“I think I found a bone.”

A volunteer whispered that to us on the last day of a public archaeology project at the Red Bank Battlefield Park in southern New Jersey in June 2022. Over the course of four days, dozens of volunteers worked under the supervision of trained archaeologists and other professionals to dig, sift and identify artifacts at the site of the Battle of Red Bank on Oct. 22, 1777.

The bone was a stunning discovery. We are an archaeologist and the director of the Red Bank Battlefield Park. We knew this public project would likely reveal dozens of artifacts, but we never anticipated finding human remains.

And we certainly did not expect to find a mass burial – one of just a handful of Revolutionary War mass burials that have been discovered.

Whose bone was this? How many others were there? And what exactly happened here 250 years ago?

The Battle of Red Bank

The Battle of Red Bank was a major upset victory for the patriots in what became known as the Philadelphia Campaign, a series of maneuvers and engagements that ultimately resulted in the capture of Philadelphia by the British.

In the fall of 1777, Fort Mercer played a pivotal role protecting Philadelphia from British troops – and the ships supplying them – moving up the Delaware River. The city had fallen to the British in September, but the patriots still maintained control of the river. Two Rhode Island regiments under the command of Col. Christopher Greene defended the fort.

In an attempt to open the river to the Royal Navy and establish a supply line, the British Army sent a Hessian brigade to attack the fort. Hessians were German auxiliary soldiers hired by the British crown to supplement their troops.

Despite the patriot forces being dramatically outnumbered, they won a stunning victory. Our project team historian Robert Selig’s original research in the Marburg Archives in Germany documents that when the smoke had cleared, 111 Hessian soldiers lay dead. Many........

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