Nathaniel Ramsey in the Point of Woods and on the Monmouth Battle Monument

Visitors to the Monmouth Battle Monument in Freehold, New Jersey, cannot help but be taken by its majesty. Its sheer size (ninety-four feet tall), its ornate design on top with Liberty Triumphant crowning its towering column which is also adorned with a cornice of flying eagles, and a base decorated with the coats of arms of the thirteen original states, connected by bronze laurel leaves between them, altogether presents a truly spectacular scene.

What must have been most impressive to visitors between the 1880s and 1920s, but lamentably less so today, is the ring of bronze bas relief panels that encircle the base of the shaft of this centennial memorial. Sculpted by New York artist James E. Kelly, each of these creations measures five by six feet and depicts a scene specific to the battle and the campaign leading to it. One hundred and forty years of erosion has wiped away the intricacies of all of them. Regardless, the inscription at the bottom of each panel identifies its importance to the campaign. Vistors will see the weatherworn panels “Washington Rallying the Troops” and know who is depicted within it. Revolutionary War aficionados as well as frequent southbound travelers on the New Jersey Turnpike will also recognize Molly Pitcher’s name attached to another panel (and to a service area between exits 8 and 8A). But the most dramatic scene in all the bas relief panels highlights a one-on-one fight to the death between two soldiers, each with blade in hand. The title of the scene—“Ramsay Defending His Guns”—provides no familiarity to anyone except the most ardent of buffs of this battle.

“Ramsay” was Nathaniel Ramsey, a Marylander thirty-six years old in June 1778 (transplanted from his birth home in Lancaster, Pennsylvania). He usually signed his name “Nat Ramsey,” although his surname appears more frequently in historical literature as “Ramsay” due to his prominent brother, David, adopting the latter spelling. Although he left no written first-hand account of his harrowing minutes on the Monmouth battlefield, Nathaniel Ramsey did the next best thing for posterity. He relayed, in scintillating detail, exactly what happened to him both during and shortly after the battle to influential and informal “publicists,” including Washington’s assistant military secretary, James McHenry, and to his good friend who was also his wife’s older sibling—Charles Willson Peale, the most prolific portraitist and artist of miniatures living in America in the late 1770s. By the early summer of 1778, Peale had captured his brother-in-law’s likeness in at least two paintings created during the decade, the first one around the time Ramsey married Peale’s sister in 1771.[1] This image remains a valuable visual aid two-and-a-half centuries later. More valuable for understanding the gripping experience of fighting the Battle of Monmouth is Peale’s (and McHenry’s) recounting of Ramsey’s battlefield experience in the artist’s autobiography, a valuable yet underutilized account first provided to Peale shortly after the battle.[2]