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 34
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Hither the people of the town who did not raise their own vegetables and keep their own cattle and fowls, came to do their marketing. In 1800 they could buy the best cuts of meat for from 6 to 8 cents a pound. The stall keepers had two or three carts which supplied the outlying districts of the town. The town prided itself on being a market centre and the town newspaper strove to encourage development along that line. Every time an unusually large ox or huge pumpkin was brought to the market the paper announced it with much enthusiasm. In January, 1795, Aaron Munn strode proudly into Market street, leading an ox fattened by Obadiah Meeker that weighed 1,500 pounds. "The ox," says the newspaper, "was the largest and made perhaps the best beef ever brought to this market. We have on this occasion been thus particular, wishing that it might create a spirit of emulation and improvement among our fellow citizens, as nothing but this will tend to raise the reputation of the market."
But the dream of Newark's citizens of building up a great market centre passed into thin air, when, in July, 1812, the first of the Fulton steam ferryboats began to run between Jersey City and New York. A number of Newarkers, by the way, who were financially interested in the development of Jersey City, were also directly concerned in this ferryboat venture, and it was no doubt
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one of them who wrote the following, which appeared in the Newark Centinel of Freedom on July 21, 1812: "I crossed the North River yesterday in the Steam Boat with my family in my carriage, without alighting therefrom, in 14 minutes, with an immense crowd of pasengers. I cannot express to you how much the public mind appeared to be gratified at finding so large and so safe a machine going so well. On both shores were thousands of people viewing this pleasing object." 1
The bells and whistles of that ferryboat sounded the knell of Newark's aspirations for a market metropolis here. It was soon found much easier, safer and less expensive for the farmers of Essex and West Hudson or the buyers from New York to drive across the two bridges and the meadows to the steam ferry than to load wagons or produce on the periaugers at Newark. This was the virtual beginning of carting and trucking across the meadows.
BUSINESS GROWS AT "FOUR CORNERS."
However, the market era had served to develop the neighbor- hood of Market and Broad streets as a business centre. For a little before the War for Independence much of the town's business had been done where the mill brook crossed Broad street, at the junc- tion of Broad and Belleville avenue. There had been ,two or three stores, the members of the Camp family being large owners. It was hither that the stone from the quarries just west and northwest was brought to be loaded on boats at the "stone dock" a little below the foot of Clay street. The grist mills on the brook, a short distance west of Broad street and Belleville avenue, attracted the people from the outlying communities. The stone doek also furnished facilities for shipping farm products to New York. After the war, however, a change came gradually. The bridge at Bridge street diverted much business from the mill brook section. The opening of the turnpikes from the western terminus of Market street proved another powerful influence to focus business at and
' See note, "The Fulton Ferryboats," at end of this chapter.
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near the "Four Corners." The stage coach traffic also served to leave the uptown centre out of the running. The only inn north of Market and Broad streets, after Gifford's tavern, was that at Bridge street, already mentioned. From 1790 the supremacy of the "Four Corners" was established.
By 1800, both sides of Broad street, from what is now Canal street to William street, were quite closely built upon, with two or two and one-half story frame buildings for the most part, and now and then a little one-story structure in which some citizen plied his trade or kept his store and lived in the rear. There were stores for the sale of general merchandise on three of the "Four Corners" in 1800, Gifford's tavern occupying the other. South of William street and north of Canal street the intervals between the buildings, most of them residences, became wider. Orchards filled generous spaces to the rear and often on either side. A block or so east and west there were small farms with only an occasional farmhouse here and there.
WHEN DAUGHTERS OF OLD FAMILIES DROVE COWS.
The town was to lose the appearance of a farming village slowly. As late as 1800 and for nearly a decade thereafter, there were few families that did not keep at least one cow; grazing space was readily and cheaply to be had, if not on one's own prem- ises on the stretches of open country but a few hundred yards away. It was part of the morning and evening "chores" of every boy and girl to drive the cows to and from pasture. "I can at this moment," wrote an old Newarker in 1863, speaking of the 1800 period, "name some old ladies whom I have seen in their girlhood days driving their cows to and from pasture, who felt a pride in tell- ing their children of the necessary duties which were incumbent upon them in their youth, whilst others who were notorious for their almost constant affiliation with the occupants of the barnyard, will now effect as much terror at a cow as they do of a tiger escaped from a menagerie."
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MAKING LOVE BY ACROSTIC.
Although it called itself a town, Newark was really a village still. Everybody in it knew everybody else. When a young man became enamored of a young lady he often poured forth his affec- tion in verse, quite frequently in the form of an acrostic. He presented the acrostic in the town newspaper one week, and left the whole community to guess whom he sought to honor, and a week or so later answers would appear. Here is a capital illustra- tion :
AN ACROSTICAL REBUS, TO MISS
One of the four seasons, If that Is first nam'd.
Then an insect for thought and economy fam'd. A beast whose true courage makes all others fear; Another admired for its beautiful hair.
The name of a state in the united fifteen. A sweet-smelling flower, that in garden is seen.
A bird whose fine feathers the ladies adorn.
That beautiful light which enlivens the morn.
That place poets tell us where Venus was born. * * * If now by attention or art you reveal, The sense of each line I so slightly conceal; Write down the initials distinctly and clear, The name of a handsome young maid will appear. So good and so lovely, so charmingly fair,
She's what many others do wish that they were. , J. A. P.
Three answers, in meter, were given two weeks later. One of them follows:
The Summer's the season designed to be nam'd.
The Ant is for thought and economy fam'd.
The Lyon keeps all other creatures in fear. The Leopard's esteemed for his beautiful hair. New York is the State in the united fifteen. *
* #
And the Rose the fine flower which in gardens is seen. The Plumes of the Ostrich the ladies adorn.
The Sun's glorious light paints the blushes of morn.
And the Sea is the place where fair Venus was born. Sally Ross is the charming young lady so gay,
Whose face I ne'er saw and perhaps never may. I. S. M.2
2 From Wood's Newark Gazette and Paterson Advertiser, Nov. 27, 1794.
:
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The bitterness engendered during the war, between Whig and Tory, cropped out occasionally in the local newspapers for many a year after the conflict was ended. In 1793 a local print published the following from the pen of some Newark versifier:
The name of a poisonous creature in wells,
And the dull, despised bird that in solitude dwells,
With the name we affix to a knave and a cheat,
And that of a puppy when kicked, will complete
The initials will tell the name of a creature,
The vilest, most hateful and wicked in nature.
The following week came the solution, no doubt written by the master mind that created the puzzle:
A Toad is a creature found sometimes in wells. The Owl is a bird that in solitude dwells.
A Rascal we call, or a knave, or a cheat.
And Yap is a name for dogs little or great.
The initials arrange, and soon you'll complete
The name of a Tory, both hateful and vile.
In 1800, Newark, meaning about the same area it now covers, had 1,200 or 1,500 inhabitants, Essex County (far larger than at present) about 22,000, and New Jersey about 181,000. Newark's growth in population really began as the new century started.
DISTINGUISHED SOJOURNERS.
Men of eminence were infatuated with its attractiveness and for longer or shorter periods made their homes here. Peter J. Van Berkel, minister plenipotentiary to the United States from Hol- land, abode here for several years, from the early 1790's. He died here in December, 1800, and was laid to rest in the First Church Cemetery in the plot of John Burnet, where his tombstone may still (1913) be seen. He lived on the west side of Broad street, just north of where the South Baptist Church now stands.
A number of distinguished Frenchmen, driven from home because of the sad state of affairs there, took up residence here in the early 1790's. One of these wrote to a friend that Newark was quite a lively little town, and that the passing and repassing of several stage coaches every day made it at times quite gay.
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Talleyrand, Charles Maurice, Prince de Talleyrand-Perigord, lived for several months on Broad street, about opposite William street, in a little two-story frame structure, part of the lower floor of which was given over to Alling's chair manufactory. There he probably did some of the preliminary work upon his essay, subse- quently published in France: "Une Memoire sur les relations Commerciales des Etats Unis vers 1797."
There were suspicions that Talleyrand had been sent to this country on a mission which boded no good to America. Alexander Hamilton, who knew Talleyrand while he was living in New York after his removal from Newark, grew to believe that the polished visitor was a more or less dangerous personage to have in the country. According to a writer in the Newark Daily Advertiser (Oct. 27, 1863) Hamilton published his doubts as to Talleyrand's openess of purpose, and the latter presently left these shores.
Francois Rene Auguste, Viscount de Chateaubriand, one of the most brilliant writers of his time, is said to have been a Newarker at about the same time with Talleyrand, but no confirmation of this has so far been found. One of the brothers of the poet Keats is also said to have stopped in Newark for a time, and some of the biographers of the poet Shelley assert that his grandfather, Sir Bysshe Shelley, was a Newarker by birth and a quack doctor here in the 1750's. Researches made quite recently tend to disturb the reliability of the Shelley incident, however." Members of a Shelley family lived here, however, as, about 1854, the tombstone of a John Shelley, who died in 1728, was unearthed in the Old Burying Ground.
TOWN OF NEWARK, "PERHAPS HANDSOMEST IN THE WORLD."
In 1796, Harman Blennerhasset, an Englishman of ancient lineage, cultured and gifted in various ways, but under the ban of social ostracism because he had married his sister's daughter,
" See Richard II. Stoddard's Anecdote Biography of Percy Bysshe Shelly, preface, page 14. Also Proceedings of New Jersey Historical Society, Third Series, vol. 1, pp. 34-35.
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came to America and subsequently became involved in the intrigues of which Aaron Burr, Newark-born, a son of the gifted Dr. Aaron Burr, was the creator. Burr's schemes for a southwestern empire cast a spell over the imaginative Blennerhasset, and he is said to have been promised the ambassadorship to England, once the new country were established. He was twice tried for treason, but was acquitted. Later he returned to England and died on the island of Guernsey in 1854. He was in Newark in 1796, and wrote enthusiastically of it in a letter, as follows:
"Newark possessed sufficient attractions within itself to induce me to tarry there for several days, even if I had not resolved to do so far the sake of visiting Passaic Falls, about fifteen miles off the main road. Newark, if considered as a village, which it more exactly nearly resembles than a town, is perhaps the handsomest in the world. Of extent nearly three miles, it is seated in a plain, clear and level as a parlor floor, on the banks of the Passaic by gently swelling hills. Its academy, court-house and two neat buildings for public worship, added to nine stages, which, beside an infinity of wagons, pass through it every day, give an air of business and gaiety to the place. It is also the residence of many private families of respectability, with some of whom we were previously well enough acquainted to be entertained longer than we chose to remain."
WASHINGTON IRVING HERE.
But it was not alone the cultured foreigner who discerned the beauties of the little village by the lower Passaic. Washington Irving, often called the founder of American literature, knew Newark and loved it, especially that portion which overlooks the Passaic from the Mount Pleasant and Belleville avenue region. There, at what is now Mount Pleasant avenue and Gouverneur street, stood the comfortable estate of "Mount Pleasent," the prop- erty of the then late Isaac Gouverneur and which had descended to a friend of Irving's, Gouverneur Kemble. To the young Kembles, Irving, his brother Pierre, Henry Ogden, Henry Brevoort, a popular young writer; James K. Paulding and a few others, this charming spot was a haven of refuge from their toils and struggles in New York. Irving and Paulding dubbed it "Cockloft Hall," and
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in the Salmagundi papers, for which they were directly responsible, Irving mentions it frequently. In 1807 and for some time there- after, Irving was a frequent visitor there, making his way thither by way of Paulus Hook ferry and thence by stage across the Hackensack and Passaic, often lingering for a time at Gifford's tavern, either going or coming.
In the fourth of the Salmagundi papers, under the caption of "Memorandums for a Tour," to be entitled, "The Stranger in New Jersey," he wrote:
"Newark-Noted for its fine breed of fat mosquitoes, sting through the thickest boot; Archer Gifford and his man Caliban, jolly fat fellows; a knowing traveller always judges everything by the innkeepers and waiters; set down Newark people all fat as butter; learned dissertations on Archer Gifford's green coat, with philosophical reasons why the Newarkites wear red worsted nightcaps and turn their noses to the south when the wind blows; Newark Academy full of windows; sunshine excellent to make little boys grow."
COCKLOFT HALL.
If you read the Salmagundi papers closely you are pretty certain to arrive at the conclusion that Cockloft Hall was con- stantly in Irving's thoughts, in 1807, and thereabouts. Here is a characteristic passage from these papers:
"Those who pass their time immured in the smoky circum- ference of the city, amid the rattling of carts, the brawling of the multitude, and the variety of unmeaning and discordant sound that prey insensibly upon the nerves and beget a weariness of the spirits, can alone understand and feel that expansion of the heart, that physical renovation which a citizen experiences when he steals forth from his dusty prison to breathe the free air of heaven and to enjoy the clear face of nature.
"Who that has rambled by the side of one of our majestic rivers at the hour of sunset, when the wildly romantic scenery around is softened and tinted by the voluptuous mist of evening; when the bold and swelling outlines of the distant mountain seem melting into the glowing horizon and a rich mantle of refulgence is thrown over the whole expanse of the heavens, but must have felt how abundant is nature in sources of pure enjoyment; how luxuriant in all that can enliven the senses or delight the imagina- tion. The jocound zephyr, full freighted with native fragrance,
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sues sweetly to the senses; the chirping of the thousand varieties of insects with which our woodlands abound, forms a concert of simple melody ; even the barking of the farm dog, the lowing of the cattle, the tinkling of their bells, and the stroke of the. wood- man's axe from the opposite shore, seem to partake of the softness of the scene and fall tunefully upon the ear; while the voice of the villager, chanting some rustic ballad, swells from a distance in the semblance of the very music of harmonious love."
And this little rhapsody, so suggestive of Grey's "Elegy in a Country Churchyard," was unmistakably inspired by the author's love for the Cockloft Hall region, the neighborhood now covered with closely huddled dwellings, with great mills near at hand, and a clamorous railroad on the edge of the erstime crystalline river- Mt. Pleasant avenue and Gouverneur street.
"At such time," Irving continues, "I feel a sensation of sweet tranquility ; a hallowed calm is diffused over my senses; I cast my eyes around, and every object is serene, simple and beautiful. * * * A whole legion of reflections like these insinuated them- selves into my mind, and stole me from the influence of the cold realities before me as I took my accustomed walk, on the battery. * * I all at once discovered that it was but to pack my port- manteau, bid adieu for awhile to my elbow chair, and in a little time I should be transported from the region of smoke and noise and dust, to the enjoyment of a far sweeter prospect and a brighter sky. The next morning I was off full tilt to Cockloft Hall, leaving my man Pompey to follow at his leisure with my baggage."
In another of the Salmagundi papers he tells of watching the gathering of night from a "high hill" not far from Cockloft Hall, in which the Mt. Prospect avenue region is undoubtedly meant.
Isaac Gouverneur was one of Newark's most generous and public-spirited residents. He was always active in whatever move- ment for the community's uplift might be afoot. He died in 1794 in September, when the town newspaper published the following:
"Died, the 25th ultimo, at Mount Pleasant, Isaac Gouverneur, Esq., in the seventy-third year of his age. This gentleman was for many years an eminent merchant of Curacao. After he returned to his native country, he continued a short time in New York and then retired to his seat in this town. He was possessed of a great goodness of heart, the strictest integrity, a high sense
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of honor, distinguished generosity, humanity and benevolence, which with many other virtues and amiable qualities, and his affable and polite manners, greatly endeared him to all who had the happiness of his acquaintance. His death is universally regretted, and must be regarded as a loss to our country in general and particularly to the academy, of which he was one of the governors, and to this institution he was a liberal benefactor."
It is probable that Mr. Gouverneur came to Newark a short time after the War for Independence, and it is possible that Mount Pleasant was, previous to the war, the estate of Captain James Gray, who in the late 1760's had an iron works at Little Falls, on the bank of the Passaic, where a dam had, even before that year, been constructed to provide water power. In 1768 and '69, Captain Gray offered his Newark estate for sale, as an advertise- ment of the time, given in Chapter XI of this work, sets forth.
If this was not the estate that later became Mount Pleasant it must have been the property that was to become the Kearny place, on part of which the State Normal School stands. The Normal School is directly opposite Kearny Castle, built just pre- vious to the Civil War by General Philip Kearny. This building stands where the manor of Peterborough stood long before it, so named at the time Colonel Peter Schuyler erected his mansion there in the 1740s or '50s. Colonel Schuyler was a brilliant figure in the history of the Province of New Jersey during the French and Indian wars. Peterborough was reckoned as being in Newark (although in what was then Bergen county), as indeed was the entire ridge now known as Arlington and Kearny.
Colonel Schuyler left but one child, a daughter, Mary, who married Captain Archibald Kennedy, at one time an efficient officer of the British navy. He kept Peterborough as his country place after Colonel Schuyler died, and for his city home erected a sub- stantial mansion at 1 Broadway, New York. After the death of his first wife, Mary Schuyler, he married Miss Nancy Watts, daughter of John Watts, of New York City, "a young lady," as the wedding notice runs, "of great merit and with a handsome fortune." This was in May, 1769. The Kearnys were related to
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the Kennedys through the Watts connection, and Captain Kennedy was General Philip Kearny's great-uncle. The first Philip Kearny to live in Newark, and where the State Normal School stands, was General Kearny's great-grandfather. It is possible, in view of the facts just presented, that the Captain Gray estate was purchased by the original Newark Philip Kearny and that Isaac Gouverneur purchased part of it for his Mount Pleasant.
Isaac Gouverneur was what we of to-day love to call a "gentle- man of the old school," and it was retired merchants and others of his type who, before and shortly after the War for Independ- ence, were looking for pleasant estates in or near Newark to which they could retire permanently, or temporarily if they chose, from the city of New York. In these old manor house owners we find the genesis of the commuter.
The "Nine Worthies," or the "Lads of Kilkenny," as they sometimes called themselves, were quite free from all restraints and conventionalities when at Cockloft Hall. The place was left in charge of an old darkey, Pompey, and his wife, and was only thrown open when these happy spirits assembled there to enjoy themselves. It was, in effect, their country club. There was fine fishing in the river and good hunting in the woods to the north and west of them.
"Upon this place," explained William A. Whitehead in an article written many years ago, "was a quaint, elaborate and elegant summer house, which had been built by one of the Gouverneurs, and near by was a fish pond which the same eccentric owner had constructed at considerable cost, although the river, teeming with fish (in his day), was only a few rods away.
"It was this summer house and pond which Irving used to illustrate the peculiarities of the mythical Cockloft, otherwise one of the Gouverneurs. 'An odd notion of the old gentleman,' says the author, 'was to blow up a large bed of rocks for the purpose of having a fish pond, although the river ran at a distance of about a hundred yards from the house and was well stored with fish; but there was nothing, he said, like having things to one's self.
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And he would have a summer house built on the margin of the pond; he would have it surrounded with elms and willows, and he would have a cellar dug under it for some incomprehensible purpose, which remains a secret to this day.'"
Washington Irving did not always stick to the very letter of historic fact in his writings, and it is possible that he did not do old Isaac Gouverneur entire justice when he described his building a pond on his premises as a whim. The so-called fish pond may not have been a fish pond at all, when the Gouverneurs first came to Mount Pleasant, but a pond for the storage of water, partly for fire-fighting purposes, in the days before fire engines in this section of the country were thought of. It is a significant fact, too, that in the account of the burning of the Gouverneur barn, already given in Chapter XVIII, the old newspaper did not mention this fish pond, from which the bucket line would undoubt- edly have been formed, instead of down the steep slope of the river. This leads us to think that either the fish pond was not built until after 1798, and therefore not by old "Cockloft," but by one of the family coming after him; or else it was out of commission, for some reason or another, at the time of the barn fire.
PASSING OF THE SUMMER HOUSE.
The summer house remained until about the time of the Civil War, when it had to be removed to make room for a new street (Passaic). John P. Wakeman, one of the later owners of the property, bought the materials of which the summer house was made and tried to get others to co-operate with him for its restora- tion on some other spot, but without result. He finally used the lumber in a carriage house, which afterward became a dwelling, in Ogden street, between Gouverneur street and Fourth avenue. The picture of it given in this chapter is taken from a copy of a sketch made in 1859 by William A. Whitehead.
The summer house "was octagonal in shape," wrote Mr. White- head, "about eighteen feet in diameter, containing only one apart- ment, with a door facing the river on the east, and having windows
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