Charity Begins in a Tavern!

Adapted from the Trent House Eyewitness Collection*

Charity Brittain was born in 1720 into the prominent Tucker family of Trenton. She married Henry Bellerjeau, who died in 1746, and later married Joseph Britton, a shoemaker from Trenton. Charity operated a tavern in their home, which she continued to manage after Joseph’s death in 1755. Throughout her life, she supported the American Revolution’s cause.

Trenton at the time had about a dozen taverns. Because of this, stagecoaches traveling between New York and Philadelphia often stopped there for meals or overnight stays. Her Indian King Tavern was a large, two-story frame house with four rooms on each floor, an attached kitchen, a wood house, a shed, a two-story stable capable of holding over 40 horses, and numerous fruit-bearing trees. During the French and Indian War in 1757 and 1758, Charity provided housing for British soldiers—accommodating six soldiers for 21 weeks and five days, two soldiers for 13 weeks, and three soldiers for over a week. During the Revolutionary War, her tavern served meals to army officers who were en route to join George Washington’s forces. The rest of her family was heavily involved in the war effort as well. Her sons served in the militia, and their hometown Trenton was heavily affected by two major battles in the area during the British and Hessian occupation in December 1776. Her tavern on King Street was right at the heart of these conflicts.

In July 1779, her son Isaac took over the family business. That same year, a joint meeting of the New Jersey General Assembly and Legislative Council was held in their tavern—this was the meeting where William Livingston was reelected as governor. The government also met there at other times during the Revolution, despite the fact that Trenton was not yet the state capital.

*Used with permission from the Trent House Association