NJ PBS offers fresh look at Jockey Hollow and the Hard Winter of the Revolution, Jan. 15

Rapid development in Morristown spurs constant debate: How many more residents can be shoehorned into this community of 20,000?

Now, imagine the buzz in 1779. Some 10,000 Continental Army soldiers — a number equivalent to the fifth largest city in the fledgling country–suddenly encamp at Jockey Hollow, helping themselves to farmland, livestock and provisions from 300 local inhabitants for the “Hard Winter” of 1779-80.

Such tensions are among the angles explored in Treasures of New Jersey: Jockey Hollow and the Morristown National Historical Park, which premieres this Wednesday, Jan. 15, 2025, at 8:30 pm on NJ PBS.

“We’re thrilled to add this episode that highlights the important role that Jockey Hollow played in our nation’s history, as well as the role that the park continues to play in the community,” Noelle Deihl-Harteveld, director of development for NJ PBS, said at a screening last week at the Morris Museum’s Bickford Theater in Morris Township.

Spanning 1,400 acres and 20 miles of trails across Morris Township, Mendham Borough, Mendham Township, Bernardsville and Harding, Jockey Hollow is one of four venues that comprise the Morristown National Historical Park. Established in 1933 as the first historical park in the United States, it attracts about 250,000 visitors annually.

Unlike Lexington and Concord and other famous Revolutionary War sites, Jockey Hollow never saw a shot fired in anger. Indeed, it never saw a British soldier. That has posed promotional challenges for the National Park Service in Morristown.

An award-winning 2009 PBS documentary, Where America Survived, made a case for Jockey Hollow as pivotal to America’s eventual triumph over the Redcoats. That film, based on The Uncertain Revolution by the late historian John Cunningham, depicted Washington’s rag-tag troops enduring deprivations worse than at Valley Forge.

By holding together at Jockey Hollow through the harshest winter anyone then alive could remember — an estimated 100 inches of snow — Gen. George Washington’s army lived to fight another day.

The new Treasures of New Jersey episode goes a step further. Morristown — where Washington’s men also wintered in 1776-77 — was the “Military Capital of the Northeast” in the War of Independence, the film suggests.

Most European armies of that era sent their soldiers home for the winter. That would have been risky for Washington. Would his poorly clothed, underpaid troops return in the spring? So he pioneered winter encampments.

Typhus, dysentery and other diseases killed so many men at Valley Forge that Washington’s high command debated whether to scrap the practice. Fortunately, lessons learned at Valley Forge dramatically reduced illnesses at Jockey Hollow.

“It’s kind of mundane things like health and hygiene that make sure the army survives these winters healthy and strong, and can perform better during the campaign season once summer rolls around,” said Steven Elliott, a history lecturer at Rutgers-Newark and former guide at Jockey Hollow.

The new documentary draws from Elliott’s book, Surviving the Winters: Housing Washington’s Army during the Revolution.

CAMP FOLLOWERS, A HORSE, AND THE GREAT WHITE WHALE

The 27-minute film touches upon the role of women — “camp followers” such as soldiers’ wives, and ladies from surrounding towns — and challenges long-held notions about a medical hospital and cemetery at Jockey Hollow.

Another highlight is the program’s delicate handling of the legend of Tempe Wick. As generations of local schoolchildren believe, Tempe, a young girl, galloped away from soldiers and hid her horse in her family home. The Wick House remains a popular tourist attraction.

“So many stories are tenuous at best, yet we love them. They are like comfort food,” said Jude Pfister, chief of cultural resources and acting superintendent of the park, who appears in the documentary.

Other familiar faces onscreen include Anne Bukata, a volunteer at the Wick House; Beth Hamerschlag, a volunteer in the Wick Garden; Steve Santucci, who portrays a Revolutionary soldier at weekend encampments every April and teaches history at West Morris Mendham High School; and Tom Ross, former superintendent of the Morristown National Historical Park.

Former Morris County tourism director Leslie Bensley, who now leads the nonprofit Friends of Jockey Hollow, appears in the 2025 and 2009 productions.

Dillard and Adrienne Kirby were major funders of both films.

“Jockey Hollow provides a multi-dimensional experience and is really a living museum that can provide regular, new learning through research and exploration,” Dillard Kirby said. Backing the Treasures project, he added, was a no-brainer as excitement grows for the nation’s 250th anniversary next year.

Additional funding was provided by the F.M. Kirby Foundation, Kim and Finn Wentworth, and the Friends of Jockey Hollow.

Other episodes in the NJ PBS Treasures series have focused on Fairleigh Dickinson University, the Great Swamp, and the Underground Railroad Museum. The popular Travels with Darley series also spotlighted Jockey Hollow last year.

Kirby joked that when PBS comes knocking in another 15 years, his children will have to pony up for the next update of the Jockey Hollow saga.

That may be a tall order. Primary sources are rare. Santucci, the re-enactor, said most of his details about soldier uniforms were gleaned from descriptions of deserters in old newspaper clippings.

Much of what is known about the winter encampment of 1779-80 comes from three sources. The Bible for local historians is Private Yankee Doodle, a Connecticut soldier’s memoir, published roughly a half-century after the Revolution. Also frequently cited is an anonymous 1859 article in Harper’s, and a map of the soldiers’ log huts. A copy serves as a mural in the Jockey Hollow Visitor Center.

That map became the Great White Whale for show Director and Executive Producer Sally Garner. She tracked the original to a 1939 auction in New York, where it sold for $250. Then the scent grew cold.

“This is the kind of thing that tells us what really happened” at Jockey Hollow, Garner lamented. “Who drew that, we don’t know. Who bought it? Where is it?”

Pfister, curator of the park’s extensive historical collection, tries to remain optimistic. In an attic or basement somewhere, he believes, are letters from soldiers or their survivors. Letters that will shed new light on the Hard Winter at Jockey Hollow.

“Things turn up,” he said.