Burial Pits & Bayonets: The Story of Baylor's Massacre and its Rediscovery in Suburban New Jersey
Around one in the morning on September 28, 1778 just a few miles across the border from New York in northern New Jersey six companies of British infantry stand in silence with bayonets fixed and at the ready. The redcoats wait in the pitch darkness without a sound. A number of local Tory guides have led them to this spot on the side of a road in Bergen County. The redcoats are under the command of Major Turner Staubenzie. The Major has gained a reputation for brutality and he has ordered that his troops give no quarter and make no sound. Over the past three years no place in the whole of America has been more ravaged by the War for Independence than New Jersey. British and American, patriot and loyalist alike, have fought a ceaseless struggle for supremacy and forage all across the Garden State from New York City to Philadelphia. Both armies have laid waste to the land and occupied and vacated the same to...