John Honeyman

I don’t go to bookstores much, and that is as it should be. I went to a bookstore the other day to find some challenging sudoku books and I wound up browsing through the history section and I came upon a book about the Battle of Trenton.

Naturally I looked in the index for John Honeyman, the unheralded hero of the Battle of Trenton, and I looked up the reference and I found that his heroic role has been discredited among egghed (butthead) types, and it pissed me off more than I can say.

Thankfully, I did not note the author, nor the name of the work, both of which deserve to be forgotten, and the sooner the better. This author was calling Miss Jane Honeyman a liar, in his or her savoir faire modern intellectual way, and let us have no more to do with him or her except to say, “You have earned the right to refer to yourself as a true butthead and contaminator of history.”

Miss Jane Honeyman had two club feet and for ten years endured the abuse of her community. Her father was tried as a traitor twice and always seemed to get off on a technicality. Twice the family farm was supposed to be auctioned off, but it just never happpened.

When she was little, a patriot mob tried to burn her home, but her mother found an officer of Washington’s among the mob and showed him a letter in Washington’s hand that said, “The wife and children of the notorious tory spy, John Honeyman, are to be protected from harm.”

Doesn’t that sound a little unusual to you? The general of the Continental Army writing a letter to protect the family of a traitor? Well, he did, and we have sworn testimony that he did from one of his officers.

Judge for yourself: After the War of Independence was won, seven long years after the Battle of Trenton, Miss Jane Honeyman saw a strange cavalcade coming up the road to her home in Griggstown, New Jersey.

Front and center were a cavalry escort, and in between was a guy you would recognize, because he’s on the money. Behind them were a host of curious townspeople.

On that occasion, I am happy to relate, George Washington knocked on the door and shook the hand of the supposed traitor John Honeyman, and thanked him for his services to the republic. The buttheads, try as they might, cannot repudiate this fact of history.

Ignore the crap you find in bookstores.