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 16
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AUSTERE TRAINING OF BOYS-1700-1750.
One may search the old records and writings up and down for evidence of anything pleasurable in the lives of the children or young people, and find little in this period. The boys and girls in Newark during the first half of the eighteenth century lived either in strict conformance to the rigid laws of their fathers or departed from them altogether and were disgraced and deemed little short of outlaws. That there were very few who strayed from the narrow and stony path is remarkable. Herewith is given a curious and illuminating description of the life of a Puritan boy of the period about 1700-1750:
: "A boy was early taught a profound respect for his parents, teachers or guardians, and implicit, prompt obedience. If he undertook to rebel, his will was broken by persistent and adequate punishment. He was accustomed every morning and evening to bow at the family altar; and the Bible was his ordinary reading book in school. He was never allowed to close his eyes in sleep without prayer on his pillow.
"At a sufficient age, no caprice, slight illness, nor any condition of roads or weather, was allowed to detain him from church. In the sanctuary he was required to be grave, strictly attentive, and
: "Life of John Brainerd," pp. 44-48.
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able on his return at least to give the text. From sundown Satur. day evening until the Sabbath sunset his sports were all suspended. and all secular reading laid aside; while the Bible, the New England Primer, Baxter's Saint's Rest, etc., were commended to his ready attention * * *
"He was taught that his blessings were abundant and unde- served, his evils relatively few and merited, and that he was not bound to contentment but gratitude. He was taught that time was a talent to be always improved; that industry was a cardinal virtue, and laziness the worst form of original sin. Hence he must rise early and make himself useful before he went to school; he must be diligent there in study, and be promptly home to do 'chores' at evening. His whole time out of school must be filled up by some service-such as bringing in fuel for the day, cutting potatoes for the sheep, feeding the swine, watering the horses, picking the berries, gathering the vegetables, spooling the yarn and running all errands.
"He was taught that it was a sin to find fault with his meals, his apparel, his tasks, or his lot in life. Labor he was not allowed to regard as a burden, nor abstinence from any improper indulgence as a hardship.
"His clothes, woolen and linen, for summer and winter, were mostly spun, woven and made up by his mother and sisters at home; and as he saw the whole laborious process of their fabrica- tion he was jubilant and grateful for two suits, with bright buttons, a year. Rents were carefully closed and holes patched in the 'every-day' dress, and the Sabbath dress was always kept new and fresh.
"He was early expected to have the 'stops and marks,' the 'abbreviations,' the multiplication table, the Ten Commandments, the Lord's Prayer and the 'Shorter Catechism' at his tongue's end. "Courtesy was enjoined as a duty. He must be silent among his superiors. If addressed by older persons, he must respond with a bow. He was to bow as he entered and left the school, and bow to every man or woman, old or young, rich or poor, black or white, whom he met on the road. Special punishment was visited upon him if he failed to show respect to the aged, the poor, the colored, or to any persons whatever whom God had visited with infirmities. He was thus taught to stand in awe of the rights of humanity.
"Honesty was regarded as a religious duty, and unpaid debts were represented as infamy. He was allowed to be sharp at a bargain, to shudder at dependence, but still to prefer poverty to deception or fraud. His industry was not urged by poverty but by duty. Those who imposed upon his early responsibility and restraint led the way by their example, and commended this example by the prosperity of their fortunes and the respectability of their positions as the result of these virtues.
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"He learned to identify himself with the interest he was set to promote. He claimed every acre of his father's ample farm, and every horse and ox and cow and sheep became constructively his, and he had a name for each. The waving harvests, the garnered sheaves, the gathered fruits, were all his own. And besides these he had his individual treasures. He knew every trout-hole in the streams; he was great at building dams, snaring rabbits, trapping squirrels and gathering chestnuts and walnuts for winter store. Days of election, training, thanksgiving and school intermissions were bright spots in his life. The long winter evenings, made cheerful by sparkling fires within and cold, clear skies and ice- crusted plains and frozen streams for his sled and skates, were full of enjoyment."
We can hardly respond to the enthusiasm shown by the writer of the above, over the boyhood of the young Puritan in New Eng- land, as well as in all Puritan offshoots on Long Island, and at Newark, Elizabethtown, Middletown, Woodbridge and Piscataway, in New Jersey. It was a solemn, joyless life, viewed from modern standpoints. It bred a race of stern, sturdy, honest, but more or less unimaginative and narrow men, intolerant of the ideas of other sects. A strange combining of splendid characteristics with others of which the least said to-day the better.
PRINCETON COLLEGE IN NEWARK.
We are now to see how the expulsion of David Brainerd from Yale worked for the founding of Princeton. There had been a dearth of ministers in the Province of New Jersey ever since the first settlements, and the desire for a college where young men might be prepared for the ministry was increasingly strong. Harvard and Yale were both difficult for the youth of the middle colonies to reach. At the time of Brainerd's expulsion from Yale, much indignation over this act was felt in New Jersey. It was intensified by a violent religious controversy in which the clergy at Yale had been in opposition to those of this neighborhood. The Rev. Aaron Burr is said to have remarked that "if it had not been for the treatment received by Mr. Brainerd at Yale College, New Jersey College would never have been erected." This was said by other divines. It is a significant fact that three of Brainerd's
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most ardent supporters were the three first presidents of the New Jersey College: Jonathan Dickinson, Aaron Burr and Jonathas Edwards.
The college was established at Elizabethtown in 1747 with the Rev. Jonathan Dickinson as its first president, who had for some time conducted a school at Elizabethtown for the instruction of theological students, while Burr was conducting his Latin School in Newark. Dickinson, however, died the same year the college was started and the eight students were removed to Newark and placed under the care of Mr. Burr. Thus Newark's pastor became, virtually, the first president of what is now Princeton.
It is not clear whether Mr. Burr gave up his grammar school when he took up the more ambitious work that had fallen into his hands from Jonathan Dickinson's stiffening fingers. It was con- tinued, but may have been directed by someone else. When the college was moved to Princeton the grammar school went with it. The college classes were held in the Essex County Courthouse, which stood facing Broad street, a little south of the church, and just below Branford Place. Mr. Burr was a masterful teacher and many of his students while in Newark became the most prominent men in this and other provinces. Jonathan Belcher, recently made governor of the Province, unlike some of his predecessors, was friendly toward the Presbyterian Church, took a deep interest . in the college from its beginning, often speaking of it as his "daughter." Ile worked assiduously to promote its welfare, and procured its second charter, which was granted by the Crown in 1748.
THE FIRST COMMENCEMENT, 1748.
The institution was formally reorganized under this charter on November 9, 1748, at the first commencement exercises, which were held in the church. At that time also Mr. Burr was unani- mously chosen president of the college which he had administered for more than a year. The first board of trustees under the new charter, and the first to show appreciable interest in the great educational enterprise, were on that day also inducted into office.
CAaron By air
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These, the first commencement exercises of the now world-famous college, were conducted in two sessions, morning and afternoon. They were the most imposing and impressive ceremonies to occur in Newark during all the then eighty-two years of its existence.
In each instance, the exercises were opened with a procession, which started at Mr. Burr's parsonage, on the south corner of what are now Broad and William streets, and where Governor Belcher lodged, he having come here for the express purpose of presenting the charter and taking part in the ceremonies. The six young graduates (who, by the way, had been ready for their diplomas for six months and had had to wait for them until the King signed the new charter and forwarded it) led the procession, everyone in it marching by twos. They were followed by the trustees, after whom came Governor Belcher and President Burr. Thus the line proceeded up Broad street from William to the church. Arrived at the door, the graduates stood, three in a line on each side, while the Governor and the President entered first, the graduates enter- ing last as the church bell ceased tolling.
"Thus the first appearance of a college in New Jersey having given solemn satisfaction, even the unlearned being pleased with the external solemnity and decorum which they saw 't 'is hoped that this infant college will meet due encouragement from all public spirited, generous minds ; and that the lovers of mankind will wish it prosperity and contribute to its support." ?
The first graduates were: Richard Stockton (afterwards a . signer of the Declaration of Independence and one of New Jersey's most eminent sons in all generations), Enos Ayres, Benjamin Chestnut, Hugo Henry, Israel Reed and Daniel Thane. All became ministers with the exception of Stockton, who took up the study of law and became a distinguished jurist.
REQUIREMENTS FOR ADMISSION.
The original requirements for admission are interesting. They were as follows:
" Parker's Gazette and Post Boy. New York, Nov. 21, 1748.
.
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"1. None may expect to be admitted to college but such as being examined by the President and Tutors shall be found able to render Virgil and Tully's orations into English; and to turn English into true and grammatical Latin; and to be so well acquainted with the Greek as to render any part of the four Evangelists in that language into Latin or English; and to give the grammarical connexion of the words.
"2. Every student [that] enters college shall transcribe the Laws [of the college] which being signed by the President shall be testimony of his admission, and shall be kept by him, while he remains a member of the college, as the rule for his Behaviour."
The time for succeeding commencements was fixed for the last Wednesday in September by the trustees, and they also decided that the second commencement should be held at New Brunswick. Governor Belcher urged that the second commencement exercises be held at Princeton, but he was overruled, the majority of the trustees being anxious to have the institution permanently estab- lished at New Brunswick. The third commencement and those succeeding it until the college was removed to Princeton were held here, in Newark.
WHY THE COLLEGE LEFT NEWARK.
There seems to have been, almost from the first, a conviction that the college could not remain in Newark. Just why this was so early determined cannot be told to-day. One reason no doubt. was a desire to have the institution more centrally located in the region from which it was expected to draw the majority of its students, since not a few of them were drawn from Pennsylvania and further south, while it was expected that New York would send few of her sons here, but to Yale or to Harvard. Another force that worked for its removal further into the country was, no doubt, the desire to keep the young men as far as possible from the temptations of a large community like New York. The officers of the college decided, however, that the community in which it was to sit down forever, must furnish a bond for £1,000, donate ten acres of cleared ground and two hundred acres of woodland. At the third commencement, here in Newark, the trustees voted.
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to make proposals embodying the above conditions to both New Brunswick and Princeton. The majority of the trustees expected the people of New Brunswick would meet the conditions. Indeed, they had insisted upon the second commencement being held there in the expectation that the people in that village would be so impressed with its value and importance, as to undertake to adopt it. But New Brunswick folk could not or would not raise the thousand pounds nor supply the land, while a few well-to-do and public-spirited residents of Princeton rose to the emergency, and thus the College of New Jersey presently became what, after the War for Indpendence, was to be re-named Princeton.
Why was the proposition above described not offered to the people of Newark ? Possibly because of the desire for a more central location, and possibly because the college officers had found, with- ont the necessity for a formal tender of their conditions, that Newark people would not respond to it. New Brunswick subse- quently got its college (now known as Rutgers), but Newark, to the everlasting regret of many of its people to-day, not only let one of its greatest opportunities slip through its fingers, but has been content ever since to go on without a higher institution of learning, for more than a century and a half.
But there is another theory with reference to the failure of the college to remain in the community in which it was virtually given in its initial momentum, which, so far as the writer is aware, has never been given its proper weight by the historians of either Newark or the college. The County Courthouse, it will be remem- bered, was the only available college hall. Nearly all recitations and meetings of the college body were held there. The Courthouse was next door to the county jail. The land riots which roused the town and the entire county to fever heat at times, throughout the stay of the college in Newark, had the jail as their focal point, for the citizens who were arrested by the officers of the Provincial government were continually being delivered from that jail by their infuriated fellow citizens.
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Such activity under the very windows of the college could not be considered anything less than pernicious so far as the college's well-being was concerned. Indeed, as a number of the students educated there while the institution was located in Newark after- ward became leaders in the cause of liberty, it is not beyond reason to assume that they drank in some of their spirit of independence from the turbulent scenes around their class room doors in the early 1750's. Finally, Governor Belcher, an enthusiastic supporter of the college, was equally energetic in denouncing the land rioters, and it is easy enough to conceive of his being anxious to remove the young men from such a hot-bed of insubordination, and of his having used his great influence with the president and trustees for its transportation to a quieter and more docile neighborhood.
COLLEGE LIFE IN NEWARK.
College life in Newark was, of course, vastly different from that at Princeton to-day. There were no dormitories; the students lived in the families of the townspeople, which was felt to be unfavorable to intellectual and moral discipline. The college had no building of its own. It remained in Newark about eight years, and President Burr kept up his duties as pastor of the First Church, and possibly continued to conduct his grammar school, all that time except for the last year when, because of his increas- ing responsibilities he found he must give up the college or the church, and he chose to leave the latter. For the first three years of the college's life in Newark he received no salary. After that, five pounds of the institution's income was annually devoted to the payment of the college clerk or treasurer, as much more to the payment of fixed charges, and the rest given to the president and the tutor or tutors.
The Assembly of the Province turned a deaf ear to the appeals of the trustees for "countenance and support." The people of Newark and the adjacent towns seem to have kept their purse- strings tightly closed against it. Generous folk of Boston, Mass., subscribed a few hundred pounds after a time, and President Burr
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was presently made very happy while on a sick bed by the good news that the college had won £200 in a lottery. The lottery, forbidden by the Jersey Assembly, throve in Pennsylvania. Mr. Burr, during all the time the college was in Newark, did most of the teaching himself, having never more than two and sometimes only one tutor to assist him. In 1751 a few pieces of apparatus for the teaching of natural science were procured, and the next year Mr. Burr published his Latin Grammar, known as the "Newark Grammar," which was long used in the college as the standard.
THE COURSE OF STUDY.
The college course of study embraced these subjects: Latin and Greek, Elements of Mathematics, Natural Philosophy, Moral Philosophy, Rhetoric and Logic, with discourses upon doctrinal religious faith. The freshmen, at least, had little time for diver- sions, athletic or otherwise, as will appear from the following, an extract of a letter written by Joseph Shippen, jr., to his father in Philadelphia, on February 14, 1750:
"At seven in the morning we recite to the President lessons in the works of Xenophon, in Greek, and in Watts' Ontology. The rest of the morning until dinner time, we study Cicero de Oratore and the Hebrew Grammar and recite our lessons to Mr. Sherman (the college tutor). The remaining part of the day we spend in the study of Xenophon and Ontology, to recite the next morning. And besides these things, we dispute once every week after the syllogistie method; and now and then we learn Geography."
The college was removed to Princeton in the fall of 1756, where a house for President Burr and a building for the institution had been prepared. It took seventy students with it, and during its stay in Newark about ninety had been graduated.
Newark felt the departure of Mr. Burr quite as keenly as it did the removal of the college; probably more so, since it seems to have made no effort to retain it, although the townspeople opposed his going, bitterly.
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DR. BURR'S MARRIAGE.
Four years before he departed from Newark, Mr. Burr went on a journey in New England (probably in search of funds to keep his college going), and when he returned announced, no doubt to the great amazement of the college and town, that, after fifteen years of single blessedness since his coming to Newark, he was about to take unto himself a wife. Joseph Shippen, jr., the student already quoted, like a dutiful son, promptly wrote his father all about it, on July 6, 1752, as follows :
YOUNG SHIPPEN'S LETTERS.
"Dear and Honoured Sir :-
"The best piece of news I have now to furnish you with is the marriage of our President. As this must come very unexpected to you, I shall give you an account of his proceedings as brief as they were themselves. In the latter end of May he took a journey into New England, and during his absence he made a visit of but three days to the Rev. Mr. [Jonathan] Edward's daughter, at Stockbridge, Mass., in which short time, though he had no acquaint- ance with, nor, indeed, ever saw the lady these six years, I suppose he accomplished his whole design; for it was not a fortnight after his return here before he sent a young fellow, who came out of College last Fall, into New England, to conduct her and her mother down here.
"They came to town on a Saturday evening, the 27th inst., and on the Monday evening following, the nuptial ceremonies were celebrated between Mr. Burr and the young lady. As I have yet no manner of acquaintance with her, I cannot describe to you her qualifications and properties; however, they say she is a very valuable lady. I think her a person of great beauty, though I must say that in my opinion she is rather young (being only twenty-one (?) years of age) for the President. This account you'll doubtless communicate to Mammy as I learn she has Mr. Burr's happiness much at heart. I conclude with my love and duty to her, love to &c., &c., and am with due esteem
"Your very dutiful and affectionate son, "J. Shippen, jr."
N. B .- Mr. Burr was in his thirty-seventh year.
Mrs. Burr was the third daughter of the Rev. Jonathan Edwards, who was one of his son-in-law's successors to the Presidency of New Jersey College. Shippen guessed the young
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lady's age wrong. She was but nineteen. Later, Shippen wrote his father: "I can't omit acquainting you that our President enjoys all the happiness the married state can afford. I am sure when he was in the condition of celibacy the pleasure of his life bore no comparison to that he now possesses. From the little acquaint- ance I have with his lady I think her a woman of very good sense, of a genteel and virtuous education, amiable in her person, of great affability and agreeableness in conversation and a very excellent economist. These qualifications may help you to frame some idea of the person who lives in the sincerest mutual affection with Mr. Burr."
A WOMAN OF RARE QUALITIES.
But we do not have to rely upon the estimate of an enthusiastic college student. Mrs. Burr was a woman of unusual gifts, and no doubt many a student left the college for the world in those early days a better and truer man for her influence. One writer has left this: +"She exceeded most of her sex in the beauty of her person, as well as in her behavior and conversation. She discovered an unaffected natural freedom toward persons of all ranks with whom she conversed. Her genius was more than common. She had a lively imagination, a quick and penetrating discernment, and a good judgment. She possessed an uncommon degree of wit and vivacity, which yet was consistent with pleasantness and good nature; and she knew how to be facetious and sportive, without trespassing on the bounds of decorum or of strict and serious religion. In short, she seemed formed to please, especially to please one of Mr. Burr's taste and character, in whom he was exceedingly proud."
Mrs. Burr was the first woman to be permitted any acknowl- edgement of particular personal worth in the whole history of Newark up to her time, and she richly deserves the extended notice of her given here.
Aaron, the unfortunate son of this union, was born here in Newark, in the parsonage, a few months before the college was
""Edwards' Life Works," vol i, p. 551.
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removed. His sister, Sarah, was also born here, a year or so older than he. Their father died less than a year after the removal to Princeton, and their mother followed him a few months later. All their immediate relatives soon passed away and the children were left in the care of more distant members of the family. Aaron was troublesome from early boyhood and his mother wrote of him with what might almost seem ominous prevision: "Aaron is a little, dirty, noisy dog, very different from Sally, almost in everything. He begins to talk a little and is very sly and mischievous. He is very resolute and requires a 'good governor' to bring him to terms."
But there seems to have been no "governor" for him. He did about as he pleased, and when it pleased him to enter Princeton, he made his mark, for he had inherited much of his parents' brilliancy. The fact that after becoming the third Vice-President of the United States he permitted himself to fall into disgrace may in some measure be accounted for by the loss of his parents in infancy. Indeed, this more charitable view of Aaron Burr has in latter years gained wide prevalence.
THE COLLEGE'S INFLUENCE ON NEWARK.
The College of New Jersey was to an extent instrumental in bringing new life and energy into Newark. The town grew some- what in population and began to develop its industries as never before. Unconsciously, it was preparing itself for stirring events. It was during Mr. Burr's pastorate that the full separation of "church and State" in Newark, the thing above all things that the founders had striven to avert for all time, was accomplished. On June 7, 1753, a charter of incorporation was obtained from Governor Belcher for the First Church. This charter, in a modified form, continues in force to this day. While previous to the incorporation, from the founding of the town, the salary of the church's pastor had been voted in town meeting, and the town was liable for its payment, it really was paid to Mr. Burr and a number of his pre- decessors by only those who were directly interested in the church.
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