The Jersey Continentals

The soldiers from New Jersey who served in the Continental Army under General George Washington fought in many of the major engagements in the Northern theater of the Revolutionary War, from the ill-fated invasion of Canada in 1775, through the siege of Yorktown in 1781, and returned home from Newburgh in 1783 with a discharge signed by General Washington himself.

Approximately 4,500 men enlisted in New Jersey’s Continental regiments over the course of the war. By 1818, 696 veterans of the Jersey line survived to file a claim to receive a pension for their Revolutionary service under the newly passed “Act to Provide for Certain Persons Engaged in the Land and Naval Service of the United States, in the Revolutionary War.” [add footnote] If their service was verified by the War Department, they would receive an annuity for the rest of their lives - $96 per year if they served as enlisted soldiers, and $240 if they were commissioned officers. It was a life changing sum of money for men who owned little to nothing and were living on the edge of solvency, or for some, deep in poverty.

By <link> using historical demographic data pulled from these revolutionary pension files </link>, learn the names of New Jersey’s Continental veterans and discover where they were living 35 years after their service ended and they returned to their homes, citizens of a newly won republic.