On June 26, 1777, the Oak Tree Engagement took place in Edison Township as one of four near continuous skirmishes known as the Battle of the Short Hills. After defeats in late 1776, George Washington’s army had recovered with victories at Trenton and Princeton, then operated from Morristown and later the Middlebrook encampment in the Watchung Heights, sending detachments to harass British forces posted between New Brunswick and Perth Amboy. By mid-June 1777, General Sir William Howe had assembled seventeen thousand troops in central New Jersey, intending to destroy Washington’s eight thousand men and capture Philadelphia. After an unsuccessful effort to draw the Americans down from the Watchung Heights, Howe began withdrawing from New Brunswick on June 21, apparently toward Staten Island, prompting Washington to move forces to the plains at Quibbletown and post Lord Stirling’s division around Ash Swamp and the Short Hills, with New Jersey and Virginia troops and Colonel Morgan’s Rifle Corps nearer Woodbridge. On the evening of June 25, learning that the Americans had moved to low ground, Howe split his army in two for a pincer attack. Before sunrise on June 26, Cornwallis’s column struck American pickets west of Woodbridge, and Brigadier General Thomas Conway’s Pennsylvania Brigade, actually led by Brigadier General William Maxwell, was sent forward but forced back near Oak Tree Road and Wood Avenue. The Oak Tree Engagement began about 8:30AM to 9:00AM near the road junction by this site and continued between New Dover Road and Woodland Avenue, where Colonel Charles Armand’s Ottendorf’s Corps tried to hold off the British advance, lost thirty-two of eighty men, and saved an American cannon while delaying the attack. Soon afterward, Lord Stirling’s New Jersey Brigade of about one thousand men and four cannons formed near the Short Hills Tavern and fought the combined elite British and Hessian troops in the largest action of the day. Outnumbered nearly five to one and almost outflanked, the Americans fought from hill to hill for close to two hours before withdrawing in good order to Westfield and then to the Scotch Plains Gap in the First Watchung Mountain. The day cost the Americans nearly two hundred casualties and three cannons, but the defensive fighting, including the Oak Tree Engagement, gave Washington the time needed to escape Howe’s trap and return his army safely to the Watchung Heights.
