Indian King Tavern attending dances there
In 1745, Mathias Aspden, a Quaker
merchant and ship owner purchased property in the center of the village of
Haddonfield, cleared the poorly constructed brewery buildings and began
constructing the largest tavern on the village's main road, Kings Highway. The
structure was completed in 1750.
Taverns such as Aspden's were
centers of commercial and social life, and in the increasing tensions between
the British Empire, represented by Loyalists, and the Patriots, forums for
heated debate that put the lives of both those arguing and the owners of such
places in jeopardy. As tensions piqued because of the Battles of Lexington and
Concord in 1775, the tavern's owner, Mathias Aspden, Jr., had gone to England
for his education and returned a staunch Loyalist. He sold his tavern to Thomas
Redman, who ran the village apothecary shop. Aspden, Jr. sailed for England for
good as the Second Continental Congress was convening in Philadelphia in 1776.
He was tried and convicted of treason in absentia; his properties in
southwestern New Jersey and southeastern Pennsylvania were seized and sold,
with the profits going into the Continental Treasury.
In 1776, New Jersey saw such
towns as Princeton and Trenton devastated by marching armies from both sides
during the American Revolution. Haddonfield residents gathered frequently at
the tavern; Redman, who was also the clerk for the local Friends Meeting, was
required to read publicly documents that included the sect's pacifist refusal
to become combatants. Because of this, in January 1777 Redman was arrested and
charged with sedition by an officer of the Continental Army, and jailed in
Woodbury, the county seat at that time. Redman was released and fined on March
18 of that same year. He returned to his tavern in Haddonfield to find that the
state had used his tavern that same day to create a Council of Safety, whose
mission it was to try, convict and incarcerate deserters, Loyalists and other
enemies of the Revolution. The cellar of the tavern is thought to have been
used by this Council to hold the overflow from the guard house across the
street
Indian King Tavern in 2010
Less than two months later,
Redman sold his tavern to Hugh Creighton, who already owned a tavern a few
blocks away near Potter Street. Creighton's old tavern was named the
"Indian King" Tavern by its original owner, Sarah Norris, in
deference to Lenape Native Americans who had cared for the newly immigrated and
poorly equipped European settlers; it was subsequently taken over by Mary
French, a widow who later married Creighton. Hugh Creighton then transferred
the name of the tavern to his newly acquired tavern on Kings Highway.
The tavern was alternately
occupied by British, Hessians and Continental troops as the revolution ravaged
parts of the state. Patriot generals "Mad" Anthony Wayne, the Marquis
de Lafayette and the Polish Count Casimir Pulaski all marched along Kings
Highway, and the Indian King Tavern, being the largest and most prominent at
the time, would have been used by these men for meetings, lodging and
recreation. Today, the remains of British and Hessian soldiers who died in
Haddonfield remain buried in unmarked graves at the north corner of the
cemetery at the Society of Friends' meeting house nearby.
Several local legends about the
Indian King Tavern have now been dispelled. When tours were given in the 1960s
and 1970s it was said that Dolly Madison frequented the Indian King Tavern
attending dances there. Another legend is that the tunnels from the Indian King
Tavern under King's Highway were once part of the Underground Railroad.
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