Robber Barrens

Two centuries before Tony Soprano, New Jersey's Pine Barrens—a million acres of coastal woodlands—harbored gangsters during the American Revolution. 

Known as banditti, they used the desolate woodlands as a base of operations, from which they robbed citizens' homes and smuggled contraband into and out of New York City, in open defiance of the Patriots fighting to separate the colonies from England.

The roughest and toughest of the banditti was John Bacon.

A shingle-maker by trade, Bacon began raiding the homes of Patriots in Forked River in the summer of 1780, carrying off everything of value that he and his men could find. In December of that year, Bacon upped the ante when he shot and killed a Patriot militia officer in Tom's River, as the soldier tried to arrest him.

Bacon's reputation as a robber blossomed a year later, thanks to an incident that became known as the “Skirmish at Manahawkin.”

When it learned he was leading a raiding party in the area, a group of local militiamen assembled to ambush Bacon at a Manahawkin crossroads. But when Bacon didn't materialize by 3 am, the militiamen retired to a tavern to get drunk. Bacon's party arrived at daybreak and shot and killed one of the militiamen as he fled the tavern. 

Bacon was indicted for high treason, as a result; but that didn't deter him. He continued raiding homes the Barnegat Bay area throughout 1782, "taking whatever he wanted—money, food, and clothing—at the muzzle of a musket or point of a bayonet," a one historian has written.

In October that year, Bacon perpetrated the "Massacre of Long Beach Island," during which he used bayonets to kill or wound 21 Patriots from Cape May, as they salvaged boxes of tea from a derelict British ship.

New Jersey's governor then put a £50 bounty on Bacon's head.

Hoping to earn the bounty, a Burlington County group of militiamen set out in search of Bacon on Christmas Day, but were waylaid by his band at Cedar Bridge, where two were killed and another wounded.

Two months later, the Revolutionary war ended. Most New Jersey bandits fled the Pine Barrens for New York City, but Bacon, fearing arrest, remained behind. 

That was a mistake. 

In April 1783, the same bounty hunters he bushwhacked at Cedar Bridge found Bacon in a tavern in Tuckertown, and executed him on the spot. The governor awarded the killers the bounty.

John Bacon was the last man to die in the Revolutionary War.