A Declaration, an Execution and a Shipwreck

Today in New Jersey history:

July 8, 1776: The Declaration of Independence was proclaimed for the first time in New Jersey in Trenton, to “loud acclamation.”

July 8, 1797: Abraham Johnstone, an escaped slave living near Woodbury, was executed for murdering Thomas Read, another African-American who was his opponent in a lawsuit. Although convicted, Johnstone maintained his innocence to the last, but confessed that he had “too great a lust after strange women.”

July 8, 1898: The steamship Delaware, heading south from New York to Charleston, South Carolina and Jacksonville, Florida with a thirty-four man crew, civilian passengers and provisions for the United States army, caught fire in its cargo hold off Barnegat light. When attempts to extinguish the fire failed, Captain Andrew D. Ingram called passengers and crew on deck and calmly organized an abandon ship procedure with the Delaware’s lifeboats as the ship went up in flames. Life saving personnel from the Cedar Creek station and the crew of the fishing boat S. B. Miller took the crew and passengers aboard, and all survived.