Hightstown, New Jersey is a small borough of 5,900 people in Mercer County. Hightstown is withing commuting distance of Manhattan and is in the Raritan Valley. Hightstown has an historic district with over 70 buildings from the 19th Century. At the heart of the district is the Civil War monument. The monument was erected in 1875 to honor those men from the county who had served in the Union army during the Civil War. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act provided a grant for Hightstown to clean the monument about a decade ago. The monument is surrounded by four Brooke cannons. There is a small triangle of land where the memorial was erected.
You may ask yourself why the borough’s name is spelled so oddly. It did not get its name from it being on a local heights. Instead it was named after the first English settler family headed by John and Mary Hight!
The triangle is well maintained and is a gathering place for Memorial Day and Veterans Day activities. The circular enclosure is planted with many flowers including roses.
When the monument was dedicated in 1875, Sergeant Edward T. Green gave the valedictory saying that it was erected to honor “the memory of soldiers…who received their death wounds upon bloody fields of battle – not in gallantly defending their native land from the attack of foreign enemies, but in repelling an effort to destroy our government institutions, made by our misguided and rebellious Southern fellow citizens.”
Green was a Princeton graduate who became a lawyer in the late 1850s. After the Civil War he returned to practice law in Trenton and was later appointed a Federal judge.
As you can see in the photo above, the monument is surrounded by 19th Century houses.
Below, you can see the eagle topping the obelisk. As people have noted, it does not follow the lines of modern “patriotic eagles.” People knew what an eagle was, although many people in New Jersey never saw one in real life.
Below the eagle are the implements of war. They include a flag, a musket and a sword. Below them is a symbol of the United States.
Below is a list of those men from the local community who gave their lives during the war.
Another side panel presents the State Seal of New Jersey.
The four Brooke Rifles were manufactured in the Confederacy during the Civil War. They were placed in coastal forts or on ships. It appears that these cannons were captured by Union forces during the war. The were likely cast at the Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond, Virginia. The cannons weight 1,100 pounds each. John Mercer Brooke designed them.
In 1978, a collector in Manassas, Virginia offered Hightstown $4,000 for all four of the cannons to return them to the south. This created a stir in the community with many people realizing there was little written about the monument or the cannons. People had sort of taken them for granted.
The dedicatory inscription is contained on the side of the monument below. It reads: ” To the memory of the heroic volunteers of East Windsor Township who gave their lives as a sacrifice for their country and humanity in the suppression of the Great Rebellion of 1861-65.” As frequent readers of this blog probably know, while “Civil War” was frequently used to name the war, a fair number of monuments refer to it as “The Rebellion,” hence those who adhered to the Rebellion were called “Rebels.”
Many people who view the monument are struck by the fact that it is dedicated to the “volunteers of East Windsor Township,” not Hightstown. Hightstown was part of East Windsor during the Civil War and Reconstruction.
Below the dedicatory inscription, there are more names of the dead inscribed. As you can see, the local men joined a number of New Jersey regiment.
A close-up of the inscription.
There is also the seal of Mercer County. The county includes Trenton and Princeton. The county is named after General Hugh Mercer, a Scottish immigrant who fled to America after the Jacobite rebellion failed. He relocated to Fredericksburg, Virginia and became a close friend of George Washington. During the Battle of Princeton, Mercer was cut off from his men and was repeatedly bayonetted by the British. He died shortly thereafter.
The Brooke Cannons are on every side of the monument.
The last two names of the dead are under the state seal.
The monument has been placed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The only controversy about the monument has been the borough placing Christmas lights on it in December.
I visited Hightstown on a rainy day.
The back of the monument.
When you visit the monument, it feels like you are back in the time of its erection because of all the 150 year old houses nearby.
These houses have been witnesses to a century and a half of Memorial Day observances at the little park.
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