The grave at Connecticut Farms contains British and German soldiers killed during the fighting of June 7, 1780. The village, now part of Union, lay on the route from the British base at New York toward the Continental Army's position around Morristown. After the exceptionally severe winter of 1779–1780, General George Washington's army was weakened by hunger, unpaid troops, and expiring enlistments. British commanders believed a rapid advance might scatter American resistance or provoke Loyalist support.

Lieutenant General Wilhelm von Knyphausen led roughly five thousand British, Hessian, and provincial troops from Staten Island to Elizabethtown Point. Their objective was to move inland toward Morristown and threaten Washington's stores and camps. New Jersey militia and Continental troops under Brigadier General William Maxwell and Colonel Elias Dayton contested roads, bridges, and defensible ground. Fighting spread through Connecticut Farms as the Americans delayed the larger column and fell back toward the Watchung Mountains.

The battle was confused and destructive. Soldiers exchanged fire around farms and the village center, and buildings were burned during the British advance. Hannah Caldwell, wife of the local Presbyterian minister James Caldwell, was shot and killed in her home; her death quickly became a Patriot symbol, though accounts disputed whether it was deliberate. The engagement did not produce a decisive battlefield victory, but Knyphausen failed to break through to Morristown and withdrew toward Elizabethtown.

British and Hessian troops who died were buried near the Connecticut Farms Presbyterian Church. Enemy dead were often interred quickly, with limited individual identification, and their resting places could vanish from public memory as communities rebuilt. The grave here recognizes men who served the Crown, including German auxiliaries hired through agreements with several German states. Their presence shows that the Revolution was an international and civil conflict, not simply two uniform national armies meeting on an isolated field.

Knyphausen tried again later in June. The renewed operation led to the Battle of Springfield on June 23, where American resistance again blocked the route toward Morristown. Together, Connecticut Farms and Springfield helped end serious British efforts to penetrate northern New Jersey. The fighting also left civilians with destroyed houses, churches, crops, and livelihoods, burdens that conventional military summaries can obscure.

The mass-grave marker was erected long after the war and gives names neither to individuals nor to units. Its value lies in restoring a visible place for the defeated dead within a landscape usually narrated from the Patriot perspective. Visitors can connect the burial ground with nearby battle markers and the church community that endured the invasion. The site encourages remembrance without celebrating the raid: it acknowledges service, loss, and the shared human cost of a campaign fought through an inhabited New Jersey village.