NJGenWeb ~ Morris County, New Jersey

Morris County Militiamen of 1778

The following list was found in The Genealogical Magazine of New Jersey, XXXIX:3 Whole Number 153, Sept 1964, pp107-110 by Harold I. Meyer.

It is the minutes (May-June 1778) of the commissioners for classifying the privates in the Eastern Battalion of Morris County militia, together with their rosters of the classified militiamen.

The commissioners were appointed in consequence of a New Jersey act of April 3, 1778, "for the . . . recruiting of four New-Jersey Regiments." Essentially it provided a selective-service machinery through which the needed Continental Line soldiers were secured, either as volunteers or by draft, from among the men already enrolled in the various militia companies. The commissioners designed for each area drew up lists of the militiamen in 18-man groups or classes, each of which was required to produce one recruit for Continental service.

The militia lists prepared by the Eastern Morris County commissioners include names which are not found in W. S. Stryker's Official Register of the Officers and Men of New Jersey in the Revolutionary War (1872). The original manuscript is at the National Archives with a photostatic copy in the Rutgers University Library. In certain cases where a similar name (but differently spelled) appears in Stryker, Dr. Meyer has inserted the variant in parentheses.

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