4-minute read

• The 1st New Jersey Regiment, made up of local tradesmen and farmers, placed Franklin under house arrest after he refused to yield authority.
• Franklin later led Loyalist operations from Manhattan, using knowledge of New Jersey to target rebel homes and disrupt Patriot efforts.

On a bitter January morning in 1776, Patriot militia from the 1st New Jersey Regiment slogged through slush to the Proprietary House in Perth Amboy. Their target was William Franklin, the Crown’s highest-ranking civilian official between New York and Philadelphia.

Franklin was not a visiting British officer or a passing bureaucrat. He was the royal governor of New Jersey, and his arrest was a milestone that destroyed the bridge back to reconciliation.

His father, Benjamin Franklin, was already a figure of international renown. Printer, scientist, inventor and diplomat, he moved easily between Philadelphia and London. William had grown up in that orbit, trained in law and politics.

Unlike his father, who increasingly sympathized with the colonial cause, William sided with the Crown. He saw loyalty to Britain as vital to protect law, order and property.

Story continues below photo gallery.

In the months before militiamen arrived at his door, Franklin steadfastly refused to yield authority as governor. While local Committees of Observation enforced boycotts and intercepted mail, Franklin continued issuing proclamations, corresponding with British officials and loyalists and asserting that the government was still under control of the Crown.

By early January, patience had ended among members of the state’s revolutionary committees. Allowing Franklin to operate inside New Jersey was no longer seen as tolerable.

Shoemakers, tanners and farmers

The men sent to detain him were not professional soldiers in the British sense. In the 1872 “Official Register of the Officers and Men of New Jersey in the Revolutionary War,” historian William Stryker wrote that the 1st New Jersey Regiment was drawn largely from Essex, Bergen and Elizabethtown.

Stryker noted that shoemakers and tanners from Newark, men who had watched their businesses tighten under British currency and customs policies, made up a significant portion of the early volunteers.

Alongside them were Dutch-descended farmers from the Hackensack Valley, many of whom viewed Franklin’s land agents and surveyors as a threat to their claims, historian Adrian Leiby wrote in the 1962 work “The Revolutionary War in the Hackensack Valley.”

It also had members of the Elizabeth-Town Rifles, whose officers lived within sight of the British fleet in New York Harbor.

The group included men who had previously served during British campaigns during the French and Indian War, when Franklin held a captain’s commission. In her 1990 biography “William Franklin: Son of a Patriot, Servant of a King,” historian Sheila Skemp wrote that some had trained with him, while others had marched beside him.

Mission led by Lord Stirling from Basking Ridge

Primary source journals from the regiment describe the uncomfortable silence of the Jan. 8 mission, led by William Alexander, an aristocrat from Basking Ridge known as Lord Stirling. In the 1847 volume “The Life of William Alexander,” William Alexander Duer wrote that before the war, Stirling and Franklin had shared wine, discussed land deals and attended the same elite galas.

The group did not storm the Proprietary House. Contemporary journals describe a solemn encirclement. Guards were placed at the gates. According to the “New Jersey Archives” published in 1886, Franklin was informed by Stirling rather plainly that he “received orders… (and) to prevent your quitting the Province… I have therefore ordered a guard to be placed at your gates.”

Franklin objected immediately, calling the arrest a “high insult” and illegal.

The 1886 “New Jersey Archives” record that he argued that nobody in New Jersey possessed the right to restrain the king’s appointed governor, but it was no use. Authority had shifted.

Franklin signed a parole agreement restricting his movement. Within weeks, it nonetheless became clear that he had no intention of complying.

Seized and transported to Connecticut

He continued corresponding with loyalist figures and acting as governor in all but name. The Provincial Congress responded by ordering his removal from New Jersey. In June 1776, Franklin was seized again and transported under guard to Connecticut.

While Franklin remained imprisoned, events in New Jersey continued. Royal government collapsed. A new governor, William Livingston, assumed office. New Jersey moved formally into rebellion.

Franklin was released in a 1778 prisoner exchange and sent to British-occupied New York City. He did not return to New Jersey. Instead, he took up a new role as president of the Board of Associated Loyalists, an organization tasked with coordinating loyalist refugees and retaliatory actions against Patriot strongholds.

In research for the Online Institute for Advanced Loyalist Studies, Todd Braisted wrote that this organization operated as a paramilitary arm of the Loyalist cause.

From Manhattan, Franklin drew on his detailed knowledge of New Jersey’s geography and leadership. Raids authorized under the board targeted farms, barns and ironworks. Loyalist parties crossed the Hudson at night, seizing property and prisoners in Bergen and Essex counties.

Leiby documented that survivors later testified that attackers called out names as they approached, which provided evidence of the advanced knowledge Franklin had gathered as governor.

Franklin’s actions during these years ensured that he could never return. When the war ended, he relocated permanently to Britain, where he died in 1813.

As we were sequestered around the Expo Hall and Main Hall at the Pennsylvania Farm Show Complex and Expo Center, guided by Pennsylvania Secretary of Agriculture Russell Redding and a Benjamin Franklin re-enactor Bill Robling, my mind began to wander to food.

Thursday marked my inaugural visit to the annual Pennsylvania Farm Show in Harrisburg, the 110th iteration the expo and one that coincided with the 250^th anniversary of the Untied States’ founding. While I and York Daily Record photographer Paul Kuehnel joined a flock of other reporters for the Farm Show’s preview, we were treated to a taste of many of the foods, both new and returning, that would be offered to visitors in the sprawling food court inside the Expo Hall.

Considering I hadn’t had breakfast that morning, I was willing to oblige.

With such an anniversary on the horizon, the Pennsylvania Dairyman’s Association unveiled a flight of red, white and blue milkshake flavors. Newer additions to the menu including pickle pizza from the Pennsylvania FFA and Lion’s Mane coffee from the Pennsylvania Mushroom Farmers, among others.

Here are some of the items the preview provided, as well as what to try when the food court opens at noon on Jan. 9.

Lion’s Mane Mushroom Coffee

Mushrooms are a major cash crop for Pennsylvania, with nearly 60 percent of U.S. production of the crop running through the commonwealth. Lion’s Mane mushrooms, especially, have been linked to brain health benefits thanks to anti-inflammatory and antioxidant compounds, according to a published paper by the journal Nutrients.

The Rhode Island Lottery offers multiple draw games for those aiming to win big. Here’s a look at Jan. 8, 2026, results for each game:

Winning Lucky For Life numbers from Jan. 8 drawing

05-12-13-39-48, Lucky Ball: 13

Check Lucky For Life payouts and previous drawings here.

Winning Numbers numbers from Jan. 8 drawing

Midday: 9-9-1-3

Evening: 0-9-6-6

Check Numbers payouts and previous drawings here.

Winning Wild Money numbers from Jan. 8 drawing

01-07-12-30-35, Extra: 26

Check Wild Money payouts and previous drawings here.

Feeling lucky? Explore the latest lottery news & results

Are you a winner? Here’s how to claim your prize

• Prizes less than $600 can be claimed at any Rhode Island Lottery Retailer. Prizes of $600 and above must be claimed at Lottery Headquarters, 1425 Pontiac Ave., Cranston, Rhode Island 02920.
• Mega Millions and Powerball jackpot winners can decide on cash or annuity payment within 60 days after becoming entitled to the prize. The annuitized prize shall be paid in 30 graduated annual installments.
• Winners of the Lucky for Life top prize of $1,000 a day for life and second prize of $25,000 a year for life can decide to collect the prize for a minimum of 20 years or take a lump sum cash payment.