going through the Pennsylvania legislature that Mary Hayes McCauley would pick up a pension, and they changed it.

It says, Macaulay, Mary, Revolutionary, Heroine.

- There are only three women who were awarded pensions for their own services during the Revolutionary War-- Margaret Corbin, who fired a cannon at Fort Washington after her husband fell during the battle; Deborah Sampson, who disguised herself as a male soldier and joined the 4th Massachusetts Regiment.

- And Mary Hayes McCauley, what did she do that was heroic?

- I think that there's a lot of unsung women that often become silent sentinels that fight alongside of whether it's their husbands, their partners, their fathers, their brothers, that often don't get the credit that they deserve.

You have 74-year-old Elizabeth Kovenhoven who's refusing the British General Clinton quarter in her house to the point where she's hiding all of her personal possessions and sleeping in a milk room to make sure that he doesn't rob her of her cattle, her horses, her family's home.

In May of 1778, the British decided to move one of their encampments in Philadelphia and regroup them up in New York.

The fear was that when the British got onto the Burlington Path, right on through to the coast, that they were going to burn houses of those who were supporting independence.

- Leading up to the arrival of the British, Monmouth County was in complete panic, with the majority of residents fleeing to nearby swamps and woodlands for safety.

Elizabeth Kovenhoven decided to stay.

She knew that if she left, chances were pretty clear that her house would be destroyed.

- And if you focus on what is human, what happens with people, you're going to see the story, not just what's done to people.

- When the British arrived, Elizabeth was making plans.

They emptied the entire house.

Everything was put on wagons.

So when the British walked in, there wasn't anything to sit on.

And so General Clinton himself addresses this elderly little woman.

General Clinton assured Elizabeth Kouvenhoven that her house would remain safe as long as she told him where there was at least one wagon full of furnishings.

So she took the gamble, and she told Clinton and his men where at least one of the wagon loads of goods were, but she never saw anything off the wagon again.

- However, one morning, a guard posted in her home would not grant her access to her belongings.

And so she confronted soldiers and confronted General Clinton.

She was able to express her feelings, and they heard her.

And so he had an officer go with her, and the officer turned to her and said, "there, you old rebel with one foot in the grave, take it and be damned to you."

And the reason we sit in this house today is because she was brave enough to protect the house.

These women did miraculous things in spite of the trauma and the suffering.

Everybody has a historical hero or heroine, and Elizabeth Kovenhoven is one of mine.

She was a little old lady.

She was 73 years old.

She couldn't do anything against the British soldiers, but she was able to walk this tightrope and in a way confront General Clinton himself.

Women's history is not just about oppression, not just about abuse.

It's about what those people do with it.

One story was Hannah Dennis.

And if you know her story, you understand why Elizabeth's decision to stay in the house was all the braver.

Hannah Dennis lived in Toms River.

And her husband, I believe, was captain in the army.

So he was thought to have a lot of cash in the household.

And in May of 1778, less than a month before the Battle of Monmouth, two Hessian soldiers, sort of German mercenaries, showed up at her doorstep.

She saw them coming and told her two young children to run to the woods to hide.

And they watched as the two Hessian soldiers beat her so badly that they thought they had killed her.

And in September, pine robbers heard about the likelihood of cash within the Dennis household.

And the robbers broke in, and they attempted to hang her with a bedrobe.

Fortunately, they did such a bad job that she was able to get free.

But this was a woman who went through two exceptionally violent incidents.

There isn't a need to focus on the suffering.

We know it's there, and we talk about it because it is a true thing.

But it is not their story.

Their story is what we use as a vehicle to learn and move on.

We think of the Civil War as happening during Abraham Lincoln's presidency between the North and the South.

But America's first Civil War really was the American Revolution.

It was literally neighbor against neighbor.

So not only do you have the British marching through, but you also have fights between the Loyalists and the Patriots.

There were so many skirmishes and small battles.

And to try and keep a household going and raise children.

Women are sometimes caught in the middle.

But you can find women who are Quakers, who try to be neutral or try to take care of soldiers that are wounded, while their son is out fighting with the Patriots.

- If you look at how Native culture worked, the elders in the community are the ones with the most power.

The decision makers, the one with the most knowledge, the oral history keepers.

- Women that traveled with the army were expected to earn their keep in a legitimate job and getting involved in surgeries where they usually in a traditional hospital setting might not have been able to do.

In the aftermath of the Battle of Princeton, it was assumed that General Hugh Mercer died on the battlefield.

They realized that he was still alive and that he had been in the care of Sarah Clark, whose family owned a house nearby that had been turned into a field hospital.

Sarah and her enslaved woman, Susanna, helped with the surgeries that were happening in Sarah's house.

We also know at the battles of Saratoga in New York that the Baroness von Riedesel, who was a camp follower, she was traveling with her husband, who was a German officer.

She was helping to treat wounded, hiding in the basement with them, while cannons crashed through the house above them.

- The Baroness is with Burgoyne's forces as they march from Canada down through New York.

Their aim is to break the colonies apart.

- After years of attending to wounded soldiers, the Baroness and her family are eventually exchanged for American prisoners and migrate to Canada.

This was a very diverse place in terms of immigrants and people of different religions.

You have African-Americans who are both free and a lot of them who are slaves, but they were fighting on both sides.

- Ona Judge has a very different perspective of life with George Washington.

She was born at Mount Vernon and her mother was a seamstress, so it's generational enslavement.

They end up first in New York after the war.

Then they move to Philadelphia.

- It is here that Ona Judge first experiences living in a free Black city while being enslaved.

She soon finds out that she's bequeathed to Martha Washington's granddaughter, who will take her out of the free city of Philadelphia, where she will have no hope of freedom.

Using the connections around her in the free Black community, she runs away.

George Washington sends people after her.

But she has friends in high places who continue to warn her and block him from taking her back.

Ona Judge hides on various ships within the port of Philadelphia.

- There are lots of Black people who work on those ships, and they actually help her.

She hides on a ship and she sails away.

The pursuit of her starts immediately.

George Washington sends messengers, and one actually does come to the door to speak to her.

Because she has friends in high places who are watching George Washington pursue this enslaved woman, they can't just snatch her and go back.

This is how she's able to remain free.

These women did miraculous things in spite of the trauma and the suffering.

- Finally tonight, a mission to unearth centuries old artifacts.

Researchers have been combing Princeton Battlefield State Park looking for any bits of history that can tell the tale of the Battle of Princeton or what life was like during Revolutionary Times.

It's part of an effort called Washington's Legacy, which aimed to improve the state park and battlefield grounds leading into this 250th anniversary.

Ted Goldberg got an up close look at some of the unique treasures they uncovered.

- It's sort of a Jackson Pollock look of of flags.

- It's Flag Day at the Princeton Battlefield, where archaeologists are finding lots of American history.

- We're already beginning to pick up artifacts in areas that nobody had really looked before, and we're identifying battle-related material in some of those places.

- The Battle of Princeton was a pivotal win for the Americans during the Revolutionary War, and archeologist Wade Catts says the last few weeks have unearthed some cool stuff from almost 250 years ago.

We are identifying lines of case shot or canister, iron balls about an ounce or so in size, that are being fired into Washington's infantry line.

The fact that we're picking them up here tells you that there are infantry formations standing in this field.

The American Battlefield Trust is looking to build a visitor center here.

So before that happens, people are using metal detectors to dig up anything interesting that would otherwise be covered.

They've found almost 500 artifacts over the last few weeks.

- So that is an impacted musket ball.

It hit a target.

You can see how deformed that is.

If you look at this other musket ball, it's very flattened.

So it impacted with greater force, possibly fired from a closer distance.

And then you'll find a broad range of smaller caliber weapons.

That's the American Army in 1776.

- Dana Linck is in charge of metal detecting here.

- People who get to know their machine and have a quality machine can greatly increase the success of the search.

- So you know your machine?

I am getting to know it.

It's smarter than I am.

- And he's found all sorts of unique artifacts from the Revolutionary War period and after, like a bicycle bell, part of a Boy Scout uniform, and some cookware.

- This would be a kettle leg or frying pan leg from a cast iron vessel that may be from the Revolutionary War period.

By the character of the oxide and the thickness and so forth, that it is, it's been here a long time.

- Some of these objects were found nearly a foot underneath the ground, and each of them is a miniature history lesson.

- I'm fascinated with what is the unexpected.

I'm fascinated with adding to or contradicting sometimes what has been produced historically about the location of historic events and people and the like.

- This work is being funded by a $1.3 million grant from Trenton.

Senator Andrew Zwicker says studies like this are crucial for the upcoming influx of history buffs likely to come by for the nation's semi-quincentennial, or 250th birthday.

- If Washington and his troops don't win the battle of Princeton, then perhaps we don't win the war at all.

We want to ensure that places like Princeton, but all of our revolutionary sites, have the resources they need to be ready for the 250th.

- To have those funds available gives you the ability to really investigate a site like this.

- And learn more about 200-plus years of New Jersey history right underneath our feet.

In Princeton, I'm Ted Goldberg, NJ Spotlight News.

That's going to do it for us tonight.

I'm Briana Vannozzi.

For all of us here at NJ Spotlight News, thanks for taking a special look at America's 250th with us.

We'll see you next time.

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