The Origins of Colonel Tye
Titus Cornelius, better known as Colonel Tye, was born a slave around 1753 in Monmouth County, New Jersey. He toiled in the farm of a Quaker named John Corlis, who parted company with his denomination’s opposition to slavery. The few Quakers who owned slaves often taught their bondsmen how to read and write, then freed them at age twenty one. Not so Titus’ master, who not only refused to educate his slaves, but was cruel to boot. Slavery was gradually declining in New Jersey, and Titus’ master was one of Monmouth County’s last few slaveholders. Titus was routinely whipped for trifles, and witnessed other slaves endure the same treatment from Corlis. When Titus reached age twenty one, the age when most masters in the region typically freed their slaves, it became clear that Corlis did not plan to free him.
So Titus ran away in 1775 and freed himself. Fortuitously, he fled one day after Virginia’s governor, Lord Dunmore, had issued a proclamation offering freedom to all slaves who escaped their American masters to serve the British. So Titus made his way to the Virginia, where the new freedman changed his name to Tye. He settled in Williamsburg, Virginia, and eventually enlisted in Dunmore’s Ethiopian Regiment. He took to his new life under arms like a fish to water, and distinguished himself. The fortunes of war eventually returned Tye to New Jersey and the birthplace where he had been enslaved, Monmouth County, as a freedman under arms in British service. There, he would distinguish himself, and earn his place in history as Colonel Tye.