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 31
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THE SHORT LINE STAGES.
In 1797 or '98, a stage line was established between Morristown and Paulus Hook. The eastbound service was on Tuesdays and Fridays, and the westbound on Wednesdays and Saturdays. The stage left Morristown at six in the morning, drawn by four horses, passed through Madison, Chatham, Springfield, and onward by an old road that afterward became Springfield avenue and into Newark by what is now Clinton avenue. From Newark it proceeded to Paulus Hook. The entire trip, under favorable circumstances, took but one day, but not infrequently a halt for the night was made at Newark. The fare between Morristown and Paulus Hook was $1.25. Later, when a steamboat plyed regularly between Newark and New York, the Morristown coaches came no further eastward than Newark.
In April, 1795, a four-horse stage "for the Summer season," between Paterson and Paulus Hook, by way of Newark, was estab- lished, Paterson then being an infant settlement. The stage left Paterson at six in the morning on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, stopping to change horses and for passengers and mail, at Gifford's tavern in Newark, Thursdays and Saturdays.
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FAST TRAVEL ACROSS THE STATE.
The fastest New York-Newark-Philadelphia stages advertised to make the westbound trip of 96 miles in 19 hours, which meant all night travel. The eastbound journey consumed 20 hours. Short- distance or "local" passengers were usually charged six cents a mile. One could carry fourteen pounds of baggage without charge; four cents a pound was the rate for excess.
All stages stopped at Newark, for fresh horses, to put off and take on passengers and baggage. They tore rapidly down and up Broad street, their horns, especially that of the mail coach, sound- ing loudly. The village was always a scene of animation upon the arrival and departure of the coaches. The people set their clocks by them, watched for them, did much of their small business between towns and cities through the drivers and guards and, thanks to this most excellent means of communication for its time (crude though it may seem to us to-day), kept themselves more or less in close touch with the outside world. Later on most of the coaches were moved by four horses, and in the early 1830's, just as stage coaching hereabouts had reached its high tide of prosperity, a six horse stage, "made in Newark," was put on the New York- Philadelphia line. At the time Newark became a city, in 1836, and when its first railroad was just beginning to make a strong bid for public patronage, there were two Newark-New York stage lines giving service either way of about one-hour intervals during the day, and carrying upwards of eight hundred passengers daily.
The stage coach traffic on Broad street was not an unmitigated benefit. It wore the roadway into great, unsightly furrows and ridges until it was almost impassable in stormy weather. Racing between coaches of rival lines became a great nuisance and had to be publicly frowned upon, and racing drivers were threatened with discharge. In 1799 a Newark citizen was run down and killed by one of two racing coaches.
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A LOSING STRUGGLE WITH THE RAILROADS.
While the coming of the railroads sounded the knell for stage coaching days, the big and prosperous companies which had flour- ished for many years did not give up without a struggle. At first they even strove to maintain such lines as the railroad paralelled, but of course soon found them unprofitable, as their coaches were almost at once emptied of passengers, mail and baggage. There were not enough conservative old citizens (such as are in every age hostile to any beneficial innovation) to maintain the traffic. Then the stage owners developed lines in sections to which the "iron horse" had not penetrated.
Newark's first railroad was put into commission, from Newark to Jersey City, in December, 1833, and while, even six months before that we find an ominous newspaper advertisement offering a fine stage coach for sale, we also note in the same issue an announcement that the Newark-Jersey City stage will call for passengers at their homes or hotels and deliver them at their destinations in New York if they wish to get down within reason- able distance of Broadway and Cortland street. Fulton steam ferryboats had been in operation for over twenty years between New York and Jersey City. Presently, too, comes the announce- ment that the Newark stage will call for people at their homes and deliver them at the steamboat wharf (in Newark), in time to get the boat for New York.
In 1833, also, an advertisement announces that the "Eclipse line" is now running between Orange and New York, by way of Newark and Jersey City, "every day, Sundays excepted." It left Orange at 6 in the morning, Newark at 7:15, and returning, left New York at 4 in the afternoon, and making the trip to Newark, including the ferry and the long drive across the meadows, in one hour and a half, reaching Newark at 5:30. It was not long, how- ever, before this service dwindled down to a mere fetching and carrying of people to and from the Newark steamboat dock and Orange. A stage line between Newark and Bloomfield, in 1834,
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carried passengers to and from the boat for 25 cents. In the same year there was a Newark and Paterson stage line, leaving Paterson at 7:30 in the morning and leaving Newark for the return trip at 2 in the afternoon, the fare being fifty cents each way.
INTERSECTING STAGE LINES.
In 1833 and for a few years thereafter, until the Morris and Essex Railroad had really begun to develop its territory, there was a powerful line of Western stages, so called, plying between Jersey City and Milford, Pa., by way of Newark, Chatham, "Sukassony Plains," Stanhope, Newton and Augusta. It met an intersecting line at Newton, which passed through that place three times a week from Newburgh, N. Y., to Easton and to Philadelphia. At the Milford terminus, the Western stage met another intersecting line that traveled to Easton, Pa.
"Every day except Monday" (strange to relate) in 1833, a stage left Newark for Elizabethtown and Rahway, at 4 in the morning, "in time to take Reeside's splendid coaches which pro- ceed through Princeton to Trenton; from thence to take the steam- boat to Philadelphia and arrive there the same afternoon." In 1834 a stage from Newark, starting at 5 in the morning, connected with a boat at Elizabethtown Point, passengers for southern points leaving that boat at South Amboy there to "take the splendid cars of the Camden and Amboy railroad," reaching Trenton at 1 in the afternoon and Philadelphia at 3.
But the struggle for supremacy was soon over. By 1837 the newspapers were well-nigh bare of stage advertisements, and by 1840 they had practically disappeared, their funny little wood cuts with plunging horses and swishing drivers' whips curling grace- fully over the rocking coaches, being gone forever. All that remains in New Jersey of those hustling old stage coach days is an occasional stage-wagon toiling painfully between two or more remote points, or a clattering auto-stage here and there, raising the dust and stirring the echoes of regions still rural.
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In 1829, an indignant citizen wrote to the editor of a Newark newspaper complaining that "noisy, profane idlers of all colours. mostly boys who hang about the Stage House, seize every letter and package etc., entrusted to the care of drivers, and, carrying them to their owners, tax the latter roundly. If refused they often become abusive and sometimes threaten to keep the goods." The boys were, it seems, developing a parcels delivery of their own. The indignant citizen unconsciously gives us an amusing sidelight upon his own parsimony and was no doubt typical of a considerable class, who had been in the habit of getting stage drivers and guards to deliver their packages, occasional unmailed letters and other property, free of charge.
THE OLD MAIL COACH GUARD.
The guards on the mail coaches were persons of no small importance. They were little short of heroes to the youthful imagination. "The guard," said a venerable Newarker, giving his reminiscences of the old stage-coaching days, "was always selected with reference to his reputation for pluck, for taciturnity and for integrity ; for committed to his charge were not only the mails and remittances, but often intelligence of the most confidential char- acter. The former it was often necessary to defend from armed attacks, the latter from more dangerous and covert assaults. On the road from New York to Philadelphia * the guard was often entrusted with enormous amounts of money and the most precious correspondence. He made the circuit from New York to Philadelphia without being relieved-though horses and drivers were changed every ten miles
"The guard wore a species of uniform intended to protest him from the night and storm and which also served * * *
to elevate him to a very high pinnacle in the estimation of Young America of his day. The principal feature of his dress was a huge drab overcoat of woolen cloth, reaching nearly to his ankles, faced on both the sides from the collar down and also around the bottom, with a bright crimson strip nearly a hand's breath in width. The breast was lined throughout on the inside, with the same startling colored material; and a double row of huge horn buttons kept guard upon the outside.
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"The famous weather protector was provided with enormous pockets-those on the outside to receive the wearer's woolen com- forter and capacious gloves, and those on the inside for the letters and valuables that were often entrusted to him outside the mails.
"He wore a black leather cap, around which ran a crimson strip, like that which formed the facings of his overcoat; and most pre- tentious of all to the gaping urchins and prowling rascals who looked with coveteous eyes on the mail bags and their fabulous possibilities-around his waist was buckled a stout leathern belt, in which were thrust, somewhat ostentatiously, one on each side, two gigantic pistols. Beside him also, on his seat, lay a blunder- buss, which rumor whispered, was loaded to the muzzle with feruble buck shot. Thus equipped, stout handed and stout hearted also, feeling the greatness of the trusts that were reposed in him, the guard became proud of his reputation for faithfulness and courage, and most rarely indeed was an imputation levelled against either.
"Manifold were the secrets placed in his keeping, important and delicate the trusts confided to him; but breasting all weather, facing cold, heat, and plunging into the darkness of the storm, the guard in his simple, honest, single-minded nature, seldom knew temptation, or if he did, rose manfully above it." 1
The stage coach traffic virtually created Jersey City. The old tavern and stables which had for generations been the only struc- tures at Paulus Hook, soon were surrounded by a huddle of build- ings. In 1805 "The City of Jersey" was begun by a company of promoters, who bought large tracts and did a brisk business in selling lots, special privileges being offered to early purchasers. A number of Newark's leading citizens were personally interested in this enterprise.
Meanwhile, as the stage coach was making a new Newark, and working ceaselessly for the ultimate disappearance of the charm- ing little village, the town's commercial interests were gradually springing into new life. There was a constant water traffic between Newark antl New York and a coastwise service was being developed, as advertisements in a local paper show. In 1796 the sloop "Patty" sailed every now and then for Charleston, N. C., from the Newark bridge. In 1800 the schooner "Louisa" carried on a service between Newark, starting from the bridge, to Savannah.
" From a letter, signed "Sancho," published by the Newark Daily Advertiser on August 21, 1863.
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THE ERA OF THE TURNPIKE.
When the War for Independence closed, Newark's streets were: The two main thoroughfares, now Broad and Market streets; the West Back street (Washington), the East Back street (Mulberry), and a few lanes connecting these. There were, of course, the old roads out into the country, laid down in the seventeenth or in the early years of the eighteenth century, as described in Chapter X. The prosperity that seems to have attended the establishment of the Newark and Hackensack bridges and the turnpike between them stimulated the building of other turnpikes by companies of individuals who derived their remuneration from the tolls.
In 1806 the Newark to Pompton turnpike 15 Company was incorporated. Starting from what is now Belleville avenue, then the Belleville or Second River Road, it ran to Montclair (Crane- town), being what we now know as Bloomfield avenue, to Cedar Grove, to Pompton Plains, with a branch starting at Montclair mountain top, to Caldwell and Parsippany (the present Bloomfield avenue). This is virtually the old Horseneck Road, laid down about 1770. At the time Newark became a city, this was the great artery of travel for all northern and northwestern New Jersey. It was acquired by the Essex County Road Board in 1872, and thrown open as a public highway, from Newark to Pine Brook. The Turn- pike Company at that time abandoned what we now know as the Pompton Turnpike, and the various county bodies took it up.
In the same year, 1806, the Mount Pleasent Turnpike Com- pany was incorporated, and laid out the road to Morristown, utiliz- ing the old Crane road, which starts at the Essex County Court- house, north side. This turnpike ran over the Orange Mountain south of Llewellyn Park, through Livingston, to the Passaic at Hanover, and thence on to Morristown through Whippany, making use of old roads or trails the greater part of the way.
" ""Turnpike" is an ancient English word, indicating the place on a road where toll is gathered. In very early times a staff. spear or pike was placed across the road and was not turned to one side to give the traveler free passage until he had paid the toll. In England, "turnpike" still means the place where toll is taken, and not the road. "Shunpike" is a path or road by which one may avoid or "shun" the toll road, and pass without paying.
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About a month after the incorporation of the Mount Pleasent Turnpike Company, the Springfield and Newark company was started, building what is now Springfield avenue, and connecting with the old Morris Turnpike at Springfield.
Clinton avenue is really one of the most ancient of all Newark's highways. It was at first a mere path, possibly an Indian trail in the beginning, and ran from the lower or southern gate of the village in the days of the founders, on out into the hills. It passed through the several stages always incidental to the development of roads of the sort, becoming a cart path, following the lines of least resistance as did the original trail, and being widened as the increase in traffic required. It ran as it does now, to where it joins Springfield avenue, in the old days little more than a trail. Because of its miry condition the greater part of the year, a plank road was laid down somewhere about the middle of the last century, from what is now Badger avenue to the top of the ascent, once called the Long Hill. It was a turnpike or toll road, within the memory of many Newark and Irvington residents still living (1913).
In 1811 the Newark and Morristown Turnpike was created, being what is now South Orange avenue, and from South Orange to Passaic at what was known as Columbia Bridge. The old Bloomfield road, described in Chapter X, lost much of its popularity when the Pompton Turnpike was laid down. These new highways were steadily followed by others of lesser importance, as the whole countryside, reaeted upon by the growing activity centered in Newark, stirred into a new life. The horn of the stage coach did more than awake the ancient echoes of the whole sylvan region and startle the sheep on the hillsides; it was as a bugle call announcing the arrival of a new era.
Newark's Postmasters-The following is a complete list of the postmasters of Newark, with the dates of their appointments: John Burnet, February 16, 1790; Matthias Day, April 1, 1804; Pruden Alling, March 8, 1833; William Stevens, June 29, 1841; Jacob K. Mead, May 5, 1843; John J. Plume, June 17, 1844; Wilson
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Knott, June 13, 1845; Rodney Wilbur, April 4, 1849; Charles T. Gray, April 6, 1853; David Price, April 6, 1861; Ezra A. Carman, July 26, 1866; John J. Craven, October 12, 1866; Alex. N. Dough- erty, April 11, 1867; William Ward, June 29, 1869; William H. F. Fiedler, March 29, 1886; Edward L. Conklin, October 1, 1889; William D. Rutan, January 31, 1894; Joseph E. Haynes, May 15, 1895; David D. Bragaw, January 10, 1898; James L. Hays, May 26, 1899; Frank J. Bock, January 16, 1912.
The location of the Burnet and Day offices has already been given. Pruden Alling had the office in his store at the northeast corner of Market and Broad streets. All the early postmasters conducted the offices in their stores. In the early 1850's the office was located in Market street, on the north side in what was then Library Hall. The government built a post office in 1857-8, on the Newark Academy property, which it had just purchased. The destruction and removal of that building was begun on August 1, 1890, the office being conducted partly in the old First Baptist Church, which stood directly west, and partly in the new building, which was not entirely finished until February 1, 1897. This is the structure still occupied (1913).
CHAPTER XVIII. CIVIC PRIDE, 1787-1800-THE FIRE MENACE AND HOW IT WAS MET-THE NIGHT WATCH.
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CHAPTER XVIII.
CIVIC PRIDE, 1787-1800-THE FIRE MENACE AND HOW IT WAS MET- THE NIGHT WATCH.
I 'T was characteristic of the community that its first public work of any magnitude after recovering from the staggering blows it had received during the War for Independence should be the erection of a larger house of worship. Indeed, preparations for a new edifice had been begun in 1774, and £2,000 had been subscribed. The site was to be a little knoll, called "School House Hill," on the south side of Market street, a hundred yards or so west of Broad street. Trenches had already been dug for the foundation stones, when the war came. Considerable metal had been collected to be converted into a bell. This was loaded into a cart and hauled by oxen down into the meadows, near the present line of Elm street, about a mile east of Mulberry street, where it was buried and where it remained until the war was over.
Four years after the close of the war the village was ready to start upon the new church, thanks to the strenuous efforts of Pastor Macwhorter. The original site was now felt to be inferior to one on the east side of Broad street, about opposite the church then in use. So, in September, 1787, the new building, the present First Presbyterian Church, and the third in the history of the Newark Congregation, was begun, with impressive ceremonies. After prayers, Dr. Macwhorter, standing at what is now the northeast corner of the church proper, took out the first spadeful of earth, followed by the deacons, until all the men in the congregation ranged along the foundation lines were at work, the opening of the trenches being completed in a few hours. The structure was of the most advanced and generally approved type of church architecture of the time.1 It gave a charming touch to the whole aspect of the
' The First Presbyterlan Church owned a Newark quarry, and it is probable the brownstone for the edifice was taken from it. A two-years' lease of the quarry was disposed of at publie "vendue" in May, 1795, at Gifford's tavern.
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village. It cost about £9,000 and was completed in January, 1791. Its immediate predecessor, a stone structure about forty-four feet square, was built as early as 1716 and possibly in 1708. According to Dr. Macwhorter, "it was the most elegant edifice for public worship at that time in the whole Colony." It is said to have taken thirty years to entirely complete the interior. It had a bell, as early as 1735. When the new or present church was taken posses- sion of in 1791, the old building became the Essex County Court House and was used for that purpose for more than fifteen years. The cemetery at the rear of the present church was apparently opened while the building was in process of erection, most of this land being the property of the lot owners, as it is to this day, 1913. There were few interments in the Old Burying Ground after that, and the resting place of the founders, which should have been pre- served with reverent care, fell into a state of neglect almost immediately.
There were contributors to the church building fund from all parts of the county and even from Bergen, and during the years it was in process of erection, the owner of the old ferry across the Passaic transported free all persons bent on the church's business. When, however, it was announced that the sittings were to be sold at auction, there was a loud protest from all directions. Later, when the trustees of the church attempted to collect an annuity from the pewholders for the upkeep of the church, there was another demonstration of disapproval. Some paid the annuity although objecting to the principle. Others refused to pay and were prosecuted. The whole matter was then aired in the courts, and the decision was against the legality of the assessment .?
THE TOWN'S SECOND ACADEMY.
The church finished, the community seems to have at once bent its energies upon the establishment of a creditable "temple of learning," and the members of both religious congregations,
? See "More Anon," in Newark Daily Advertiser for Oct. 15, 1863.
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مستمرة
THE FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH From a photograph made in 1913
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Presbyterian and Episcopalian, united in this work with equal zeal, just as they had done in the erection of the old Academy on Wash- ington Park, burned by the British some ten years before. The cornerstone for the new Academy, at the corner of Broad and what is now Academy street, was laid on Monday, June 25, 1792, (the land being purchased, not donated) "with much ceremony, amid the acclamation of a large number of the inhabitants of the town and neighborhood. This building, it is said, will, when finished, for convenience and elegance, vie with any building of like nature in America.
"Last Sunday being the anniversary of St. John the Baptist, a day observed by the masonic order, the celebration of the same was put off until Monday, when the brethren assembled, and, with their officers and other inhabitants, went in procession to the place intended for the academy, when the master of the lodge, Col. [John N.] Cumming [a faithful soldier of the War for Independ- ence] laid the cornerstone and delivered a handsome address, perti- nent to the occasion, as did also Dr. Macwhorter. They then returned in like manner to the Presbyterian Church," then less than two years old, "when the Rev. Mr. [Uzal] Ogden, after the usual ceremony, delivered an excellent discourse well adapted to the occasion. The whole was conducted with much decorum, and the remainder of the day spent at Mr. Gifford's tavern, where a magnificent dinner was provided for the occasion, in a social, friendly manner, attended with that hilarity common on such occasions."
The funds were raised by subscription, the pastors of the two churches, together with the town's postmaster, John Burnet, being a committee of three to solicit them. Permission was obtained from the Legislature to hold a lottery to raise additional funds of an amount not to exceed £800, and this was done, the enterprise being closed and the lottery "drawn" in June, 1794. There was a first prize of $2,500, one of $1,500, two of $1,000 each, two of $500, one of $300, three of $200, five of $100 and twelve of $50 each, a total of $9,000 in prizes.
It was a hard struggle to get sufficient money, but the success of the enterprise was made certain, when St. John's Lodge of Free Masons arranged to defray about one-third of the cost, on condition
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that a third story be built to be set aside for its uses. An attrac- tive structure of brick was built, with a frontage of sixty-six feet on Broad street, setting back some distance from the street, and with a depth of thirty-four feet. The Newark Academy Associa- tion was organized in February, 1794, with Isaac Gouverneur, the same who owned the handsome estate at what is now Mount Pleas- ant avenue and Gouverneur street, known afterwards as Cockloft Hall (thanks to Washington Irving), as first president of the board of trustees. Dr. Macwhorter, the first president of the association, so continued until he passed away in 1807. One other episode connected with the gathering in of the "wherewithal" for the work must not be forgotten. One contributor, of the name of Watts, donated a negro man, "James," who was sold by Rev. Uzal Ogden, rector of Trinity Church, for forty pounds, the same going into the building fund.
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