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By Root 1446 0

friend and Chatham neighbor, Shepard Kollock, had been talked into publishing his own newspaper by George Washington and Henry Knox. New Jersey had only one newspaper, the New Jersey Gazette, funded by the state legislature and published in Burlington, in the southern half of New Jersey and far from the population centers in the northern half. Washington wanted a newspaper that would be pro-army, a journal that was independent and respected, but one that he knew would praise the army and the country. Kollock, a lieutenant, was the nephew of William Goddard, one of America’s most respected editors. Kollock had edited a small newspaper in the West Indies and had recently worked on the newspaper in Burlington. Kollock was also eager to leave the army. Washington and Henry Knox met with the lieutenant and proposed that he become the editor of a new paper, the Jersey Journal, that would be subsidized by the army. He would keep any profits he made from advertising and circulation and the paper would be his when the war ended. He had to promise to promote the interests of the army in its columns.

Washington would also provide him with all the editorial material he needed, including copies of his letters to Congress and his orders, sermons by ministers that the general knew, and political columns and copies of bills in the New Jersey legislature provided by the commander’s close friend, New Jersey governor William Livingston.

The army would also provide couriers to deliver the newspaper not only in the Chatham–Morristown area, and to the army camp there, but to other army camps and to towns in New Jersey and New York not occupied by the British. Kollock would also receive an immediate honorable discharge from the army so that he could run the paper as a civilian, permitting him to return to his wife, who lived near Chatham, right away.

Kollock, a tall, large-framed man with shaggy eyebrows, a large nose, and grey eyes, agreed to the arrangement, one that would give him a career after the end of the war. Seely was there in Day’s Tavern, Chatham, when Kollock published his first issue and admired it along with his assistant, John Woods, and two young apprentices, Shelly Arnett and Matthias Day.1

There was something in Chatham that Seely admired more, though, and that was the lovely Mrs. Stephen Ball.

By the spring of 1778, an affair had been going on for some time between Colonel Seely and the attractive Mrs. Ball, the wife of his friend Doctor Ball. It is unknown how it started or how quickly it caught fire, but the two had deep feelings for each other. The relationship between two friends, in a small town where everyone seemed to know everyone else’s business, was dangerous, but the pair seemed to have carried it off without the local gossips finding out. Seely and Mrs. Ball usually rendezvoused in an apple orchard on the outskirts of Chatham; they arranged the meetings during the day in brief conversations with each other. The large apple orchards of the surrounding area, thick with trees in spring and summer, offered the privacy they needed.

Seely was smitten with her and referred to her as his “charmer” and “my jewel” in the cipher code in his diary. She was equally taken by him. They had known each other as friends for over six years since Seely had moved to Chatham. They saw each other in church, at stores in the village, and at dinner parties at the homes of mutual friends. Seely often walked past her residence in the village; the two passed each other constantly when on horseback. Mrs. Ball was friendly with Jane Seely and the women visited each other at their homes.

Little has been written about sex in the colonial era. There have been some works on the large percentages of women who became pregnant and then married, but the married men and women of the era were careful not to write down anything about the sexual liaisons outside of the marriage bed. There were surely a number of extramarital trysts then, just as there are today, and unhappy people sought new partners outside the home. There were few divorces because