The full history is online at website below The Revolution and Revolutionary Traditions.— This part of the Newark colony touched the Revolutionary contest at several points. The fact that Nathaniel Crane, a private,— after the Revolution well-known as Maj. Nathaniel Crane,—was in the battle of Long Island on Sept. 15, 1776, and one of the last to leave the field under a shower of bullets, indicates that citizens here early entered the military service. From 1777 the enlistments were common throughout the county. Among those known to have been from the Montclair region were Capts. Abraham Speer and Thomas Seigler, Second Lieut. Joseph Crane, Sergt. Obadiah Crane, and the Privates Jonathan and Joseph Baldwin, Aaron, Matthias, Nathaniel, Joseph, Eliakim Benjamin, Oliver, William and Phineas Crane, Peter Davis, Nathaniel and Parmenas Dodd, Moses Harrison, Amos Tompkins, Abraham and Francis Speer, John, Levi Vincent, John Smith and a Van Gieson. After the retreat of Washington from Acquackanonck, through the lower part of the town, to New Brunswick, universal consternation prevailed. The people fled to the mountains and over the mountains. The pastor of the Mountain Church was marked for capture. The scouting-parties of the British carried devastation everywhere. But not till the reaction of the next year, 1777, did the people venture back to their desolate lands and plundered houses. Nathaniel Crane— and we may infer that others were with him— was at the battle of Monmouth in 1778, where was also Gen. Joseph Bloomfield. When Gen. Anthony Wayne— according to tradition— left his camp at Second River, just south of the ruins of the copper-works, his troops took their march in the famous snow-storm of January, 1779, up the old road to Horseneck, posting a picket at Bloomfield and abandoning their cannon embedded in the snow in Caldwell. The encampment at the Fordham Crane house, near the Mountain House, was probably in 1780,— some months after the battle of Springfield,— when the troops returned from the Hudson. The troops from this region were in that battle, in June of 1780, and Washington was greatly pleased with the patriotic spirit of the militia. His main encampment from October 7th to November 27th was at Totowa, near Paterson. Col. Mayland’s regiment of cavalry was stationed near Little Falls, and Maj. Paul’s rifle corps was stationed in a ravine near the Great Notch. He was ordered to watch the roads through the Notch into this region and into Acquackanonck, and to guard against surprises. Lafayette’s headquarters were at Gaffel, near Centreville. During October the light infantry was ordered to a new position, the better to watch the Notch and the Cranetown Gap. This agrees with the tradition well as to the time when Washington, with a detachment, was at the Crane mansion. He was scouring the country on his blooded Virginia horses, looking after the stragglers and correcting the mutinous tendencies of his wretched soldiers. The bold hill on the east side of the notch was, it is said, a favorite lookout. From that height he once detected a raiding-party of British sallying from Elizabethtown to the mountains. He dispatched at once a troop of cavalry behind the hill to Springfield, who cut off the foragers and reclaimed the fine lot of cattle they were driving off. The army here was in that deplorable condition which led, in 1781, to the mutiny of the Pennsylvania troops at Pompton. The detachment extended along the road and mountain southward from the Crane homestead. Confiscated household furniture taken from the British is still in possession of a family here, purchased with Continental currency earned by working for the soldiers. http://216.181.70.227/NJ/essex/Essex70.htm