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 33
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"When it is considered," said the newspaper in publishing the call for the meeting at which the officers were to be elected, "that the object of this association is merely with a view to alleviate the occasional distresses of one another, it is to be hoped that none will be found to withhold their names to an institution so laudable and benevolent, an institution so well adapted to the interest and safety and prosperity of the town."
They called it the Newark Mutual Assurance Company. It was the first fire insurance company in New Jersey, and it began business in April, 1810, about two months after the first mass meeting. Its secretary was Joseph C. Hornblower, then a young lawyer, but afterwards to become chief justice and one of the lead- ing citizens. The company's business was at first done in Horn- blower's office, and he did most of it for a short time. The company
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was conducted with great shrewdness and care, and it prospered. It was reckoned as purely a town institution. No provision was made in the original charter, granted in 1811, for the disposition of any surplus that might accrue. Wise as the founders were, it never seems to have occurred to them that there would be any considerable sum which they would not need to use in strengthening the business and thus directly benefiting the town. In a supplement to the charter granted in 1827, provision was made for the pay- ment of dividends, and thus the company began to take on the form and attributes of a money-making institution. It changed its name two or three times, and is now known as the Newark Fire Insurance Company. In its early years it contributed largely to the support of what fire department there was, and of course one of its chief benefits to the community as a whole was that it gradu- ally relieved the people of contributing personally to recoup a neighbor who was ruined by fire. The institution was of invaluable service to Newark in those early days of its industrial growth.
NIGHT WATCH A POLICE FORCE.
The struggle to avert disaster by fire was largely instrumental in developing something like systematic surveillance of the town at night. At a meeting of the Newark Fire Association, February 13, 1797, it was announced that three hundred citizens had volun- teered to join the Night Watch. These were promptly. told off into squads of sixteen, one squad to serve throughout one night, each being called on in rotation. The instructions to the Night Watch, as laid down with considerable detail, were as follows:
"That they shall patroll every part of the town, silently, observ- ing due order themselves, inspect into the cause of all lights appear- ing in any house or building at an unreasonable hour of the night; and in case a Fire should happen to break out, the patroll on duty shall immediately give notice first to the family, and then to those in the Watch House, sounding the alarm as they pass along. The key of the Church is to be kept by the different watches and one person of each watch is to be particularly appointed to ring the Bell in case of Fire." The Night Watch was also directed to keep
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an eye out for all disorderly persons, night prowlers, thieves, etc. If any such were found they were haled before the squad captain, who for the night was virtually chief of police. That functionary could lock up those so captured or let them go free, at his dis- cretion.
"The patrolls," said the instructions, "are to take up all per- sons found out at an unusual hour of the night and, in case they cannot give a satisfactory account of themselves, or if anything should appear suspicious about them, they are to be taken to the Watch House to be disposed of at the discretion of the captain.
"The captain of each watch shall make report in writing of every material thing passing under the observation of his patroles.
* * * No member of the watch is to go home until regularly dismissed by the captain."
PUBLIC EXECUTION OF MURDERERS.
There was practically little need of a police force of any sort until after the War for Independence. Previous to the war the town constable had usually been quite able to attend to all such melancholy business as might occur. The first robbery, for instance, on record occurred January 4, 1787, when thieves got into the post office on the southeast corner of Market and Broad streets, and walked off with the mail.
The first hanging of record, after the war, (a Continental soldier was executed in Newark during the war), occurred on May 6, 1791, when William Jones was hanged for killing Samuel Shotwell. It was made a public function of great solemnity. Serv- ices were held in the Presbyterian church, when the Rev. Uzal Ogden, of Trinity, preaching a sermon, "very happily .adapted," said the town newspaper, "to the occasion, from Genesis, ix, 6: 'Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed.'" Dr. Macwhorter gave an address at the scene of the hanging, and "the deportment of the criminal was decent under the jibbet."
In 1805, that rare genius, Moses Combs, concerning whom much more is told in the chapters on early industries and early schools, gave a slave named Harry Lawrence his freedom. Combs
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was a vehement abolitionist and he resolved to practise what he preached. Unfortunately, the negro proved a miserable subject for the experiment, for, after threatening the life of Mrs. Combs, he killed his own wife. Lawrence was hanged with much ceremony on Oct. 8, 1805. The occasion was made a sort of solemn holiday. The militia of Newark and Orange assembled at the Court house and marched in procession with the townspeople, all escorting a cart in which the wretched prisoner was pinioned, to Military Park, where the negro was, according to the newspaper, "swung into eternity." After the noose was fixed, the cart was driven away and the man left dangling in the air. "During the march," says this ancient purveyor of news, "the scene was truly awful! The dragoons with their drawn swords, the foot with their glittering muskets and fixed bayonets-the slow and solemn beat of the drum and in the centre of whom was the negro dressed in white trowsers and jacket, a cap of the same on his head, a rope around his neck, and his own hand the bearer of the other part [of the rope]-was a sight at which humanity and sensibility could freely drop a tear." People climbed into the trees to get a good view of the fearful spectacle.
Newark dealt a trifle more gently with horse thieves after the war than before it, when death was sometimes the penalty for this offense. In June, 1793, a man named Pough, "said to be a refugee Tory half pay officer, sustained with manly fortitude, the discipline of the Cat for horse-stealing. He is to receive a like punishment at Springfield and Orange this week," announced the newspaper. It does not tell how many lashes of the rawhide were laid upon his bare back, but we may be sure they were neither few nor tenderly applied.
ORGANIZING AGAINST THIEVES.
Fruit thieves were abroad in Newark as early as 1794. The town was one great orchard at the time. In that year a fruit protective association was organized. Burglars became so bold in 1800, that, at a meeting of citizens in December, a committee of
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thirteen was appointed to visit each housekeeper, weekly, "to inquire concerning all persons harbored there and to raise $100, by subscription, to be expended in rewards for the apprehension of the villains." There was comparatively little crime in Newark, after all, during the first three decades of the last century. In 1834 there were but six watchmen and but four of these patrolled at one time.
CORPORATION GREED IN 1806.
The first manifestation of corporation greed appeared in 1806, when some shrewd citizen signing himself "Mechanic" complained in the newspaper that the stage companies were taking advantage of the improved roadway provided by the turnpike company (of which he was an officer), between Jersey City and the Hackensack. The stage companies had raised their rates, he said, but were con- tributing nothing to the expense of road building, beyond the sum always charged them. This says "Mechanic," is "flagrant extor- tion." A moderate estimate of the number of passengers, he says, is five passengers each way for each stage. The coach people, while paying twenty-five cents to the turnpike company for each stage load, were thereafter to ask $1.00 additional for those five passengers. Assuming that each stage travels three hundred days a year, it would mean $300 a year more for each stage, and there being four, the people (meaning the turnpike company, which con- ducted a public utility) were to be bamboozled out of $1,200 a year.
"Is money to be extorted in this manner ?" exclaims "Mechanic," "from the merchants and mechanics of this town. . It is time then for our citizens to awake from their delusion and exert their energies and destroy this extortion."
The owner of one stage line promptly announced, after this terse denunciation, that he would make no raise in his rates. Whether the others followed his example history does not tell. The incident is valuable simply because it shows that there were already abroad those who were quick to take advantage of the publie whenever the opportunity offered, and that there were still
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others equally alert to detect their schemes and to subject them to the light of "pitiless publicity."
COUNTY JAIL AND DEBTORS' PRISON.
The county jail, which served for Newark as well, was a long, two-story, stone structure, built about 1700. It stood just south of the town's second church building, that is, on the lower side of Branford place, or on the ground now occupied by that thorough- fare. The upper floor was used for the court rooms, and it was around and in this building that the land riots raged previous to the War for Independence, and where the meetings of the patriots were held for the purpose of organizing the community and the whole county for its fight against the Crown. It is quite probable that these court rooms were used as class rooms by the students of the College of New Jersey while it was located in Newark. When the present First Church was finished, in 1791, the old church building became the county court house. In the days of the founders the meeting house (the first church building to be set up here) was also used as a court house. It is believed that a small prison house or jail was provided in the very early days and that it stood adjacent to the meeting and court house, but exactly where it is impossible to tell.
The jail and court house erected, about 1700, was described in 1863 by a Newarker writing of his boyhood days of some sixty years previous, as having a kitchen at the south end. "The entire lower floor," says this writer, "was arched with passages. There were a few iron grated windows. The short-sentence prisoners were kept in rooms at one end of this lower floor, while the other end had dungeons for the more desperate criminals. The dungeons were dark and were separated from the rest of the building by iron doors. The debtors' prison was on the second floor, and after the second church building became a court house, the keeper of the prison and his family lived on the second floor.
CHAPTER XIX.
THE VILLAGE TAVERNS AND THEIR INFLUENCE-EMINENT MEN IN NEWARK-WASHINGTON IRVING AND "COCKLOFT HALL."
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CHAPTER XIX.
THE VILLAGE TAVERNS AND THEIR INFLUENCE-EMINENT MEN IN NEWARK. WASHINGTON IRVING AND "COCKLOFT HALL."
T HE business and social life of Newark at the close of the eighteenth century, and for two or three decades thereafter, focused around its inns or taverns. There the people could meet, exchange views and gather the gossip of the day, free from the restraints of the church or of the court house, which were the only other places for common assemblage. They could come when they wished and depart when they were ready. They could get closely in touch with their fellow men without ceremony, could see life in all the phases that the village afforded. The more or less constantly arriving and departing stage coaches (which always halted at the principal taverns for the discharge of passengers, the taking on and taking off of mail and the exchange of horses) were the telegraph, telephone, stock-ticker and wireless of the day. One did not have to wait for Sunday (when men, for generations, had been wont to gather before and after church in and about the horse sheds) to discuss matters of personal, local, county, State or national importance; nor did he have to possess himself in patience until the next session of court. At the inn he was quite certain to meet those who could satisfy his desire to learn what was going on in the world outside of his own narrow orbit.
Newark had had its public houses or "ordinaries" from 1670 or thereabouts, when, by virtual command of the Lords Proprie- tors, a place was provided for visitors in order, chiefly, that the representatives of the Governor and his counsel might have suit- able shelter when on their visits throughout the colony. The first of these was on the northeast corner of Broad and Walnut streets, where Grace Episcopal Church now stands. We have no trace of its immediate successors, although it is probable they were, like the first, simply the home of some resident selected by the com- munity to entertain strangers.
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THE "RISING SUN," THE "EAGLE," AND OTHER INNS.
About the middle of the eighteenth century we read of the "Rising Sun" tavern, which stood about where River street and Canal street meet, on the, then, high road from Newark to New York, the "Old Ferry Road" as it was after- ward called, and from which our present Ferry street derives its name. Travelers going to New York passed up or down Broad street to Market and then eastward to the ferry across the Passaic, over the meadows to the Hackensack and on over Bergen Hill to the inn at Paulus Hook, whence they took ferry to New York. The "Rising Sun" tavern, located as it was on a little eminence, commanded an extensive view of the river and bay and the country to the eastward. It was on both arteries of communication with the outside world-the road and the river. It seems to have been a famous place of entertainment in its time, but, unfortunately, the records of its day are exasperatingly meagre. We do know that under its roof the first lodge of Free Masons in New Jersey, St. John's, was organized.
In 1759 and probably for many years before, James Banks kept a tavern "fronting the great road leading to Elizabethtown." It was located upon what is now Clinton avenue, not far below Lincoln (South) Park. Banks had been a more or less prominent figure in the village from 1736. It is probable that he was at one time "mine host" of the "Rising Sun" and that he removed thither from Clinton avenue.
There was comparatively little need for taverns in Newark until just before the War for Independence, when the Old Ferry Road route to Paulus Hook had grown popular enough to be a modest competitor for traffic with the long ferry between New York and Elizabethtown. Then, we learn of a hostelry at what is now the north corner of Broad and William streets, the "Eagle Tavern," where Washington is believed to have stopped in Novem- ber, 1776. There was an inn kept by a Capt. Pierson during the war. It may have been either the "Rising Sun," the "Eagle," or some other. The "Rising Sun" seems to have been continued after
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the war began, until 1777, and possibly afterwards, although it was too close to the bay and lower river territory over which Tories and militia and occasional detachments of British and Hessians moved, to be a comfortable place of entertainment. It was reopened afterwards, if it closed at all. James Banks continued as innkeeper until 1771, when he made the following announcement in the newspapers :
"As I intend to leave off publick-houskeeping soon, I will dispose of, at private sale, the house and lot of ground whereon I now live; its advantageous situation for publick business is well known to be as good as any between Powles Hook and Philadelphia, being the county town; a large house, convenient rooms, a good cellar, and a fine large stable in the yard, an excellent kitchen garden adjoining it; is likewise suitable for a gentleman's seat, or for a merchant, being in the centre of the town."
This was, in all probability the "Rising Sun." Newark's first directory in its first issue, 1835-6, gives it as one of the hotels and its keeper as O. Dickerson. This was probably a revival of the old house and does not indicate that its existence had been continuous. It had been unheard of in the public prints for generations. Indeed, it disappears from the directory a year or so after the first issue.
Another of Newark's old inns was that kept by Capt. Jabez Parkhurst, starting shortly after the War for Independence. It stood on the west side of Broad street, was the fourth structure south from Market street, just north of the County Court House and previous to 1791 the First Church, the immediate predecessor of the one now standing (1913) across the street. Capt. Parkhurst was a man of high standing in the community, and a school build- ing on the little plot just west of Lincoln Park was erected chiefly through his efforts. In 1796 he offered his hostelry' for sale, announcing that it had a good stable, "well with pump which con- veys water to a convenient bathing house," the first in Newark of which there is any mention, "and from thence to trough for horses. A cistern near stable, within 6 feet of kitchen door, with a pump for its convenience." The house had a frontage of 52 feet, was 34 feet in depth, and contained 14 rooms. The stable and yard into which some of the big New York-Philadelphia coaches rolled to
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exchange their tired and steaming horses for fresh ones and to leave and take up passengers, abutted upon the old Burying Ground. The windows of the tavern's barroom looked out upon the tomb- stones.
This inn was acquired by Stephen Roff, probably at the sale of 1796, by Parkhurst. Early in the first decade of the 1800's it was run by Nathaniel Seabury. In 1808 and afterwards Johnson Tuttle presided over it. In the 1830's it was conducted by D. D. Chandler. The old Eagle Tavern, on the corner of Broad and William streets, was kept, shortly after the war, by a Major Sayres. Nathaniel Seabury, already mentioned as one time owner of the inn about opposite Mechanic street (Parkhurst's), took the Eagle after Sayres and enlarged it with kitchen, new stables, etc. In 1803 a third story was added to the tavern and the county courts were held there for a short time while the court house and jail on the site of the present Grace Episcopal church was being erected. About that time the property was acquired by a member of the Roff family, of the name of Moses.
These inns on the west side of Broad street added materially to the desecration of the Old Burying Ground. Refuse was thrown out upon the graves; cooks and scullions sharpened their knives upon the stones. Those were crude and unsentimental days.
In 1803 Stephen Halsey kept a tavern in a building about where the Broad street station of the Central Railroad stands. "The best worn path across the entire length of Broad street," naively remarked a writer in telling of the days of 1800 and there- abouts, "ran from Halsey's tavern to Roff's," at Broad and William streets. Shortly after the bridge over the Passaic was put in operation, an inn was set up on the north corner of what are now Bridge and Broad streets, but it never acquired the fame or the popularity of those huddled about the Four Corners. It was not until the turnpikes were built running southwest and northwest from Market street, at what is now the Court house triangle, that inns were set up in Market street, unless we except Gifford's tavern, which stood on the northeast corner of the town's main highways.
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ARCHER GIFFORD'S TAVERN.
Gifford's was by far the most popular inn in Newark, from the early 1790's and for a period of nearly twenty years. It possessed a famous "Long Room," apparently fronting on Broad street, where all of the public gatherings not conducted in the churches, the Academy, or the Court house, were held. It was the royal place for feasting at times of popular celebration. Distinguished trans- ient visitors stopped there and held receptions in the Long Room. For a long time all the mail and other stages swung noisily into Market street and thence to Gifford's stables, just east of the inn. On the corner was the inn sign, swinging from a post, bearing the tavern name, "The Hounds and Horn," and with a painting depict- ing the end of a fox hunt. There were hunters on horseback, one of them holding up the fox above a pack of hounds. It was the most ambitious work of art in Newark for many a day.
It is believed that the very beginning of Newark's business with the South, which had assumed proportions of great magnitude at the outbreak of the Civil War, was brought about in that inn. A traveler from the South in the 1790's, who rested at Gifford's, noticed that there were shoe factories in the village, and questioned Archer Gifford, the genial innkeeper, about them. Gifford is said to have given a glowing account of the excellence of the shoes made by Moses N. Combs and of the honorable character of Combs. He directed the traveler to Combs' little shop on the south side of Market street, about where Plane street now it. Presently Combs was shipping shoes to the South, and other local makers were soon doing the same.
Gifford's tavern was famous the country 'round for its good cheer. Its dinners were the talk of the whole countryside .. In 1800 Gifford was accustomed to advertise for live quail, offering six cents apiece, no doubt to supply his table with the daintiest the neighborhood afforded. President John Adams stopped at Gifford's tavern on one if not two occasions. Many other of the country's notables were entertained there also. It was a headquarters for the local companies of militia, who did all their drilling out of doors,
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and who always concluded muster with a feast at Gifford's. He was a man of high respectability and reckoned as one of the most public-spirited men in the town. He was an uncle of Archer Gifford, one of Newark's most eminent lawyers. The tavern was burned down in the early 1830's. Mr. John A. Gifford, a descendant of Archer Gifford, the lawyer, told the writer (in 1913) that he was taken down to the "Four Corners" when a little boy to see the old tavern burn.
NEWARK AS A MARKET CENTRE.
The increase in hostelries shortly after the War for Independ- ence was by no means due to rapid growth on the part of Newark's population, but to the building of the bridges across the Passaic and Hackensack rivers, and to the easy water communication between the town and New York. The bridges made the stage lines possible, and the Passaic, Newark Bay and the Kill van Kull furnished comparatively inexpensive transportation facilities for the market produce of Newark and all the surrounding towns to the big city on Manhattan Island. Newark, West Hudson and Essex County farmers could illy afford to transport their wares to New York, so the merchants of that city found it a good invest- ment to come here to Newark, buy farm products and ship them by the swiftest and safest vessels of the time, the periaugers (broad-beamed, light-draught sailing craft) .
So it came about that the farmers from the "back country" swarmed into Newark on certain days, lined the streets with their carts, and, after they were sold out, flocked about the taverns and made bustle and business all around the centre of the thriving little town. Now it was (in the last decade of the eighteenth century) that Market street got its name. Previous to that period it had had none, being sometimes mentioned as "the East and West street," to distinguish it from "the three other chief high- ways," "the Broad street," "the West Back street," Washington, and the "East Back street," Mulberry. Market street led directly down to the water, by the old Ferry road, where the periaugers waited to take the farm produce to New York.
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The town now began to feel the need of a market of its own. The street curbs, and the parks (South or Lincoln, Military and Washington) did well enough for the farmers and buyers from New York in mild weather, but shelter was needed at other times. So, in 1794, a committee of five was chosen at town meeting to provide for a market house. It was composed of Isaac Alling, Samuel Hays, Nathaniel Beach, David Crane and John Pintard. A building was promptly erected, on the south side of Market street, about sixty feet east of Halsey street. It was a two-story stone affair, with two stalls on the ground floor. It was opened in May, 1795. It was a tiny structure, indeed, this first Newark market building, but 20 feet square. On the second floor, a Mrs. Conger, wife of a tallow chandler, conducted a free school.
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