Matthias Ogden, Colonel of the 1st New Jersey Continentals, was once again in hot water. This time it was not for the "pernicious vice of gaming" which earned him a severe reprimand from General Washington in general orders, but for being - quite literally - in the wrong place at the wrong time.
From army headquarters in Totowa in northeast New Jersey, George Washington issued the following orders on November 6th, 1780:
The General has just received information that Colonel Ogden and
Captain Dayton who were in Elizabeth Town, were taken last night in
their beds by the Enemy. A convincing proof that they have the most
minute intelligence of every thing that passes in that place and that it
is dangerous for an officer (except with a guard or under sanction of a
flag) to remain there during the night; He has assured the Officers in
General Orders that if any of them are taken out of the line of their
duty and by their own imprudence that their Exchanges shall be postponed
while there is an officer remaining in Captivity of their rank. He again repeats this in most solemn terms,
with this further declaration that whenever they are exchanged, they
shall be arrested and a full investigation had into the circumstances of
their capture. The General means this as a caution to the army, not as a
reflection upon the present conduct of Colonel Ogden who he has reason
to believe was in the execution of business by proper authority: He is
yet uninformed of the reason of Captain Dayton's being at
Elizabeth-town.
The other captured officer was Captain Jonathan Dayton. He was Colonel Ogden's brother in law, and held a commission in a sister regiment: his father Col. Elias Dayton's 3rd New Jersey. He was a staff officer, having served the previous year as A.D.C. to General Sullivan on the expedition against the Iroquois. In the interest of full disclosure, he was also my direct ancestor, while Col. Matthias Ogden was the elder brother of my 4th great grandfather Aaron Ogden.
It is curious that Col. Ogden and Captain Dayton were captured in their beds, as Rivington's Royal Gazette gloatingly reported, "horizontal, cheek by jowl." One wonders, as did Washington, how they had cause to be taken in such vulnerable circumstances. There was a long history in New Jersey of seizures of private citizens patriots and isolated military personnel alike by loyalist raiders. Back in December 1776, Major General Charles Lee was captured well outside the lines at Widow White's Tavern in Basking Ridge by a detachment of the British16th Queen's Light Dragoons. Because of its proximity to loyalist Staten Island, Elizabethtown was especially prone to such snatch and grab incursions. Washington's impatience with officers who took unnecessary risks with their billeting and who ended up getting captured is manifestly clear in his response to the Ogden and Dayton capture.
Both men were from Elizabethtown. Ogden's family had by this point in the war relocated to the safety of the interior. The New Jersey Brigade was at this time posted as part of Greene's Division near the main army, and not assigned to watch the channel between New Jersey and Staten Island. If, as Washington alludes, Colonel Ogden had a legitimate reason for spending the night in the vicinity of Elizabethtown, perhaps it was to gather intelligence. Dayton often acted in the same capacity for his father, so this may explain why the two decided to overnight in such a dangerous place. Given their subsequent careers after their release from captivity, one must assume that whatever Captain Dayton's reasons, they were deemed satisfactory.
Ogden and Dayton spent the night of Saturday, November 4th, 1780 outside Elizabethtown at William Herd's Tavern at Connecticut Farms (now Union) New Jersey. This fact is quite remarkable in itself, as nearly every dwelling in that hamlet had been burned to the ground during Knyphausen's Raid the previous June. By August, though, there is evidence that Herd's Tavern was not only open for business but in use for official business as well. And as was so often the case in that divided border region during this war, someone with loyalist sympathies quickly learned of the pretense of the two Continental officers, both of whom were from prominent families in the community. Word got to the loyalist refugees on Staten Island, among whom were some of their ex-neighbors who promptly planned a raid to capture them, or perhaps they came over that night on other business as one report suggests and took advantage of a new, ripe target.
Several contemporary reports identify the New Jersey Loyalists who captured Ogden and Dayton. They were lead by 
Cornelius Hatfield, a notorious partisan from Elizabethtown and a distant relative of Ogden's though his mother, Phoebe (Hatfield Ogden). Also involved were John Smith Hatfield, a cousin of Cornelius', and Elias Man, along with one or two others. The Hatfields are remembered in America as "predatory" and "infamous", while among the descendants of the United Empire Loyalists they are, not surprisingly, regarded in a much more positive light. Their subsequent actions included retaliatory execution of prisoners, but it seems that in this case Ogden and Dayton, if not " in perfect scerenity and good humour", were not particularly ill used by their captors.
The raid was successful, with Ogden and Dayton taken by surprise as they slept. Rivington's Royal Gazette, hardly an unbiased source, smugly implied that bribes were offered by the captives in an attempt to win their release. Rivington claimed that the officers were taken from Staten Island to New York where they gave their paroles and were allowed to return to Elizabeth to gather up their affects before returning as prisoners until formally exchanged. This does not seem very credible; more likely, they were able to send for their things as they would have needed a means of support while housed in New York or on Long Island. We will examine what little is known of their captivity and what happened following their release in a subsequent post.
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