At the Sign of Three Pigeons: The Story of North Bergen's Forgotten Tavern
This work seeks to produce the most complete documentary history of the Three Pigeons Tavern ever assembled. It is written in commemoration of the 250th Anniversary of the United States and seeks to place one of North Bergen's most important forgotten landmarks within the larger story of the American experience.
The Three Pigeons was more than a tavern. During nearly two centuries of existence it served as a colonial inn, Revolutionary War landmark, military rendezvous, transportation hub, polling place, political meeting ground, sporting center, and social gathering place. Although the building disappeared more than a century ago, its documentary record survives in military correspondence, newspapers, maps, deeds, genealogies, memoirs, county histories, photographs, and local tradition.
The purpose of this study is not merely to recount those sources, but to synthesize them into a single narrative while carefully distinguishing between documented fact, strongly supported conclusion, informed interpretation, and unanswered questions.
Where the evidence is clear, this study states its conclusions with confidence.
Where the historical record is incomplete, the uncertainty is acknowledged rather than concealed.
It is hoped that this work will preserve the history of the Three Pigeons for future generations while providing a foundation upon which future researchers may continue to build.
This work is dedicated to the memory of Ron Skokandich (1952–2022).
Ron possessed a deep appreciation for the history of North Bergen and was among the modern researchers who helped rekindle public interest in the Three Pigeons Tavern. Through years of collecting photographs, preserving memories, asking questions, and encouraging others to explore the site's history, he ensured that one of North Bergen's most significant landmarks would not be forgotten.
Every historical study builds upon the efforts of those who came before it.
It is fitting that this work honors one whose passion for local history inspired many of the questions this research attempts to answer.
May future historians continue the work he helped revive.
Local history is American history.
The American Revolution was fought not only at Trenton, Saratoga, Yorktown, and Valley Forge, but also along forgotten roads, at ferry landings, crossroads, mills, churches, farmhouses, and taverns where soldiers marched, intelligence was exchanged, supplies were gathered, and ordinary people experienced extraordinary events.
The Three Pigeons was one of those places. As the United States commemorates its 250th Anniversary, the story of this forgotten tavern reminds us that the nation's history was built one community at a time.
Every day, thousands of people unknowingly pass through one of the most historic intersections in Hudson County. Traffic moves steadily along Bergen Turnpike. Buses pull to the curb. Storefronts open for business. Neighbors cross the street without giving much thought to the ground beneath their feet. To most people, the intersection of Bergen Turnpike, 43rd Street, and Grand Avenue is simply another corner in North Bergen.
Two hundred and fifty years ago, it was something entirely different.
Imagine standing here before the streets were paved, before traffic lights and apartment buildings, before automobiles climbed the hill from Jersey City. Picture instead a well-worn country road stretching north toward Hackensack and south toward Bergen. Dense forests covered the heights to the east. Open fields rolled toward the Hackensack River to the west. Wagons creaked along the turnpike. Horsemen disappeared into the woods. Stagecoaches rattled toward Hoboken, their passengers eager for news, conversation, and a warm meal before continuing their journey.
At this crossroads stood a tavern known throughout Bergen County by a simple name, The Three Pigeons.
For nearly two centuries, the Three Pigeons was far more than a place to eat or spend the night. Like the Green Dragon Tavern in Boston or Philadelphia's City Tavern, it served as one of those places where the life of a community naturally converged. Travelers exchanged news beside its hearth. Elections were held within its walls. Farmers stopped on their way to market. Militia companies assembled in neighboring fields. Sporting clubs gathered on its grounds. Politicians addressed local crowds. Generations of residents celebrated holidays, weddings, military musters, and Washington's Birthday beneath the sign of three pigeons.
When the American Revolution reached Bergen County, this quiet roadside inn found itself at the center of events far larger than anyone who built it could have imagined.
Continental soldiers marched past its doors. British patrols watched the surrounding roads. Intelligence moved quietly through Bergen Woods. Captain John McLane waited nearby on the eve of Major Henry "Light Horse Harry" Lee's daring attack on Paulus Hook. Less than a year later, General Anthony Wayne's troops once again occupied the roads around the tavern during the Battle of Bull's Ferry. In the uncertain years of the Revolution, the Three Pigeons became one of the many ordinary places where the extraordinary story of America's founding quietly unfolded.
Its importance did not end with the Revolution.
As New Jersey entered the nineteenth century, the Three Pigeons evolved alongside the community surrounding it. The tavern became a regular stop for the Hoboken-to-Hackensack stage line and the mail coach. It served as a polling place, a political meeting ground, a sporting venue, and one of the best-known landmarks along the Bergen Turnpike. Newspapers from across northern New Jersey regularly mentioned the old tavern by name, assuming their readers needed no explanation of where it stood.
Then, almost without notice, it disappeared.
Development gradually transformed New Durham during the closing years of the nineteenth century. Farms gave way to houses. Open fields became streets. The stagecoaches stopped running. The old tavern that had witnessed nearly every stage of North Bergen's growth quietly vanished from the landscape. By the beginning of the twentieth century, one of Hudson County's most recognizable landmarks had disappeared, leaving behind little more than scattered references in military correspondence, newspapers, county histories, maps, memoirs, family papers, and the fading memories of longtime residents.
Today, little remains to remind passersby that this ordinary intersection once stood at the center of an extraordinary story.
As the United States commemorates the 250th anniversary of its founding, communities across the nation are rediscovering the local places where the American story unfolded. Some are famous battlefields whose names appear in every history book. Others survive only in fragments—a weathered diary, an old map, a faded newspaper clipping, or a forgotten historical marker. Yet these places remind us that the Revolution was experienced not only in capitals and on celebrated battlefields, but also along country roads, at ferry landings, in churches, mills, farmhouses, and taverns where ordinary people witnessed extraordinary events.
The Three Pigeons was one of those places.
Although generations of historians preserved pieces of its story, no single work has attempted to assemble the surviving evidence into one comprehensive history. Its story remains scattered across Revolutionary War correspondence, nineteenth-century county histories, sporting journals, genealogies, maps, deeds, newspapers, photographs, and local tradition. Individually, these sources offer only glimpses. Together, they reveal the remarkable history of a place that helped shape North Bergen while quietly taking its place in the larger story of the United States.
This study represents an attempt to bring those fragments together for the first time. It does not claim to answer every question. Some mysteries remain, and perhaps always will. But by comparing the surviving documentary record, tracing the evolution of the property across more than two centuries, and carefully distinguishing documented fact from informed interpretation, we can come closer than ever before to understanding the history of one of Hudson County's most influential forgotten landmarks.
To tell that story, however, we must begin long before the American Revolution... before North Bergen existed... and before the United States itself.
At the Sign of Three Pigeons: The Crossroads Before North Bergen
When the first European settlers established permanent communities along the western shore of the Hudson River during the seventeenth century, there was no North Bergen.
There was no Hudson County. No Bergen Turnpike. No New Durham.
Instead, this corner of New Jersey was a landscape of dense forests, tidal marshes, scattered farms, and a handful of rough wagon roads connecting isolated Dutch settlements. Travel was slow and often difficult. Most journeys were made on horseback or by wagon, and the condition of the roads depended entirely upon the weather. Heavy rains transformed them into seas of mud, while winter froze deep wagon ruts into uneven ribbons of ice.
Yet even these primitive roads determined the future.
Long before railroads, automobiles, or highways dictated where towns would develop, roads shaped the settlement of colonial America. Wherever roads intersected, people stopped. A place to stop became a place to rest. A place to rest became an inn. Over time, an inn attracted travelers, merchants, farmers, teamsters, politicians, and eventually entire communities. Again and again, throughout the American colonies, crossroads became villages, and villages became towns.
The story of the Three Pigeons begins not with a building, but with one such crossroads.
Situated near the southern edge of Bergen Woods, the future site of the Three Pigeons occupied one of the most advantageous locations in old Bergen County. The main road connecting Bergen to Hackensack passed directly through this point before continuing north toward the fertile farms of the Hackensack Valley. To the west, roads descended toward the Hackensack River and the important ferry crossing later known as Bull's Ferry. To the east rose the Palisades overlooking the Hudson River and New York beyond. Nearly every traveler moving between these settlements found themselves passing this location.
It is easy to forget just how important taverns were in colonial America. Today they are often imagined simply as places to eat, drink, or spend the night. In the eighteenth century, they were something far greater. Taverns functioned as post offices before formal postal routes were established. They served as polling places, courtrooms, recruiting stations, meeting halls, business offices, and informal news exchanges. Travelers learned the latest political developments around a tavern fire. Farmers negotiated prices over supper. Military officers planned campaigns at corner tables. Local governments often conducted public business within their walls.
Some taverns became famous. Boston had the Green Dragon Tavern, remembered for its connection to the Sons of Liberty. Philadelphia had the City Tavern, where delegates to the Continental Congress gathered during the nation's founding. New York had Fraunces Tavern, forever linked to George Washington's farewell to his officers. Old Bergen had the Three Pigeons.
Although far smaller than these celebrated establishments, the Three Pigeons served the same essential purpose within its own community. For generations, it stood at the point where transportation, politics, commerce, military affairs, and everyday life intersected. Long before North Bergen existed as a municipality, people throughout the region recognized the location simply by the name of its tavern.
The earliest years of the Three Pigeons remain among the least understood chapters of its history. No surviving construction record has yet been discovered. No tavern license has been identified. No deed has been found stating precisely when the building first appeared or who first raised its timber frame. Like many colonial structures, its beginnings emerge only in fragments scattered across later records.
Those fragments, however, tell an intriguing story. The earliest documented individual connected to the Three Pigeons is William (Willem) Earle I, baptized at the Reformed Dutch Church in Hackensack on October 13, 1700. In Arnold, Redway and Earle Families, genealogist Willis Arnold Boughton identifies William as "the keeper of the Three Pigeons Tavern at New Durham, N.J." While Boughton does not identify the original document from which this statement was drawn, it represents the earliest known published source directly associating a specific individual with operation of the tavern.
Additional evidence strengthens that connection. A manuscript map prepared in 1943 by D. Stanton Hammond for the Genealogical Society of New Jersey, compiled from William H. Winfield's History of Land Titles in Hudson County and other historical sources, identifies the Three Pigeons property as belonging to John and William Earle. The map further traces the family's ownership through earlier generations, including Edward Earle Jr., whose will was dated 1709 and proved in 1717, and Edward Earle, whose will was dated 1750 and proved in 1755.
Taken together, these sources strongly suggest that the Three Pigeons was associated with the Earle family during the first half of the eighteenth century. Whether William Earle built the tavern himself, inherited an existing establishment from his father, or acquired an already well-known roadside inn remains unknown. Until additional deeds, probate records, or tavern licenses are discovered, the exact origins of the building must remain one of the enduring mysteries of North Bergen's early history.
What can be said with confidence is that by the middle of the eighteenth century, the Three Pigeons had already become an established landmark. Roads do not take their names from insignificant places, nor do military officers use obscure buildings as geographic reference points. By the time the American colonies moved toward revolution, the Three Pigeons was no longer merely a tavern. It had become one of the principal landmarks by which this portion of Bergen County was understood.
Within a generation, war would transform the quiet roadside inn into something far greater than its founders could ever have imagined.
The Tavern at War: The American Revolution Comes to Bergen County
When shots were fired at Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775, few people traveling the Bergen Turnpike could have imagined how profoundly the conflict would reshape their quiet farming community.
The first battles of the American Revolution were fought hundreds of miles away in Massachusetts. News of the fighting arrived in Bergen County slowly, carried by newspapers, travelers, and riders moving along the colony's rough roads. For a time, daily life continued much as it always had. Farmers planted their crops. Ferrymen crossed the Hackensack River. Travelers stopped at roadside taverns, including the Three Pigeons, to rest before continuing their journey.
War still felt distant, however, that illusion would not last, and everything changed during the summer and fall of 1776.
Following the signing of the Declaration of Independence, British strategy shifted toward capturing New York City, whose harbor and waterways were considered essential to controlling the northern colonies. After a series of defeats on Long Island and Manhattan, General George Washington and the Continental Army retreated across the Hudson River into New Jersey. By November, British forces occupied New York City, transforming the Hudson River from a commercial highway into one of the most heavily contested frontiers in North America.
Few regions found themselves in a more precarious position than Bergen County. To the east stood British-occupied Manhattan. To the west maneuvered Washington's army. Between them stretched a narrow corridor of farms, crossroads, ferries, forests, and villages where armies marched, intelligence was gathered, and loyalties were constantly tested. Control of the countryside shifted repeatedly. British regulars, Hessian troops, Continental soldiers, Loyalist volunteers, and local militia all traversed the same roads, often within days, or even hours, of one another.
For the people of Bergen County, the Revolution was not a distant political debate. It was an everyday reality. Families found themselves divided between Patriot and Loyalist sympathies. Livestock was seized to feed opposing armies. Horses disappeared overnight. Homes were searched. Farms were raided. Travelers risked encountering patrols from either side. What had once been ordinary country roads became military highways linking New York City with the interior of New Jersey.
Among those roads, none proved more important than the Bergen Turnpike. Running north and south through the county, it connected Bergen, New Durham, Hackensack, and the fertile agricultural lands beyond. Branching roads led toward the Hackensack River and east toward the Hudson waterfront and Bull's Ferry. Anyone moving troops, supplies, intelligence, or dispatches through this portion of New Jersey was almost certain to travel roads that converged near the Three Pigeons.
As discussed in the previous section, geography had already made it a gathering place decades before the outbreak of war. The Revolution simply transformed that gathering place into a military landmark. Officers used it to describe troop movements. Couriers passed its doors carrying orders. Scouts and spies traversed the surrounding woods. Soldiers on both sides came to recognize the Three Pigeons not merely as a tavern, but as one of the principal reference points in northern Bergen County.
The surviving documentary record demonstrates just how familiar the landmark had become. Between 1777 and 1780, the Three Pigeons appears repeatedly in military correspondence, newspapers, and later historical accounts describing events ranging from skirmishes and partisan raids to some of the most celebrated operations of the Revolutionary War in New Jersey.
Few taverns in the state can claim such a record.
The earliest known wartime reference to the Three Pigeons occurs during the autumn of 1777.
David C. Munn, in Battles and Skirmishes of the American Revolution in New Jersey, records that on October 31, 1777, American and British forces skirmished at the Three Pigeons. Unfortunately, few details of the engagement survive. No lengthy battlefield reports have yet been located, nor do contemporary newspapers appear to have preserved a detailed account of the encounter.
Military reports did not typically identify insignificant places. Officers described movements using landmarks that fellow soldiers would immediately recognize. By the fall of 1777, only two years after the outbreak of the Revolution, the Three Pigeons had already become one of those landmarks. The brief reference preserved by Munn demonstrates that the tavern had entered the military geography of Bergen County, a role it would continue to play throughout the war.
The quiet roadside inn had become part of the Revolution.
January 1778: A Revolution Divides Neighbors
By the winter of 1778, the fighting in Bergen County had evolved into something far more complicated than battles between two opposing armies.
The Revolution had become a civil war.
Unlike the great battles fought elsewhere during the conflict, much of the violence in northeastern New Jersey occurred on lonely roads, isolated farms, and wooded lanes where neighbors often knew one another by name. Families found themselves divided by politics and loyalty. One son might join the Continental Army while another remained loyal to the Crown. Friends who had attended the same church or traded at the same market could suddenly find themselves on opposite sides of the conflict.
No place illustrated this reality more clearly than the countryside surrounding the Three Pigeons.
The roads converging at the tavern connected British-held New York with the interior of New Jersey, making the area a constant thoroughfare for soldiers, militia, refugees, merchants, spies, and Loyalist volunteers. Encounters between opposing factions were frequent, and they often ended in violence.
One such encounter occurred in January 1778.
Walter T. Eickmann, quoting the New Jersey Gazette, preserved the account of an incident that unfolded on the road between Bergen and the Three Pigeons:
"On Thursday afternoon Captain John Richards, of New Barbadoes Neck, on his way to see some member of his family who was sick of the smallpox, was captured on the road between 'Three Pigeons' and Bergen by two professed patriots and was shot dead by one (Brouwer) as he was preventing the other (Lozier) robbing him of his watch."
David C. Munn likewise records the event as occurring on January 29, 1778, identifying it simply as an American raid in which Loyalist John Richards was killed near the Three Pigeons.
At first glance, the episode appears little more than another wartime killing. Yet it reveals much about the nature of the Revolution in Bergen County.
John Richards was not killed in a formal battle. There were no battle lines, no artillery, and no military formations. Instead, he became the victim of the kind of partisan violence that increasingly characterized the region. Roads that once carried farmers and travelers had become dangerous places where armed patrols, irregular militia, and self-appointed vigilantes operated with remarkable freedom.
The incident also illustrates another uncomfortable truth about the American Revolution.
The war was not fought solely between Americans and British soldiers. In Bergen County, it was often fought between Americans themselves.
Loyalists and Patriots lived side by side. Some had grown up together. Others belonged to the same extended families. The conflict fractured communities that had existed for generations, creating divisions that often lingered long after peace returned.
The Three Pigeons stood at the center of this divided landscape.
Travelers approaching the tavern in early 1778 could never be certain who might be encountered along the road ahead. A rider might meet Continental scouts, Loyalist volunteers, British patrols, or armed civilians claiming allegiance to one side or the other. The tavern offered shelter, but the roads leading to it had become among the most dangerous in New Jersey.
The Tavern at War: The Woods Around the Three Pigeons
By the spring of 1779, the Three Pigeons had become far more than a familiar landmark along the Bergen Turnpike. It had become part of the military landscape.
The countryside surrounding the tavern was unlike much of Bergen County. Immediately to the east stretched Bergen Woods, a dense forest covering the ridge above the Hudson River. To the west lay open farmland descending toward the Hackensack River and Bull's Ferry. The roads connecting these two landscapes made the area ideal for scouting parties, reconnaissance patrols, and surprise attacks. The woods concealed movement, the roads dictated it and both armies understood that fact.
Continental officers frequently used the forests surrounding the Three Pigeons to mask troop movements beyond the view of British patrols stationed closer to New York. Loyalist forces likewise used the same roads to monitor Patriot activity in the countryside. The result was a constant contest for information. Small detachments, scouting parties, and mounted patrols crossed paths with remarkable frequency, making the area one of the most active military corridors in northeastern New Jersey.
One such encounter occurred during March 1779. According to David C. Munn's Battles and Skirmishes of the American Revolution in New Jersey, Colonel Abraham Van Buskirk dispatched a party in pursuit of Carolina troops from the vicinity of the Three Pigeons into Bergen Woods, capturing one of the Americans during the chase.
A contemporary account published in Rivington's Gazette on March 17, 1779, provides additional context. The newspaper describes an unsuccessful attempt by Colonel Abraham Van Buskirk and Lieutenant Haslop, commanding Loyalist forces, to capture an unnamed Patriot captain, lieutenant, and a detachment of Carolina troops operating near the Three Pigeons.
Although brief, the report offers an important glimpse into the nature of military operations in Bergen County. These were not conventional battles but were contests of movement, surprise, and intelligence.
Small detachments moved quietly through the forests, attempting to locate one another before disappearing again among the trees. Officers relied upon familiar landmarks to coordinate these operations, and once again the Three Pigeons appears in the documentary record not because fighting necessarily occurred within the tavern itself, but because everyone involved understood exactly where it stood.
The surrounding landscape made the location invaluable, nearby woods provided concealment and the turnpike offered rapid movement north and south. Roads leading east toward Bull's Ferry connected the interior of Bergen County with one of the most important crossings on the Hudson River. Any force attempting to move between British-held territory and the New Jersey countryside would likely pass through this network of roads. The Three Pigeons occupied the center of that network.
August 1779: The Night Before Paulus Hook
If the earlier Revolutionary War references establish the Three Pigeons as a military landmark, the events of August 1779 elevate it into the national story of the American Revolution.
For generations, historians have celebrated Major Henry "Light Horse Harry" Lee's daring attack on the British fortifications at Paulus Hook as one of the boldest small-unit operations of the war. The raid earned Lee a gold medal from the Continental Congress, brought praise from General George Washington, and became one of the defining military achievements in Revolutionary New Jersey.
Yet every great operation begins long before the first shot is fired.
In the case of Paulus Hook, the story begins not at the fort itself, but in the woods near the Three Pigeons.
The attack required extraordinary secrecy.
Lee's force needed to move from the Continental lines near New Bridge through enemy-controlled territory without alerting British patrols. The route demanded careful coordination between scouts already familiar with the roads of Bergen County and the main body of soldiers advancing under cover of darkness.
Among those scouts was Captain Allen McLane. Serving as aide-de-camp to Lee, McLane possessed intimate knowledge of the countryside separating the Continental lines from Paulus Hook. His surviving diary, preserved through the work of William H. Richardson in Washington and "The Enterprise Against Powles Hook", contains one of the most important references ever made to the Three Pigeons.
McLane wrote:
"Wednesday 18 August... this morning received orders from Mr. Lee to take post in the woods near Bargain in order to intercept the communication between Powis Hook and the country and to join him at a certain place in the woods near Three Pidgeons in order to conduct him to attack Powless Hook..."
Few surviving Revolutionary documents place the Three Pigeons more firmly within a nationally significant military operation. McLane's words reveal that the tavern was not merely a landmark passed during the march.
It served as a rendezvous, a meeting point. A place where separate elements of Lee's carefully coordinated force came together before beginning the final movement toward Paulus Hook. That distinction cannot be overstated.
Military rendezvous are selected for specific reasons. They must be familiar to everyone involved, easily identified even in darkness, and situated where troops can assemble without attracting unnecessary attention. The woods surrounding the Three Pigeons offered precisely those advantages. Hidden beneath the cover of Bergen Woods yet positioned beside one of the principal roads through the county, the location allowed Lee's men to organize before continuing their hazardous march toward the British fortifications.
As darkness settled over Bergen County on August 18, 1779, Continental soldiers quietly assembled within sight of the old tavern. The familiar crossroads that had welcomed travelers for decades now witnessed preparations for one of the most celebrated raids of the American Revolution.
August 1779: Into the Darkness
As evening fell on August 18, 1779, the roads surrounding the Three Pigeons grew unusually quiet.
The summer air was heavy, and the dense woods east of the Bergen Turnpike concealed movements that few local residents could have imagined. Somewhere beneath the trees, small groups of Continental soldiers gathered in silence. Orders were spoken quietly. Equipment was checked one final time. No campfires betrayed their position. Surprise would determine the success or failure of the entire enterprise.
Waiting nearby was Captain Allen McLane. Months earlier, Washington had selected the young officer for dangerous assignments requiring courage, initiative, and an intimate knowledge of the countryside. Bergen County had become McLane's world. Its roads, streams, farms, and woodlots were as familiar to him as city streets are to a modern commuter. That knowledge made him indispensable. Lee's force could not simply march to Paulus Hook, they had to be led.
McLane's diary reveals precisely where that guidance began.
"...to Join him at a certain place in the woods near Three Pidgeons in order to conduct him to attack Powless Hook..."
It is one of the simplest sentences in the surviving record. It is also one of the most revealing. For generations, historians have understandably focused on what happened at Paulus Hook itself, the assault, the capture of prisoners, and Lee's daring withdrawal. Yet McLane's account reminds us that the operation depended just as much upon what occurred beforehand.
The rendezvous near the Three Pigeons was not incidental. It was essential. Without a secure place to assemble beyond British observation, Lee's carefully planned march risked unraveling before it ever reached Paulus Hook. The familiar crossroads near the tavern offered exactly what military planners required: recognizable terrain, concealed approaches through Bergen Woods, and immediate access to the roads leading south toward the British lines.
In many respects, the operation succeeded because geography cooperated. And geography had favored the Three Pigeons for generations.
Shortly after darkness settled over Bergen County, Major Henry "Light Horse Harry" Lee began moving his column toward Paulus Hook. The march was anything but easy. Heavy rains had flooded portions of the route. Tidal creeks proved deeper than expected. Some soldiers became separated in the darkness. Others struggled through marshes that slowed the advance and threatened the carefully planned timetable. Every delay increased the possibility that daylight would expose the Americans before they could complete their mission.
Yet the column continued. Guided by McLane and other officers familiar with the countryside, Lee's men threaded their way through roads and paths that only local knowledge could reveal. Every mile carried them farther into territory effectively controlled by the British. Behind them, the Three Pigeons disappeared into the darkness. Ahead lay Paulus Hook.
Just after three o'clock on the morning of August 19, Lee's men struck. The attack lasted only minutes. Caught by surprise, the British garrison offered fierce but ultimately ineffective resistance. By dawn, Lee had captured approximately 150 prisoners while suffering remarkably few casualties of his own. Unable to hold the fort against expected reinforcements from New York, he ordered an immediate withdrawal. The success astonished both friend and foe.
General George Washington praised the operation as one of the boldest enterprises of the war. Congress later awarded Lee a gold medal, one of the highest military honors bestowed during the Revolution, in recognition of his conduct at Paulus Hook. Today the raid occupies a prominent place in Revolutionary War history. Yet hidden within McLane's diary is a reminder that the story did not begin at the fort. It began hours earlier in the woods near the Three Pigeons.
Victory did not end the danger. If anything, Lee's withdrawal proved even more hazardous than the attack itself. British forces quickly realized what had occurred and began pursuing the retreating Americans. Exhausted from marching throughout the night and burdened with more than one hundred prisoners, Lee's men hurried northward through the same countryside they had crossed only hours before.
Once again, the familiar roads of Bergen County became the key to survival. Richardson's reconstruction of the expedition, together with Washington's correspondence and the official reports, demonstrates that the retreat carried Lee's command back through northern Bergen County before finally reaching the safety of New Bridge.
The Three Pigeons once again lay within the operational landscape of one of the Revolution's most celebrated exploits. Victory often produces competing memories. Only days after the raid, Rivington's Gazette, the leading Loyalist newspaper in British-occupied New York, published an intriguing report.
According to the paper, Ensign Barrett of the 70th Regiment captured Captain Meals at the Three Pigeons along with documents revealing Lee's plans. Walter T. Eickmann, famed West New York Historian, later noted the account while questioning its credibility. If such an event occurred, it likely involved stragglers or small detachments left behind after Lee's expedition. The alleged capture of Lee's operational orders has never been substantiated by Continental records and may well represent wartime propaganda intended to soften the embarrassment of the British defeat at Paulus Hook.
Whether true or not, the report remains historically valuable. It demonstrates that even British newspapers associated the Three Pigeons with Lee's expedition. The tavern had become so firmly connected with the operation that it naturally appeared in competing narratives published by both sides of the conflict.
The events surrounding Paulus Hook represent the strongest documentary evidence linking the Three Pigeons to the national story of the American Revolution.
Unlike earlier references that merely identify the tavern as a landmark, McLane's diary places the Three Pigeons directly within the planning and execution of one of the war's most celebrated raids. His account establishes the woods near the tavern as a rendezvous where elements of Lee's force assembled before advancing toward Paulus Hook. Later reports, both Patriot and Loyalist, continued to associate the location with the expedition.
The significance of this evidence extends beyond North Bergen. It demonstrates that one of the nation's defining military operations depended, in part, upon local geography, local roads, and a landmark that generations of Bergen County residents simply knew as the Three Pigeons.
The Tavern at War: The Road to Bull's Ferry
The triumph at Paulus Hook did not bring peace to Bergen County. If anything, the fighting intensified.
Although Major Henry Lee's daring raid embarrassed British commanders and boosted Patriot morale throughout the colonies, it changed little about the strategic realities of northeastern New Jersey. British forces continued to occupy New York City. Loyalist units remained active throughout Bergen County. Patrols crossed the countryside almost daily, and the roads surrounding the Three Pigeons continued to serve as military highways linking British outposts with the interior.
For the people living along the Bergen Turnpike, the Revolution remained an ever-present reality. Fields that had only recently yielded crops now produced forage for competing armies. Horses, cattle, and sheep became military resources as valuable as muskets and ammunition. Every farm, ferry, and crossroads held strategic importance. One of those strategic points lay west of the Three Pigeons. Bull's Ferry.
Located on the Hudson River, Bull's Ferry provided one of the principal crossings between British-controlled territory and the New Jersey countryside. Whoever controlled the roads leading to the ferry could move troops, gather supplies, or disrupt communications throughout much of Bergen County.
By the summer of 1780, General George Washington sought to weaken British control of the region through a coordinated attack on the blockhouse at Bull's Ferry.The assignment fell to one of the Continental Army's most aggressive commanders. General Anthony Wayne.
Known to history as "Mad Anthony," Wayne had earned a reputation for boldness bordering on recklessness. His battlefield courage had become legendary, and Washington frequently entrusted him with difficult operations requiring speed and determination.
The plan appeared straightforward. Wayne would attack the heavily defended blockhouse overlooking Bull's Ferry while simultaneously driving away British livestock from the surrounding countryside, depriving the enemy of valuable supplies.
As with Lee's expedition the previous year, geography would determine success or failure. And once again, the roads surrounding the Three Pigeons became part of the operation.
Historical accounts preserved by William H. Shaw and later summarized by Walter T. Eickmann and most recently Patrick Cullen, that on July 21, 1780, Wayne ordered Colonel Stephen Moylan to establish his position at the Three Pigeons. His mission differed from Wayne's.
Rather than assault the British defenses directly, Moylan received orders to guard against enemy movements from the south while simultaneously sweeping the countryside of livestock that might otherwise sustain British forces.
The assignment reflected Washington's broader strategy. Victory would not depend solely upon defeating enemy soldiers. It also required denying the British food, horses, and transportation.
The familiar crossroads surrounding the Three Pigeons once again became an operational base from which Continental forces coordinated their movements.
Wayne attacked. Moylan waited. Each relied upon the same network of roads that had served Lee only eleven months earlier.
The assault on Bull's Ferry did not unfold as Washington had hoped. The British blockhouse, defended by Loyalists under Captain Thomas Ward, withstood repeated Continental attacks. Despite determined efforts, Wayne failed to capture the position. The stout timber fortifications and determined defenders proved stronger than anticipated.
Yet the expedition cannot be judged solely by the unsuccessful assault. While Wayne struggled before the blockhouse, Colonel Moylan achieved remarkable success elsewhere. According to Shaw, Moylan's command drove away "several hundred quadrupeds, consisting of horses, horned cattle, sheep and hogs" from the surrounding countryside before escorting them safely toward Liberty Pole, present day Englewood.
Military historians often remember Bull's Ferry as one of Wayne's disappointments. For the farmers of Bergen County, and undoubtedly for British quartermasters, the operation looked very different. Hundreds of valuable animals had vanished. Washington's army had once again demonstrated that British control rarely extended far beyond the immediate protection of its fortifications.
The Three Pigeons appears almost effortlessly in accounts of Bull's Ferry. That alone is revealing. Neither Shaw nor Eickmann pauses to explain where the tavern stood. No explanation was necessary. Readers of the nineteenth century already knew. The Three Pigeons had become one of those places whose name alone conveyed an entire geography. Military officers recognized it. Local residents recognized it. Historians recognized it. The tavern had become inseparable from the roads that surrounded it.
The Bull's Ferry expedition reinforces a pattern that now appears repeatedly throughout the Revolutionary record. The Three Pigeons was not associated with a single isolated military event. Instead, it repeatedly served as a staging point, reference landmark, operational headquarters, and geographic waypoint during multiple Continental operations conducted over several years.
This distinction is significant. Many Revolutionary landmarks are remembered because one important event occurred there. The Three Pigeons is different. It appears again and again. Each reference strengthens the conclusion that the tavern occupied one of the most strategically important crossroads in Bergen County during the American Revolution.
By 1780, the war in Bergen County had become increasingly one of information.
Large battles had become less common than scouting expeditions, reconnaissance patrols, and clandestine missions carried out behind enemy lines. Officers depended upon local guides, trusted scouts, and an intimate knowledge of the countryside. Every crossroads, tavern, and ferry became part of an invisible network through which information flowed.
It is within this landscape that later historians have associated the Three Pigeons with one of the Revolution's most remarkable intelligence operations, the mission of Sergeant John Champe.
Champe volunteered for what may have been the most dangerous assignment of the war: to feign desertion from the Continental Army, gain the confidence of the British, infiltrate Benedict Arnold's command, and help kidnap the infamous traitor before he could further assist the Crown.
Although surviving documentation does not place Champe inside the Three Pigeons itself, the roads surrounding the tavern formed part of the operational geography through which scouts, couriers, and intelligence agents routinely traveled between New Jersey and British-occupied New York.
Whether Champe himself paused near the tavern can no longer be determined. What can be said is that the Three Pigeons stood within one of the Revolution's principal corridors of intelligence gathering, a landscape where secrecy often proved more valuable than open battle.
When the Treaty of Paris formally ended the American Revolution in 1783, no celebrations marked the return of peace at the Three Pigeons. No newspaper described the first traveler who arrived without fear of encountering a British patrol. No diary recorded the first evening when the conversation inside the tavern shifted from troop movements and military dispatches back to crops, weather, business, and family. History rarely preserves such quiet moments. Yet they happened.
Almost overnight, the familiar roads surrounding the Three Pigeons began serving a different purpose. For nearly eight years they had carried armies. Now they carried commerce.
The horses that once hauled cannon and military supplies returned to pulling wagons loaded with produce destined for markets in Bergen, Hackensack, Hoboken, and New York. Couriers carrying military orders gradually gave way to merchants, craftsmen, ministers, and families traveling between the scattered communities of northern New Jersey.
The Three Pigeons remained exactly where it had always stood and the world around it had changed.
The conclusion of the Revolution marked the beginning of an entirely different chapter in American history. The young United States possessed few established institutions. Roads remained rough. Bridges were scarce. Hotels were uncommon outside larger towns. Newspapers circulated slowly, and formal post offices reached only a limited number of communities. In this environment, taverns assumed an importance that is often difficult to appreciate today. They became the unofficial public buildings of early America.
Travelers stopped to exchange horses and gather the latest news. Farmers discussed crop prices and weather. Local officials conducted public business. Elections were held within their walls. Militia companies assembled in their yards. Business agreements were negotiated over supper, while political debates often lasted long after the candles had burned low.
For many residents, the local tavern represented the closest thing their community possessed to a town hall. The Three Pigeons was no exception. If anything, its prominence only increased after the Revolution.
Having already established itself as one of the best-known landmarks along the Bergen Turnpike, the tavern naturally became the gathering place for a growing rural community whose population steadily expanded during the closing years of the eighteenth century.
Ironically, the very geography that had made the Three Pigeons strategically valuable during the Revolution now made it economically valuable during peace. The Bergen Turnpike remained one of the principal north-south roads in northeastern New Jersey.
Travelers moving between Bergen, Hackensack, Hoboken, and the surrounding farming districts passed the tavern almost by necessity. Roads leading west toward the Hackensack River and east to Bull's Ferry continued carrying both local traffic and travelers heading toward the interior or New York.
Every wagon represented potential customers. Every stagecoach brought new visitors. Every election introduced unfamiliar faces. Unlike isolated country inns that depended upon seasonal trade, the Three Pigeons occupied a crossroads where people naturally converged. Its success was built upon movement. As long as the roads remained busy, so too would the tavern.
When the Three Pigeons first welcomed travelers during the colonial period, the surrounding landscape consisted largely of scattered farms separated by forests and open fields. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, subtle but important changes had begun reshaping the countryside.
New farms appeared. Roads improved. Commerce increased. Families established permanent homes along the principal transportation routes.
Although New Durham remained rural by modern standards, it had begun the gradual transformation from an isolated agricultural settlement into the nucleus of what would eventually become North Bergen.
Throughout that transformation, the Three Pigeons remained a constant. Residents came and went. Landowners changed. Generations passed. The old tavern remained.
Modern residents identify places by street numbers. Colonial Americans rarely had that luxury. Instead, they navigated using landmarks, a church. a mill, a ferry, a bridge or a tavern. The Three Pigeons became one of those enduring reference points.
Long before numbered streets and municipal boundaries existed, directions throughout northern Bergen County were frequently given in relation to the tavern. Military officers had already done so during the Revolution. Travelers continued the practice afterward. Newspapers, advertisements, and legal notices increasingly assumed that readers understood exactly where the Three Pigeons stood.
The tavern had become more than a business. It had become geography.
During the decades following the Revolution, another transformation quietly unfolded. Improved roads shortened travel times. Regular mail service expanded. Stagecoach companies connected growing communities with New York. As commerce accelerated throughout northern New Jersey, the Three Pigeons found itself at the center of a transportation network unlike anything its earliest proprietors could have imagined. Its greatest years still lay ahead.
If the American Revolution established the Three Pigeons as a military landmark, the nineteenth century transformed it into something equally important.
It became the heart of a community.
For generations, the Three Pigeons was one of the busiest places in what would become North Bergen. Long before churches, schools, municipal buildings, and civic halls defined the life of a town, the old tavern filled many of those roles itself. Travelers paused beneath its sign. Stagecoaches changed horses in its yard. Politicians addressed local voters from its porch. Sportsmen gathered for competitions in the surrounding fields. Farmers exchanged news before returning home. Military companies assembled nearby, while families celebrated holidays within its walls.
To understand nineteenth-century New Durham is, in many ways, to understand the Three Pigeons because the tavern stood at the center of nearly every aspect of community life.
The Three Pigeons owed much of its continued success to a simple fact that had remained unchanged since colonial times.People never stopped passing its doors.
By the opening decades of the nineteenth century, improvements to the Bergen Turnpike and connecting roads made travel more regular than ever before. Wagons carrying produce from Bergen County farms rolled south toward markets in Hoboken and New York. Merchants traveled north seeking customers in the growing villages scattered across the county. Public stages began operating on dependable schedules, linking communities that had once seemed isolated from one another.
The Three Pigeons sat directly in their path and unlike many rural taverns that depended largely upon local trade, the Three Pigeons welcomed a constantly changing mixture of residents and strangers. A traveler stopping for dinner might share a table with a farmer from New Durham, a politician from Bergen, a merchant from Hackensack, and a stagecoach passenger bound for Hoboken. Every meal became a conversation and every conversation carried news.
Among the most familiar sights along the Bergen Turnpike was the stagecoach operated by Andrew Van Buskirk. Known proudly as the "Flying Machine," the line connected Hackensack and Hoboken, making regular stops along the route. Contemporary guides and later historical accounts consistently identify the Three Pigeons as one of its principal stopping places.
To modern readers, the phrase Flying Machine may sound amusing, but to nineteenth-century travelers it represented speed, reliability, and connection. Long before railroads reached the area, stagecoaches served as the arteries of everyday life. They carried businessmen to appointments, families to visit relatives, attorneys to court, physicians to patients, and travelers to the ferries that crossed into New York City.
They also carried the mail. The arrival of the stagecoach was often the most anticipated moment of the day. Residents gathered outside the tavern waiting for newspapers, letters, packages, and familiar faces arriving from neighboring communities. For many, the Three Pigeons was the place where the outside world arrived.
The tavern's importance as a transportation center is reflected in one of the earliest modern travel guides to mention it. In 1896, Rand, McNally & Co.'s Handy Guide to the Country Around New York identified the Three Pigeons as a well-known landmark along the Bergen Turnpike, preserving the memory of a location that generations of travelers had already known by heart.
The guide appeared at a moment when horse-drawn transportation itself was beginning to disappear beneath the advance of electric trolleys and railroads. Ironically, one of the last great guidebooks celebrating carriage travel also became one of the last publications to describe the Three Pigeons as a recognizable destination.
Its inclusion reminds us that the tavern was not merely important to local residents. Travelers from across the region knew it as well.
One of the most remarkable aspects of the surviving newspapers is how casually they refer to the Three Pigeons. Articles announced meetings there. Advertisements gave directions by using its name. Political notices assumed every reader knew where it stood. No explanation was necessary. The Three Pigeons required no address. It was the address.
In an era before numbered streets, GPS coordinates, or even standardized rural addresses, the tavern functioned as one of the defining landmarks of northern Hudson County. People measured distance from it. Military officers used it during the Revolution. Stage companies incorporated it into their routes. Newspapers relied upon it as a geographic reference point. The building had become part of the language of the landscape.
To describe the Three Pigeons merely as an inn would be to misunderstand its role entirely. It functioned simultaneously as a hotel, restaurant, transportation hub, post office, meeting hall, polling place, business exchange, sporting headquarters, and social club.
Few buildings in nineteenth-century New Durham brought together as many different people under one roof. On any given day, a visitor might encounter a judge discussing politics, a farmer delivering produce, a stagecoach driver changing horses, sportsmen organizing a pigeon match, or local residents debating the latest news from Trenton, Washington, or New York.
The Three Pigeons did not simply serve the community. It created one.
Every landmark is ultimately remembered because of the people who gave it life. The Three Pigeons was no exception.
For nearly two centuries, travelers recognized the weathered sign depicting three pigeons suspended above the Bergen Turnpike. Yet behind that familiar symbol stood generations of innkeepers who welcomed strangers, listened to local gossip, served meals, rented rooms, and quietly witnessed the changing history of northern New Jersey.
Most have been nearly forgotten.
The surviving records preserve only fragments of their lives, an entry in a census, a newspaper advertisement, a land record, an obituary, or a passing mention in a local history. Individually, those fragments reveal little. Together, they allow us to reconstruct the lives of the men who transformed a roadside tavern into one of the best-known landmarks in old Bergen County.
The earliest documented family associated with the Three Pigeons is the Earle family, one of the oldest English families to settle in colonial Bergen County.
Although the exact date of the tavern's construction remains unknown, genealogical evidence strongly associates the property with William (Willem) Earle I, who was baptized at the Reformed Dutch Church in Hackensack on October 13, 1700.
Willis Arnold Boughton, in Arnold, Redway and Earle Families, identifies William simply as:
"He was the keeper of the Three Pigeons Tavern at New Durham, N.J."
Independent evidence supports that tradition. A manuscript map prepared in 1943 by D. Stanton Hammond for the Genealogical Society of New Jersey, compiled from William H. Winfield's research on Hudson County land titles and other historical sources, identifies the Three Pigeons property as belonging to John and William Earle.
The genealogy of the family suggests the tavern may have remained in Earle hands through much of the eighteenth century. Edward Earle Jr.'s will, dated 1709 and proved in 1717, together with the later will of Edward Earle III, dated 1750 and proved in 1755, demonstrates the family's longstanding presence in this portion of Bergen County.
Whether William himself constructed the tavern remains one of the enduring mysteries of the Three Pigeons. No surviving tavern license, deed, or construction contract has yet been discovered to answer that question definitively. Nevertheless, the documentary record leaves little doubt that the Earles stood among the earliest known custodians of what would become one of Bergen County's most recognizable landmarks.
If the Three Pigeons had a founding family, the evidence presently points to the Earles.
By the middle decades of the nineteenth century, the Three Pigeons had passed into new hands. Among the earliest proprietors to emerge regularly in surviving newspaper accounts is James Brush.
Unlike William Earle, whose story survives largely through genealogies and land records, Brush appears in the newspapers as an active businessman operating one of the township's best-known establishments. Notices connected with the tavern reveal that by the 1860s the Three Pigeons had become far more than a simple country inn. Public gatherings, sporting events, elections, and community meetings all continued to gravitate toward the old tavern.
Brush's tenure illustrates an important transition.The Three Pigeons was no longer merely a stopping place for travelers. It had become an institution within New Durham itself.
Garry Day became its Civil War landlord of the Pigeon at the most difficult time in American History.. Walter T. Eickmann recalled that during the Civil War, troops encamped in white tents upon the neighboring Doremus estate. The increased activity proved so great that Day reportedly employed four assistants, Enoch Greenleaf, Egbert Post, Peter Vincent, and William Young, to keep pace with the demands placed upon the tavern.
Whether serving meals to travelers, refreshments to soldiers, or hosting the famous Washington's Birthday gatherings of the "Old Tops," Garry Day inherited not merely a business but a community tradition stretching back more than a century. Under his stewardship, the Three Pigeons continued fulfilling the same role it had always played, a gathering place for a community
Perhaps no nineteenth-century proprietor became more closely identified with the Three Pigeons than Dennis Blaque. A French immigrant, Blaque appears in census records during the 1870s and 1880s as proprietor of the Three Pigeons Hotel. Under his management, the tavern reached what was arguably the height of its social prominence.
Newspaper after newspaper places Blaque at the center of community life. Political organizations met beneath his roof. Sportsmen gathered on his grounds. Public dinners filled the dining room. Travelers continued arriving by stage. His hotel became one of the best-known gathering places in Hudson County.
Reading the newspapers of the period, one gains the impression that Blaque knew nearly everyone, and nearly everyone knew Dennis Blaque. His personality seems to emerge naturally from the surviving accounts. He appears less as a distant hotelkeeper than as a familiar host whose establishment functioned as the community's informal headquarters. Although much of his private life remains unknown, his public life is remarkably well documented. For more than a decade, Dennis Blaque and the Three Pigeons became almost inseparable.
Owners changed. Governments changed. Roads improved. Wars came and went. North Bergen itself emerged around the old crossroads. Yet one remarkable continuity persisted.
Generation after generation, the Three Pigeons remained a place where strangers became acquaintances, neighbors exchanged news, politics was debated, celebrations were held, and history quietly unfolded over ordinary meals.
Perhaps that is why so many newspapers mention the tavern so casually. The writers assumed everyone already knew it and for nearly two centuries, they did.
There is no surviving diary describing an ordinary day at the Three Pigeons.
No traveler left behind a detailed account of breakfast beneath its roof. No proprietor kept a journal recording each arrival and departure. Like so many places that served thousands of ordinary people, the Three Pigeons performed its daily work without anyone imagining that future generations might wish they had written it down.
Yet the newspapers did. Taken together, hundreds of small notices, advertisements, election announcements, sporting reports, stagecoach schedules, census records, county histories, and travel guides, allow us to glimpse what life at the Three Pigeons must have looked like during its busiest years.
Imagine arriving on an autumn morning sometime during the 1870s.
Long before the first traveler arrived, the tavern was already awake. Smoke curled from the kitchen chimney as breakfast was prepared. Horses stamped impatiently in the stable yard. The smell of fresh bread mixed with wood smoke drifting across the Bergen Turnpike. Wagons could already be heard in the distance, their iron-rimmed wheels striking the hardened road as farmers made their way toward market.
Inside, proprietor Dennis Blaque was beginning another day. Census records identify him as the hotel's keeper, while newspaper accounts repeatedly place him at the center of community gatherings. Whether welcoming overnight guests, preparing for a political meeting, or arranging a sporting event, Blaque's work rarely stopped. The Three Pigeons was not simply his livelihood. It was the crossroads of an entire community.
By mid-morning, attention turned toward the road. The familiar sound of approaching horses announced the arrival of the Hackensack-to-Hoboken stage operated by Andrew Van Buskirk, proudly known as the Flying Machine. For many local residents, its arrival represented the day's first connection with the outside world.
Passengers stepped down stiff from the journey. Mailbags were unloaded. Packages changed hands. Newspapers arrived carrying reports from New York, Trenton, Washington, and beyond. Before the telegraph and long before radio, the stagecoach delivered more than people. It delivered information.
Within minutes, conversations throughout the tavern shifted from local gossip to national events. News of elections, business opportunities, crop prices, and distant political debates spread from table to table as naturally as the coffee was poured.
For many residents of New Durham, the Three Pigeons was where the news arrived first.
By noon, the dining room had changed once again. Travelers shared tables with local farmers. Merchants discussed business with customers. Neighbors who lived miles apart along scattered country roads met almost by accident, exchanging news they might otherwise not have heard for weeks.
One newspaper might be passed from hand to hand until every page had been read. Someone argued politics. Another complained about the condition of the roads. Someone else discussed livestock prices. The Three Pigeons functioned as the community's newspaper long before many residents subscribed to one.
The newspapers make one fact abundantly clear. Politics and the Three Pigeons were inseparable.
Election notices repeatedly directed voters to the tavern. Candidates addressed supporters there. Political organizations scheduled meetings beneath its roof. Public notices assumed every voter knew exactly where the Three Pigeons stood.
On campaign days the quiet tavern became a forum for democracy. Arguments undoubtedly grew spirited. Voices occasionally rose. Yet by evening many of those same neighbors remained seated around the same tables, sharing supper despite having voted differently earlier that day.
The Three Pigeons reflected one of the oldest traditions of American democracy: politics happened face to face.
Not every visitor came to discuss politics. Throughout the nineteenth century, the grounds surrounding the Three Pigeons hosted some of the most popular sporting events in Hudson County. The Pigeon matches drew skilled marksmen from across the region. Horse races attracted enthusiastic crowds. Walking contests tested endurance before cheering spectators.
Newspapers reported these competitions with surprising regularity, demonstrating that the tavern had become one of northern New Jersey's principal centers of outdoor recreation. On such afternoons, the quiet crossroads became a place of excitement.
The crack of shotguns echoed across nearby fields, crowds applauded, wagers were quietly exchanged, and children watched from fences while vendors sold refreshments beneath the familiar sign of three pigeons.
As daylight faded, travelers once again gathered indoors. Oil lamps illuminated the dining room. The smell of tobacco drifted through the bar. Stories grew taller as the evening progressed. Some guests continued north the following morning. Others remained overnight before boarding the next stage.
Local residents lingered long after supper had ended, discussing politics, crops, business, or simply enjoying the company of neighbors. Outside, the Bergen Turnpike gradually fell silent. Inside, conversation continued late into the evening. Tomorrow, the routine would begin again.
The People's Tavern
No single day at the Three Pigeons changed American history. That is precisely the point. History is often remembered through battles, elections, and famous speeches, yet communities are built through ordinary days repeated over generations. Thousands of breakfasts were served here, thousands of travelers paused beneath its sign, and thousands of conversations shaped friendships, businesses, political opinions, and community traditions.
Those countless ordinary moments transformed the Three Pigeons into something extraordinary, the living room of early North Bergen. If the Three Pigeons had served only travelers, it would have been remembered as another successful country inn. It became something much greater. During the nineteenth century, the tavern evolved into the unofficial public square of New Durham. Long before municipal buildings, civic auditoriums, or community centers existed, residents naturally gathered at the Three Pigeons whenever something important happened.
There they voted, celebrated, competed, debated politics, welcomed visitors, mourned neighbors and experienced all the highs and lows of life. The story of the Three Pigeons is, in many respects, the story of the people who passed through its doors.
One of the clearest themes to emerge from nineteenth-century newspapers is the tavern's role in local government. Election after election directed residents to the Three Pigeons. Political organizations announced meetings there. Candidates addressed supporters beneath its roof. Party committees assembled there to organize campaigns that would shape the future of Hudson County.
To modern readers, conducting elections inside a tavern may seem unusual. To nineteenth-century Americans, it was perfectly ordinary.
Throughout the young republic, taverns served as polling places because they were among the few buildings large enough to accommodate public gatherings and centrally located enough for voters to reach them. They were familiar, accessible, and already functioned as places where neighbors discussed public affairs.
The Three Pigeons fulfilled that role for generations. When local residents cast ballots within its walls, they participated in one of the oldest traditions of American democracy. The same building that had watched Continental soldiers march toward Paulus Hook now witnessed citizens peacefully determining the future of their community through the ballot box. The transition speaks volumes about the nation's evolution.
Politics at the Three Pigeons was rarely quiet. Newspaper notices throughout the nineteenth century reveal a steady procession of campaign meetings, public addresses, caucuses, and organizational gatherings held at the tavern. Local elections were often decided by people who knew one another personally. Candidates did not rely upon radio advertisements or television appearances.
They stood before their neighbors. Questions came directly from the audience. Arguments unfolded face to face. Supporters and opponents frequently left through the same doorway. The Three Pigeons was not merely a polling place. It was where democracy was practiced.
If politics filled the tavern's rooms, sport animated the fields surrounding it. Few modern readers would immediately associate a country tavern with organized athletic competition, yet the newspapers leave little doubt that the Three Pigeons became one of northern Hudson County's principal sporting centers.
Among the most frequently reported events were live pigeon shooting matches.
Today such contests may seem unfamiliar, but during the nineteenth century they ranked among the most popular competitive shooting sports in America. Marksmen traveled considerable distances to participate, and newspapers regularly published the names of competitors, match results, and prize purses.
The grounds surrounding the Three Pigeons proved ideally suited for such gatherings. Open fields provided safe shooting space. The tavern supplied food, drink, lodging, and companionship. A sporting event became an all-day social occasion. Horse racing attracted equally enthusiastic crowds. The roads and open spaces surrounding the tavern occasionally echoed with cheering spectators as riders tested speed and endurance before assembled neighbors.
Walking contests, another immensely popular nineteenth-century pastime, also drew participants seeking both competition and local recognition. To contemporary residents these were not isolated amusements. They were community events.
Nearly a century after the Revolution, another war once again brought soldiers to the Three Pigeons. During the Civil War, troops encamped in white tents upon the neighboring Doremus property, only a short distance from the tavern.
According to Walter T. Eickmann, proprietor Garry Day required four assistants, Enoch Greenleaf, Egbert Post, Peter Vincent, and William Young, to keep pace with the extraordinary demand placed upon the establishment.
The scene must have appeared remarkably familiar. Uniformed soldiers once again filled the roads. Military camps stood within sight of the tavern. Conversation again turned toward battles, politics, and the uncertain future of the nation. Nearly eighty years after the Revolution, the Three Pigeons once again found itself serving a country at war.
The Three Pigeons also witnessed some of New Durham's happiest occasions. Among the most beloved traditions were the annual Washington's Birthday celebrations hosted by the organization remembered as the Old Tops. Later recollections describe evenings filled with music, dancing, and remarkable ceremony. At the center of the ballroom hung a large gilded spinning top suspended from the ceiling. As guests danced beneath it, the top slowly revolved throughout the evening until, sometime during the early morning hours, it gradually lost momentum and came to rest.
It was a simple tradition. It was also unforgettable. Anthony Ryder, speaking during North Bergen's Centennial celebration in 1876, recalled those festivities with unmistakable affection:
"Shades of the old Three Pigeons, how stupendous! Those muster dinners, those Old Top suppers, those barbecues, those clambakes, those oyster cracks!"
His words capture something no census or property record ever could. The Three Pigeons was not simply remembered, it was missed.
Historians often evaluate buildings according to their architecture. The Three Pigeons deserves to be judged differently. Its true importance lay not in its construction but in its use. For nearly two centuries the tavern welcomed generations of ordinary people whose names rarely appear in history books.
Farmers.
Teamsters.
Stage drivers.
Politicians.
Soldiers.
Sportsmen.
Merchants.
Immigrants.
Families.
Children.
Thousands of lives briefly intersected beneath its roof. Each departed carrying away memories of a place that seemed as permanent as the road itself. That, perhaps more than anything else, explains why the Three Pigeons continued appearing in newspapers decade after decade.
It was not simply where events occurred. It was where the community gathered. For nearly two centuries, life at the Three Pigeons followed a familiar rhythm.
Each morning brought new travelers. Each election season filled its rooms with voters. Holidays, sporting matches, political meetings, and community celebrations came and went, while generations of proprietors welcomed the next group through the same front door. The building endured because the road endured, and as long as people traveled the Bergen Turnpike, there was always a reason to stop at the Three Pigeons. But roads have a way of changing.
As the nineteenth century drew to a close, the forces reshaping America began to reshape New Durham as well. Railroads, electric trolleys, suburban development, and new patterns of travel slowly altered the landscape that had sustained the old tavern since colonial times. The Three Pigeons did not suddenly fall into ruin, nor did it disappear after a single dramatic event. Instead, like many of America's great roadside inns, it quietly entered its final chapter.
For nearly two centuries, life at the Three Pigeons followed a familiar rhythm. Each morning brought new travelers. Each election season filled its rooms with voters. Holidays, sporting matches, political meetings, and community celebrations came and went, while generations of proprietors welcomed the next group through the same front door. The building endured because the road endured, and as long as people traveled the Bergen Turnpike, there was always a reason to stop at the Three Pigeons.
But roads have a way of changing. During the final decades of the nineteenth century, the pace of life in northern Hudson County quickened. What had once been a rural farming community found itself increasingly influenced by the explosive growth of nearby Jersey City, Hoboken, and New York. Open fields slowly gave way to new streets and houses. Horse-drawn stagecoaches began sharing the road with faster and more efficient forms of transportation. Communities that had once depended upon roadside inns found themselves connected by railroads and, eventually, electric trolley lines.
The Three Pigeons had survived war, political upheaval, and nearly two hundred years of changing ownership. What it could not escape was a changing world.
The Beginning of the End
Ironically, the same transportation network that had made the Three Pigeons one of the best-known landmarks in the area gradually worked against it. For generations, travelers depended upon places like the Three Pigeons. They needed fresh horses, warm meals, overnight lodging, and reliable stopping places along the journey. Every wagon, stagecoach, and rider moving between Hackensack, Bergen, Hoboken, and New York passed beneath its familiar sign.
By the 1890s, those needs were beginning to disappear. Railroads shortened journeys that once required an overnight stay. Electric trolleys carried passengers quickly between growing communities. Improved roads allowed travelers to complete trips that had once taken an entire day.
The old tavern had not failed. The world had simply outgrown the purpose for which it had been built. It was a story repeated across America as hundreds of colonial inns quietly faded into history.
On November 24, 1893, one of the last major chapters in the history of the Three Pigeons quietly began. Developer James H. Symes purchased the historic New Durham tract from the Van Wagenen estate. Symes was not interested in preserving a colonial tavern. Like countless developers of the late nineteenth century, he saw opportunity in land that had once been farmland.
Walter T. Eickmann noted that when Symes acquired the property, the Three Pigeons was still standing. For nearly two centuries it had overlooked the junction of the at Six Corners, and the roads leading toward Bergen Woods. Around it, however, surveyors were laying out a very different future.
Fields became building lots. Country roads became neighborhood streets. The quiet crossroads that had defined the Three Pigeons since the colonial era was becoming part of a growing suburb.
One of the most fascinating aspects of researching the Three Pigeons is that no newspaper ever announced its closing. There are no dramatic headlines proclaiming the end of one of North Bergen's oldest landmarks. No farewell banquet. No obituary for the old hotel that had served generations of travelers.
Instead, historians are forced to follow the evidence wherever it leads. The maps tell the story. An 1888 topographic map still identifies the Three Pigeons by name. A detailed 1894 survey prepared after James Symes purchased the property clearly shows the building standing on its familiar triangular parcel. By 1898, the structure still appears on topographic mapping, although its name has quietly disappeared. Then, almost without notice, it is gone.
When the earliest available Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps for the area were prepared around 1900, the Three Pigeons no longer appears. Somewhere between those dates, after standing for nearly two centuries, the old tavern was demolished. The exact date remains unknown.
Perhaps that is the saddest part of the story. The Three Pigeons witnessed the American Revolution. It watched Henry Lee march toward Paulus Hook. It stood while Anthony Wayne prepared for Bull's Ferry. It welcomed stagecoach passengers, politicians, soldiers, sportsmen, and generations of North Bergen residents. It became one of the township's best-known landmarks.
Yet its disappearance passed almost unnoticed. No one seems to have imagined that future generations would wish it had been saved. History often works that way. Landmarks rarely disappear because people stop caring. They disappear because no one realizes, until it is too late, that they are about to lose something irreplaceable.
When the tavern disappeared, North Bergen lost far more than an old hotel. It lost it's remaining physical links to its colonial past. The same building that had guided Continental soldiers through Bergen Woods, welcomed travelers on the Bergen Turnpike, and served generations of township residents quietly slipped into history. The roads remained. The community continued to grow and very few people realized that one of New Jersey's oldest landmarks had just disappeared.
The Three Pigeons disappeared sometime during the closing years of the nineteenth century. By the turn of the twentieth century, the old tavern that had stood watch over the Bergen Turnpike for nearly two centuries was gone. New streets crossed the property. Houses occupied land where stagecoaches once stopped. Travelers passed the intersection with little indication that one of New Jersey's oldest inns had ever stood there.
Yet something remarkable happened. The Three Pigeons refused to disappear. Not physically, but historically. Most buildings vanish twice. The first time is when they are demolished. The second is when people stop talking about them. The Three Pigeons never suffered that second fate.
Generation after generation, local historians, newspaper writers, genealogists, and longtime residents continued telling its story. Long after the walls had fallen, the tavern remained part of North Bergen's collective memory.
As the twentieth century progressed, historians increasingly recognized the role the Three Pigeons had played during the American Revolution. William H. Winfield's History of the County of Hudson preserved many of the earliest documentary references connecting the tavern with the Revolutionary War. Later historians expanded upon those accounts. Perhaps none did more than Walter T. Eickmann, whose 1948 History of West New York devoted an entire section to "Three Pigeons on the 'Pike."
Drawing upon Winfield, Revolutionary diaries, county histories, and contemporary accounts, Eickmann assembled one of the earliest comprehensive narratives of the tavern's military significance. More importantly, he recognized that the Three Pigeons represented more than an old hotel. It was one of the few surviving landmarks that connected modern Hudson County directly to the struggle for American independence. Without Eickmann's work, many of the documentary references assembled in this manuscript might have remained scattered across dozens of obscure sources.
By the early 1960s, local interest in the Three Pigeons had grown strong enough that the tavern finally received official recognition. In 1964, the site was commemorated with a historical marker, ensuring that motorists traveling the Bergen Turnpike would know they were passing one of the township's oldest and most significant landmarks. The marker could not replace the building. It accomplished something equally important. It acknowledged that the place mattered. For the first time since the tavern's demolition, the community publicly recognized what generations of residents had quietly remembered.
The story did not end there. Throughout the twentieth century, newspapers periodically returned to the Three Pigeons. Some articles revisited its Revolutionary history. Others recalled the colorful days of stagecoaches, sporting events, and political meetings.
Still others simply reminded readers that one of North Bergen's oldest landmarks had once stood at a now-familiar intersection. By then, many readers had never seen the building. Yet they knew its name. That continuity is extraordinary. Few demolished buildings continue appearing in newspapers seventy-five years after they disappear. The Three Pigeons did.
Every generation seems to produce someone determined to rescue a forgotten story. For the Three Pigeons, that person was Ron Skokandich. Ron devoted years to researching the tavern, collecting references, locating photographs, studying maps, and sharing its history with countless residents of North Bergen. Through his video series, social media posts, conversations, and historical programs, he reintroduced the Three Pigeons to a community that had largely forgotten where it once stood.
More importantly, he inspired others to continue asking questions. Much of the renewed public interest in the Three Pigeons during the early twenty-first century can be traced directly to his enthusiasm and generosity as a local historian. Although Ron passed away in 2022, his work lives on in every new researcher who pauses to ask:
"Where exactly was the Three Pigeons?"
This article owes an enormous debt to the foundation he helped build. It is fitting that it be dedicated to his memory.
The timing of this research is no coincidence. As the United States prepares to commemorate the 250th anniversary of its independence, communities across the nation are rediscovering the places where the American story unfolded.
Some are famous.
Independence Hall.
Lexington.
Concord.
Yorktown.
Others are quieter.
A crossroads.
A farmhouse.
A ferry landing.
A country tavern standing at the edge of Bergen Woods.
The Three Pigeons belongs in that second group. Its importance was never measured by grand architecture or famous residents. It mattered because ordinary people gathered there while extraordinary history unfolded around them. For nearly two centuries, it connected North Bergen to the larger story of America. That alone makes it worthy of remembrance.
Today, nothing remains of the Three Pigeons above ground. No weathered timbers. No stone foundation. No sign swinging above the Bergen Turnpike. The stagecoaches are gone. The horses have long since disappeared. The fields that once echoed with political speeches, pigeon matches, and the conversations of generations have long since yielded to modern development.
Yet history has a curious way of surviving. Sometimes it survives in a soldier's diary. Sometimes in a faded newspaper tucked away in an archive. Sometimes on an old map whose faded ink quietly preserves what the landscape has forgotten. And sometimes it survives because people choose not to let it disappear.
As this article was being researched during the commemoration of America's 250th Anniversary, another chapter in the story of the Three Pigeons began to unfold. More than sixty years after the original historical marker was erected in 1964, efforts were undertaken to return a marker to the site and, fittingly, to the location where that first marker once stood.
That effort would not have been possible without the dedication of many people over many years. The late Ron Skokandich, Patrick Cullen West New York's Historian, Brian Murphy, Program Development Coordinator for the Hudson County Office of Cultural & Heritage Affairs, whose shared commitment helped ensure that one of North Bergen's most important historic sites would once again be recognized for future generations.
The new marker cannot replace the old tavern. No marker ever could. But it does something just as important. It reminds every person who passes that intersection that history happened there. Not only during the American Revolution, but for nearly two centuries afterward.
The Three Pigeons witnessed the birth of a nation, the growth of a township, the transformation of a rural crossroads into a modern community, and the lives of thousands of ordinary people whose stories might otherwise have been forgotten.
The building is gone. Its place remains. Its story endures.
And beginning this fall, everyone who passes that corner will once again be reminded to look beyond the pavement, imagine the old road, and remember the tavern that stood there for generations, welcoming travelers, shaping a community, and quietly earning its place in the history of North Bergen, Hudson County, New Jersey, and the United States.
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