A short history of Newark

Preface

This work originally appeared in three small pamphlets, written at the request of the Newark Free Public Library, and published by it. The Library desired the work because there was in print no brief history of the city which it could purchase and hand to the many people — both old and young — who were constantly asking for something of the kind. It has now been completely recast and enlarged.

More space is given in it to the early history of Newark than to the last half century. It is far easier for the average citizen to familiarize himself with the growth and development of his city during the times close to his own than it is to learn of its early days, when there were few newspapers and periodicals and when people did not write down their observations, experiences and ideas with anything like the frequency that they do now.

If one would clearly understand how the Newark of to-day grew to be what it now is, he must learn of its beginnings and of the forces that formed it during its first century and a half.

As one grows more familiar with the early days viii A SHORT HISTORY OF NEWARK.

of Newark, the more he appreciates the dignity and value of a good and honorable name, whether it be that of a man and his family or that of a city, county, state or country.

Considerable attention is paid to the Puritan colonization movement in New England previous to the founding of Newark, and especially to one of the foremost figures among our founders after his return to Connecticut. This has been done to make clearer the influences that moved the settlers in coming here, and the character of the settlers themselves. History has found much to criticise in the Puritans, and also much to admire. Some of their more admirable traits were strongly accented in the early history of this city, where the last attempt was made to found a Puritan theocracy. Their social theory time showed to be wrong. Their kingdom of God on earth could not endure. It failed as had all similar efforts in New England, and for the same reasons. It crumbled gradually, but out of its ruins grew a better town and one more nearly answering the needs of the people. Still, the founders of Newark left behind them a high ideal for all succeeding generations to strive to perpetuate. Their honesty in all their dealings, their uprightness of purpose in everything they, under-

PREFACE. lx

took and their fearlessness in standing for the right, as they saw the right, at whatever cost, are characteristics which have been many times reproduced in succeeding generations.

There is very little biography in this book, as it seemed desirable in so short a history to deal chiefly with events and not with persons.

The town's relation to the government of the province is not touched upon, as knowledge of this relation does not seem essential to a good understanding of the growth of the town, and to treat of it would have added considerably to the size of the volume.

Few dates are given ; for these and for a list of places of historic interest in and near Newark, the reader is referred to the appendices.

The illustrations were, with the exception of the maps, the work of Edwin S. Fancher and Otto

Bechtolf.

Frank J. Urquhart.

Newark, N. J., August i, 1908.

Table Of Contents

Page

Chapter I. The Story of its Early Days. . . . i-6o

i A Roadless Wilderness 4

2 Earliest Settlements 4

3 Puritan Movement

4 The Purpose of the Puritans I0

5 Their Reasons for Settling in New Jersey n

6 Like the Children of Israel J 5

7 A Bargain in Land

8 ,Wealth of Settlers I9

9 The Four Texts 22

io Newark the Last Theocracy of Puritans 23

11 The New Jersey Indians 2 5

12 The First Church a Fortress 26

13 The Church a Precious Thing 28

14 The Church as a Meeting House 29

15 Drums Were very Useful 2 9

16 Filling in the Meadows 32

17 The Newark Settlers' Thanksgiving Hymn 33

18 The Settlers Good Workmen 34

19 Newark Ten Years Old 3°

20 The First Schoolmaster 37

21 Forming New Settlements 39

22 Roads Began as Footpaths •••• 39

23 The First Industry 4 °

24 Treat Returns to Connecticut 4*

25 Treat in Battle 42

26 Treat as Governor • 43

27 Settlers were Able Men 45

28 Newark, Yale and Princeton 45

29 Military Park 49

30 Newark in 1774

31 In the War for Independence 52

32 Washington in Newark 54 xii A SHORT HISTORY OF NEWARK.

Page

33 British Outrages 55

34 The Heritage of Other Days 58

Chapter II. The Story of its Awakening. 61-86 36 Newark's Long Sleep 64

37 Newark the Village in 1800 65

38 The Old Tavern and Southern Trade 68

39 The Stage Coach 69

40 Broad Street in 1800 70

41 High Street and Beyond in 1800 72

42 A Farm in Mulberry Street in 1815 73

43 Quiet Sundays in Old Newark 74

44 Newark Begins to Make Things 75

45 Making Boots and Shoes 76

46 An Early Free School .' 76

47 Newark a Village of Shoemakers 77

48 The Stone Quarries 78

49 Flour Mills and Saw Mills ' 79

50 Iron Foundries ; Tool Making 79

51 Seth Boyden, Inventor 80

52 Boyden a Many Sided Genius 81

53 Coaches, Coach Lace, Saddlery 82

54 Hats, Jewelry, Beer 82

55 Power from Water and from Animals 83

56 Ships, Whaling ; the Canal 83

57 Eminent Men in Newark 84

58 Newark Awake 85

59 Keeping Awake 86

Chapter III. The Story of its Prosperity. 87-129 60 Newark Becomes a City; 1836 90

61 The First Railroad 91

62 The Young City Thrives 93

63 Hard Times of 1837 96

64 A Time of Prosperity ; 1849 97

65 How They Fought Fires 97

TABLE OF CONTENTS. xiii

Page

66 The Old Hand Engines 98

67 The Great Fire of 1836 99

68 The First Steam Fire Engines 100

69 One of the First Schools 100

70 More Schools 102

71 The Board of Education 103

72 Overcoming an Old Idea 103

72, When the Passaic was Beautiful 104

75 On the Eve of Civil War 108

76 A Great Public Meeting in

77 Newark's Southern Trade 112

78 Going to the Front 113

79 Camp Frelinghuysen 114

80 War's Serious Side 115

81 General Kearny 115

82 The First Horse Car Line 117

83 Newark's Drinking Water 118

84 Old Wells and Reservoirs 118

85 The Present Supply of Water 119

86 Street Lighting 120

87 The First Gas Light 121

88 Edison in Newark 121

89 Edward Weston 123

90 Making Electric Lighting Possible 123

91 Newark's Proud Record 124

92 The City of the Future 124

93 The Era of the Subway 126

94 Meadow Improvement 127

95 A Cleaner and Prettier City 128

96 The Greater Newark 128

Some of the Leading Events in the History

of Newark 131-138

Historic Spots in Newark i39 -I 5 I

Index i53- T 58

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE.

Statue of Puritan in Fairmount Cemetery 2

Henry Hudson exploring Newark Bay, 1609. ... 5

Map showing principal settlements from Maine to the Delaware at time of Newark's settlement, 1666 9

Map made by the Settlers to show distribution of

Home Lots 17

Going to church in the infant settlement 27

A "Burning Day'' in the settlement 31

Gathering of Patriots at County Court House

Trinity Church a Soldiers' Hospital — 1776 53

The Outrage upon Joseph Hedden — January,

1780 57

A Skirmish at the "Four Corners ;" with a

modern background 59

Seth Boy den, 1798- 1870. From, a bust in the

Library 62

Looking East from Mulberry street — 1800 67

In Stage Coach Days at Market and Broad streets 71

Newark from the Passaic by Night. An impression 88

Broad street looking South from Market — 1845. • I01 "Lower Green" or "Military Common," now

known as Military Park — 1845 io 7

STATUE OF PURITAN IN FAIRMOUNT CEMETERY

Chapter I. The Story Of Its Early Days

Newark is over two hundred and forty years old. In 19 1 6 it will celebrate the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of its birth. The people who founded it came from four different towns in Connecticut. They were English born or of English parentage. Their leader was Robert Treat. He should have a monument erected to his memory, for he was a remarkable man, a resourceful organizer, and the guiding force of the little colony during its earliest years. Treat came to Elizabethtown in 1665, a few months after it was founded. There he saw Governor Carteret, who had come from England to take charge of all the upper half of New Jersey. The Governor was anxious to get settlers.

Except for a few small settlements on the Jersey shores of the Delaware and Hudson rivers, what we now know as New Jersey was then a wilderness, inhabited only by a few hundred Indians and by wild animals and birds. On the Delaware the towns were little more than forts, for the white people sometimes fought each other there, and fierce and warlike Indians lived but a short distance away in what is now Pennsylvania.

i. A Roadless Wilderness.

From the Hudson to the Delaware there were no roads for white men; nothing except narrow Indian paths from the hills to the big rivers and the salt water, and the trails of deer, bear and wolves leading to the springs where animals came to drink. Some of the Indian paths were well worn and quite easy to follow. They ran from the sea shore or from the Hudson, Passaic or Raritan rivers over the Orange mountains and there joined other paths that led on across the country to points high up on the Delaware. The Indians had use for these paths because many lived near the Delaware in winter and in the summer camped by the sea. When Newark's first settlers came they found huge piles of oyster, clam and other shells along the shore, which showed very plainly that one of the reasons why Indians traveled so far across the country was to get fish to eat after living all winter chiefly on game and Indian corn.

2. Earliest Settlements.

The Dutch, until a year before Newark was founded, had owned for about forty years much of the land on both sides of the lower Hudson. There was a tiny village at Bergen Point; and there were a few farms here and there where Jersey City, Hoboken and Hackensack now are. A few Dutchmen and their families had also made small farms in the upper Passaic valley, all the way up to what are now Paterson and Little Falls, and even further on. A few more were scattered along the lower Hackensack. The Indians came to these farm houses to sell the skins of animals they killed. The skins were then taken to New York City, which was called by the red men Manhattan, and by the Dutchmen New Amsterdam. There the skins were sold by the farmers and traders to the Dutch West India Company, who packed them in great bundles, put them in the holds of clumsy little ships and carried them to Holland.

It was the Dutch West India Company that induced people to come from the old world and live in New York and New Jersey, to gather skins from the Indians, and make farms. The Dutch thought that all the land along the Hudson was very valuable, and to-day we understand readily enough how far-seeing they were.

Thirty-four years before Newark was founded the West India Company bought all of Staten Island, and what is now Jersey City and Hoboken

THE STORY OF ITS EARLY DAYS.

for $10,400. They thought this a great deal of money then, little as it seems to us now when we recall that Staten Island alone is to-day worth many, many millions. The Dutchmen who sold Hoboken, Jersey City and Staten Island to the West India Company bought it from the Indians for a few coats, hats, guns and groceries.

The English had for some time wished to hold all this fine country, and lawyers and others in London said that this ground belonged to them. At last, soldiers came from England and took Manhattan by force, and when they captured the city, the entire country which lay between Connecticut 'and New Jersey, including all of New Jersey, became theirs. This happened in 1664, and put an end to Dutch rule here. Many of the Dutch farmers and traders, however, stayed on their farms in spite of the change of government. The descendants of some of them are living to this day in Jersey cities and towns on the very land where their forefathers settled over two centuries ago.

Elizabethtown had only four or five houses when Robert Treat, the man sent out from Connecticut to find a settling place for the Newark colony, saw it in 1 665. Philadelphia was an Indian village ; Trenton was not founded until sixteen years after; New

York was not as large as Belleville is to-day; and children who were born among the Pilgrim Fathers at Plymouth, Massachusetts, soon after their coming in 1620 — those who had survived the hardships of the early days — were just in the prime of life.

Robert Treat had two other men with him when he came from Connecticut to look for a place for a settlement. The three were sent out by people living in the four towns of Milford, Branford, New Haven and Guilford. They first went in boats to the Delaware river, examined the country along its banks and came near choosing for their new settlement the ground on which Burlington, New Jersey, now stands. But they made up their minds that it was too far from the old home in Connecticut and from New York, then the only strong English settlement for hundreds of miles along the coast. On the Delaware, also, they would have had Indians all around them and few white people near. They would have been almost alone in a great wilderness.

3. The Puritan Movement.

It is not easy for us to-day to understand how important the church was to the people then. The Newark settlers were Puritans like most of the people in New England at that time. Their towns were meant to be Kingdoms of God on earth. In jY/l/NEr To THE DELAWARE' AT Tfl£ Tf/7£r °/* NEWARK^* io A SHORT HISTORY OF NEWARK.

England the Puritans saw much wickedness and much of what we call graft among men in high places, and they spoke out against it all. They would not remain silent, for they believed God wanted them to try to put down all evil. They were sent to prison for saying what they thought, and were sometimes forbidden to hold their own religious services. Their houses were quite often destroyed and now and then they were beaten and driven from their homes. Reformers of to-day believe that the country can be made better if people will go to the polls and vote for good men for office and for better law. In the time of the Puritans in England, there was little voting, for kings and the nobility did about as they chose. So the Puritans, who were the reformers of their time, looked to religion and their church as the guides that would lead their country into a better and truer way of living. When they were not allowed to have their own churches and to worship and preach and talk reforms in their own way in England, they made up their minds to go to some country where they could do as they thought right. Some of them went to Holland.

4. The Purpose of the Puritans.

But this was not all that the Puritans wished for.

THE STORY OF ITS EARLY DAYS. n

They longed for a country of their own, where they could govern themselves in all things by the teachings of their church. So some of them sailed away for America and settled in Plymouth. Other ships followed and other towns grew up near Plymouth, each with its church as its centre, as the fountain from which all the town's life flowed. As time went on, some of the people in these earliest settlements found that they did not agree with the rest about the town's government or its religion. When they could not have their way, they went off by themselves and started a town of their own. There was plenty of unoccupied land; they could buy all they wished from the Indians for very little money, and they soon had a new town established. Nearly every new town that the Puritans founded was a little further south and west than any of those built before it, so that by the time the little body of Puritans who were to make Newark, got into their boats at New Haven and started down Long Island Sound there was a fringe of little settlements along the seashore all the way from Boston and Plymouth to the Connecticut river.

5. Their Reasons for Settling in New Jersey.

The Newark men went much further away from the other Puritans than any other town builders had gone before. There were at least two reasons for this : First, they wished to keep near the seashore; they did not dare settle in the interior for fear of Indians; and they could find no place that suited them on the New England coast that was not taken already or was not too near other settlements or too near large tribes of Indians. Second, as they went down the coast to find what they wanted, they had to go beyond what is now New York State because almost the only white people in it were Dutch with whom they had been very nearly at war two or three years before.

There was perhaps still a third reason for their coming to New Jersey. When the first Puritans came over in the Mayflower they did not intend to land on the bleak New England coast. They planned to make their homes on the banks of the Delaware. But as the Mayflower drew near the shores of this continent the winds drove her far up the coast. When the Puritans found themselves in Massachusetts Bay they were much disappointed and turned southward again, once more trying to reach the Delaware. But the winds were still against them. They never saw the "promised land" on the Delaware of which they had dreamed, and of which extravagant praise had been written by men who sought to get rich Englishmen to buy it from the Indians. The Mayflower was again beaten back around Cape Cod, and the Puritans, at last feeling that God meant them to stay where they were, went ashore and founded Plymouth. It may have been that the Newark settlers, remembering that forty years before, the first Puritan immigrants had wished to set up their new home on the Delaware, thought they would themselves carry out the old plan.

For over twenty years before Newark was founded English adventurers had often visited the shores of what is now New Jersey, and had sent or taken home enthusiastic accounts of what they had seen. Their accounts were often highly colored. They tried to make these new lands as attractive as possible to induce settlers to come out from the mother country. One of these accounts is about the Jersey side of the Delaware. It was written by Master Evelyn in a letter to an English nobleman, was printed and, it is believed, quite widely circulated. It may have been seen by some of the men who were to found Newark, and its glowing narrative might readily have induced them to explore the Delaware river region. It is easy to see that the writer was more anxious to bring settlers to the i 4 A SHORT HISTORY OF NEWARK.

country that he describes than he was to give a faithful description. Part of the letter is as follows : "I saw there an infinite quantity of bustards, swans, geese and fowl, covering the shoares as within the like of a multitude of pigeons, and store of turkies, of which I tried one to weigh forty and sixe pounds. There is much variety and plenty of delicate fresh and sea-fish, and shell-fish, and whales or grampus; elks, deere that bring three young at a time, and the woods bestrewed many months with chestnuts, wallnuts and mast of several sorts to feed them and the hogs that would increase exceedingly. There the barren grounds have four kinds of grapes and many mulberries with ash, elms and the tallest and greatest pines and pitch trees that I have seen. There are cedars, and cypresse and sassafras, with wilde fruits, pears, wilde berries, pine apples and the dainty parsemenas [persimmons]. And there is no question but what almonds and other fruits of Spain will prosper, as in Virginia; And (which is a good comfort) in four and twenty hours you may send or goe by sea to New England or Virginia, with a faire winde. You may have cattle, and from the Indians two thousand bushels of corn at twelve pence a bushel, so as victuals are there cheaper and better than can be transported.

"If my lord will bring with him three hundred men or more, there is no doubt but that he may doe very well and grow rich, for it is a most pure healthfull air, and such pure, wholesome springs, rivers and waters, as delightfull as can be seen, with so many varities of severall flowers, trees and forests for swine, so many fair risings and prospects, all green and verdant, and Maryland a good friend and neighbour, in four and twenty hours, ready to comfort and supply."

6. Like the Children of Israel.

No doubt the Newark pioneers thought a long time, and read their Bibles, and prayed for advice from Heaven, before they made up their minds just where they would settle. The Puritans never took any important step without asking Divine aid. They did not try to establish their church where they thought God did not wish it to be. They felt that in coming to this wild country of America they were doing very much as the children of Israel had done, as described in the Old Testament, and were finding a new home, their Land of Canaan, under God's guidance. They felt that they were being watched over and cared for in very much the same way as were the Hebrews in their long and weary journey from Egypt.

7. A Bargain in Land.

After a conference with Governor Carteret at Elizabethtown, Treat and his companions returned to Connecticut, and in the following spring the settlers came. The land they chose included a large part of what is now Essex County, and for it they gave goods which were worth about $750. The purchase of the land from the Indians was arranged by Samuel Edsall, an English trader who spoke the Indian dialects. A year or so before, Edsall had started a little settlement at Constable Hook. The people there were nearly all Dutch.

Just think what this purchase means! To-day you would find it hard to buy a piece of ground anywhere in the city, twenty-five feet front and extending back fifty or one hundred feet, for twice the sum the settlers paid the Indians for the whole town. In the centre of the city you would have to pay very much more for such a lot. Early in 1904 a lot was sold on one of the corners of Broad street not far from Market, thirty-eight feet wide on Broad street and about one hundred feet deep on Bank street, for $400,000. Write these figures down above those representing what the Indians got for the whole town and you may begin to realize how wonderfully Newark has grown. Other Broad street lots have sold for even higher prices during the last four years.

The settlers did not pay for the land in money, but in goods. Here is a list of the articles which the Indian Perro and his family, who claimed to own the land, received for it : "Fifty double hands of powder, one hundred bars of lead, twenty axes, twenty coats, ten guns, twenty pistols, ten kettles, ten swords, four blankets, four barrels of beer, ten pairs of breeches, fifty knives, twenty hoes, eight hundred and fifty fathoms of wampum, two ankers of liquors and three trooper's coats."

This payment was not made until after the settlers had been here over a year, as many of the families that had agreed to come did not arrive from Connecticut until about that time. When the first settlers landed, a bill of sale, including the price to be given, was agreed on, but apparently nothing was paid to the Indians then. There seems to have been an understanding on the part of the settlers that Governor Carteret was to pay the Indians for the land Newark was to be built on; but he does not appear to have done so. All they got, probably, was the strange collection of things mentioned above. Later, additional tracts were purchased. One extended' from the western boundary of the first tract to the foot of the Watchung mountains, as the Orange mountains were then called. This was owned by two Indians named Winnocksop and Shenoctos, and they were content to part with it for "two guns, three coats and thirteen kans of Rum," to quote the bill of sale.

It should be a source of honest pride to every resident of this city and of all New Jersey, that every foot of ground within the limits of the State was purchased from the Indians, and not taken by force or stolen. The Newark founders were among the first to establish this enviable record and their example was scrupulously followed by all who afterward made settlements in New Jersey. Few of the original States can lay claim to a like record of just and honorable dealing with the red men.

8. Wealth of Settlers.

In all the company there were money and goods to the value of about $64,000, an average for each of the thirty families of about $2,000. They profited by the sad experiences of the Plymouth pioneers of over forty years before, who suffered much because they settled in a new country with too little money, food and clothing. The Newark settlers made sure that there was to be no "starving time" in their New Jersey town.

Many small waterways ran hither and thither about the little village of Newark. A streamlet splashed its way down what is now Market street from a pond near the southeast corner of Market and Halsey streets. This stream fed a second and smaller pond below, just back of the southwest corner of Market and Broad streets. Traces of these old ponds were found only a few years ago when excavations were made for some of the taller buildings on the south side of Market street between Broad and Halsey. The stream wound its way clown into the marshes a little below where the Market street station of the Pennsylvania railroad is located at the present time.

It is probable that this Market street waterway was once much more than a streamlet. In the summer of 1908, while workmen were digging deep into the soil near the corner of Market and Beaver streets, they struck into an area of the finest of sand of such a character as to indicate that at some period, very long ago, the ground there had been a part of the stream's bed.

Other little streams came down the hillside west of the village. One of them ran a little north of the present line of Clay street. This came to be called Mill Brook, for on it the settlers' corn was ground for many years. Others found their way to the marshes south of Market street. One ran through Lincoln park, then little better than a marsh, and one right where the new City Hall now stands.

Out of the marshes near where the Pennsylvania railroad now is, rose a long bluff which faced the river and followed its curves all the Avay up to what is now Belleville. Most of this bluff was leveled away as streets were extended and buildings rose; but traces of it are still to be seen, at Mt. Pleasant Cemetery, for instance. Below the bluff and between it and the river was a stretch of marsh.

The woods about the village abounded in chestnut, hickory, elm, birch, black and white ash, tulip, sycamore, oak and the bitter and sweet gum. The oak the settlers used largely for the frames of their houses, when the day of log huts was over. Many trees were split for fence-rails ; many were cut down and burned to clear the land for planting, and many more for firewood. The bitter gum was used for floors. There was a dense cedar forest to the northeast of Newark on the Hackensack Meadows, and there were thick woods in other places near by; but the earlier Newark historians say that the little town was not by any means closely shut in by forests. As the country was quite open the labor of making farms was much less than it would have been had the ground been covered with trees. The centre of the settlement was at what is now the junction of Market and Broad streets. It must have been a pretty village, after the first year or two, when vines and creepers grew over the log houses and the roughness of the clearing began to disappear.