USA > New Jersey > Middlesex County > New Brunswick > The colonization and subsequent history of New-Jersey : a discourse pronounced before the Young Men's Association of New-Brunswick on the 1st of December, 1842 > Part 1
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REYNOLDS HISTORICAL GENEALOGY COLLECTION
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ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 02246 7093
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The Colonisation and subsequent history of New-Jersey.
A DISCOURSE,
PRONOUNCED BEFORE
THE YOUNG MEN'S ASSOCIATION,
OF
NEW - BRUNSWICK,
On the Ist of December, 1912.
BY WILLIAM BEACH LAWRENCE.
SOMERVILLE, N. J. 3. L. B. BALDWIN, PRINTER. 1543.
1764880
Lawrence, William Beach, 1800-1881.
F 853 47
The colonization and subsequent history of New-Jersey. A discourse, pronounced before the Young men's associa- tion of New-Brunswick, on the 1st of December, 1842. By William Beach Lawrence. Somerville, N. J., S. L. B. Baldwin, printer, 1843.
31 p. 213 **.
1. New Jersey-Hist .- Colonial period.
136h11
8-16031
Library of Congress
₣137.L42
SHELF CARD
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CORRESPONDENCE.
DEAR SIR : NEW-BRUNSWICK, DECEMBER 10, 1842.
At a recent meeting of the Lecture Committee of the Young Men's Association of our city, the following resolutions having been submitted were unanimously adopted, viz.
" Resolved, That the thanks of the Lecture Committee on behalf of the Young Men's Association of this city be, and hereby are, tendered to William B. Lawrence, Esq. for his very interesting and able lecture before it, on the evening of the 1st inst. Also,
" Resolved, That the Secretary be authorized to communicate the above resolution to Mr. Lawrence, and to request the favor of a copy of his address for publication."
The agreeable duty of communicating the above resolutions to you devolves upon me. In consonance with my instructions, I would beg to call your attention to the request contained in the last resolution, earnestly hoping that you will comply with it.
Permit me to add, my dear sir, my own personal tribute of thanks to that of the Committee I represent.
On behalf of L. C. of Y. M. A.
Yours, very truly, CH. D. DESHLER. W. B. LAWRENCE, EsQ.
NEW-YORK, DEC. 14, 1842.
DEAR SIR :
I have received your letter of the 10th instant, requesting a copy of the Lecture, which I delivered before the " Young Men's Association of New-Brunswick." The remarks which were addressed to your So- ciety were very hastily prepared in consequence of the invitation, with which they had honored me, and were intended to point out a few of the interesting incidents of the history of New-Jersey, and to recall to the remembrance of the present generation some of the great and good men, whose character and services confer lustre on your State. If it is supposed that the publication of the Lecture can in any wise promote the laudable objects of your Association, it is entirely at your disposition. Please accept for yourself my acknowledgements, for the flattering man- ner, in which you have communicated the resolutions of the Committee. I am, dear sir, yours truly, W. B. LAWRENCE.
CHARLES D. DESHLER, EsQ.
Sec'y of L. C. of the Young Men's Association of New-Brunswick.
A2
A DISCOURSE, &c.
Mr. President and Gentlemen :
I will not offer any apology for complying with the invitation, with which I have been honored by the " Young Men's Associa- tion of New-Brunswick." To appear before a respectable assem- blage of a place, with which and its vicinity,# my early impress- ions are more intimately connected than with any other spot in the universe could not, at any time, fail to afford me a gratification of no ordinary character. The occurrences of this evening carry me back through an interval of thirty years. The venerable seat of learning,f to which I am indebted for much valuable instruction
* The seat of the late Rev. Abraham Beach, D. D. the maternal grandfather of the writer, and to which allusion is made, is extensively known as " THE FARM." Dr. Beach, who died on the 11th of Septem- ber 1828, at the advanced age of eighty-eight years, was a native of Cheshire, Connecticut. He was admitted to holy orders, in London, in 1767, and, at the same time, was appointed by " the society for the propagation of the gospel in foreign parts" their missionary, to officiate in Christ Church, New-Brunswick. The estate referred to, and which was soon after his arrival in New-Jersey, acquired by intermarriage with a descendant of one of the first settlers, has ever since continued the resi- dence of his family, and at "THE FARM," after officiating for twenty- nine years as the minister of Trinity Church, New-York, to which place he was called in 1784, he passed in tranquil retirement the last fifteen years of liis earthly career. His situation, during the war of the revo- lution was an extremely difficult one, living as he did, during the greater part of it, between the lines of the two contending armies, but, though in principle a loyalist and bound to the mother country by the ecclesias- tical connection, which existed between him and the authorities in En- gland, yet he ever scrupulously confined himself to the duties of his sa- cred office, never absenting himself a single Sunday from his profession- al labors, and dispensing spiritual consolation alike to Whigs and Tories, to Americans and Englishmen. Indeed, at one time, he was the only Episcopal clergyman officiating in New-Jersey. At the close of the war, he declined offers of the highest preferment in the British provinces.
t The Collegiate department of Queen's College was closed from 1815 to 1825, when it was reopened, under the name of Rutgers College, having been so called in honor of Col. Henry Rutgers of New-York, a respectable member of the Dutch Church, of great hereditary wealth and who had contributed to its funds. Its first President under the new organization was the Rev. Philip Milledoler, D. D. who resigning his office in 1840, was succeeded by the Hon. Abraham B. Hasbrouck, L. L. D, now the eminent head of the institution.
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.and which notwithstanding its temporary depression during a por- tion of the intervening period, now constitutes, under its present happy auspices, the proudest monument of your city, recalls the friendships of juvenile days, many of them too soon interrupted by the varied duties which, in our business community, put in re- quisition the abilities of all, and no few of them long since severed by the unsparing hand of death. In returning to scenes, amidst which so much of my life was passed I cannot feel altogether as a stranger, and I trust that the circumstances, to which I have allu- ded, will be deemed a sufficient justification of the selection that I have made, and that it will not be considered presumptuous in one thus situated to ask your attention to a few remarks, connected with the colonization and subsequent history of New Jersey.
Indeed, there is so much similarity in the motives, which indu- ced the settlement of the several colonies included in the old Thir- teen States, there was so uniformly a love of civil liberty, either brought over from the countries of their origin or engendered by the position of the emigrants, such a determination to follow the dictates of their own consciences in serving God, according to the almost boundless varieties of their religious creeds, that no American can study the history of his own particular State, without becoming more or less conversant with that of the Union, and as regards the citizens of New-York and New-Jersey, their annals, to no incon- siderable extent, are identical. Exposed not only to the same gen- eral political changes, which affected the paramount sovereignty, but constituting under the first European claimants a single prov- ince, being included in the original grant of the second as such, and afterwards having, though under separate organizations, for a long period of their anterevolutionary existence, the same individu- .als as Colonial Chief Magistrates, we may even, apart from that charter and safe-guard of our liberties, which has made all Amer . icans one people, deem ourselves in every sense fellow-citizens and fellow-countrymen. It is not my design, nor would the limits of a brief hour suffice to present to you even the most succinct analysis of your political annals. My object in this rapid glance is merely by bringing to your recollection the very inany incidents, which they afford, worthy of the investigation of every son of the soil, to invite as the best means of cherishing patriotic sentiments and dif- fusing that knowledge, which all should possess, those among you, who may follow me, to choose their themes from those ennobling topics, by which your history is amply illustrated.
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If we look to that colonization, in which Holland, Sweden, Scot- land, Ireland and England bore a part, to say nothing of the ear- ly emigration from the descendants of the Pilgrims, settled in the inore Eastern colonies of our own country, if we consider the va- rious distinctions of sects, which prevailed among the original em- igrants, if we examine the systems of government and civil poli- ty, adopted by the Powers, which bore sway in portions of the ter- ritory, before its acquisition by England, and the different experi- ments adopted under the proprietary and royal authorities, if we call to mind the memorable occurrences of the revolutionary strug- gle within this State, or in which her distinguished sons bore a part, no one can complain that I propose a barren subject.
Not to enter on the questions connected with the ante Columbian discoveries of America, which though but recently discussed in the literature of Southern Europe, have been transmitted to us through Icelandic manuscripts, and are even noticed in the Swedish narra- tives of the historians of a portion of your State, Campanius and Acrelius, to whom, for another purpose, I shall, by and bye, have occasion to refer-not to inquire, whether New-Jersey formed a part of that Vinland which, at the end of the tenth century, was visited by the northmen, to whose voyages the labors of the anti- quarians of Copenhagen" and the narrative of our accomplished countryman Wheatont have given so much interest, not to trace the parts of our coast explored, as early as the 16th century, by Verazzano, a Florentine in the service of Francis 1st of France and who entered the bay of New-York, we may look to the voyage of Hendrick Hudson, who, in 1609, whilst in the employ of the Dutch East India company, and in search of a north west passage to India, sailed up the magnificent river, which bears his name, as well as entered the Delaware, your other boundary, as laying the foundation of the first European colonization of New-Jersey. In- deed, a redoubt was thrown up on Jersey City point, long before any fortification was erected on Manhattan Island, and the settle- ments in your territory were nearly contemporaneous with those of the City of New-Amsterdam, which, when visited in 1614, by Argall's expedition, on its return from Port Royal, consisted but of a few huts.
Nor were initiatory proceedings for forming settlements taken
* Antiquitates Americana Ante Columbiana &c. Hafnia, 1837.
+The history of the northmen by Henry Wheaton.
/
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only on the Eastern borders of the State. . The province of the New Netherlands, which was understood to include the whole coun- try from Cape Cod to the Delaware, was subjected to the West In- dia Company established in 1621. In the same year fort Nassau was built on Timber creek, near Camden, and the forts at New- York and Albany, the latter of which was called fort Orange, were erected.
V.
It was not long subsequent to this period that there were estab- lished in the New-Netherlands three colonies, two of them con- nected with New-Jersey, by which the directors of the West, India Company intended to perpetuate, through territorial possessions in the New World, the wealth, which successful commerce had ac- quired for them in the Old. The charter of liberties of 1629* granted by the West India Company to the Patroons, allows to any of its menibers, who should, within a limited period, plant colonies of fifty souls and comply with certain preliminary condi- tions, the privilege of extending their limits sixteen English miles along shore, that is on one side of a navigable river or eight miles on each side, and so far into the country, as the situation of the oc- cupants would permit. 'The colonists were free from charges, tax- es and duties imposed on others and the Patroons possessed the right of establishing courts of Justice ; they had the power of ap- pointing all magistrates and officers and of providing religious in- struction, regulating the support of schoolmasters and most other matters, which are supposed to belong to the government of an in- dependent comnninity, and, though we do not find the privilege in the charter of liberties, yet it is a matter of history, that the Pa- troons of Rensselaerwick, (the first of whom availing himself of a provision of the charter authorizing the grantees to increase their territory according to the number of the original colonists, had ex- tended his possessions to a tract twenty-four miles by forty-eight,) built a fort to maintain their possessions. The virtues of the last individual, who enjoyed the hereditary estates devolving on him, as proprietor of this colony or manor, as it was regarded under the English government, and who, by the ties of family alliance, was connected with one of the distinguished statesmen of New-Jersey, to whom I shall in the course of these remarks have occasion to allude, ; lias created a respect for the name of Patroon, which has
*A translation of this document will be found in " the New- York His- torical collections," New Series, Vol. 1 p. 369.
+ William Patterson.
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caused it to be considered a title of honor long after the extinc- tion of the political rights on which it was based .* Pavonia, the colony of the Director De Paw, and to whom at one time was like . wise granted Staten Island, embraced a portion of the Jersey shore, immediately opposite New-York. A plot of sixteen miles square, on the peninsula of Cape May, was bought of the Indians for the Director Goodyn, who gave to it the name of Swanwendal, but soon abandoned his project of colonization, and, at this day, no more vestiges are to be found of the Dutch Patroons, within the limits of New-Jersey than of Plowden's palatinate of New-Al- bion, which seems, indeed, to have embraced the territory included in Goodyn's grant. For that enterprise a charter was obtained from Charles Ist in 1634, a copy of which may be seen in Hazard's collections of State Papers,t conferring among other powers on the Earl Palatine that of creating orders of Provincial nobility, to which those proposed by Mr. Locke in his Carolina constitutions, among us alone afford any similitude. The colony was to be es- tablislied between Maryland and New-England. It is said that a settlement was made at Salem in this State, and it is stated in the same work, in which I have found the charter, that the Earl Pala- tine of Albion resided on his grant for several years and acted as chief sovereign thereof. This effort, the existence of which has been recently questioned, to transplant the hereditary distinctions of European aristocarcy to the American soil, was not, however, more successful than that undertaken under the auspices of the great Philosopher, and the colony was soon broken up by the neigh- boring Dutch and Swedes.
The settlements of the New- Netherlands were made at a glori- ous period of Dutch History, at a time when a few insignificant provinces revolting from the greatest empire of the world, sustained by the mighty influence of commercial enterprise and an innate horror of foreign domination, were giving to Europe a foretaste of what, a little more than a century afterwards, was illustrated by our own story. There are few of those, who now honor me with their presence, in whose veins does not flow some portion of the blood of the countrymen and associates of Patriots, who disregard-
*For a very interesting account of the colony of Rensselaerwick, the reader is referred to "a Discourse on the life and services of Stephen Van Rensselær by D. D. Barnard."
+See Hazard's State Papers Vol. 1 p. 160.
B
الدينية لعطاءيتد ليدعمفي
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ing the immense distance, which separated the burghers of Am- sterdam from the King of Spain and the Indies, had yet the cour- age to defend, in the dykes and morasses of Holland, the exercise of their religion and the political rights of man against the most powerful potentate of Europe.
It was, indeed, long before the peace of Munster had given a formal sanction to Dutch liberty, and while the independence of the States General was yet liable to be assailed by their former haughty masters, that the settlements in the New-Netherlands were formed. It is, however, due to historical truth to state that the motives of the Dutch in proposing these establishments were not precisely the same as those of the Plymouth pilgrims, who were themselves escaping from oppression. The Dutch West India company were engaged in a commercial enterprise, and their plans had rather in view the benefit of those by whom the funds were advanced than the happiness of the governed. "They were intent on promoting trade. Considerations, however, connected with the success of their own enterprise, rendered necessary a discrimi- nation as to the character of the emigrants, the principle of which is fully maintained in the concessions to the Patroons, to which I have referred, and all the instructions of the Directors to their Gov- ernors evince the utmost solicitude as to commercial honor. They were charged to keep every contract inviolate, and the modern doctrine of repudiation would have found no favor, either with the council of nineteen or with their Representatives on this side of the Atlantic. We may learn from the accounts, which the English gave of New-York, at the time of its surrender, the happy effects which had resulted from the honorable frugality and unspotted in- tegrity of the original settlers. " All the early writers and travel- lers" says a recent historian, (I quote from Mr. Grahame, a most liberal friend of America and whose valuable history of the colo- nization of the United States is deserving of general perusal,) "unite in describing the Dutch colonial metropolis as a handsome, well built town ; and Jossylin declares that the meanest house in it was worth one hundred pounds sterling." "Indeed," continues Mr. Grahame, "the various provisions that were introduced into the articles of surrender to guard the comforts of the inhabitants from invasion, attest the orderly and plentiful estate, which these colonists had attained, as well as explain the cause of their unwar- like epirit. Of the colonists, who had latterly resorted to the prov-
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ince, some were persons, who had enjoyed considerable affluence and respectability in Holland, and who imported with them and displayed in their houses costly services of family plate and well selected productions of the Dutch school of painting."*
But in our commendations of what is valuable in Dutch char- acter and enterprise, we must not forget that the notions of liberty, which prevailed, even in the mother country, were very different from those which, under the blessed influence of magna charta and the common law, accommodated to our circumstances and position, constitute the boast and glory of our present institutions. Liberty in Holland was confined either to the territorial lords or to the municipal burghers. The peasant, the boor had no partici- pation in the elective franchise, no political rights to defend. There was no trial by jury, that distinguishing characteristic of English jurisprudence. Even the officers of the municipalities constituted close corporations, or were nominated by the Stadtholders and by the municipalities were the provincial delegates chosen and by them the delegates to the States General. Nor were the colonies subjected, except by a remote tie, to the political sovereignty of the mother country, but they were the property of a corporation, which, how- ever extensive its powers, could be regarded only as a trading com- pany. From such a source and surrounded by such associations, we would, in vain, look for any provision as to colonial representa- tion. The grants to the Patroons contemplated the establishment of lordships similar to those of Holland, while the island of Manhat- tan was retained by the company and was the residence of the Governor General. The Sheriff of the City of New-Amsterdam was appointed by the Governor and the Schapen and Burgomas- ters perpetuated themselves.
'The Agriculturists-the farmers of the New-Netherlands were, however, too near the English colonists to submit always to the degradations, to which the institutions of the Fatherland subject- ed them. We find, as early as 1653, that a voluntary convention was held of two delegates from each village, in which Baxter, an emigrant from New-England, bore a prominent part, and which resulted in a remonstrance unanimously adopted, that breathed the spirit rather of English than of Dutch liberty. To use the elegant version of Bancroft, "'The States General of the United Provin- ces" said they " are our liege lords, we submit to the laws of the
*Grahame's history of the United States, Vol. 1 p. 225.
/
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United Provinces and our rights and privileges ought to be in har- mony with those of the Fatherland, for we are members of the State and not a subjugated people ; we, who have transformed the wilderness into fruitful farms, demand that no laws shall be enact- ed but with the consent of the people, that none shall be appointed to office but with the approbation of the people, that obscure and obsolete laws shall never be revived."*
The result, however, was what might have been anticipated. Stuyvesant, high minded and estimable as the old Governor was in every relation of life, had not been educated in a school to toler- ate language such as this. Though the divine right of kings had been repudiated, he could not conceive that power should emanate from the great body of the people. The assembly was dispersed under threats of exemplary punishment, the Governor declaring that " we derive our authority from God and the West India Com- piny, not from the pleasure of a few ignorant subjects." It is a. remark not unfrequently made and to the truth of which the his- · tory of the New-Netherlands affords no exception, that revolutions do not go backwards. When menaced by the English in 1663, the necessities of his government induced Stuyvesant to call an assembly and to appeal, as the only means of protection, to those · boors, whom he had, a few years before, treated with so much in- dignity. It was, however, too late. The Colonists would not fight to perpetuate the sway of the West India Company nor would the company spend money for the Colony ; and, thus the aristocratic liberties of Holland yielded to the anticipation of equal rights.
Not, however, to dispose so rapidly of our Dutch ancestors-the claims of the New-Netherlands embraced the Connecticut river, and as early as 1633, Fort Good Hope was built within the bounds of the present city of Hartford, but as it does not fall within the territorial limits, to which I propose confining myself, I shall not attempt a sketch of the various diplomatic negotiations, in which the Dutch Governors, who, not without reason complained that the hospitality, which had been accorded to the Pilgrims, during their temporary abode in Holland, had been ill requited by their descendants of New-England were engaged with the wily Yankees, nor shall I speak of those inartial achievements of our ancestors, on which one of our most eminent and accomplished countrymen has contrived to cast such a shade of ridicule. Indeed, while doing
*Bancroft's history of the United States, Vol. 2 p. 306
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justice to the happy irony by which the pages of rke Knickerbocker are distinguished, no one who studies the early annals of his country can fail to unite with an historian, whom I have already introduced to your acquaintance, in wishing " that Washington Irving had put a little more or a little less truth in it, and that his talent for humor and sarcasm had found another subject than the dangers, hardships and virtues of the ancestors of his national family."*
It has been remarked by the historians of New-Jersey that the carlv settlement of this province was more exempt from the disas- ters attendant on border wars and Indian fights than that of any of the other old States of the confederacy. That the freedom from such difficulties, under the colonial regime of the English, was fully made up by the military occupation of the country, during the revolution, we shall hereafter see, and though the government of The New-Netherlands was very fortunate in its relations with " the - five nations," of which full evidence was afforded during the short restoration of its authority, after the first surrender to the English, yet there were connected with Indian affairs difficulties, while the Dutch bore sway, that prove that the pacific condition of things referred to, even as applicable to that period, was not without its exceptions. In 1630, De Vries was associated with De Laett Van Rensselær and other Patroons for the purpose of planting colonies in the New-Netherlands. A settlement of thirty persons was made near Lewistown on the Delaware, all of whom, on the return of their leaders, two years afterwards, were found to have been killed by the Indians, and by this act of the savages was terminated the first colony, which the Patroons attempted to establish in America, under the liberal charter, to which reference has been made.
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