A signal beacon built by order of General George Washington during the American Revolution may have been located at the corner of King George and Mountainview Roads, behind the King George Inn. One of a string of 23 signals erected in the spring of 1779, the Warren beacon has been the subject of much speculation: The available evidence places it on property now owned by George Dealaman, directly across Mountainview Road from the old fieldstone Mount Bethel firehouse (now a clothing store).

Washington led his army of 8,000 back to Middlebrook in the mountains just above Bound Brook where it would go into camp for the winter in December 1778. "It was in a mood of hope" that Washington returned to New Jersey, wrote Carl E. Prince in Middlebrook: The American Eagle's Nest (1958). "The summer's campaigns had been favorable to the Continental cause, and the Commander-in-Chief felt that the tide of war had begun to turn in his favor."

The Continental Army had first camped at Middlebrook from May to July 1777, and then spent the winter of 1777-78 at Valley Forge, where the troops suffered unspeakable hardships. As the winter of 1778-79 approached, Washington decided to return to the Watchung Mountains. Washington knew the area was readily fortified and centrally located, positioned as it was to defend both the New Jersey countryside and enable the Americans to keep watch on the British in New York City. That winter, with the British 40 miles away in New York, American soldiers from Virginia, Maryland, Delaware and Pennsylvania built camps on sites scattered around present-day Bridgewater, Bound Brook and Manville.

Maryland troops built the signals on Wayne's, Lincoln's and Quibbletown Gaps. Troops from Pennsylvania were "to proceed to a remarkable Hill near Princeton to erect a Beacon there." Eventually other alarm posts were constructed along the Hudson, in Sussex, Bergen, Essex and Hunterdon counties, and as far south as the Neversink Hills at Sandy Hook, but Somerset's Watchung Mountains were the key.

The beacons were tall, obelisk-shaped structures, filled with dry brush. When the alarm was sounded, these signals would be lighted, and the ensuing blaze and smoke, says Prince, could be seen for miles around. "The initial alarm to set the signals blazing was the discharge of three pieces of cannon from General Stirling's headquarters near Middlebrook."

There were at least six beacons in Somerset County. According to a list found in the papers of Governor William Livingston, one of the beacons was in Warren, another in Watchung. The list names the "Persons engaged to fire the Beacons in Somerset," as follows:

• Capt. Smalley, at Stoney Hill - Beacon No. 6
• Lt. Catterlin - Beacon No. 5
• Ensign Van Dorn - Beacon No. 4
• Lt. Mackleworth - Beacon No. 3
• Capt. Sebring - Beacon No. 2
• Lt. VanDewater - Beacon No. 1

Several of the sites can be tentatively identified. Captain Sebring lived at the foot of the mountains, in what is now Green Brook. Lt. Catterlin lived on Mountain Blvd., near present-day O'Connor's Restaurant, at the Quibbletown Gap. And Captain Smalley lived on Mountain Avenue in Warren.

But where was Beacon No. 6, the one assigned to Captain Smalley? No doubt this was the beacon on "the Hill upon Baskenridge Road" (the only beacon not built at or near a gap in the mountains), part of which is now known at Mount Bethel Road, but where? Another reference places No. 6 "about four miles north of Col. Van Horne's house...." The answer may lie in a typescript article about the Compton family written by Cora Wilcox of Somerville, a descendant. Ms. Wilcox first quotes an article that appeared in 1918 in the Somerset County Historical Quarterly, by Thompson B. Drake, a grandson of James and Abigail Compton, who reminisced about his family's history, noting that in 1781 James and Abigail owned a farm of some 644 acres on the left side of the road leading to Liberty Corner, adjacent to the Dead River.

"Like most people of this period," said Drake, "they owned a large number of slaves, which were used for both farm and domestic work. One evening during the same year Mr. Compton saw, a beacon light, which was used by the colonists to warn other colonists of the approach of the British Army. Mr. Compton rushed into the house, called all the slaves together and ordered them to get all the cattle, horses and wagons together and make for the Dead River, which lay in the rear of the Plantation or farm." Ms. Wilcox, writing c. 1936, then adds to Drakes's mention of the beacon light, saying that the beacon was "atop Mount Bethel above the cemetery, which my father showed me once when a child driving me out to see our old homesteads and historical places of interest. This his beacon light spot would now be right back of the Mt. Bethel Fire House and from there one can see all over the Western Valley toward Liberty Valley and Basking Ridge, N.J." Interestingly enough, Mount Bethel is approximately four miles northeast (as the crow flies) of Col. Van Horne's house, which is near the new Somerville ballpark.

The Mount Bethel location makes sense in one respect, because it was on a well-traveled road between Green Brook and Basking Ridge. From another standpoint, however, the location raises questions. At 440 feet above sea level, the smoke from a beacon at Mount Bethel could easily be seen throughout the Passaic River valley, at Long Hill (where there was another beacon) and certainly in Baskenridge. But the peaks of the First and Second Mountains are more than 500 feet above sea level and would have blocked any direct communication by beacon from the signals at Steel's, Wayne's, Lincoln's and Quibbletown Gaps, all much lower. Possibly, Lord Stirling's men realized the difficulty presented by the height of the First and Second Mountains: Beacons built on the top of the mountains, though visible both to the south and north, would have been a logistical nightmare, considering the short time available in which the beacons were to be built. There were no roads to the mountaintops, which in any event afforded few level areas, and even if the beacons had been built there, the riders who had to reach the beacons to set them on fire would have had a difficult, time-consuming uphill journey through heavy timber. The Mount Bethel beacon appears to have been a compromise location: It was highly visible to the patriots living north of the Second Mountain and could easily be reached by an express rider traveling along Mount Bethel Road from any of the gaps where the other beacons were located.

Benson J. Lossing, in his Pictorial Field-Book of the American Revolution, includes a copy of Lord Stirling's order directing the construction of the beacons and his sketch of what such a beacon would look like: "Each of the beacons are to be of the following dimensions: at bottom, fourteen feet square, to rise in a pyramidal form to about eighteen or twenty logs of about seven feet long; twenty logs of about six feet long. He should then sort his longest logs as to diameter, and place the four longest on the ground, parallel to each other, and about three feet apart from each other. He should then place the four next logs in size across these at right angles, and so proceed until all the logs of fourteen feet be placed. Then he is to go on in the same manner with logs of twelve feet long, and when they are all placed, with those of a lesser size, till the whole are placed, taking care, as he goes on, to fill the vacancies between the logs with old dry split wood or useless dry rails and brush, not too close, and leaving the fifth tier open for firing and air. In the beginning of his work to place a good stout sapling in the center, with part of its top left, about ten or twelve feet above the whole work. The figure of the beacon will appear thus. The two upper rows of logs should be fastened in their places with good strong wooden plugs or trunnels." One expert estimates that it would have taken 24 men one day to cut the needed trees and build the beacon.

The beacons served their purpose on numerous occasions, summoning the militia to arms in an era when the fastest communication otherwise was a man on horseback. William Lloyd, a militiaman from Upper Freehold, was on duty in Monmouth County when the militia was called out. "The British army, or part of them, had marched out of Brunswick to Somerset Courthouse," recalled Lloyd. "I went with the militia.... We marched by way of Princeton to Sowerland Mountain. Met with General Sullivan and his command there. About sundown he ordered a fire to be made upon the mountain, and as an answering one...appearing on Steel's Mountain, we were ordered to march..." toward Washington's headquarters at Middlebrook. The beacons were also lit in June 1780 to summon the militia to the Battle of Springfield.

As might be expected, nothing remains of Beacon No. 6. Unless memory failed both Ms. Wilcox and her father, however, the beacon light for which Captain Smalley was responsible was located on or near property owned by Benjamin Enyart, another patriot of the Revolution, directly behind where the King George Inn now stands. Admittedly, the evidence is not indisputable. "The Hill upon Baskenridge Road" is not a precise description. However, another researcher writing in 1951 concluded that Smalley's beacon was "near the gap on the road from Mount Bethel to Ford's" that is, somewhere between the King George Inn and the Kirch House. A topographic map of that portion of Mount Bethel Road that lies on Stony Hill, that is, the Second Mountain, shows that the two highest elevations [at 440 ft. above sea level] are near the present location of the Mount Bethel Baptist Church and the Dealaman property, directly across the road from the old firehouse. Both of these locations are readily accessible to a rider using the road, but the Dealaman location has three distinct advantages: (1) It is within a hundred feet of a home occupied by a patriot family [there is no evidence of any buildings at the time of the Revolution near the present church location]; (2) it is closer to Smalley's house; and [3] being close to the edge of Stony Hill, it would have been much more visible to the people living in the valley below than a site several hundred feet further back into the gap.