Day: August 28, 2026

“I think I found a bone.”

A volunteer whispered that to us on the last day of a public archaeology project at the Red Bank Battlefield Park in southern New Jersey in June 2022. Over the course of four days, dozens of volunteers worked under the supervision of trained archaeologists and other professionals to dig, sift and identify artifacts at the site of the Battle of Red Bank on Oct. 22, 1777.

The bone was a stunning discovery. We are an archaeologist and the director of the Red Bank Battlefield Park. We knew this public project would likely reveal dozens of artifacts, but we never anticipated finding human remains.

And we certainly did not expect to find a mass burial – one of just a handful of Revolutionary War mass burials that have been discovered.

Whose bone was this? How many others were there? And what exactly happened here 250 years ago?

The Battle of Red Bank

The Battle of Red Bank was a major upset victory for the patriots in what became known as the Philadelphia Campaign, a series of maneuvers and engagements that ultimately resulted in the capture of Philadelphia by the British.

In the fall of 1777, Fort Mercer played a pivotal role protecting Philadelphia from British troops – and the ships supplying them – moving up the Delaware River. The city had fallen to the British in September, but the patriots still maintained control of the river. Two Rhode Island regiments under the command of Col. Christopher Greene defended the fort.

In an attempt to open the river to the Royal Navy and establish a supply line, the British Army sent a Hessian brigade to attack the fort. Hessians were German auxiliary soldiers hired by the British crown to supplement their troops.

Despite the patriot forces being dramatically outnumbered, they won a stunning victory. Our project team historian Robert Selig’s original research in the Marburg Archives in Germany documents that when the smoke had cleared, 111 Hessian soldiers lay dead. Many more were wounded and died in the coming days and weeks. It was one of the worst losses of Hessian life in the Revolution. On the American side, there were 14 dead and 23 wounded.

On Oct. 23, 1777 – the day after the battle – Greene ordered the Rhode Island regiments to bury the dead. The remains of the Hessian soldiers were unceremoniously dumped in a ditch.

As one member of the Rhode Island regiments, Sgt. John Smith, documented: “[I]n the morning we began to strip & Bury the dead of our men & hesians (sic)– we buried 75 hesians in one Grave in the intrenchment & Covered them over & 8 or 10 more below the bank by the River – it took us all day to Bury the dead.”

Maps from the period indicate a burial space near the prosperous home of Quakers James and Ann Whitall, whose property had been seized to construct Fort Mercer. However, our burial space was nowhere near the house.

Sobering evidence of war

Located on the Delaware River directly across from Philadelphia International Airport, the Red Bank Battlefield today offers a mix of history, recreation and nature.

Visitors can see the Whitall House, which dates to 1748 and served as a field hospital in the days after the battle, and the earthen remains of Fort Mercer. There are also recreational paths and views of the river and of the Philadelphia skyline.

The park is administered by Gloucester County’s Department of Parks and Recreation. In 2021, Gloucester County purchased a small, quarter-acre parcel adjacent to the park’s northern boundary. The site was particularly compelling because it contained an undisturbed trench, a part of Fort Mercer’s fortifications.

In the spring of 2022, we had begun to archaeologically survey the site – never expecting that this unassuming parcel would become among the most significant spots in the park.

After the discovery of human remains, our team of archaeologists and volunteers worked tirelessly over the long, hot summer. Eventually we recovered the remains of 15 individuals believed to be Hessian soldiers. The project has benefited greatly from the resources committed by the New Jersey State Police Forensic Anthropology Unit.

The work of removing the human remains was delicate. The bones were not in good condition; there were no fully articulated skeletons. The team recovered pieces of people: craniums, jawbones and femurs. As the work progressed, it became very clear from the artifacts of battle – the buttons, buckles and musket balls – that these were Hessian dead.

As the team worked, they numbered the remains from 1 to 15.

Bones are artifacts and can share powerful stories that are sometimes missed in traditional primary sources. This was the case with No. 7, whose remains told a particularly sad story. He was found face down at the base of the fort wall. We believe he was hit by a lead musket ball in his right hip, a lead canister shot in the center of his back and iron grapeshot, which is like a mini-cannonball about the size of a golf ball, in his left arm.

Other injuries revealed more grim realities of a Revolutionary War battlefield, such as the Pennsylvania Navy’s use of bar and chain shot as ammunition. Bar shot looks like a heavily weighted dumbbell. Chain shot is two cannonballs linked by a chain. Once fired from a cannon, both spin as they sweep through the air toward the target.

Traditionally used to damage a ship’s rigging and destroy masts, in this instance it was used by the patriots as an antipersonnel weapon, with devastating effect. We did not have complete individuals. What we recovered was battlefield gore.

‘CSI’ meets 18th-century burial

Since the discovery in 2022, the team has grown from historians, archaeologists and forensic anthropologists to include experts in stable isotope analysis and ancient DNA.

Teeth can tell a lot about a person’s early years. The food we eat and the water we drink create a unique signature that signals our geographic origins. By analyzing the tooth enamel, the stable isotope experts concluded that the soldiers’ diets were consistent with a European diet of wheat, barley and oats.

The analysis also indicates that these men spent their childhoods within a 30-mile (48-kilometer) radius of one another. Ancient DNA studies conducted on three of the individuals by Raquel Fleskes of Dartmouth College demonstrates strong northwestern European ancestry.

The project’s “CSI” approach to studying the past captured the public’s attention. We have offered presentations on this project nationally and internationally to well over 1,000 people. A new round of funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities is allowing for more robust testing of our remaining individuals.

The ultimate goal of the project is to identify at least one individual by name.

Rethinking the ‘enemy’

As America celebrates 250 years since its founding, we believe the Red Bank Battlefield Park project is an opportunity for more nuanced interpretations of who and what constitutes the enemy.

Rather than seeing the battle as good guys versus bad guys, we encourage people to consider the space in between. These men never anticipated being dumped in a New Jersey ditch so far from home.

The mass burial of these soldiers also prompts questions regarding who and what we remember – and who and what we forget.

War is frequently romanticized at Revolutionary War battlefields. Red Bank Battlefield Park is one of the few battlefield sites that tackles the actual violence of a Revolutionary War battlefield.

The discovery of human remains encourages a more human connection with the past while fostering empathy for those left behind at the end of the battle. It compels us to consider the real lives that were lost on a Revolutionary War battlefield and the human cost of war.

Read more of our stories about Philadelphia and Pennsylvania, or sign up for our Philadelphia newsletter on Substack.

Jennifer Janofsky receives funding from the New Jersey Historical Commission, the New Jersey Council for the Humanities, the Villanova Lepage Center, the New Jersey Historic Trust, the County of Gloucester. I serve on the board of the Glen Ridge Historical Society and the Glassboro Historic Preservation Commission.

The Red Bank Battlefield Archaeology Project has received funding from the New Jersey Council for the Humanities, the New Jersey Historical Commission, and Gloucester County.

Wade Catts is a member and former president of the American Cultural Resources Association.

Wade Catts is a member of Preservation Delaware.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation

In January 2026, during Operation Country Roads, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and state and local law enforcement detained roughly 600 immigrants across West Virginia.

Many of those arrested were held in the state’s already overpopulated jail system, which until this spring was part of a national network of immigrant detention centers.

Within this market, ICE ships detainees around the country, paying hundreds of facilities a per-day rate for housing them. Many of these facilities are in rural communities where federal funding cuts have hollowed out social services, from healthcare to food stamps, leaving them desperate for economic relief.

Federal immigration detention in local facilities hearkens back to earlier eras of expanding American incarceration. As a sociologist of law and punishment, I’ve explored how rural places have long built and expanded prisons to tap into federal funds during times of economic precarity.

The 1876-1908 blueprint

Rural incarceration isn’t new. More than a century before ICE was established, West Virginia was holding out-of-state federal prisoners to collect revenue – a history I reconstructed using the West Virginia Penitentiary’s administrative records.

As modern prisons proliferated across the nation, major cities exported prisoners to state prisons in less populated areas. West Virginia was one of a few states – alongside Maryland and Texas – to receive these excess urban prisoners.

Beginning in 1876 and lasting until around 1908, federal and District of Columbia prisoners sent to West Virginia drove an expansion of the state’s prison system. During this time, the state’s prison population grew more than sevenfold, booming from about 160 in 1876 to more than 1,200 in 1908. Controlling for population growth, the incarceration rate tripled.

West Virginia was paid for housing each federal prisoner, and the state’s prison administration was desperate for this revenue. Reports that I reviewed from the penitentiary’s wardens and supervisory board show that by 1908 revenue from the federal government was US$77,000 over a two-year period, or the equivalent of $2.8 million in today’s dollars.

Beginning in 1908, after federal prisons opened in Atlanta, Georgia, and Leavenworth, Kansas, most federal prisoners were sent to these new federal prisons, and cells began to empty at the West Virginia state penitentiary.

Filling empty beds

The national incarceration rate – which includes both jails, for short-term detention, and prisons, for sentences of more than a year – has more or less crept downward since 2010. But that decline is not even across place or institution; it has been concentrated in cities and liberal-leaning states that have implemented expansive criminal justice reforms and diversion courts.

Meanwhile, jail stays are booming, especially in rural and suburban places. Lengthy pretrial periods and resource shortages account for much of that growth. So does the rental of jail beds to outside entities, including state departments of correction and federal immigration authorities.

Rural communities have often vied for prisons, just as they lobbied for federal prisoners in the 1800s. These rural areas seek new prisons for the infusion of money and jobs into the local economy. According to sociologist John Eason, these facilities often function as a “state-sponsored public works program for disadvantaged rural communities,” creating “perverse economic incentives for prison proliferation.”

Today, as criminal justice reforms drive down prison admissions in some areas, immigration detention is filling prison and jail cells that would otherwise be empty. The number of people detained by ICE increased by 58% – or more than 25,000 people – between 2025 and 2026, according to the Prison Policy Initiative, which advocates to end mass incarceration. Expanded immigration detention, the group’s March 2026 report says, “accounts for virtually all of the growth in mass incarceration” since its last report.

Indiana offers an example of this shift: Its Miami Correctional Facility in rural Bunker Hill had 1,000 beds it could not properly staff with a limited budget. The state now rents those beds to ICE for $291 per detainee per day.

In the rural town of Baldwin, Michigan, in one of the state’s poorest counties, a closed prison has reopened as an ICE facility. A state legislator told The Washington Post in August 2025 that the facility was on track to become the area’s biggest employer and taxpayer.

Similarly, in August 2026 officials announced that a long-closed private prison in rural Minnesota will soon reopen as an ICE detention center. As sentencing decreased across the state, the prison in Swift County, which was once one of the area’s largest employers, closed in 2010 for lack of demand. But its reopening presents an economic opportunity: Minnesota state Sen. Torrey Westrom pointed to some 450 new jobs that the facility will bring to the area.

History repeats itself

Following the decline of prisoner importation in the early 20th century, West Virginia ceased to receive direct federal payments for housing prisoners. But a similar practice, one fueled by immigrant detention, has returned to the Mountain State.

As immigration enforcement ramped up under the second Trump administration, West Virginia, like many states – including Ohio and Florida – opened its facilities to ICE, which paid the state $90 per day per detainee.

Beginning in early 2026, federal judges ordered the release of immigrants held in the state’s jails, finding due process violations. In late March, the regional jail system temporarily suspended accepting new immigrant detainees.

Nonetheless, West Virginia has continued to collaborate with federal immigration enforcement for financial gain. The state hosts a recently expanded Customs and Border Protection training center and will continue participating in the federal 287(g) program, through which local law enforcement agencies are paid to collaborate with the federal government on immigration enforcement.

In the past, rural states and counties have built out their carceral systems with profit from imported prisoners. Immigration detention is reviving that model. So long as states see immigration detention as a potential revenue stream, it appears that tradition will continue.

Ella Siegrist does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation