WINTER QUARTERS FOR OFFICERS AND MEN.
Local tradition has it that upon arriving in Morristown, on January 6, Washington went to the Arnold Tavern, and that his headquarters remained there all through the 1777 encampment period. Maj. Gen. Nathanael Greene lodged for a time “at Mr. Hoffman’s,—a very good-natured, doubtful gentleman.” Captain Rodney and his men were quartered at Colonel Ford’s “elegant” house until about mid-January, when they left for Delaware and home. Brig. Gen. Anthony Wayne, on rejoining Washington in the spring of 1777, is said to have stayed at the homestead of Deacon Ephraim Sayre, in Bottle Hill. It has been stated that other officers, and a large number of private soldiers as well, were given shelter in Morristown or nearby villages by the Ely, Smith, Beach, Tuttle, Richards, Kitchell, and Thompson families.
According to the Reverend Samuel L. Tuttle, a local historian writing in 1871, there was also a campground for the troops about 3 miles southeast of Morristown on what were then the farms of John Easton and Isaac Pierson, in the valley of Loantaka Brook. Tuttle obtained his information from one Silas Brookfield and other eyewitnesses of the Revolutionary scene, who claimed that the troops built a village of log huts at that location. It is highly curious that not one of Washington’s published letters or orders refers to such buildings, nor are they mentioned in any other contemporary written records studied to date.