Scudder Family Historical & Biographical Journal

Like many of their neighbors, the Hart and Scudder families of New Jersey in the revolutionary period had their roots in Long Island and their heritage in the Puritan immigration from England to New England.

By their crucial contributions and their numbers, perhaps no other New Jersey family contributed more to the fight for independence and self-governance than the Scudders and their extended family that included John4 Hart, the signer of the Declaration of Independence.

The American army was in precarious condition in Pennsylvania, just across the Delaware River from New Jersey. Its numbers were estimated to have dwindled from 30,000 in the summer to 3,000. Washington’s soldiers were not well furnished, having had to leave supplies as they fled New York.

There had been little time for the Americans to rejoice over the laurels of their stunning victory in the First Battle of Trenton on December 26, 1776, and escape back to Pennsylvania. All signs were that the British would make a countermove.

The story of Major John5 Polhemus began in the era of monarchy, when the conventional paradigm was based on the idea of sacrifices by the masses for the privilege of the one. He, with many others flipped that paradigm on its head by an example that there was a better way:

Two sets of Scudder siblings, whose fathers were first cousins, went to New Jersey, 1698–1749, so 2nd cousins. To make tracing their descendants accurately even more confusing, those who were brothers each went to different parts of New Jersey.

As John4 Hart’s biographer, Cleon E. Hammond, succinctly states: ‘Shortly before the year 1700, a settlement of English families in the vicinity of Newtown, on Long Island, began to migrate to an area ‘away over in the Jarseys’.

In a previous article, we identified Deborah6 Scudder as the daughter of Richard5 Scudder who was the son of Richard4 Betts Scudder, the latter being a great-grandson of Thomas1 Scudder (T), the Immigrant.

Maj. General William7 Scudder Stryker, who served in the American Civil War, 1861–1865, was born on 6 June 1838 at Trenton, Mercer, New Jersey, the son of THOMAS6 JOHNSON STRYKER. William7 was rightfully given the middle name of Scudder because his mother was an 8th-generation Scudder.

Eli6 Field Cooley was connected to an extraordinary circle of men by his years at Princeton, and by his wives’ relatives. Eli6 Field Cooley was born 15 October 1781, at Sunderland, Massachusetts to Rinnah5 and Lucy Field Cooley.1