Most people have never even heard of Pattenburg, New Jersey. (And the old school spelling was actually Patenburg it seems). It's a tiny spot in Hunterdon County, tucked along what used to be called the Muthockaway Creek.
Here's a summary of what happened that day.
A railroad was being built from Easton to Perth Amboy, and crews were blasting a mile-long tunnel through the Musconetcong Mountain. There were black laborers and white laborers - mostly Irish immigrants - working on the site in separate gangs. They also lived in separate quarters on opposite sides of a deep rock cut.
On Saturday, September 21, all the laborers were paid and each group went their separate ways to have some fun. It is believed that the Irish workers drank a whole lot of whiskey that night. The Black workers headed to the village to serenade (as you did in 1872), and on their way back, a group of Irish laborers jumped them. The Black workers fought them off and went back to their quarters.
That should've been the end of it. It wasn't.
The black workers decided they needed to make it clear that they would not tolerate what they just experienced. They got a group together and head to where the fight took place. By then, the Irish group had also grown.
The fighting started and escalated through the night. The Irish workers, better armed with pistols and clubs and outnumbering the Black workers, attacked their cabins, stole the wages they'd just been paid, and burned the buildings to the ground.
During the chaos, an Irishman named Colls was killed by his own side in an internal fight. His body was left near the cabins.
But by morning, the Irish mob created a story around Colls murder: the Black workers did it.
It was a lie, but it worked.
Around 150 armed men attacked the Black workers' camp at dawn. Men were dragged from hiding places and beaten to death. Denis Powell was shot, left dying in the road, and when the mob came back and found him still breathing, they finished him off with clubs and stones. An elderly man found hiding under a porch was shot and beaten to death. Oscar Bruce was shot climbing a fence, then stomped and clubbed until - as the original account put it - his body was "unrecognizable as the remains of a human being."
And then? Almost nothing happened.
The killers walked away, the mob leaders fled. The sheriff was too afraid to go near the Irish workers. Governor Parker waited five days to offer a $500 reward. Meanwhile, three Black survivors were arrested.
Not one of the murderers was brought to justice.
