By: Iris Naylor
Company C of the New Jersey National Guard was organized in 1866 and was composed mostly of veterans of the Civil War.
The company was based in Lambertville, many of its members lived in Lambertville, and it was part of the Seventh Regiment that was commanded in 1876 by Colonel Ashbel W. Angel of Lambertville.
Colonel Angel sent Company C and several other companies to Hopewell in January 1876 to monitor the "frog" war. There are frogs that live in and around water, and there are railroad "frogs."
The war in Hopewell was fought over a railroad "frog." A railroad frog is, according to the dictionary, "a section of intersecting railroad tracks designed to permit wheels to pass over the junction without difficulty."
The Pennsylvania Railroad Company was running two trains a day each way on tracks it had leased from the Mercer and Somerset Railway Company. The newly formed Delaware and Bound Brook Railroad Company wanted its line to intersection that of the Mercer and Somerset at a point just outside of Hopewell.
To prevent the rival company from putting a frog in the Mercer and Somerset tracks, the Pennsylvania Railroad Company placed a locomotive at that point. When a passenger train approached, the locomotive was moved to a siding, and when the train passed by, the locomotive was moved back to its position on the main line.
With the locomotive sitting on the tracks, the Delaware and Bound Brook Railroad employees could not install the necessary frog. Two hundred Delaware and Bound Brook Railroad employees waited until the locomotive was back on the siding one evening, stormed the track, tore up the siding, barricaded the main track and proceeded to install the frog. Then the Pennsylvania Railroad Company sent a locomotive to ram the barricade. The locomotive broke through the barricade but ran off the track.
One Mercer County newspaper gave the opinion "The brave manner in which George Ellis, the engineer of the Pennsylvania locomotive, performed his part of the work is said to have been a heroic act. No one believed that any living sane man would attempt any such daring feat."
The Bound Brook people saw him coming, and they did not believe it.
The Beacon said, "When they saw the timbers and iron flying through the air, they believed and wondered and are wondering still."
The Delaware and Bound Brook people placed their own engine on the track on top of the frog and chained it fast. The Pennsylvania people continued to run their trains but unloaded their passengers on one side of the barricade and reloaded them on the other side. At one time there were six locomotives on the scene, and onlookers came from all over the countryside to watch the proceedings. Employees of both companies camped alongside the railroad.
The Beacon reported, "Their fires lighted up the heavens, producing a decidedly warlike scene."
Between the spectators and the employees of both companies, there were 1,500 people at the scene by Thursday evening. That’s when the sheriff of Mercer County got nervous and called for help from the National Guard. The conflict lasted from Wednesday, Jan. 5, 1876, to Saturday, Jan. 8, at which time the Pennsylvania company withdrew its wrecked engine, the Delaware and Bound Brook company took its engine away from the frog, the crowd dispersed, and Gov. Bedle sent the National Guard home. The "war of the frog" was over.

