Colonel Richard Wescoat Marker is associated with Oct 6, 1778 and the history of New Jersey. Richard Wescoat served as a New Jersey militia officer during the Revolution. Atlantic County militia guarded coastal communities, watched British vessels, and resisted raids. The marker commemorates local military leadership rather than a major battle. Living at the Forks in 1764, he became an ardent patriot and as a First Major, served in Colonel Richard Somers’ 3rd Regiment, Gloucester County Militia in 1775. He served at Mt. Holly in a skirmish in Dec. 1776 and was wounded at Trenton Jan. 2, 1777. Wescoat and Elijah Clark constructed the Fort Fox Burrows at Chestnut Neck prior to the battle on Oct. 6, 1778. Moving to Mays Landing in June 1783, he operated a store and tavern close to the present County buildings and died here on Mar. 9, 1825, aged 91 years. He is buried in Presbyterian Cemetery.

Because this entry concerns a marker, the visible object is primarily a guide to an earlier event rather than the event's original fabric. Markers select facts, names, and dates for public memory, often compressing uncertainty and change into a small amount of text. The most useful way to visit is to compare the inscription with the surrounding geography and the fuller account in this record. Doing so restores movement, distance, and setting to a story that the marker alone can only summarize.

A house or homesite places public history within a private and domestic setting. Such properties could support farming, business, hospitality, political discussion, military lodging, or family networks, even when no formal institution operated there. Their historical value often comes from the people who lived or stayed on the land and from the decisions, labor, and relationships centered there. The setting therefore links biography and household life to events unfolding beyond the property boundaries.

Within the broader theme of New Jersey, this place shows how national history was assembled from local actions. Strategy and policy depended on geography, labor, supplies, communication, and cooperation that varied from community to community. The event recorded here is therefore significant on two levels: for what happened at or near this location, and for the way that episode contributed to a wider sequence of military, political, economic, or social change. The marker makes that connection visible in the present landscape.

Taken together, the documentary account, the marker, and the surviving setting give this place its significance. The site is most informative when approached as part of a connected landscape rather than as an isolated point. Changes in roads, buildings, vegetation, and land use may obscure the original scene, but location still helps explain relationships among people and events. Preserving the marker and improving its interpretation keeps a locally grounded piece of history available for comparison with maps, records, archaeology, and other nearby sites.