Building an Impression with ZERO hard information- New Jersey State Prison, circa 1816

If you build impressions for any length of time that encompass off-beat or seldom touched on subjects, sooner or later you will be drawn to an impression that you desire to bring to fruition for which there is nothing to go on.

Case in point... New Jersey Penitentiary House, 1816.

New Jersey State Prison, and indeed the entire New Jersey Department of Corrections trace their existence back to the original state penal facility in NJ, The Penitentiary House. Founded pursuant to an act of the NJ Legislature in 1796, that very first institution opened in the final days of 1798, which put New Jersey in the books for a few records. NJ comes in at third for the oldest State Law Enforcement Unit- VA and Mass founded dedicated State Prison units just prior to NJ with personnel appointed to work therein. The NJ Penitentiary House is the second purpose built State Prison in America; Massachusetts drops out of the running here because, while they did found a unit of State Officers to keep State prisoners before NJ did, they adapted a mine as a prison, kept the prisoners locked below ground in the mine where they worked and never put up a purpose built secure facility there on the property. Pennsylvania and their Walnut Street Jail hold the record for the first cell block that housed State Prisoners in penitentiary style cells, under the Pennsylvania System, but this was always a city/county jail staffed by city/county officers and was never a State Prison. Pennsylvania's first State Prisons and Officers didn't come along until the 1820's.

Because I seek to document the NJ State Correction Officer back to those first beginnings in 1798, my curiosity extends to clothing and equipment. Here is where matters get a bit gray. The facility itself survived in largely unchanged physical condition during those years between 1838 and 1928 when it served as the State Arsenal, and in those years it was photographed at several different times, examples of which survive. As for locks, there are a few remaining on the old Front House structure, and the keys can be surmised from those locks. The arms are no problem- The State Prison drew weapons and ammunition from the stocks of the State Militia and later the NJ National Guard until 1928. There are several examples of requisitions for, and mentions in the Arsenal's reports of muskets, rifles, and ammunition provided for the use of the State Prison from the early 19th Century on. As the weapons and accoutrements of the State Militia and later NJ National Guard are well known, the arms provided to the Armory at NJSP are likewise no secret.

From 1880 onward, images and knowledge of the uniforms worn by the Deputies at NJSP exist and are not only known to me but have been used to have new examples produced of the uniforms actually worn by the staff in various eras, which I have happily worn to various functions and historical demonstrations. Before 1880, however, clothing was not documented in words or images. The 1880 line in the NJSP Annual Report to the NJ State Legislature on the progress of the State Prison that year mentioned that the newly issued uniforms, which came into use on 1 May 1880 were the first at the prison. One would be tempted to take that as a definitive word on that subject and let the matter rest were I not well aware that where the past history of the State Prison and the department in general are concerned, definitive knowledge of the past of the organization is spotty on a good day. General Gershom Mott, the Keeper of the State Prison in 1880 (the forerunner of today's Commissioner of the NJDOC) may have stated that he issued uniforms for the first time, but that doesn't necessarily mean that those were the first- They were the first in memory.

There are common sense reasons why a uniform of sorts was probably worn in the decades before 1880, and most certainly in the Penitentiary House years. In 1829, the State Legislature conducted an investigation of the Penitentiary House as part of a move to seek appropriations to build a newer, more secure facility, an effort that was ultimately successful and resulted in the construction of the Fortress Penitentiary compound that still stands and is in use today, almost intact. The investigation looked into the records of the prison and discovered that there were well over 100 escapes from the Penitentiary House between 1798 and 1829! If you think that is a deplorable security record, get ready for this: The Penitentiary House considered an escape to be the successful escape of an inmate, not from the confines of the prison, but only if the inmate made it out of the city! This little tidbit serves to show that 109 inmates made it out of the prison AND out of town in the years before 1829, and there was an additional, considerable number of inmates who made it out of the prison who were apprehended in town and returned to custody.

Here is where common sense comes into the equation. The NJ Penitentiary House was what was colloquially known in the Old West as a "Leaky Jail", meaning that it was easy to escape from. In thirty one years, 109 inmates had made it over the wall and out of town, and at least twice as many were apprehended before they could get very far. There were a number of incidences of inmates being shot by State Prison Deputies as they ran down the streets surrounding the prison, and from the numbers of escapees we see in the records it's fairly obvious that seeing a fleeing prisoner with a keeper in pursuit with a musket and affixed bayonet was a common sight, especially at night. It is only common sense that the Principal Keeper of the Penitentiary House took steps to see that his assistant keepers were dressed in such a manner that when they were seen in public pursuing a prisoner  that they could be easily identified by the citizens of Trenton and the surrounding areas so that they could tell the difference between the prison staff and the prisoners when they were seen scuffling in public when escapees were pursued and apprehended.

My current working theory is that, as with arms and accoutrements, which came from the stocks of the State Militia, certain items of clothing common to the local citizen soldiers probably came into use by the Officers of the State Prison in the early 19th Century. The most likely apparel would be the generic Militia Jacket and Round Hat, plenty of which were locally available during and after the War of 1812 and which persisted in use for decades afterward. The jacket and trousers were simple garments that any local seamstress or housewife could stitch together, and alternately might have been produced as a trade by the women incarcerated at the Penitentiary House. Round hats (very similar in look to Top Hats) were produced by hatters everywhere, and were issued in large numbers during the War of 1812. It is my belief that the Keeper saw to it that his men wore a militia style jacket in gray or black and a round hat with a hat plate identifying them as State Prison Keepers as a way to see that they would be recognized and aided when chasing escaped prisoners.

Below is an approximation of what the post War of 1812 (1816-1836) State Penitentiary Officer might have looked like. The outfit closely resembles the cut and style of a local militiaman of the era, differenced by the hat plate and the color variation of a black rather than a gray jacket to set him apart as a State Penitentiary Keeper. Compare that to the other illustration farther down of the garb of New Jersey volunteer regiments in the War of 1812 and you can see how the look shaped up. Add to this a Springfield Model 1795 or 1816 Musket and bayonet, cartridge box, a flintlock pistol and truncheon or short billy club and there you have it.

As with many things in reenacting and historical impressions, in the gray area beyond where good documentation and surviving examples of clothing and equipment end and the need to represent them goes on, you sometimes have to reason things out and take your best shot. Until some hard evidence surfaces, the below is my best shot- The 1816 State Penitentiary Officer, the many times great grand dad of the New Jersey State Correctional Police Officer of today.

2016 New Jersey Living History Fair- The reenacting season has begun!

Saturday, May 14, 2016 I attended the Spirit of the Jerseys N.J. State Living History Fair and kicked off my reenacting season, such as it is. (There isn't much in the way of events that fit my impression, but they're all in the warm months, so...)

I was ambitious this year- I debuted not one but two new impressions, both of them New Jersey State Prison Deputies, one circa 1862- 78, the other 1898- 1910.

The 1862 fell together quickly, with only a hat needed to be custom made for the outfit. I had almost everything else already with the exception of an inexpensive Civil War era vest and some leather goods. The biggest difficulty was the cap device. Unlike the later formal uniform hats, the 1862 is an all cloth piece, requiring sewn on embroidered devices and lettering. The circa 1862- 1878 NJSP Deputy Keeper needed only the correct 1861 Springfield rifle musket and bayonet that was the standard issue arm that the Deputies at NJSP used in that time period and some more or less generic leather gear to round out the look.

The 1862 cap is an example of how you can plan months ahead, make all the right moves and still be left without a crucial component that your look depends upon to make you distinctive and provide identification of your subject. Months back I had worked with someone who runs a patch and custom embroidery business as a sideline. In the past I got excellent service and great cooperation. After we had worked together to design the cap device I needed, the maker had a health problem that went from a temporary setback to having to take some time off to apparently dropping the business altogether.

Hey, these things happen. I'm not mad. I was, however, left scrambling to finish off the cap that I had waited for Dirty Billy in Gettysburg to custom make for me with a color and brim that are unique to my needs. As I hit the two week mark before the Fair I had to admit that the cap was not going to look the way I planned it to. A tough choice had to be made- Go with a plain cap with no device and lettering (I really didn't want to do that because with no State Prison lettering I was going to be correcting people all day long who would see me as a sailor) or find some other design option that could provide an acceptable cap device in time for the Fair.

Luckily, when I was ordering the vest that I was going to wear as part of the 1862 impression, I saw some embroidered wreaths that were worn on Union Army Officer's hats and caps in the catalog, and I bought one each of the large and small patches. When I matched up the large patch to the cap, the size was just right. A trip to the uniform shop to have some other work done allowed me to have them make up an embroidered patch with the words STATE PRISON along the bottom and the wreathed cap patch sewn to it, with N.J. added to the center of the wreath. Not the elaborate embroidered device I wanted, but more than good enough for the Fair. My biggest headache was sitting down and sewing this all onto the cap myself with needle and thread. I am many things, and I may be a decent reenactor, but as a tailor I am a miserable flop! I'm glad nobody spotted how abysmally bad the stitching on that hat was!

While I was at the uniform shop I also had them sew N.J. State buttons onto the reproduction U.S. 1887 Fatigue Blouse that I had sourced for the 1898-1910 impression. I was surprised to find that I could purchase a reasonably priced generic uniform item as part of a State Prison impression. After viewing photographs in the 1906 Rahway Reformatory Annual Report that depicted many of the line Officers wearing U.S. Model 1887 Blouses as daily uniform items, and then finding a supplier that sells that blouse at a very reasonable price I rolled a circa 1898-1910 impression using everything I already had as part of the 1880's outfit by substituting the 1887 Blouse for the 1880 Frock Coat and changing out the 1880's firearms for a U.S. Model 1898 Springfield- Krag .30-40 infantry rifle, a Colt Army Special in .38spl and period correct antique handcuffs and leg irons from my collection of keys and restraints, all from 1898 and later and all of which I had on hand.

The Living History Fair was a blast! I decided for family reasons not to put up a table display under a tent fly as I did last year. I missed so much of the fair last year by being tied to a table that I wanted to try the one-man roving impression thing, as I saw several people do last year. One fellow in particular, Rip Diringer, who does a very nice Spanish-American War soldier impression inspired me to try it this year. He takes his impression everywhere, talks to everyone, checks out all of the camps and displays and in so doing he sees the entire fair. That's for me!

I wore the 1862 the first three hours of the fair, changed out and wore the 1898 for the rest of the day, and walked around the whole place wearing both. The 1862 didn't draw too much attention, but the 1898 really turned heads. The big tin star and leg shackles swinging from my belt really shouted Lawman well in advance as I moved around.

And that's the biggest piece of information I came away with from the 2016 N.J. Living History Fair: You can have a meticulous and well put together look, but if you have some sort of accent piece as part of your outfit that proves to be an eye-opener, be it a live tiger, a very real looking head on a pike, or in my case a tin star and antique leg shackles hanging out front where everyone can see them you stand a much better chance of sparking interest from viewers and fellow presenters alike.

The Planned Impressions for 2016

Time marches on, and I'm well into planning for the impressions I will display in 2016. I currently plan two impressions, an 1861 NJ State Prison Deputy Keeper, and an 1810 NJ Penitentiary Assistant Keeper.

The 1861 Deputy turned out to be easy to settle on- Since a formal uniform pattern was not mandated until mid 1880 and I have records that confirm that the issued longarm was the 1861 Springfield Rifled Musket as produced under contract by the Trenton Arms Company for Civil War service, all I needed to research was the cap. There are no known photographs or illustrations of State Prison staff before the year 1882, so the style of cap was settled upon through research into service cap styles for policemen, military personnel, ship's crews and the like that were standard or common for the time period. It turns out that one style was almost universal during that era and was almost certainly the cap used by the Officers of the State Prison at Trenton. It is best known as the Union Naval Officer's Cap even though it had existed for at least a decade previous to the Civil War and was used in many different services.

Because the announcement that was made about the first standardized uniforms at the State Prison in 1880 made a big point of stipulating that the outfits would be blue, I surmised that the earlier caps were very likely black or dark gray. To avoid the obvious stigma associated with gray uniforms, I decided on black. These caps usually had embroidered emblems and job titles on their front between the crown and the chin strap. For the State Prison cap I decided on an early version of the NJ State Arms and the words STATE PRISON embroidered on black wool broadcloth:

It was pretty much standard for police and prison officers in the years before the Civil War and in many places for decades after the conflict to dress in plain business attire and wear an official cap sporting a badge, symbol or wording denoting their official office or title. As late as 1874 when the Chief of Police of Hackettstown NJ was murdered by a suspect during an arrest, he was the only paid full time Police Officer in town. He had unpaid volunteer special officers who drew a police cap and a baton at City Hall when they were called to duty. In earlier times, local police officers had no uniforms or badges and made due for identification by placing hat bands embroidered with POLICE or DEPUTY on their Stetsons or top hats:

The embroidered cap worn by prison officers otherwise dressed as bankers or businessmen was the norm and lasted until prisons adopted uniforms for the custody staff in the years after the Civil War:

Thus clothed they looked as much like railroad conductors as anything else. That similarity as opposed to looking anything like police, as well as the influx of Civil War veterans returning home after the conflict, men who proudly fought and bled wearing the blue garb of soldiers in the Union Army may account for the overall shift to blue uniforms and hats in the law enforcement field in the last quarter of the 19th Century. The 1861 NJ State Prison Deputy impression will be a suit such as the men in the above photo are wearing, with the black cap pictured earlier.

The 1810 recreation is much more difficult. In reasoning this one out I had to make a number of deductions about clothing and equipment. There are absolutely no written descriptions of the clothing, no illustrations, no surviving examples of like equipment or clothing to study. In deciding on which way to go here I followed the only equipment with a documented history upon which I could draw: The firearms.

From the very beginning, up until approximately 1930, the State Prison drew long guns from the stocks of the NJ State Militia (later the NJ National Guard) for use at the original Penitentiary House from 1798 through 1836, and at NJ State Prison from then on. Through exhaustive research I discovered reports from the Arsenal Commandant to the General of the NJ Militia/National Guard and the Governor detailing types and amounts of arms and ammunition supplied to the State Prison: Muzzle loader muskets, then 1861 Springfields, 1873 Trapdoors and later Krag rifles in the 1890s, each older type returned to the State Arsenal in exchange for the newer, more modern arms.

With this close, century long relationship with the State Arsenal and their stocks of arms and supplies, it was not unreasonable to extrapolate a connection, at least in style, between the State Militia's other equipment and the supplies and clothing in use at the NJ Penitentiary.

The standard militia headgear was known at the time as a Round Hat, what we call a Top Hat now. NJ units wore either a leather or beaver round hat with either a tin plate bearing an emblem of a US Eagle and a unit designation held to the front by a leather strap, a brass stamped emblem pinned to the hat or the emblem painted onto the hat. There is one surviving example of a NJ militia round hat, at the museum at Morristown park, the hat worn by the Morris Rangers in the War of 1812. It is a beaver felt hat with a tin hat plate strapped to the front. As this is the only authentic New Jersey hat I can document from the time period that was actually used by the NJ militia, I decided on this hat as the model for the reproduction for the 1810 Assistant Keeper. The tin hat plate will have a depiction of the State Arms of 1812 and the words New Jersey Penitentiary painted on it instead of what you see below:

The clothing will be generic militia clothing in colors consistent with NJ local militiamen- A plain jacket in dark blue wool with brass buttons, linen or wool trousers, white vest and shirt. These are items in an easy to make style that were commonly made at home or locally when the militia units were directed to adopt some form of common dress when military operations were likely, such as the mass call ups for Shays Rebellion, the undeclared war with France in the late 1790's, and the War of 1812. With these call ups having occurred three times in 40 years and Trenton being not only the State Capitol but also the seat of the government of the United States for several years during summers in the 1790's, the Trenton area militias would have been better equipped than the average back country militia unit. There would have been uniforms and uniform suppliers around in 1798, and the Officers of the Penitentiary House very likely dressed in these available garments.

A standard US Springfield 1795 Musket and bayonet (readily available as replicas on the reenactor market) cartridge box or kit bag and standard period leather goods will round out the impression.

The rationale is that, with the frequency of escapes from the Penitentiary House (judging from newspaper stories from the time they were chasing escaping inmates down the street, shooting up the neighborhood and marching prisoners back to the jail at the point of bayonets as often as once or twice a month) they would quickly have seen the need for the Prison Officers to be easily identified by the public- If you look into your back yard and you see two men struggling over control of a musket and they're both dressed in crummy, nondescript clothing, who do you help? The Keeper would almost certainly have made some provision for his Officers to be easily identified on sight, and this would have been the cheapest as well as the most likely way he may have done so, given what we know about law enforcement in those times. The State of New Jersey seems to have regarded the staff at the Penitentiary as an armed service similar to the State Militia, only a law enforcement organization rather than a military unit. It's safe to be guided by this when making decisions on how to portray the early State Prison Officer, given that we have nothing else to go on.

The trials and tribulations of creating what may be the only real vintage Prison Officer impression out there...

I know what you're thinking: How in the actual hell did I wind up doing a recreation of 19th Century Prison Officers? I'm sometimes surprised by it myself, although maybe not that I am actually doing impressions- I used to march with Union Army Civil War reenactors. I do sometimes find it remarkable that I found my way to this particular subject. Some explanations are in order...

I didn't just pick this impression out of a hat. As I've already said, I have some reenacting experience, so I already knew I had the temperament and predilection to do historic impressions. The subject, however, is not one that the average person on the street would choose or even think of as a subject to recreate, unless...

I was a Correctional Officer. In late 1989 I walked into a correctional facility in New Jersey as a recruit Correction Officer. I walked out in mid 2015 into retirement as a Major, a commanding officer at New Jersey State Prison, the maximum security lockup at Trenton. In 25 1/2 years on the job I saw, heard and did many things, as one would expect- some good, some bad, and much of it challenging. In and around the career, I developed a burning curiosity about the history of the State Prison and the Officers who served there over the last two centuries. I'd always been curious about prison history, but the burning part started one evening while I was on an online genealogy site, working on my family tree.

I was hard at work filling in the blanks in my tree, searching and verifying resources, tracing family lines and connections, and with no warning whatsoever something pivotal happened: I found someone I was not expecting. I discovered a text transcription of a City Directory for Trenton, New Jersey dated 1882, and unsurprisingly I dove right in looking for people named Sanderson. After skimming the S section it became sadly obvious that there were none. I was disappointed, but not terribly surprised- I was to find out when I finally managed to trace my bloodline that my Sanderson family was not only very elusive, but also they weren't from New Jersey- They were from Massachusetts- My 2nd Great Grandfather came down to Jersey in the 1890's when he became a partner in a business in Trenton and married there a few years later.

When I didn't find any of the relatives I was searching for, I let my curiosity roam, settled in with an iced tea and browsed the document. It was an early enough edition- 1882- that there were no telephone numbers listed with the names- In 1882 very few telephones were to be found in private homes in America. The directory consisted of a simple alphabetical listing of names, followed by each person's address and their occupation. It was interesting to look at everyone's place of work and career written right there. Teamster. Cooper. Potter. Deputy State Prison Keeper. Dressmaker. WAIT- Go Back! DEPUTY WHAT?

Yup, there it was. Deputy State Prison Keeper. This guy worked at the State Prison in 1882! I started scanning the occupations and I began to find more and more of them. I was tickled- Here I was, a modern day correctional officer, looking at the names of the staff who worked in the very place I was serving, back in 1882. It was very, very cool.

I then realized that the directory I was looking at had been scanned through an Optical Character Recognition program and had been posted as text on a web page, and I could therefore highlight and copy it. I did just that, and then pasted the text into Excel, formatted it and Voila! I had a sort-able list! I sorted it so that everyone in the directory with the word PRISON listed in their occupation came out at the top, and there it was- Several dozen names- The crew at the State Prison in 1882, at least those who lived in Trenton. One guy was actually named Ahab!

I browsed through the group, looking at all of the names- There it was, that quickly, right at the top- The name I wasn't expecting: Joseph Ashmore Jr., occupation: Deputy Keeper, State Prison. That took me by surprise. I realized with a start that I'm related to Ashmores, and my Ashmores lived in Trenton during this time period. I had a feeling... I switched browser tabs over to the genealogy website where I research my family tree, followed the trunk up to the Ashmores, went back past my 3rd Great Grandmother and... There he was- Joseph Ashmore Jr., nephew of my 4th Great Grandfather!

I don't know why, but it never occurred to me that I had relatives that I never knew about that worked at the State Prison. Having now identified one, I suddenly realized that I had to know about this, my Cousin, Joe Ashmore. This was the beginning of it all. This was the tipping point where I passed from being just one of any number of correctional officers with only a passing interest in the history of the prison service in New Jersey to eventually being a full-bore, hard charging researcher, and eventually the volunteer historian of the NJDOC.

As for the period impression, it came from the discovery of and curiosity about my cousins at the State Prison as well. Yes, cousins. Joe Ashmore wasn't the only one I found. There were four more that I could identify through the old records. One of them was shot and killed in the line of duty at the State Prison in 1894. When I found out that James Lippincott, the first documented line of duty death in the history of the NJ Department of Corrections was also a distant cousin, I was hooked. The history of the service, the people who served, it had to come out of the basements and the old dusty files. It wasn't just the history I shared with all other NJ State Correction Officers. It was also personal- It was my family history.

And that's how The Vintage Prison Officer came to be. He is myself, but only because someone must don the old uniform. He's also James Lippincott, Joseph Ashmore Jr., Winfield Scott Carty, and all the rest. They were there. They made it all work. They fought and bled. Several of them died in the process. They should be remembered- and they will be.