The Hancock House is a historic structure in the
Hancock's Bridge section of
Lower Alloways Creek Township,
Salem County
Salem County is the westernmost county in the U.S. state of New Jersey. Its western boundary is formed by the Delaware River and its eastern terminus is the Delaware Memorial Bridge, which connects the county with New Castle, Delaware. Its cou ...
,
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...
, United States. It was the site of the 1778 Hancock's Bridge massacre.
NJDEP-Parks and Forests-Centennial of NJ State Historic Site
/ref> The site is on the National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...
.[
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History
The house was built in 1734 for Judge William
William is a male given name of Germanic origin.Hanks, Hardcastle and Hodges, ''Oxford Dictionary of First Names'', Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, , p. 276. It became very popular in the English language after the Norman conquest of Engl ...
and Sarah Hancock and features Flemish bond brickwork detailed with blue-glazed bricks, which gives the year of construction (1734) and the initials of the couple for whom it was built: ''W S'' for William and Sarah.William
William is a male given name of Germanic origin.Hanks, Hardcastle and Hodges, ''Oxford Dictionary of First Names'', Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, , p. 276. It became very popular in the English language after the Norman conquest of Engl ...
, also a judge.
Massacre
On March 21, 1778, Major John Graves Simcoe
John Graves Simcoe (25 February 1752 – 26 October 1806) was a British Army general and the first lieutenant governor of Upper Canada from 1791 until 1796 in southern Ontario and the Drainage basin, watersheds of Georgian Bay and Lake Superior. ...
led approximately 300 British soldiers and Queen's Rangers through a marsh and across Alloway Creek
Alloway Creek is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map , accessed April 1, 2011 tributary of the Delaware River in Salem County, New Jersey in the United States. The name is a derivati ...
to surround Hancock House. At approximately 5 a.m., they entered the house and surprised 20 to 30 members of the local militia stationed there, along with Judge Hancock, a loyalist who was thought to be away for the night. Eight American men were killed during the melee, including Judge Hancock, who died the following day from 10 stab wounds. The rest were wounded at the scene or during a retreat, or captured as prisoners.
William Abbott and his son Samuel watched in the dawning light from the attic window of their home in Elsinboro, diagonally across the creek from the Hancock House, as the British and Tory soldiers pursued and killed the few American militiamen who had escaped the scene of the carnage at the house and surrounding yard. The next morning while driving to a meeting in Salem, several British and Tory troops surrounded the Abbott carriage, tormenting the occupants by thrusting their bayonets at them, then showed them blood on their steel weapons and exclaimed, "See the blood of your countrymen."
Other County Colonial lore states that, in the midst of the massacre, the pregnant wife of one of the local militia was sleeping in the Hancock House. She was awakened by the screams of the dying men and jumped from a second story window on the west side of the house to make her escape. Tradition says that, within twenty-four hours, the child was born and that descendants of that child are living in Lower Alloways Creek township today. The old Hancock House museum is said to still have actual massacre blood stains on its attic floor.
See also
*
* List of the oldest buildings in New Jersey
This article attempts to list the oldest extant buildings surviving in the state of New Jersey in the United States of America, including the oldest houses in New Jersey and any other surviving structures. Some dates are approximate and based upo ...
References
External links
*
The Story of the Hancock House
*
* Hancock House
Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in New Jersey
Houses completed in 1734
Houses in Salem County, New Jersey
New Jersey in the American Revolution
Museums in Salem County, New Jersey
Historic house museums in New Jersey
National Register of Historic Places in Salem County, New Jersey
Lower Alloways Creek Township, New Jersey
American Revolutionary War sites
New Jersey Register of Historic Places
Historic American Buildings Survey in New Jersey
American Revolution on the National Register of Historic Places
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