Resolved, That two complete artillery companies be raised in this colony.
The ordinance provided that the term of enlistment should be for one year, and that one company should be stationed in the eastern part of the province, the other in the western. Each company was to consist of a captain, one captain-lieutenant, two second lieutenants, four sergeants, four corporals, and one hundred and fifty matrosses. (The last term was at that time used to denote gunners’ mates, or soldiers in a train of artillery, who assisted in loading, firing and sponging the guns.) The day following the passage of the ordinance the first or eastern company was organized in Newark by the election of the following officers:
Captain—Frederick Frelinghuysen.
Captain-Lieutenant—Daniel Neill.
Second Lieutenants—Thomas Clark and James Heard.
Captain Frelinghuysen served but one month and resigned—Lieutenant Neill succeeding him.
Shepard Kollock, born in Delaware in 1750, after learning the “art preservative of all arts” in Philadelphia, came to Elizabethtown after the war had commenced, and joined Captain Neill’s battery. He was with it when it attacked and destroyed a British gunboat off this city, and by his distinguished gallantry on that occasion was promoted to the first lieutenancy.
At the close of the campaign in 1778, General Knox, commanding the American artillery, advised Lieutenant Kollock to establish a newspaper in Elizabethtown, as he would thereby be able to render great service to the patriot cause. Lieutenant Kollock liked a soldier’s life, and did not want to leave the army, but General Knox finally prevailed upon him to engage in the newspaper enterprise, so he resigned, and securing a rude outfit located in Chatham, a much safer place than Elizabeth was at that period, and for some years afterwards Lieutenant Kollock continued the publication of the New Jersey Journal and Political Intelligencer at Chatham, until peace was declared, when he removed his plant to Elizabeth, where it has since remained.
Captain Neill, a young man born in Ireland, by untiring energy and devotion to duty, quickly got his command in good trim for the active service it was soon to engage in. In the latter part of June Captain Neill, who had been stationed in Newark, N. J., being ordered to Elizabeth, took possession of the earthworks at what is now the foot of Elizabeth Avenue, where he made a comfortable camp. To relieve his men from ennui when not engaged in drilling, Captain Neill caused them to throw up more earth, thus adding to the strength of the redoubt. He placed his four guns so they would command the sound, narrow at that point, as well as the entrance to the Elizabeth River, then known as “Mill Creek.”
William Livingston, a resident of Elizabeth, who resigned his seat in the Provincial Congress at Burlington, to be made commander-in-chief of the New Jersey militia, overjoyed at the presence of Captain Neill’s battery, on the morning of July 4, 1776, wrote General Washington as follows: