A Heroic Fight, an Ordnance Oops, a Radio First & Pegleg Pete

Today in New Jersey history:

July 9, 1864: The Fourteenth New Jersey Volunteer Infantry was part of a force that fought a delaying action along the Monocacy River, near Frederick, Maryland, against Confederate general Jubal Early’s march towards Washington D. C., holding up the Confederate advance long enough to save the capital from possible capture.

The Fourteenth lost heavily at Monocacy. There were about 350 men present with the regiment at the outset of the battle. On July 11, when the Fourteenth reassembled near Baltimore, the regiment mustered a mere five officers and ninety-eight enlisted men. A number would rejoin the unit several days later, but twenty-four men were killed in action and another sixteen eventually died of wounds received at Monocacy. Others, seriously wounded, would spend the rest of the war in hospitals and be discharged for disability. In all, the Fourteenth lost more men killed and wounded, and fewer as prisoners, than any other Union unit in the battle.

July 9, 1892: A five-hundred-pound shell fired from the United States ordnance testing range at Sandy Hook accidentally hit the schooner Henry R. Tilton and sank it. 

July 9, 1908: The first radio broadcast from New Jersey, using an arc transmitting station, was made from Newark. The voices of Mayor Jacob Haussling of Newark and Governor J. Franklin Fort went out over the airways.

July 9, 2013: It was announced that a $25,000 grant from the Hudson County Open Space and Historic Preservation Trust Fund was approved to begin the restoration of Jersey City’s bronze statue of Pieter Stuyvesant (locally referred to as “Pegleg Pete.”) and return it from a warehouse to its original site. It was estimated that another $100,000 was needed to complete the project.