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Bound Brook Village
33) Van Horne House
34) Old Dutch Parsonage State Historic Site
35) Wallace House State Historic Site
36) Van Veghten House
Morristown
37) Morristown National
Historical Park
38) Long Pond Ironworks State Park
39) Dey Mansion
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Mountain Refuges
The Watchung Mountains, known to Washington as the Blue
Hills, were a natural barrier behind which the Continental
Army was safe from incursions by the British out of Manhattan and
at the same time a menace to British security. Washington with his
main army sought the shelter of these hills for three winter encampments,
two at Morristown and one at Middlebrook.
Bound Brook Village and the surrounding countryside
frequently were targets of British soldiers during their
encampment at New Brunswick in 1777. On April 13, 4,000
British and Hessian troops under General Charles Cornwallis
marched out from New Brunswick in four columns to surprise
the American garrisons guarding Raritan River crossings.
Completely overpowered, some fled, others were taken prisoner,
and the Battle of Bound Brook was over.
Washington camped along Middle Brook, between the
first and second range of the Watchung Mountains, in
June 1777. He returned in the winter of 1778-1779 with an army
of 10,000, equal to the population of Somerset County, to camp
near the village of Middlebrook. To minimize impact on residents,
brigades were assigned to locations several miles apart: Maryland
to the east of Middle Brook, Virginia on the west, Pennsylvania
across the Raritan, on the west side of the Millstone River, and
the artillery at Pluckemin. The six-month Second Middlebrook
encampment takes its name from Washington's "Middlebrook"
dating of his dispatches; that 18th century village no longer exists,
having become the western end of Bound Brook.
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