Present at the Revolution
And Deeply Involved
By Margery Boyden, Scudder Family Historian
Perhaps few families contributed more to the fight for independence from Britain than the Trenton area Scudders.
John Hart, husband of Deborah Scudder, was a signer of the Declaration of Independence and he and his kinsman Nathanial Scudder were part of an intricate network of early New Jerseyans who were on the forefront of the struggle for independence even before 1776.
Both served in the New Jersey Provincial Assembly and in the Continental Congress, often trading places or assisting each other such as in working together to get the Articles of Confederation signed. Sadly, Nathaniel was the only member of the Continental Congress to die in battle during the American Revolutionary War.
Nathaniel Scudder’s brothers, William and Lemuel, fought in the Battle of Princeton and Nathaniel participated in the Battle of Monmouth.
Deborah (Scudder) Hart’s first cousins, Amos and Jedediah Scudder, were two of the local guides who were on the New Jersey side of the Delaware River to meet General George Washington and his army after their crossing of the Delaware from Pennsylvania. They then helped lead his troops through the night to the First Battle of Trenton with a victory over the Hessian mercenaries at the Old Barracks.
John and Deborah (Scudder) Hart’s son-in-law, Maj. John Polhemus, also served in the Battle of Trenton and the battles of Princeton and Monmouth and spent the winter of 1777–1778 encamped with Washington at Valley Forge with his mother-in-law’s cousin, Amos Scudder.
Before the Battle of Trenton when Washington’s army was ill-funded to pay the men’s wages and outfit them properly, Polhemus mortgaged his farm to pay back wages to the soldiers under his charge so they would remain in Washington’s army prior to the Battle of Trenton.
One of the many Scudders who made New Jersey American Revolutionary War history, General William Scudder Stryker, wrote about it. Gen. Stryker was twice a Scudder, a great-grandson of Amos Scudder, Washington’s guide, and a great grandnephew of Nathaniel Scudder.
Stryker says, “In my youth I spent many pleasant hours listening to the residents of Trenton as they related the brave deeds of their fathers in the old war and told the story of the trials and sufferings of the heroic men and women of the Revolutionary period, things they had heard directly from the lips of those who had taken part in the struggle for independence. From early manhood, I began to take notes from the conversations of my mother and her aged friends.”
Stryker spent the remainder of his life researching and writing his The Battles of Trenton and Princeton, published two years before his death, and many other works.
We invite you to read the full story of these remarkable people in our recently published articles in the Summer 2024 issue of the Scudder Family Historical & Biographical Journal at https://scudder.org/scudder-family-historical-biographical-journal-volume-6-no-2/.
