Loyalists, a Hanging & a Baseball Star

Today in New Jersey history:

June 26, 1776: The New Jersey Provincial Congress, meeting in Trenton, ordered militiamen to suppress Tory demonstrators in Hunterdon County and directed the arrest of others in Monmouth County’s Upper Freehold and Shrewsbury Townships, where Loyalist agents were active and somewhat successful in exploiting Quaker ambivalence about the war and translating it into active opposition to the Patriot cause. 

June 26, 1812: Mary Cole was hanged in Newton for murdering her mother, Agnes Thuers, the previous Christmas in the Cole home in Lafayette. Cole slit her mother's throat and she and her husband Cornelius buried Thuers in a shallow grave in the cellar. They subsequently rented the house and several months later the tenants discovered the body in the basement. Cole and her husband were tried and convicted, she of murder and he of being an accomplice after the fact. The murder was apparently a result of Thuers being an annoying person, to the point of insisting on sharing the couples' bed. 

June 26, 1974: Baseball superstar Derek Sanderson Jeter was born in Pequannock. The Jeter family moved to Kalamazoo, Michigan when Derek was four, but he spent summers with his grandparents in West Milford and attended numerous New York Yankee games, becoming a passionate fan. Jeter enjoyed a stellar baseball career in high school. The Yankees drafted him in 1992 and he made his major league debut in 1995. Throughout his career Jeter has contributed substantially to the success of the Yankees’ franchise. He holds many postseason records and has a .351 World Series batting average.