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 40
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Manufacturing enterprises were, therefore, looked upon as patriotic enterprises, and those who invested their money in them or gave their energy and brains to promote them were held up as patriots of a high order. No man dreamed of the marvelous growth of the industries that was then being prepared for.
An effort was made soon after the War for Independence to establish wool raising, with the hope of building up a great industry, and the flocks of sheep which had dotted the hillsides for a century and a half increased in number.
At a Newark town meeting in 1788 it was decided to subsidize the proposed industry and to offer premiums for the best wool. "The increase of Sheep," asserted the resolution, "and the conse- quent production and increase of Wool being of the utmost import- ance to the interest and prosperity of the Country, and the inhabi- tants of this Township being disposed to encourage and promote so laudable a design, do agree to give the following premiums upon the Conditions following, viz .: to the person who shall shear off his own Sheep in the spring of 1789 the greatest quantity of good, clean wool, the sum of Ten Pounds." Prizes of eight, six, five and two pounds were offered to those whose products should rank next in
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order. "No person shall be entitled to either of the above said premiums," continued the resolution, "unless he shall reside within this Township, and unless he shall appear before David Banks, Esq., 'innkeeper', on or before the tenth Day of June, 1789, and shall make oath to the quantity of Wool he shall have sheared, as above s'd."
In 1810 John P. Durand and John Juhel bought a large farm near South Orange for the raising of Merino sheep, whereupon the Newark newspaper announced: "The farmers of New Jersey will certainly rejoice to hear of such a laudable undertaking by two gentlemen of patriotism and capital. We believe this is the first establishment of its kind in the State."
But this industry was not destined to attain to great propor- tions here. The census of 1810 showed that 43,000 yards of woolen goods were made in Essex County for that year, but all in families.
In September, 1790, John Johnson of Newark announced in the New Jersey Journal, "The subscriber informs the public and his . friends in particular, that his Fulling Mill is in complete order, and that he has supplied himself with the best of workmen from Europe, so that they may depend upon having their work done with care and expedition. He intends dressing all kinds of cloth and will dye them any color they may choose, except scarlet, after the first of October next."
NEWARK'S PART IN THE FOUNDING OF PATERSON.
It was in the following year that the "Society for Promoting Useful Manufactures," which resulted in the establishment of what is now the city of Paterson, came into being. Its chief promoter was Alexander Hamilton, and many of those who rallied around him to advance the enterprise were Jerseymen, several of them New- arkers. Hamilton was an ardent believer in the vital necessity for the creation of American industries. He had campaigned in New Jersey during the then recent war, and no doubt, as already inti- mated in this work, had grasped some of its vast possibilities for the exploitation of the useful arts. He even went so far as to
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procure the employment of a number of engineers to test the waters of the several States with a view to determining which were the purest and best adapted for use in manufacturing. Some of these experts were Frenchmen. It was decided as a result of their researches that the water from the Pequannock Valley (from whence Newark gets its water supply today) were the purest and softest. The waters of the Pequannock flow into the Passaic, and it is said on good authority that Hamilton had virtually made up his mind that the "Society for Promoting Useful Manufactures" should locate its plant upon that river long before a decision on that point. Elisha Boudinot of Newark was very close to Hamilton at that time, and the now famous society actually came into being here. Behind Boudinot's comfortable mansion in what is now Park Place was a spacious orchard and garden, and in it was a summer home. It was in that summer house that Hamilton, Boudinot and others met, on several occasions, when they were intent on the firm establish- ment of New Jersey's industries.
Late in December it was announced: "The Society for Pro- moting Useful Manufactures have given notice that they will receive proposals from any bodies, corporations, townships or individuals in this State who may be desirous of securing the emoluments which will result from this establishment, which will be an actual capital of one million dollars." This, of course, meant that the promoters of the new venture were looking for the best inducements to locate in one section or another. "Expectation is on tiptoe," remarked a Jersey newspaper, in that same month, December, 1791, "for the final determination of the place where the factory of the new society is to be established. Springfield, Second River and the Falls (Paterson) are all anticipated as the proper places, but the mother of all things will bring it forth in season."
The name of the proposed manufacturing settlement was fixed upon months before the spot was chosen. The coming community was known far and wide as Paterson, as a compliment to the then Governor Paterson, the second chief magistrate of New Jersey in its history as a State. "Last Friday," said the New Jersey Journal
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on May 23, 1792, "the directors of the Manufacturing Society, con- vened at Newark, resolved unanimously that the town of Paterson should be on the Passaic, somewhere between Mr. Isaac Gouver- neur's, near Newark, and Chatham Bridge, and appointed Mr. Bayard, Mr. Lowe and Mr. Boudinot a committee to locate said town and make the necessary purchases of land, etc. We are also likewise informed that the Secretary of the Treasury, Colonel Hamilton, attended the meeting in person and has promised the infant institu- tion his countenance and support. It is to be put into immediate operation."
Isaac Gouverneur, as has been shown in preceding chapters, was the proprietor of the fine estate called "Mount Pleasant," from which the present avenue gets its name, the estate which Washing- ton Irving two years later was to name "Cockloft Hall." It is not easy for the present generation to conceive of the city of Paterson being located in the northern section of Newark, but, as the above news- paper notice shows, the neighborhood was reckoned as one worthy of serious consideration. As for Springfield, it was at that time ยท looked upon as a highly favorable location for manufacturing inter- ets. "A number of patriotic gentlemen of this town and neighbor- hood," said the New Jersey Journal on February 9, 1792, "have it in contemplation of establishing a company for the prosecution of a valuable manufactory at Springfield, where local advantages give it the preference to most places in the State." The Journal was then published in Elizabethtown. For two or three years after the foundation of Paterson the annual meetings of the board of direc- tors of the society were held in Newark. In fact, the board was formally organized in the Essex County Court House, in Newark.
EARLY FACTORIES.
In Wood's Newark Gazette and Paterson Advertiser for Sep- tember 22, 1794, appears the first advertisement of a paint factory, which was called into being because of the complaints of many residents of the town that the paint they bought was adulterated. This brought about a movement for the town to make its own paint. Hence this announcement :
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"PAINT MANUFACTORY.
"Under the patronage of the Patriotic Society in the town of Newark, white lead, spruce and yellow ochres, Spanish brown and Venetian red, Turkey umber and red lead in cases of one hundred, half and quarter hundreds, by the ton or single pound are manufac- tured and offered to the public together with most colours used by Painters and Limners, all of which are equal and many superior to those imported from London and Bristol and Amsterdam. = * at the place of M. B. Higgins.
"By Higgins and Andruss.
"N. B. The apothecaries and physicians are informed that the Peruvian Barks, Ipecacuanha, Jallop, etc., are pulverized and boulted at the same factory on the most reasonable terms. They have also erected a machine to triterate Mercurial Ointment. They can supply any calls of this kind at one-third the price if prepared in mortar. All orders will be strictly attended to and the usual per cent allowed for ready cash."
This factory was located on the north side of Market street, about a hundred yards west of Broad, and was but one of the several most commendable activities inaugurated by the Patriotic Society, described in a previous chapter. This particular venture does not appear to have been a success, as Higgins advertised the paint mills for sale in 1799.
Samuel C. Richards, in an advertisement, announces in the Newark Gazette of November 5, 1794, that he is about to establish an oil mill, upon the advice of several citizens, because "the country is so rapidly increasing and the use of oil so advantageous to every person that ereets buildings; and it is their opinion also in having such large quantities of flax seed within ourselves, that this mill should immediately be attended to."
In December of the same year Richards & Ross, in'an adver- tisement of window glass, conclude :
"N. B. The coach and chair-making business is carried on at the same shop, where persons may on short notice be furnished with coaches, chair coaches, stages, sleighs or sulkeys, finished in the most approved manner and in the newest fashion, warranted equal in strength and elegance to any built on the continent."
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THE FIRST CARRIAGE MAKERS.
Ichabod Spining advertised for apprentices at carriage making in May, 1795. In 1804 the following were making carriages in Newark: Stephen Wheeler, Cyrus Beach, Caleb Carter and Robert B. Campfield.
The Campfield concern, which afterward became Campfield & Hedenberg, developed great skill in the making of heavy coaches. For a time Colonel John N. Cumming of Newark, who conducted stage lines and obtained many contracts for mail carrying, bought his coaches of Campfield. The latter, however, was a Federalist, while Cumming was a staunch supporter of Jefferson and Madison, and at last, in the heat of political excitement, withdrew his patronage from Campfield. The latter then sought a market in New York, and soon found himself making money for his concern and winning wide fame for Newark. Great carriages of state were made in Newark, costing as high as $2,000 each, a handsome sum for the time, were made here for General Santa Anna of Mexico, . and for a leading official in Cuba. James M. Quinby, the founder of J. M. Quinby & Co., was an apprentice under Hedenberg. In 1833 a local newspaper, in speaking of the great prosperity of the carriage making business here, tells that local concerns had just supplied an omnibus for use in the city of Philadelphia and a hearse for a purchaser in New Orleans.
"An American gentleman recently returned from Naples," announced the Daily Advertiser in 1833, "mentions that he was attracted in a street of that city one day by a crowd. On approaching it he discovered the object of curiosity to be a carriage built in this town. It appeared to be the common sentiment of the admiring bystanders that it was more comely and convenient than the huge, lumbering and unsightly vehicles of the Neapolitans. The fame of the Newark manufactures is rapidly extending, and we are grateful to learn that there is a corresponding increase in the industries."
The earliest saddlery and harness business of which there is any definite record was that of Smith & Wright, started about 1823. The factory was on the south corner of Broad and Lafayette streets.
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There was a stocking manufactory in Newark in 1792 and for several years thereafter.
A shop for the making of willow hats was conducted in 1794, "at the upper end of this town, at the house of James Green." This was probably in the neighborhood of Bridge street.
Gray and Mann were in the cabinet making line in 1792.
THE PIONEER HATTERS.
Jacob Myer was making hats in a factory on Bridge street in 1800. But no one knows exactly when the making of hats began in Newark. The actual beginning of the industry probably antedates the War for Independence. It was but a neighborhood business at the best until the last century had well begun. About the time Myer advertised himself as a hat maker, William Rankin, who was to Newark's hatting interests what Moses Combs was to the shoe and leather industry, came to Newark. His son, William Rankin, and at one time mayor of Newark, wrote his reminiscences in 1889, in which appears the following:
"About ninety years ago William and Andrew Rankin were apprenticed to the hatting trade in Elizabethtown, and having served out their time and done some journey work, they formed a co-partnership and set up in business for themselves. But there was a depressing aristocratic atmosphere pervading the town, and these young men, casting about for a more congenial trade center, where Scotch energy might have fuller scope, found it in Newark, and moved here in 1811.
"After separating as partners, they built factories and opened hat stores, William opposite Trinity Church in North, and Andrew, his brother, near the old burying ground, in South Broad street. In those days the geographical divisions of Newark were uptown and downtown-there was no east and west to speak of. If one, facing the south, turned to the right on Market street, he came into the country road to Camptown and Springfield at Colonel Stephen Hay's, where is now the Court House; or if he turned to the left he struck Mulberry street, leading down to the Neck and Salt Meadows. * *
"The most stirring daily event of the town was the arrival, about 5 o'clock p. m., of the four-horse daily mail coach from New York, with passengers for Philadelphia. The bag was exchanged
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at the Post Office, a small frame building standing where Centre Market is now, and which was removed when the canal was dug. Matthias Day was the veteran postmaster, who could read from the face of the sealed letters much of the family history of his contemporaries. The contractor for carrying the mail was General Thomas Ward, whose son, Isaac, was a well known gentleman of leisure, unique in person and habit, would mount the box at the bridge, and taking up the reins and whip, with a resounding snap, would bring up artistically before David Roff's tavern, where is now [1890] our City Hall.
"Colonel Isaac Ward had the honor of introducing an improve- ment in one of our great industries. Returning home from a visit to Paris, he gave us the first specimen of the present style of gentle- men's pants, side-buttoning giving place to the mode of old Grimes, with his old blue coat. In 1830 my father bought David Beach's house and carriage factory, embracing 764 Broad street and the one next adjoining on the south and the lot on which stands Miner's Theatre, for $10,000, and shortly after Dr. Samuel Hay's house, now the Howard Savings Bank, for $5,000.
"Trade was tending downtown and my father wished to follow the current." The writer of these reminiscences was the son of William, the brother who located his hatting business about opposite Trinity Church. "Not so his next neighbor, John H. Stephens, who remained securely moored through all his business life, and inter- cepted the Sussex teams with their country produce, exchanging it for plaster of Paris and groceries. His fixedness, combined with general intelligence and integrity, made him one of our most suc- cessful merchants. I first knew him, or rather his children as play- mates, in 1816."
AN INFLUENTIAL MERCHANT.
This same John H. Stephens set up his store in Newark about the same time the Rankins began their hatting industry. During the first quarter of a century and more, after 1800, Stephens was the town's leading merchant. He began with groceries and made large sums by bartering them and other commodities for the pro- ducts of the farm. He established his own water transport between Newark and New York, and was the leading spirit in a Newark whaling company which, in the 1830's, sent out a whaling ship from this port. The writer once saw the log book of this ship, the "John Wells," and it was chiefly remarkable for the quaint little stencil
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pictures on the margins of the pages, showing whales in various attitudes. Stephens was one of the first stockholders in the Morris and Essex Railroad Company. Joel A. Condit was interested with him in the water transportation business, hence the Stephens and Condit Transportation Company. Not a few of Newark's leading merchants of the period just preceding the Civil War, and imme- diately thereafter, were once clerks in the Stephens store, which was located until near the opening of the present century opposite Military Park on a portion of the plot where the Hahne & Co. store now [1913] stands. Stephens was succeeded by Camp & Osborn, and the concern still exists as D. Osborn & Co., although devoted to but one or two phases of the original business, in Broad street, opposite the Central Railroad station.
THE BEGINNINGS OF JEWELRY-MAKING.
Benjamin Cleveland advertised himself as a gold and silver- smith in 1792, while to Epahras Hinsdale is given the credit of being the pioneer of Newark's great jewelry industry. Hinsdale was doing business in 1801, his factory being located on Broad street, east side, a little distance north of Lafayette street. A little later it was quite the fashion for ladies of means to drive up in their car- riages to Hinsdale's to inspect his wares. Hinsdale died about 1818. Few of the manufacturing "plants" of that day employed more than half a dozen workmen. The first concern to give Newark jewelry a wide reputation was that of Taylor & Baldwin, who were in business in the late 1820's, and whose shop was in Franklin street, near Broad.
THE FIRST LABOR AGITATION.
Labor troubles began in Newark almost coincidently with the establishment of its industries. The town had a "Carpenters' Society" as early as 1798. It had been established "to cultivate social friendship, and see that no inconvenience should arise to themselves or the public by persons imposing themselves on the builders," owners, "who have not served a regular apprenticeship to
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the business." In a statement published in the Newark Centinel of Freedom on April 10, 1798, the society gives a long argument remonstrating against the high prices then being charged by masons. It says that it is a well established system that masons shall receive but twelve cents more a day than carpenters, but adds that the former are now, some of them, charging $2.87 a day for themselves and as high as $1.75 and $2.37 a day for their boys. It serves notice on the people that this is too high, but that if anyone pays those amounts to masons they will be required to pay a higher wage than they have hitherto paid to carpenters; that they will have to pay carpenters within twelve cents as much as the masons. The carpenters recommend that masons be paid a maximum of $2.25 per day. The article concludes with this :
"These observations are not made on account of the scarcity of work, but to bring this class of citizens within the bounds of moderation."
NEWARK'S EARLY BREWERIES.
In May, 1795, Caleb Johnson, of what is now South Orange, but then a part of Newark, advertised that he was brewing ale, porter and table beer. Several spasmodic attempts at brewing were made in the next two or three decades, but the industry was not definitely established until 1831 by Thomas Morton, in High street a little south of Orange street, on the west side. In 1804 a brewery was built in Newark, but just where there is no apparent means of knowing. We would not have knowledge of this brewery were it not for the fact that Sayres Crane, according to the newspaper account, was fatally hurt at the "raising" of a brewery late in November of that year.
In 1812 appeared the following: "Newark Brewery. The sub- scriber respectfully informs the public that he has commenced the brewing of Strong Ale, the flavour and quality of which he flatters himself will meet their approbation. He also intends brewing Porter and Brown Stout, which he hopes will put a stop to the importation of Brown Stout. *: Thomas Tool."
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It is plain enough that Newark had its own home-brewed beer and ale from the very first decade of the last century.
In 1827 appeared the following advertisement: "Brewery. For Sale, at Newark bridge, west bank of Passaic," Bridge street, "five hundred bushels per week can be brewed. This is a most eligible opportunity to embark in this business, being in a thickly populated neighborhood," Newark then had about 8,500 inhabitants, "and commanding an extensive custom. Caleb Sayres, agent."
In 1809 there was an earthenware factory in Orange street, not far from Broad street.
MOSES COMBS AND THE LEATHER INDUSTRY.
But it was, after all, the making of shoes that attracted the eyes of the outside world to Newark. It was shoemaking that laid the actual foundations of Newark's industrial strength, that created the fundamental although unwritten laws for the advancement of Newark as a centre where useful things were well made and at reasonable prices. The making of shoes to sell to people outside of the Newark neighborhood seems to have first appealed to one far- seeing, hard-thinking man, Moses Newell Combs. As has been told in a preceding chapter, a planter from the South, Colonel John Rutherford, stopping at Archer Gifford's tavern, heard of the indus- try of a local manufacturer, and expressed a desire to know more about him and his shop. He visited Mr. Combs' place on Market street. The stranger was well pleased, and gave Mr. Combs a hand- some order. This was in the early 1790's, and from that time down to the present moment Newark has never ceased to ship larger or smaller quantities of the fruits of its workmanship to distant points. Mr. Combs' first customer was from Georgia, and it is recorded that his order was for two hundred pairs of sealskin shoes. Later on Mr. Combs received as high as $9,000 for a single order of shoes.
GENIUS FOR ORGANIZATION.
But it was not so much his skill at making shoes that made it possible for Moses Combs to put Newark's industries upon a new
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and profitable basis as it was his masterful genius for organization. He was a tanner before he was a shoemaker. His shops were on Market street, on the south side, a little above Plane street. "Comes's alley," on the north side of Market street, is believed to have been named for him, although misspelled, and this today questionable honor seems to have been the only public recognition that has ever been made of his service to the community.
It is a most significant fact that the apprentices' indenture for at least the first half of the last century showed evidence of being drawn up along the lines pursued by Mr. Combs in his business practice. "The universal condition of apprenticeship," said a New- ark writer in the Daily Advertiser in 1863, "was not only to be taught the trade, art and mystery of the business, but apprentices were to be provided with good and wholesome food, washing and lodging, a certain number of quarters of night-schooling, and to be found good and comfortable apparel, or an allowance of a certain specified sum of money in lieu thereof, with a perfect control of their boss over their morals.
"It is not my intention to write the biography of any man, but a man so marked in character as Mr. Combs and who had the train- ing and forming of the characters of men who figured in their day among the most prominent business men of our city, and men who had the liberality to attribute to him the credit of laying the foun- dation for their success and position in life, should not be lost sight of in the success of those who are indebted to him for the foundation on which grew the superstructure ** of the most im- portant business of the city and the adjacent country until circum- stances drove the business from the place."
Many of the first apprentices to Newark's manufacturers were descendants of the Dutch families located in the northern and west- ern sections of the county. In the shops Dutch was spoken almost as much as English. Seven pairs of shoes was a week's work as a rule. Rated at fifty cents a pair, the master figured to realize about $3.50 a week from each apprentice.
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ZEAL OF THE MANUFACTURERS.
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