The Battles of nd street
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F ORT D E L A NCEY H AD A R I C H H I S TORY, BU T
THERE’S NOTHING TO SHOW FOR IT
By Pat Bonner they go about their day-to-day activities, few residents realize that they may be walking or parking their cars on ground where Revolutionary War battles or skirmishes were fought. Although the area around Avenue B and 52nd Street is now mostly one- and twofamily homes, once it was a place where the newly formed Continental Army fought against the loyalists who were supporting the British Empire. In the late eighteenth century, Bayonne was known as Bergen Neck. In April 1776, when George Washington learned that the British fleet was sailing for New York, he ordered that a main fort be built at Paulus Hook in Jersey City. In July of that year, he ordered General Hugh Mercer (for whom Mercer Park on the city line is named) to send 500 men to Bayonne to set up two forts: one at First Street and Avenue A and the other between 51st and 52nd Streets east of Avenue B. This uptown site was later known as Fort Delancey.
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‘A Notoriously Vicious Character’ One historian, writing 115 years ago, reported that the fort occupied the high land between 51st and 52nd Streets starting about 100 feet east of the Speedway (Avenue B) and adjoining the property to the rear of 99 West 51st Street. Until
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Avenue B and 52nd Street is now mostly one- and two-family homes. Once it was a place where the newly formed Continental Army fought against the loyalists who were supporting the British Empire. recently, there was a marker near the site reading “BERGEN NECK FORT, built by Americans 1776, occupied 1777-1782 by Loyalist Forces who named it Fort Delancey.” With the British landing in New York, General Mercer was forced to abandon the fort on October 5, 1776, marching his men north to Fort Lee. For the next seven years, Bergen Neck/Bayonne was a
sort of no man’s land between the British on Staten Island and the Continentals to the west and north of Jersey City. Fort Delancey was taken over by the loyalists and was commanded by a loyalist named Tom Ward, who reportedly was a “notoriously vicious character” who sent his band of “desperadoes” to plunder the surrounding farms. Farmhouses were looted and then burned.
