USA > New Jersey > Somerset County > The Somerset hills : being a brief record of significant facts in the early history of the hill country of Somerset County, New Jersey > Part 1
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GENEALOGY COLLECTION
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ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 02232 9756
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So Charles a. Kip
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Sebuary 1. 1949.
POVR DE
FOY
VOIR
Seymour Duke
ofJonersel.
The Somerset Sills
Being a Brief Record of Significant Facts in the Early History of the Hill Country of Somerset County New Jersey
By
Ludwig Schumacher OF
THE PUBLIC LIBRARY
New Amsterdam Book Company 156 Fifth Avenue New York
-
1328864
TO
F. P. OLCOTT OF
ROUND TOP FARM BERNARDSVILLE
Soodeput $6.00
-12-61-6
Lesh #
INTRODUCTORY NOTE.
" When 'Omer smote 'is bloomin' lyre He'd 'eard men sing by land an' sea ; An' what he thought 'e might require, 'E went an' took-the same as me !"
In the preparation of this little book, the usual sources have been consulted. These have been found in the collections of the New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania Historical Societies. To these have been added some oral traditions, now first put in form, and some materials culled from unpublished manuscripts. In brief, to use the words of the immortal creator of Don Quixote, "though seemingly the parent, I am in truth, only the stepfather" of these historic excursions and digressions.
MILLINGTON, N. J. OCTOBER, 1900.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. GENERAL SURVEY - - II
II. INDIAN TRADITION AND HISTORY - 20
III. SOCIETY IN COLONIAL SOMERSET - 29
IV. PLUCKAMIN AND BEDMINISTER -
- 41
V. BERNARDSVILLE
-
-
62
VI. BASKING RIDGE -
- - 71
VII. LAMINGTON - -
- -
VIII. MENDHAM, PEAPACK, ETC. - - 118
IX. EPILOGUE - -
-
- - 123
X. NOTES ON ILLUSTRATIONS - - - 129
ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE
Frontispiece.
" THE DUST OF A VANISHED RACE" - Facing 20
THE STIRLING ARMS -
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40
GENERAL KNOX'S HEADQUARTERS, BED- MINSTER - -
- Facing 54
SIR FRANCIS BERNARD
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62
FACSIMILE OF GENERAL LEE'S WRITING
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70
MRS. WHITE'S TAVERN
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Facing 76
CARICATURE OF GENERAL LEE
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66
78
EAST FRONT OF STIRLING MANOR HOUSE
86
WILLIAM ALEXANDER FIRST LORD STIRLING
92
MAJOR-GENERAL THE EARL OF STIRLING
IOI
THE SOMERSET ARMS
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IIO
RELICS OF THE BUILDINGS -
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THE SOMERSET HILLS
I.
GENERAL SURVEY.
T HE traveller needs but a slight acquaintance with London in order to recall the huge building or series of buildings looming over the Thames known as Somerset House. It was built on the site of the erstwhile palace of the Dukes of Somerset in the year 1776-a signifi- cant date in American annals. The relationship existing between the town house of the Protes- tant Protector during the minority of King Edward VI. and the Somerset Hills of New Jersey is not apparent. But a brief inquiry into the origin of names will bring us to fair Somer- setshire in Old England, the ancestral home of Henry VIII.'s brother-in-law, and so too, doubt- less, of the early settlers of Somerset County.
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Perhaps they found in these New Jersey foot- hills some suggestions of the mountains, moors, and fens that characterize old Somersetshire, the land of Lorna Doone and John Ridd, the West Wales of the romances of Arthur and his Round Table.
In any case, the county name records the memory of their old home for all time. So, too, the townships of Bridgewater and Bedminster, and the town of High Bridge, once within the county limits, but now across the borders of Hunterdon County, are but names transplanted from old Somerset. And who shall say that this new Somerset, no less than the old, may not claim " a fine soft atmosphere all its own " ?
The aristocratic tradition of Somerset County neither begins nor ends with the association in name with an English ducal house. The Duke of York, the first Lord Proprietor of the Colony, deeded all the land within the present limits of the State to two arch-aristocrats, John, Lord
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Berkeley, and Sir Philip Carteret. The trifling gift was in recognition of their loyalty to the House of Stuart. Berkeley had accompanied the Stuarts into exile, and Carteret, governor of the Island of Jersey, had endeared himself to the royal house by a determined defence of the island against the parliamentary troops. Divid- ing their estate into two parts, the dividing line passed through the Somerset Hills. The greater part of the county, however, was in East Jer- sey, whose capital was Perth Amboy, from which centre the county was developed. Only a small portion fell to West Jersey, the estate of Lord Berkeley. But in 1673, Lord Berkeley lost all faith in the possibilities of his American estate, and sold out for the sum of £1,000 all his interests to one John Fenwick, a Quaker, who purchased it in trust for Edward Byllinge, also a Quaker. This sale was destined to mo- mentous consequences in the colonial develop- ment of America. It led directly to "one of
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the pivotal events of American history "-the coming of the Quakers to the middle Colonies. For a dispute between Fenwick and Byllinge over the purchase was brought to William Penn for adjudication, in the process of which he became interested in American real estate.
East Jersey was soon subdivided by Car- teret's heirs, and again subdivided until the Lords-Proprietors numbered twenty-four. Every foot of ground belongs to the present owner as successor to these proprietors, by and through the rules of Common and Statutory Law.
The aristocratic tradition is well maintained ; for in the last century, we find that Catherine, Duchess of Gordon, of Gordon Castle, Scotland, a daughter of the Earl of Aberdeen, was a large landowner in both Bedminster and Bridgewater townships. In local parlance, this tract is still referred to as "The Duchess." A mention of the Duchess of Gordon suggests a link of as- sociation with a classic repartee. The Duchess
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married General Staats Morris, whose brother, the celebrated Gouverneur Morris, induced her to invest in American real estate, acting as her agent in the Somerset County purchase. While Gouverneur Morris was at the French Court, his personal resemblance to the King, Louis XVI., was a subject of general comment. The king himself noted it and once remarked to Morris: "You bear a striking resemblance to our family ; was your mother much at court ?" "No," replied Morris, "but my father was." This was a favourite story of the late Lord Tenny- son, who accounted it a brilliant illustration of the world's stock of anecdotes of this class. It is possibly mythical in the personal application to Morris, but his resemblance to the House of Bourbon, together with a reputation as a wit, makes it entirely possible.
To continue the county tradition, Lord Neil Campbell, brother of the Duke of Argyle, lived in state on an estate of sixteen hundred acres
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near the junction of the north and south branches of the Raritan River. He was devoted to the cause of "The Pretender " and saved his head by escaping to the Colonies. His grandson, John Stevens, married Betty Alexander, sister of the last Earl of Stirling. They are the ances- tors of the distinguished Stevens family of Hoboken.
The Earl of Stirling proved his title clear in 1760 and then returned to his estate at Bask- ing Ridge, and spent his time, to use his own words, "in settling a good farm in the wilder- ness and bringing to it some of the productions and improvements of Europe." That aristocratic tradition and ancestry were not incompatible with the type of patriotism that gave birth to a great republic in 1776, is abundantly shown in the annals of the American Revolutionary struggle.
The early settlers of Somerset were most heterogeneous, both in rank and nationality.
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There were English and Scotch gentlemen and yeomen, Dutch burghers and peasants, and Ger- mans from the Palatinate, many of whom were redemptioners. We may trace their origin in the religious societies and congregations that still exist, some of which have records of a historic continuity of more than two centuries. Several Protestant Episcopal parishes have their origin with the mother-church of England, and were doubtless centres of settlements by the English. Luthern congregations were organized by the German immigrants ; Presbyterian by Scotch Calvinists ; and the Dutch Reformed churches scattered through the central and southern part of the country speak for the land of dikes and ditches, the land of William the Silent and John of Barneveld.
The earliest specific reference we find to the Somerset Hill country is in a report to the proprietors of East Jersey. In answer to one of their inquiries of their agents, the report
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dated March, 1684, says : "There are also hills up in the country, but how much ground they take up we know not; they are said to be stony and covered with wood, and beyond them is said to be excellent land."
The existence of Somerset County dates from 1688, when it was set off from the neighbor- ing county of Middlesex. But it was some twenty-five years before it was sufficiently or- ganized to have courts of its own for the ad- ministration of justice, and a county seat. Six Mile Run, Hillsborough, and Somerville were successively the county capital, the present ad- ministration buildings at Somerville dating from 1798.
In Smith's "History of New Jersey, " published in 1765, the description of the county records: "The land is rich and being settled by the in- dustrious low Dutch and a few others, much improved wheat is the staple of the county of which they raise large quantities ; they send
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their flower down Rariton River, to New York."
The first permanent settlement within the present bounds of the county was made in 1681. In 1665 the first English governor, Philip Car- teret, issued a publication entitled " Concessions and Agreements of the Lords-Proprietors." The object of this was to encourage emigration, and as an immediate result several families from Piscataqua, in the then province of Massachu- setts, settled Piscataway. Pushing westward from this point along the line of the old Indian trail, the settlement soon spread across the present borders of Somerset, and with the settlement of Bound Brook in 1681 the county history begins as a matter of written record.
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II.
INDIAN TRADITION AND HISTORY.
A S with other prehistoric peoples, we are largely dependent upon oral tradition for our theories of the genesis and evolution of the American Indian race. By a careful considera- tion of their weird and fantastic traditions, we may reach a plausible working theory when these are supported by circumstantial evidence. The Indians who roamed through the Somer- set Hills are classed as Algonquins, the huge family whose territory extended from the Mis- sissippi to the Atlantic and from the Carolinas to Hudson Bay. "Like a great island in the midst of the Algonquins, lay the country of the tribes speaking the generic tongues of the Iro- quois." The true Iroquois, or Five Nations, ex- tended through Central New York, from the Hudson to the Genesee River. The particular
"The Dust of a Vanished Race"
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tribe occupying New Jersey, so far as it was occupied, is now termed Delawares, though they called themselves Lenni-Lenape, and the country they occupied between the Hudson and Delaware Rivers they call "Scheyichbi." The Indians were never numerous in this State ; in- deed, the whole family of Algonquins is estimated within a quarter of a million, and at no time after the discovery by Europeans numbered more than two thousand in New Jersey. In New England, attracted thither possibly by the bounty of the sea, they were more numerous.
The Algonquin traditions all agree that their remote ancestors came from a region west of the Mississippi. Like the story of the Aryan migrations from the region about the Caspian Sea, there seems to have been successive tides of migration, each crowding its forerunner toward the sea. They believed that previous to their incarnation they were all animals, and lived in caves under the earth. One of them
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accidentally discovered a hole leading out to the sunshine, and then they all followed him out and found it so pleasant that they began life anew. They gradually developed into human beings, learned to hunt and fish, and practised a rude agriculture. They still claim kinship to their animal ancestors, it would seem, for we still hear of such chiefs as "Sitting Bull" and "Big Bear."
The Lenni-Lenape in their march eastward came in friendly contact with an earlier migra- tion from the Northwest, called the Mengwe, later known as the Iroquois. Their common progress was disputed by another powerful tribe known as the Alligewi, who disputed their right to advance. Neither tribe being strong enough to vanquish the Alligewi, they joined forces and completely annihilated them. Then the Lenape and Mengwe parted company, the latter settling in the vicinity of the Great Lakes, and the former continuing eastward. The Le-
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nape crossed the Alleghanies, a name com- memorating their vanquished enemies, the Alligewi, and in course of time reached the Delaware, which they called Lenape-Whittuck,- the River of the Lenape. Then crossing over the river they took possession of the land and called it Scheyichbi.
Such is the Indian tradition. They surely found game and fish in abundance ; deer were plentiful ; bears, wolves, and panthers were quite too numerous to permit even the idle life of the aborigines to drift into monotony. The fertile bottom lands of the rivers were easily cultivated, and here they usually planted their maize and built their wigwams. On a single farm near Basking Ridge, along the upper courses of the Passaic River, several hundred flint and quartz arrowheads, and some fifty tomahawks, have been picked up in recent years. At still another point irregular fragments of flint, and imperfect arrowheads, celts, and
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tomahawks, seem to indicate the site of an arrow "factory." An " amulet " too is occasion- ally met with. These are curious and varied in shape, sometimes resembling a bird, sometimes a rabbit or other animal. They are sometimes rudely decorated-or are the decorations hiero- glyphics ? Throughout Bedminster township, too, these relics of the American Stone Age have frequently been found.
The Indian trails connecting the Delaware River with the ocean crossed Somerset County in several places. The main one followed the lower course of the Raritan River, between New Brunswick and a point on the Delaware north of Trenton. The natural course of settlement was along these trails, but it is a matter of great pride to the people of the State that the country was peaceably occupied by purchasing the lands from the Indians. No bloody Indian wars interrupted the development of the Col- ony. Disputes occasionally arose as the pur-
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chases multiplied, but the matter was amicably adjusted by the colonial government, and a reservation of three thousand acres in Burlington County was set aside for their use. Here the remnants of the Lenapes settled and became known as the Edge-Pillocks. In 1801 they were invited by the Mohicans of New York to join them. The invitation was in terms both cordial and picturesque : "Pack up your mats," said the Mohicans, "and come and eat out of our dish which is large enough for all, and our necks are stretched in looking toward the fire- side of our grandfather till they are as long as cranes."
The Edge-Pillocks sold their lands and joined the Mohicans. Both tribes soon decided to buy lands in Michigan and settle there, but they did not prosper. In 1832 the whole remnant of these New Jersey Indians numbered only forty. They therefore sent their oldest chief, one Bartholomew Calvin, to petition the New
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Jersey legislature for aid, making a claim for cer- tain hunting and fishing rights they still held.
They claimed but two thousand dollars, which amount the legislature readily granted. "It is a proud fact in the history of New Jersey," said Samuel L. Southard, a native of Basking Ridge, on this occasion, "that every foot of her soil has been obtained from the Indians by fair and voluntary purchase and transfer-a fact that no other State in the Union, not even the land that bears the name of Penn, can boast of." These sentiments were indorsed by the Indian agent in his address to the legislature. He was a full-blooded Indian, called by his people Shawriskhekung or Wilted Grass. He was educated in Princeton College by a Mis- sionary Society which had named him Bar- tholomew Calvin. In closing his address, he said : " Not a drop of our blood have you spill- ed in battle, not an acre of our land have you taken but by our consent. These facts speak for
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themselves and need no comment. They place the character of New Jersey in bold relief and bright example to those States within whose territorial limits our brethren still remain. Noth- ing but blessings can fall upon her from the lips of Lenni-Lenape."
There is a record, however, of one Indian brave who refused to follow the tribe West. He with his squaw returned to Burlington County and settled near Mount Holly, where they died some twenty years later. They left a daughter, a tall, powerful woman who was known throughout the country as Indian Ann. She lived to a great age, dying in 1894, with the melancholy distinction of the "Last of Lenni-Lenapes in New Jersey."
"Ascending the St. Lawrence," says Francis Parkman, "it was seldom that the sight of a human form gave relief to the loneliness, until at Quebec, the roar of Champlain's cannon from the verge of the cliff announced that the savage
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prologue of the American drama was drawing to a close, and that the civilization of Europe was advancing on the scene." In New Jersey, haply, the advance was accomplished with no record of cruelty or wrong.
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III.
SOCIETY IN COLONIAL SOMERSET.
T T HE colonial population of Somerset County was far from homogeneous. It was liter- ally composed of all sorts and conditions of men. There were English, Scotch, Dutch, German, Indians, and of negroes there were not a few. There was a corresponding diversity in rank, for class distinctions, both in theory and in fact, were as fully recognized as they were in the mother countries. But colonial society added yet another social condition-that of the negro slave. We find within the narrow limits of Somerset County the noble, the slave, and all the intermediate ranks; all this too in a scattered population probably never much exceeding 6,000 souls.
The international conscience of the civilized world on the subject of slavery was not yet
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awakened. The traffic proved to be extremely profitable, and its interests were carefully fos- tered by the home Government. In theory the institution was as fully accepted in the North as it was in the South, and the fact that they soon became more numerous in the South is due chiefly to conditions of climate and occupation. The moral and economic aspects of the question were not seriously considered until a period shortly prior to the Revolution. Stern New England Puritans did not hesitate to engage in the traffic and amass fortunes thereby. Peter Faneuil, the Boston Huguenot merchant, was, we are told, " on the one hand piling up profits from his immense slave trade, while on the other occupied in private and public charities, and in the erection of a Cradle of Liberty in Boston."
As Professor John Fiske humorously observes, "It takes men a weary while to learn the wickedness of anything that puts gold in their purses." The pious woman who retorted to
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the author of "The Negro's and Indian's Ad- vocate " that "he might as well baptize puppies as negroes" was not unique. The question before the United States Supreme Court in the famous Dred Scott case was no new thing. So early as 1667, nearly two centuries before Chief- Justice Taney's decision, the Virginia House of Burgesses enacted : "Whereas, some doubts have arisen whether children that are slaves by birth and by the charity and piety of their owners made partakers of the blessed sacrament of baptisme, should by virtue of their baptisme be made free : It is enacted and declared by this grand assembly and the power thereof, that the conferringe of baptisme doth not alter the condition of the person as to his bondage or ffreedom ; that diverse masters, ffreed from this doubt, may more carefully endeavor the propa- gation of Christianity by permitting children, though slaves, or those of greater growth if capable, to be admitted to that sacrament."
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The extent to which it obtained in New Jersey is not definitely known, but in proportion to its population, it was far in excess of any other colony north of the Mason and Dixon line. They were most numerous in those parts of the country settled by the Dutch, presumably be- cause the Dutch colonial interests in the tropics and their vocation as traders had familiarized them with the institution. The total population of the State in 1726 numbered 32,442, of which eight per cent. were negro slaves. The same year, out of a total population in Somerset County of 2,271 souls, 17 per cent. were negro slaves, and this ratio was exceeded in two other counties. In the year 1800 the proportion of negroes to whites was still nearly as great, and they then numbered 1,863. In the early years of the century a series of laws were enacted for their gradual emancipation, and by 1830 the total number in Somerset County numbered but 78.
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Negroes in Somerset County were valuable property. In an inventory of an estate at Branchburg, settled in 1764, there is mention of six slaves varying in value from £30 to £70 each. Again, a few years later, we find the following bill of sale : "July 10, 1768, John Van Nest, of Bridgewater (now Branchburg) sold to Peter Van Nest, a certain Neger Winch named Mary, and a neger boy named Jack for the sum of £66, York currency."
Nor shall we have to go South, or to the pages of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," for instances of barbaric cruelty. There are records of revolting brutality in the execution of the death penalty. For murder or assault, the slave was burnt alive, and for certain petty misdemeanors, hanging was considered none too severe by the colonial courts. In 1694 a justice of Monmouth County pronounced sentence on a negro murderer in the following terms : "Cæsar, thou art found guilty by thy country of those horrid crimes
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that are laid to thy charge : therefore, the court doth judge that thou, the said Cæsar, shall return to the place from whence thou camest, and from thence to the place of execution, when thy right hand shall be cut off and burned before thine eyes. Then thou shalt be hanged up by the neck till thou art dead, dead, dead : then thy body shall be cut down and burned to ashes in a fire, and so the Lord have mercy on thy soul, Cæsar."
From such sombre pictures, it is a relief to turn to a consideration of the fashionable life of the Colony. Here we have glimpses of colour, gayety, and grace sufficient for the composition of a Watteau picture. Midway between New England and Pennsylvania, the social life of New Jersey was neither so austere as was that of the Puritans nor yet so sombre as that of the Quakers across the Delaware. It was more in touch and sympathy with the gayety of Knick- erbocker New York and Cavalier Virginia. So
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we may read of gay doings in the old Capitol at Perth Amboy ; of men in crimson and satin garments, gold laced and frilled, with silver buttons engraved with monograms ; in silk stockings and jewelled shoe buckles ; in hats cocked and laced, and powdered wigs ; with gold snuff-boxes and gold-headed walking-sticks.
And the ladies were even more "smart" in gorgeous apparel. They wore gorgeous bro- caded silks and satins, large hats with streaming feathers, jewels, gay ear-pendants ; they pow- dered and puffed their hair, painted and patched their faces. We hear of all these vanities ; they are no new things in these later days. An advertisement in the New York Gazette of 1733 reads : " Morrison, Peruke maker from London, dresses gentlemen's and ladies' hair in the politest taste. He has a choice parcel of human, horse, and goat hair to dispose of."
"The apparel oft proclaims the man " and woman. It is but a step from the world's
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stage to the mimic stage. The first theatre company to visit the Colonies appeared in Perth Amboy in 1752, and fashionable New Jersey society received the innovation with open arms. Long years after, old ladies recalled with rap- ture the beauty and charm of the leading lady as Jane Shore. In marked contrast to all this, in the year 1750, the Assembly of the province of Massachusetts forbade theatrical representa- tions because, that body held, " they tend greatly to increase immorality, impiety, and a con- tempt of religion."
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