Stories

Joseph Plumb Martin

A Private Soldier's Winter

Joseph Plumb Martin was nineteen years old during the Hard Winter at Morristown. He had already served three years in the Continental Army — long enough to lose any illusions about glory. What he had ...

Joseph Plumb Martin

Starving at Jockey Hollow

We arrived in Morristown in December with the expectation that winter quarters would mean rest, shelter, and provisions. It meant none of those things. The march into Jockey Hollow was through snow th...

Theodosia Ford

The Widow Whose House Became Headquarters

My husband had been dead eleven days when General Washington arrived in Morristown. Colonel Jacob Ford, my husband, died of the pneumonia on the eleventh of January, 1777, having served his country in...

What the Hut Sites Remember

Everyone knows Valley Forge. Almost no one knows Morristown. That's the first thing I tell visitors, and you can see it register — a mixture of surprise and guilt, as if they've been caught not doing ...

Walking Jockey Hollow in Winter

The trails at Jockey Hollow are quiet in February. The parking lot holds a few cars, and the visitor center offers warmth and maps, but the landscape itself belongs mostly to the cold. This is the tim...