NEW JERSEY HISTORICAL PROFILES REVOLUTIONARY TIMES.

By Stewan Hoagland '28. Somervile, NJ.. SomersesPress, Inc.. 1973. 19 illustrations and 3 maps146 pp. $3.50.

Written with painstaking care by a former editor of The Dartmouth, this book throws light on the Revolution as "the golden period of New Jersey history." Mr. Hoagland attempts to focus on the bravery, quick-wittedness sacrifices, and energy of New jersey men and women who, often risking and sometimes losing their lives, fought on to victory and freedom Some of the illustrations and touches of local color may generate more excitement in non-New Jerseyites than the firm and solid facts concerning birth, businesses, and deaths.

Thus William Livingston, the first govern of New Jersey, was sent as a boy of 14 to live with a missionary among the Mohawk Indians because his family looked to his possible future as a fur trader or a speculator in frontier land Martha Washington used to preside over midday meals with as many as 30 officers and other guests and over a house staff of 14, including her Own personal maid and a body servant for General George. Seven more servants worked on the home plantation, 24 on various farms, 11 at trades and 7 in the mills.

Known in the American colonies as Lord Stirling, William Alexander acted and dressed like an English earl with 31 coats, 58 vests and waistcoats, and 43 pairs of breeches. His phaeton and coach he imported from England and at dinners he entertained George Washington with imported wines and spirits His daughter, Lady Kitty, married William Duer of Washington's army, who was wealth enough to outdo his father-in-law. In his New York home liveried servents served 14 diflerent kinds of wine at dinner, a sobering thought.

Bright enough to graduate from Princeton at 16, Aaron Burr took his forthcoming duel. the result of 15 years of Hamilton's almost pathological hatred, so seriously that he practiced appropriate moves in his garden and sharpened up his marksmanship. Hamilton apparently did not, and, shot, could regret his nonchalance for only one day.

The Revolution produced a poet of Huguenot extraction, Philip Freneau, and much of his early work, published in pamphlet form. was directed against the British. The intensity of feelings - and the quality of his poetry may be deduced from this quatrain:

From an Island that bullies and hectors and swears I send up to heaven my wishes and prayers That we, disunited, may free men be still And Britain go on - to be damned if she will.

As a newspaperman Freneau joined forces with Jefferson and Madison in their conflicts with Alexander Hamilton. Jefferson praised Freneau and said that he "saved our Constitution," but Washington damned him as "that rascally Freneau."

Am Irishman of Scottish descent, John Honeyman, a spy, provided Washington with 'inortant information enabling him to win, on Christmas night 1776, the Battle of Trenton. To Bacchus to whom the British were offering Christian libations must also be given some credit. Spying and the meat business proved Profitable. The patriot-businessman bought two farms, fathered seven children, at the age of 90 joined the Presbyterian Church, and lived to be 95.