September 8, 1777 At 7 A.M., after "a remarkable borealis", British troops passed through Newark and Hockessin and points north. General Washington, meantime, held a council of war at Brandywine Springs to determine the Americans' next move.
William D. Lewis writes in Delaware Notes (1961) University of Delaware Ancestors, Friends and Neighbors:
"The year 1777 is for Newark an important one. In the late summer, Washington and Greene and Lafeyette were watching from Iron Hill the landing of the British and Hessian forces under General Howe on the Chesapeake side of the peninsula, and on September 3 there occurred the running skirmish northward from Aiken's Tavern at Glasgow and terminating at Cooch's Bridge. The American forces, which were unacquainted with the lay of the land, became bogged down in Purgatory Swamp. The British spent the next few days reconsolidating their forces on the shoulder of Iron Hill and the town still remembers vicariously the great campfires and the elongated shadows of the watch, stretching away up the hill as if each man were thirty feet tall. And obviously this company of giants was coming through Newark toward Wilmington in pursuit of the retreating Americans. They passed through the town on September 8, not by South College and Main Streets as we commonly suppose, but diagonally along Academy Street and 'round the Academy corner, when the workmen in the shoe factory, finding them not giants but quite ordinary men, plucked up courage and fired upon them. The fire was returned, with no recorded harm on either side. The Academy Building perished in 1839 and with it went any scars it may have borne but the Platt house, which stood across the way where the Green Mansion now stands, remained until the 1870's, and when it was torn down, shot were found embedded in the walls. Family silver and gold coin belonging to the Iron Hill families had been buried in the woods, and when the troops left, the terrain had changed so completely that the caches are yet to be found. The Academy, though not in operation, was taking care of its funds, and like other institutions in Wilmington and the nearby towns, sent its money to safety in a ship lying in Wilmington harbor, ready to sail if or when danger approached. Unfortunately the ship was captured by the British, and in October, Acting President Thomas McKean wrote to Washington to say that they had seized many of the county records "and every shilling of the public money, together with the fund belonging to the Trustees of the Newark Academy." The charter and deed survived, not having been so carefully cared for; we might have done better to bury the funds in the Academy yard.The passing soldiers did small damage in the town. They set the Simonton grist mill (now the National Fibre Co.) to grinding, and twelve hours of grinding without grain did the millstone no lasting good. It was the wizard Robert Warnock who had the courage to go into the great dark, noisy shell of a building and turn off the water that moved the wheels. The diaries of Thomas Sullivan, a British soldier, and of John Montresor, an engineer connected with the invading army, give some details of the passage and of the divisions involved. Newark had had its baptism of fire, and save for the passage of the American army southward in the last stages of the struggle, was to see no more of the war."Cooch’s Bridge: Delaware’s lone Revolutionary War battle - See more at: http://www.wdde.org/16980-coochs-bridge-delawares-lone-revolutionary-war-battle/#sthash.It4wt6vW.dpufCooch’s Bridge: Delaware’s lone Revolutionary War battle - See more at: http://www.wdde.org/16980-coochs-bridge-delawares-lone-revolutionary-war-battle/#sthash.It4wt6vW.dpufCooch’s Bridge: Delaware’s lone Revolutionary War battle - See more at: http://www.wdde.org/16980-coochs-bridge-delawares-lone-revolutionary-war-battle/#sthash.It4wt6vW.dpuf
ARRT's Useful Chronology of Delaware militia from GenWeb: http://genforum.genealogy.com/
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