A History of the city of Newark, New Jersey : embracing practically two and a half centuries, 1666-1913, Volume I, Part 13

Author: Urquhart, Frank J. (Frank John), 1865- 4n; Lewis Historical Publishing Company. 4n
Publication date: 1913
Publisher: New York, N.Y. ; Chicago, Ill. : The Lewis Historical Publishing Co.
Number of Pages: 1186


USA > New Jersey > Essex County > Newark > A History of the city of Newark, New Jersey : embracing practically two and a half centuries, 1666-1913, Volume I > Part 13


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ANTI-PROPRIETARY MOVEMENT GROWS.


There were no less than thirteen governors from Carteret's immediate successor to the last one to be appointed by the Lords Proprietors, in 1699. Most of the difficulties arose over alterations and deviations from the original "Concessions," and there were frequent intervals when the Assembly did not meet. The repre- sentatives of government were openly opposed on several occa- sions in Newark, as well as in some of the other towns. Sessions of the Provincial court were broken up amid scenes of violence.8 The governors were often singularly unfitted for their positions. Some used undue severity and harshness, others were arbitrary in the extreme and some were foolishly and unavailingly concilia- tory. In two or three instances an effort was made to enforce the Provincial authority by show of arms, but in each instance the insurgents appeared with a superior force, winning their points for the time, and without bloodshed.


The anti-proprietary party grew steadily stronger as the seventeenth century neared its close. In 1697, it had become so powerful in the Assembly that Governor Hamilton made use of a technicality to dissolve it, and there was rioting in Newark and the other towns. Governor Hamilton himself was thrown into prison. This ended the proprietary government in New Jersey. After long negotiations both East and West Jersey were taken up


" See New Jersey Archives, Vol. II, pp. 317, 333-39.


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by the Crown, all authority of the Lords Proprietors (save such rights and titles to land as still remained to them) was extin- guished, on April, 1702, and the series of royal governors, begin- ning with Lord Cornbury and ending with William Franklin, natural son of Benjamin Franklin, in 1776, was inaugurated.


DETAILS OF THE STRUGGLE-THE "REVOLUTION."


The struggle against the Lords Proprietors during the last few years of their dominion was, for many years thereafter, spoken of in Newark and throughout all East Jersey as the "Revolution." This "Revolution" in East Jersey, while it has no prominent place in history, is singularly attractive to the student. It came just when the second generation of settlers were beginning to assume the reins of government in the several towns, when the founders of Newark, Elizabethtown, Middletown, Piscataway, Woodbridge and the Shrewsbury had either been laid to rest in the quiet churchyards or had, while still living, handed over the control of affairs to their sons. The new generation had received something more from the founders than the mere posses- sion of the soil and the means of tilling it, the homesteads, the live stock, etc. They had breathed in a staunch spirit of independ- ence, which voiced itself against every move under the proprietary form of government that savored of oppression.


Unfortunately the Lords Proprietors did not seem to appre- ciate the temper and the mettle of the people whom they had set out to govern. They expected to control them very much as the petty rulers of England were at the same period administering affairs for the masses in the mother country. They failed to grasp the vital and subtle fact, that the new country was breeding a new spirit in men, and that their application of old world rules and systems did not adequately apply to the management of the colonies. They continually violated the letter or the spirit of the original "Concessions" of 1665.


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The people of Newark and the other East Jersey communities readily divined the trickeries and fallacies of the government set in authority over them; they saw that justice administered by the governor and his council, constantly ignoring the rights of the Assembly, was but a paltry subterfuge designed to carry out selfish ends; and they grew rapidly to treat it first, with open distrust and finally with indifference, until their personal rights were most arrogantly interfered with, when they resorted to force.


A JERSEY "LEXINGTON" IN 1700.


In 1700 the Governor of both East and West Jersey, Andrew Hamilton, made Lewis Morris president of the Governor's Council, ordering him, from his headquarters at Burlington, to see to it that his, the Governor's authority, was properly respected by all the people in East Jersey. Morris promptly made it known that he would make the people respect the Governor and obey his wishes, or "embrue the province in blood." Because the English sheriff of Monmouth county had not managed affairs with as much zeal for the Governor's interests as the latter saw fit, he was dismissed and a Scotchman appointed, a man ready and pliable to the first touch of proprietary authority.


There was unrest in Middletown, and the new sheriff was sent there to discipline several men who were known to be outspoken in their contempt for government. The sheriff threatened these men with imprisonment if they did not give security for good behavior in the future. One refused, and the sheriff promptly placed him in durance.ยบ "This disturbed the people greavously, itt being harvest time, and they [the Governor's representatives] had given out warrants to seize Richard Salter and others, and the sheriff had like to have taken him, which some of his [Salter's] neighbors onderstanding [they] went and met the sheriff, banged him, broake his head and sent him packing."


"New Jersey Archives, Vol. II, pp. 327-329.


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This episode stirred the people of all of what is now Mon- mouth county. The men gathered in an impromptu mass-meeting and decided to leave their fields and the harvest, on Friday, July 19, 1700, go in a body to Middletown and release the man whom the sheriff had taken with him and locked up. The sheriff learned of this move in advance, and sent messengers to Governor Hamil- ton at Burlington, telling of the acute stage matters had reached. The Governor came at once, pressed thirty or forty men into his service, gave them arms and marched to Middletown, where they found the people assembled to the number of nearly two hundred, without arms, but each man with a stout club. The Governor's show of authority had no effect upon the people. They stood their ground and Hamilton presently withdrew in a mighty rage. In cowardly fashion he commanded the sheriff and the armed men not to leave the ground until the people had come to their senses and had acknowledged his authority. The sheriff, nevertheless, did leave the field in the possession of the yeomanry without firing a shot. One is reminded of the fact that three-quarters of a century later a somewhat similar scene was to be presented at Lexington.


NEWARK GIVES AID TO FELLOW INSURGENTS.


No sooner had the sheriff and his hirelings disappeared than the people of Middletown and all the surrounding country put themselves in communication with the people of Middlesex and Essex counties, in the latter case with leading men of Newark, asking for support if the outbreak should take a more serious turn. Newark and the other communities answered that they would send aid, and they urged the Middletown and Monmouth folk to stand their ground. It was decided by the people among themselves that if Governor Hamilton and his council resorted to further measures of oppression they should be seized and confined and the whole case be presented to the Crown. "And the coun- try, on the other hand, are rising by whole townes against them [the Governor and his Council] resolving to putt a stop to their arbitrary proceedings although it be with the hazard of their lives


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and fortunes. These officers of theirs [of the Governor and Council] are so bold as to attempt the drinking of King James' health."10 Which last sentences shows how deep was the detesta- tion of the people of East Jersey for the former Duke of York, when to drink his health as King, in public, was held to be an insult!


THE FIRST NEWARK RIOTS.


About two months later, on September 10, 1700, the scene shifted to Newark, when a Provincial court attempted to sit and mete out justice. This was counted as needless interference with the local government, and it seems to have been resented with quite as much bitterness as would no doubt be shown if the Federal government of to-day should set about to adjudicate matters of purely local importance. In this instance the court proposed to compel a man to support his natural child. Whether the court had justice upon its side does not appear. Its action, however, was vehemently resented, apparently not so much because of the nature of this specific case but because of the Governor's representatives presuming to pass judgment in matters which the town's magistrates had in the past disposed of. A riot occurred. The judges were hustled out of their seats, their wigs torn off, the sword of one court officer taken away from him, and before the melee was over the defendant in the case had been spirited away.


THE SIXTY HORSEMEN.


This affair inflamed the whole neighborhood. Two days later more than sixty horsemen rode into the centre of Newark, searched out the sheriff, took the keys of the jail (which was on Broad street at what is now Branford place), and released the one prisoner then confined there. The Governor demanded that a grand jury be assembled to investigate this scandalous business, and eighteen jurors were assembled. The sworn testimony of many witnesses was taken. One of these set forth that there appeared suddenly before his house, "a greate company of men a


" See New Jersey Archives, Vol. II, pp. 327-329.


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horse backe with clubs in their hands." They demanded to know the whereabouts of the "pitifull Raskells who had taken upon them to userp authority."


The horsemen called upon one of the leading men in all Newark, Theophilus Pierson, a son of Pastor Pierson and a brother of the first president of Yale University, to produce the sheriff. Pierson attempted to compromise and asked the horsemen if any two of them would stand surety for the body of the sheriff if they were permitted to see and talk with him. They answered defiantly that they would not. They declared they would take the sheriff by force. Pierson commanded them, in the King's name, to let the sheriff alone. And again they refused. Then Pierson demanded to know by what power would they presume to seize the sheriff, and one of the horsemen, Samuel Whitehead, answered, as he brandished his club, "By this power!" "And soe you say all of you, gentlemen !" he cried to his followers. With that they held up their hands and said, "Yes, one and all;" 11


East Jersey was now in a state of anarchy. After this stirring demonstration in Newark, but one more episode remained to bring the administration of Governor Hamilton to a virtual close, and to rouse the Crown to put an end to the rule of the Lords Pro- prietors. It has been said that the people of East Jersey had made up their minds to jail the governor and his council if they were annoyed by them after the affair at Middletown already described. The rioting at Newark seems to have brought the anticipated crisis. The end came very soon afterwards.


In March, 1701, the Governor and his Council assembled in Middletown to try a number of cases, notably that of "Moses Butterwoth who was accused of piracy and who confessed yt he did sail with Capt. William Kidd [none other than the notorious freebooter] in his last voyage when he came from ye East Indies." The proceedings had not gone far when a man named Samuel Willetts rushed out of the courtroom and dashed down the stairs


11 See New Jersey Archives, Vol. II, p. 362.


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to the ground floor crying that the Governor and Council had no authority to hold court, and that he would break it up.


LORDS PROPRIETORS "DRUMMED OUT" OF POWER.


Now enters Thomas Johnson, a drummer boy, and we are at once reminded that a youth, Joseph Johnson, was first appointed by the Newark settlers to warn the people to their various duties to meet every common emergency, with his drumming. We cannot but wonder if this drummer at Middletown was not the Newarker (some old scrivener giving the wrong first name, possibly), now of middle age, or some member of his family. "Accordingly," runs the old record, "Willetts went downstairs to a company of men there in armes [no doubt deliberately assembled by the people] and sent up a drummer, one Thomas Johnson into ye court, who beat upon his drum, and severall of ye company came up with their armes and clubs."


A furious riot was now started. The Governor and his Council strove to go on with the proceedings, but Johnson drummed continuously and the insurgents raised a mighty din, which all ended just as planned, no doubt, in the representatives of the Lords Proprietors being put under lock and key. They were kept prisoners for three or four days-and thus ended proprietary government in New Jersey. The drummer Johnson, whether of Newark, Middletown or elsewhere, deserves a unique place in New Jersey history for he drummed proprietary government out of existence.


CHAPTER IX. THE COMMON LANDS-EARLY LAWS AND PENALTIES -QUARRIES AND MINES-CURRENCY.


CHAPTER IX.


THE COMMON LANDS -- EARLY LAWS AND PENALTIES-QUARRIES AND MINES- CURRENCY.


T HE opening of the eighteenth century, which was to work such tremendous changes in the welfare of the colonists be- fore its completion, found Newark and her sister villages of East Jersey freed from the vacillating and exasperating govern- ment of the Lords Proprietors, but, while hopeful of much better things under the direct government of England, uneasy and sus- picious. In the early days of the settlements, shortly after the promulgation of the famous "Concessions," New Jersey was recom- mended by some cynic as a "Paradise," because, among other things, it was almost entirely free of "lawyers, physicians or parsons." 1 A quarter of a century or so later, about 1700, another observer wrote that "no men grow rich as fast here as gentlemen of the bar." The chief reason for this last was the great confusion over land titles.


THE PATENT OF 1696.


In 1696, the freeholders of Newark, having practically all of them taken out surveys for their land under the Lords Proprietors, resolved to secure the so-called common lands; so, on December 10 of that year, they obtained a patent, granting to the town, the Watering Place, Market Place, Training Place, the Burying Ground, the highways, the large parcels variously distributed over the uplands and in the meadows, spoken of as the "parsonage lands" and aggregating about 210 acres. This gave the people of Newark, as a whole, a comprehensive or "blanket" title to much of their territory that had not as yet been taken up by individuals. The settlers, as has been told in previous chapters, always contended that their rights to the land were from the Indians, the original


' Atkinson's "History of Newark," p. 50.


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owners, and that they needed no further confirmation of this right. But, as fast as they had taken out individual letters patent under the Lords Proprietors, the latter had felt that their own contentions to supreme right in the land had been acknowledged by the settlers. To avoid further danger of losing their common lands, the second generation of Newarkers did as above described.


THE TRUSTEESHIP.


Under this grant of common lands, they were to be held by four leading citizens and their "heirs and assigns forever," as trustees for the community. An annual fee of six pence sterling was to be paid, every March 20th. The four trustees were: John Curtis, John Treat (son of Robert Treat), Theophilus Pierson (third son of the first Pastor Pierson) and Robert Young. In this connection the comment of the late associate justice of the United States Supreme Court, Joseph P. Bradley, is of great value: ? "The common lands (embraced in the patent) belonged, in truth, to the town, as much after as before, and as much before as after, the grant, and, when not affecting private rights, such as adjacency to streets and highways, the town could dispose of them for such purposes as it saw fit. The action of the town has always been in accordance with this view."


The trustees were accountable to the community for the proper conservation of these common lands, first through the Town Meet- ing. Newark was practically a pure democracy for forty years, and until the township of Newark was created in 1713 by royal patent under Queen Anne (the other then existing four counties being similarly sub-divided), when the trustees became known as "The Trustees of the Freeholders and Inhabitants of the Township of Newark." The Queen Anne charter remained in operation even after the War for Independence, until 1798, when, by law, a body politic was created under the name of "The Inhabitants of the


" See "Miscellaneous Writings of the late Hon. Joseph P. Bradley," edited and compiled by his son, Charles Bradley, pp. 294-297.


4


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Township of Newark of the County of Essex." This form of government continued until 1836, when the charter of the City of Newark was granted.


PASSING OF THE TRUSTEESHIP, 1804.


The trusteeship over these common lands was continued until 1804, when a law was enacted, describing the impracticability of maintaining this trusteeship, and vesting the title of the trustee- ship in "The Township of Newark in the County of Essex" 3 excepting all such parcels as had been disposed of by sale or lease by the heirs of the trusteeship, such as the First, Second and Third Presbyterian churches, Trinity Episcopal of Newark and the First Church of Orange, previous to the year 1803. The officers of the township thus assumed the mantles of the ancient trustees, and they in turn handed them over to the Mayor and Common Council, when the city came into being in 1836.


SELLING COMMON LANDS.


It was not many decades after the granting of the common lands to the trustees before the town began to realize that portions of these lands were not needed for common use, and could be disposed of by the community, to individuals, with great advantage to the town.+ The Watering Place, which lay on the south side of Market street between Harrison [now Halsey] and the foot of the hill [above Plane street], and extending nearly to William street, but somewhat gore-shaped, being no longer needed for its original use, was left out and finally sold to the tanners of the town for the location of tanneries; and in that way has con- tributed immensely to the prosperity of the town. The Burying Ground, not being all needed for that purpose, and the northeast corner being a pond, or marsh, and unsuitable for it, the town and church let out lots around the margin, which greatly benefited the appearance of that part of the town, multiplied business facilities,


" Essex and Monmonth counties, the first in New Jersey, were created in the same year, 1675.


E


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and contributed to the public finances without any public detriment. The court house and jail were erected on lots granted to the county along Broad street, south of the old church [which stood about where Branford place now is] and neat and tasteful stores were erected between the meeting house and Market street. Nobody was injured; the town was benefited; the public good was furthered.5


BEGINNING OF CITY PARKS.


"Then the Training Place [Military Park] being no longer wanted for that use [the militia was often drilled there even as late as the early decades of the last century ] as there were hundreds of places in the vicinity much better fitted for it, was converted into a public park, and planted with beautiful trees that adorn it; first, those grand old elms were planted about the beginning of the present century [1800], and the interior trees were set out in 1838, many of them being brought from Long Island, and finally, the park was enclosed with an iron fence [the last vestiges of which disappeared in the 1880's] * * Then, again, the Market Place, Washington Park, was deemed to be of more use to the health and beauty of the city by making a public park of it, than by using it for a market.


"The first market that was built for the town was not built on Washington Park, but in Market street, on the margin of the Burying Ground, in a low spot where no graves could be dug." It was the only market that the town had for many years. It had a hall above in which meetings were held and when the old Court House at the corner of Broad and Walnut streets was burned [1835], the courts were held in the upper part of the old Market house. They were held there in 1835, 1836 and 1837, whilst the present court house [the one demolished in 1906 to make room for that now standing] was being built. When this old market became too small, what next? Did the city authorities (the collective representatives of all the town's people) go uptown and take Wash- ington Park for a market place? No. They purchased the present


4 The earliest leases of land abutting on the Burying Ground of which there is record were given by the First Church the year after the War for Independence closed, in 1784. Jesse Baldwin leased the southwest corner of Market and Broad streets in that year.


' See "Miscellaneous Writings," by Justice Bradley, p. 295.


" It gave the street its name. It was on the south side of Market street, had a frontage of about 50 feet, and was a little east of Halsey street. It was built about 1795.


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site over the Morris Canal because it was more central and con- venient to the people, and because Washington Park * * was a public park, and property had been purchased and residences built around it on the faith of that appropriation."


The above was written by Justice Bradley in defense of the common rights of all the people to these public places. It is given here in order to establish clearly the status of these common lands. Justice Bradley's concluding sentences in this connection are particularly lucid and forcible:


"The courts, or the City Council itself, would have no more right now to deface it and convert it [Washington Park] into a market place, than they would to sweep away all the trees and structures from Military Common, or from the Watering Place. [ An effort, by the way, was made to locate the then proposed new City Hall in Military Park, in the 1890's, but quickly abandoned in response to public opinion.] And why? Simply because, upon the faith of the acts and conduct of the town for over two hundred years, rights have grown up which can not be disregarded and overthrown. The plea that these acts and conduct are in violation of the Patent of 1696 * * * is based on a false idea, namely,


that the public lands, commons and streets of Newark were the free donation of the Proprietors; whereas historic truth is different, and shows that this common property belongs to the townspeople themselves, to be disposed of by them for the public good as they deem best, and not to the private injury of the citizens. This is the sound, sensible view of the subject, and law is never found, in the end, to be at war with sound sense and reason."


LAST PHASE OF COMMON LANDS DISPOSAL.


The last link in the long chain of adjustments of the common lands titles was not forged until 1888, at the time of the celebrated "Old Burying Ground Case," when an injunction was asked by the officers of the First Presbyterian Church to restrain the Mayor and Common Council, the successors of the ancient trustees, from removing the bones of the settlers from the cemetery, the old Burying Ground. The chancellor sustained the First Church, but was reversed by the State Supreme Court, and the remains of the settlers were taken up and deposited in a vault in Fairmount Ceme- tery. The Mayor and Common Council were confirmed in their right and title, for the city, in the Burying Ground plot. The


:


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First Church's title to the lands bordering upon the Burying Ground was not disturbed. The church, it was long thought, could not sell any of these lands, now (1913) enormously valuable; but that theory has been exploded. On the other hand, the city had sold all of the Burying Ground land by 1911.


EARLY LAWS AND PENALTIES.


While a greater part of the unrest and strife during the regime of the Lords Proprietors and the early royal governors is traceable to struggles over the land and to the hostility of the settlers to the payment of quit-rents (which virtually ceased to be paid in the second or third generation) not a little of the trouble was caused by the long periods when the Assembly did not sit, and the towns of East Jersey were almost without government save that which they administered themselves. Such laws as were enacted by the central government they obeyed or not, about as they chose. The early penal statutes, which reflect to a striking degree the Puritan characteristics of the first English speaking settlers, were continued in force after the coming of the royal governors, and many of them were not materially modified for a long time thereafter.




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