On this day 250 years ago in Essex County, New Jersey, the Committee of Correspondence issues a call to the Freeholders of Essex County to elect Committees of Observation to enforce the Continental Association boycott of trade with Great Britain. The Committee of Correspondence praised the citizens of Essex County for the “zeal you have hitherto manifested in support of the constitutional liberties of our country” and requested them to form a Committee of Observation in each of the three precincts of Essex County: Newark, Elizabeth Town, and Achquakanung. The Committees of Observation were charged with holding “up to public notice” anyone who refused to join the boycott “as unfriendly to the liberties of his country, and [that] all dealings with him, or her, be thenceforward broken off.” Essex County was the first county in New Jersey to begin enforcement of the boycott as requested by the First Continental Congress.
Three of the members of the Essex County Committee of Correspondence, Stephen Crane, William Livingston and John De Hart, had been members of the First Continental Congress that had adopted the Continental Association, explaining the Essex County Committee’s rapidity in acting on the boycott called for by the Continental Association. Crane and De Hart would serve as delegates to the Second Continental Congress and as elected officials in New Jersey during the Revolutionary War. William Livingston would become Governor of New Jersey during the War and afterwards a Signer of the Constitution. Although Stephen Crane was too old to serve in the military, he nonetheless sacrificed his life for American Independence at age 70 when the British Army invaded Essex County in 1780 and Crane was bayoneted in his home in Elizabethtown by a Hessian soldier.
Other members of the Essex Committee of Correspondence would also go on to serve the Patriot cause during the War. William Peartree Smith, John Chetwood and Elias Boudinot all held elective office during the War and Boudinot in particular had distinguished service. Elias Boudinot was a Colonel in the Continental Army, but was later elected to the Continental Congress, serving at the end of the War as President of the Congress, at that time the highest ranking official in the American government. However, one member of the Essex Committee, Isaac Ogden, would betray America by joining the Loyalists.
On This Day In The Revolution 