Talk: Trenton Eyewitnesses to Revolution

The Trent House Association presents a talk by William (Larry) Kidder profiling Trenton residents during the Revolutionary War and their responses to the long conflict on their doorstep. 

This is a free program, but online pre-registration is encouraged. Plenty of free parking is available at the rear of the museum property.

Trenton’s residents during the Revolutionary War included working people and the wealthy, people of European and African descent, enslaved and free, young and old. Some were ardent Patriots, others equally Loyalist, and some wavered or tried to stay neutral. Two were Abraham Hunt and Dr. William Bryant. Bryant had been a surgeon in the British Army and received a half-pay pension after he retired and purchased “Kingsbury” (now known as the Trent House). Abraham Hunt was a merchant and active in civic affairs in Trenton before the Revolution and supplied the Continental Army during the War. Both men have been suspected of Loyalist leanings during the war, although neither suffered any major hardship from either British or Patriot forces. 

Larry Kidder will describe what we know about these and other Revolutionary War-era Trenton residents. He will reveal the complexities of life in Trenton during the long, hard years of the Revolution and about how people from all walks of life coped with war while carrying on with their day-to-day lives. Kidder is the author of many books on the Revolutionary War, including Crossroads of the Revolution: Trenton, 1774-1783; Ten Crucial Days: Washington’s Vision for Victory Unfolds; and Revolutionary Princeton 1774-1783: The Biography of an American Town in the Heart of a Civil War. His newest book, The Revolutionary World of a Free Black Man: Jacob Francis 1754-1836, was published in 2021.