Union County will not change its current seal

By David Jablonski Managing Editor

The Union County seal was almost changed last month, if not for the efforts of concerned organizations and individuals in the Union County government.

“We were not told about it at first, but our understanding is that a group, Mothers Against Domestic Violence, questioned why our seal has the scene it does,” said Barbara La Mort, president of the Union Township Historical Society, in an interview with LocalSource on Monday, May 1. “And I don't think the person addressing our group knew the history of the seal. My disappointment with this is that this had been in discussion since 2020, but we’ve only been made aware of it at Christmas 2022. Though polling was introduced in March, the existing seal wasn’t a third option.”

“When we found out about this last December, it was only by a fluke that somebody heard someone talking about it in the court house or the commissioners building, and they passed it onto us,” she added. “The Union County Historical Society also agrees with us.”

“We love our town and want to preserve its history as best we can,” said David Arminio, vice president of the Union Township Historical Society, in an interview with LocalSource on Monday, May 1. “The mission of the Historical Society is not just the preservation of the his- tory of the American Revolution – it’s the preservation of the history of the town, from the 1620s all the way to 2023 and beyond.”

The Union County seal has remained unchanged since 1933. It depicts a British Redcoat shooting a woman, Hannah Caldwell, as she stands in front of her home. The shadowy figure in the doorway is meant to represent Elias, Caldwell’s 4-year-old son, who was there that fateful day.

The county seal is unique in New Jersey and very likely the entire nation, as it depicts a woman being killed in the doorway of her home,” La Mort said. “If that was the entirety of the picture, then perhaps Mothers Against Domestic Violence would be justified in its opposition to this as the county seal; however, when viewed from a historical standpoint, this seal is extremely important to both the county and to the importance of women in our nation’s history.

“Our museum is on the site that’s depicted on the seal. The actual house was burned with Hannah Caldwell’s dead body in the house. One of her neighbors begged the British officers to let the husband and children have a proper funeral for her and then the neighbors brought her body to the neighbor’s house. She was in the house with two of the children and two friends. Steven Speilberg wants to make a movie out of it. There’s deep faith. There’s military battles. It’s like ‘The Patriot.’”

To better understand the significance of the scene represented in Union County’s seal, La Mort went into greater detail regarding this historical event.

“On June 7, 1780, Hannah Caldwell was sitting on her bed, nursing her baby,” she said. “Her 4-year old son kept running to the window and saying he saw soldiers coming. She asks the two women with her to get him away from the window. Finally, she gets up from the bed, hands the baby to one of them and goes to the window and, at that moment, she is shot through the window and dies.”

La Mort said some historians speculate that Caldwell was assassinated because her husband, the Rev. James Caldwell, was preaching revolution, although she feels that isn’t what happened. Some speculate it was friendly fire, but to her, that’s the least believable. Most likely, a British

See DESPITE, Page 14