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 43
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The first Essex County Court House was the original meeting house of the Newark settlers, in what is now Branford place. About 1700 a jail was built adjoining the meeting house, and the second story was used for court rooms. When the present First Presby- terian Church was completed, in 1791, the stone church on the west side of Broad street was vacated and the county courts held session there. By 1800 this court house had become inadequate. It was not large enough to meet the demands of so prosperous a county, besides, it was becoming dilapidated. The annual town meetings were held there, and the throngs that gathered seem to have used the structure roughly. The last town meeting held there seems to have been on April 14, 1806, when the following "Resolves" were adopted: "That the Township Committee be authorized to make good all damages done to the Court House at the time of holding Town Meetings therein, and to cause the same to be swept and cleaned after each meeting." The next year the minutes of the Township Committee do not locate the place of the annual town meetings, nor in the year 1808. But the minutes of the year 1809 show that the annual meeting was held in "the Court house" at Broad and Walnut streets, on the site of the present Grace Episcopal Church, which brings us to an interesting episode in Newark's history.
THE "GREAT COURT HOUSE ELECTION."
When it was determined, in 1806, that the Court House would no longer meet the needs of the county, there arose a mighty discus-
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sion over the erection of a new edifice, but particularly with refer- ence to its location. Elizabethtown and Newark were rivals for supremacy in the county, as it then existed. Elizabethtown was the stronger of the two in the Board of Chosen Freeholders, and all efforts to repair or enlarge the Court House and to erect a new one were blocked. At last it was agreed to submit the whole matter of the location of a new court house to the people at a popular elec- tion, to be held on February 10, 11 and 12, 1807, the polling to be held at Day's Hill on the first day, at Elizabethtown on the second and at Newark on the third. Seven localities were to be voted for, but Day's Hill and Newark were generally known to be the most popular sites. The Elizabethtown contingent favored Day's Hill. This hill was on the estate of Jonathan Day. The tract is on the east side of Springfield avenue. Its western boundary is the line that separates Newark from South Orange township. The eastern boundary fronts on Forty-second street. This information was obtained from searches made by the Fidelity Trust Company. It was felt by many that Day's Hill was a central location, as the county was then constituted. But, of course, the people of Newark were loath to see the county seat taken from their town.
The whole county worked itself into a state of intense excite- ment. Mass meetings were held and the politicians of the day expounded the desirability of one site over the other to great length. The feeling ran so high that it was reckoned as not alto- gether safe for a resident of Elizabethtown to visit Newark or for those of Newark to show themselves in Elizabethtown. Two New- arkers are said to have had a bucket of tar poured over them while in Elizabethtown.
WOMEN AT THE POLLS.
When the days of election came, all sense of honest and fair dealing seems to have been lost sight of. The county was in a state of hysteria. All means were apparently taken to accomplish the ends desired. On the first day, the election being held at Day's Hill, there were rumors of fraudulent voting, in the afternoon, and these
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served to stir the rival cohorts to all manner of sharp practices. A voter had his choice as to which polling place he should vote in. Many voted in several-of that there seems to be not the slightest shadow of a doubt.
In those days the women of New Jersey had the right of suffrage, and they were called upon in the excitement of the hour to lend their aid to one side or the other. Numbers of them voted several times. Youths disguised themselves as women and depos- ited their votes. Prominent citizens made no scruples of gathering together all the women they could induce to vote. Men were brought into Newark by the boat load from other sections of the State. In a word, the whole election was but a travesty and makes a sadly grotesque paragraph in Essex county's history. In all the succeeding century there is nothing in the county annals in the way of corrupt elections to even approach it.
Men and women of hitherto unapproachable character seemed to lose all sense of political honor. In the 1880's there were two women living in Newark who openly stated that as young women they had each voted no less than six times in the "great Court House election." On the last day, when the voting was done in Newark, the polls were opened at one o'clock in the morning. There seems to have been no attempt to challenge anybody's vote. It is recorded that emissaries were sent to Elizabethtown to keep track of the vote counting there, and every time that Day's Hill was reported as being ahead, greater energy was exerted to obtain votes for Newark, by fair means or foul.
NEWARK'S HOLLOW VICTORY.
The results of the election were announced from the old Court House in Branford place. The Elizabethtown contingent had voted almost solidly for Day's Hill, with a total of 6,181. But the sup- porters of Newark, to be continued as the county seat, were 7,666, a majority of 1,485. Alas, the entire population of Newark town- ship as it was then constituted was less than 6,000, and there were cast at the Newark polls a total of 5,039 votes, or but 961 less than
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the total population of Newark three years later, when the 1810 census was taken! The fraud stands boldly out in these figures, and an analysis of the Elizabethtown returns shows a similar state of affairs. The seven polling places were at the following locations: Newark, Elizabethtown, Acquackanonck, Springfield, Caldwell, Westfield and Rahway.
"The election," said the Centinel of Freedom, "was the most warm and spirited ever held in the county of Essex, and probably ever witnessed in the State. For weeks preceding the election the most indefatigable labor had been spent by each in organizing for the election. When the 10th of February arrived, every man stood ready at his post prepared for the combat; every town and village was divided into districts and men specially appointed to see the electors to the polls. Every nerve was strained by each party to ensure success."
There was unbounded enthusiasm in Newark over the result. The church bells were rung, bonfires were lighted and the steeple of the First Church was illuminated. But there was to be a stern awakening. The Elizabethtown forces denounced the election as reeking with fraud, a most truthful contention, even although their own skirts were none too clean. The whole affair became known from one end of the State to the other as a most scandalous pro- ceeding, and the next Legislature set it aside, as corrupt and illegal, a decision that pleased the Elizabethtown folk immensely.
WOMAN SUFFRAGE IN NEW JERSEY.
It was this unsavory episode that virtually put an end to woman suffrage in New Jersey, which the women of the State are now striving to regain (1913), albeit on a far more enlightened basis. There is nothing in history, however, to show that the women were any more blameworthy than the men for the 1807 scandal.
The history of women's suffrage in New Jersey is concisely given in Vol. VII, pp. 101-105, Proceedings, New Jersey Historical Society, by William A. Whitehead: "By the laws of the Lords
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Proprietors, the right of suffrage in New Jersey was expressly con- fined to the free men of the Province, and, in equally explicit terms a law passed in 1709 prescribing the qualification of electors, con- fined the privilege to male freeholders, having one hundred acres of land in their own right, or worth fifty pounds current money of the Province, in real and personal estate, and during the whole of the Colonial period these qualifications remained unaltered.
"By the constitution adopted July 2, 1776, the elective franchise was conferred upon all inhabitants of this colony of full age, who are worth fifty pounds, proclamation money, clear estate in the same, and have resided within the county in which they claim a vote for twelve months immediately preceding the election." Similar restrictions were made in the several successive acts regulating elections until 1790, and there is no evidence of women having taken advantage of the phrase 'all inhabitants up to that year.' In 1790, however, Joseph Cooper, a Quaker and a member of the Legislature of New Jersey, while serving on a committee revising the election laws, urged that women be specifically given the right of suffrage, by the interpolation of the phrase "he or she." He wished the State to extend the same privileges to women as did the regulations of his religious congregation. His fellow members on the committee agreed to this at his request, and the change was accordingly made in the laws. There was still no voting by women as far as is known. The amended law of 1790 was repealed in 1797, but the "he or she" clause was preserved in the new act, the suffrage being conferred upon 'all free inhabitants of this State.'"
In that year, 1797, occurred the first voting by women of which there is record. There was a sharp contest for member of the Legislature from Essex County. John Condit, who stood for New- ark and the upper section of the county, as a "Federal Republican," was one candidate, and William Crane, favored by Elizabethtown and the lower section of Essex as it was then constituted, was the other candidate. He was a "Federal Aristocratie." The Elizabeth- town political managers made up their minds that the county was pretty evenly divided between the two candidates and they planned
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a surprise. Just before the polls were closed "a number of females were brought up, and under the provisions of the existing laws, allowed to vote [in Elizabethtown] ; but the maneuver was unsuc- cessful, the majority for Mr. Condit in the county being 93, not- withstanding." It was said that about 75 women voted. The leading Newark newspaper of the day, the Centinel of Freedom, waxed highly sarcastic over this episode, and ironically advocated the "admission of females to office" as well as to the diplomatic service.
Women did not vote again in New Jersey until 1800, in the Presidential campaign, when Adams and Jefferson were the candi- dates. On that occasion, "females voted very generally throughout the State; and such continued to be the practice until the passage of the act positively excluding them from the polls. At first the law had been so construed as to admit single women only, but as the practice extended the construction of the privilege became broader and was made to include women 18 years old, married or single, and even women of color. At a contested election in Hunterdon County in 1802, the votes of two or three such actually elected a member of the Legislature." The exclusion of women from the polls occurred the very next year after the Court House election in Essex County, in 1807, "and it is noticeable that, as the practice originated in Essex County, so the flagrant abuses which resulted from it reached their maximum in that county and brought about its prohibition." The preamble of the new law of 1807 is, under the circumstances, interesting :
"Whereas, doubts have been raised and great diversities in practice obtained throughout the State in regard to the admission of aliens, females and persons of color or negroes to vote in elec- tions, as also in regard to the mode of ascertaining the qualifica- tions of voters in respect to estate; and, whereas, it is highly neces- sary to the safety, quiet, good order and dignity of the State to clear up the said doubts by an act of the representatives of the people declaratory of the true sense and meaning of the constitu- tion, and to ensure its just execution in these particulars according to the powers thereof"-etc, etc.
If the women of New Jersey felt this heavy-handed slap at their qualifications for the suffrage, they seem to have made no sign
1
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of protest whatsoever. There seems to have been no thought of woman suffrage for fifty years thereafter. The first note in the present movement was sounded in 1858, when Lucy Stone, of Orange, wrote a letter to the tax collector for the district in which her property was, returning her tax bill unpaid. In the letter she said: "My reason for doing it is that women suffer taxation and yet have no representation, which is not only unjust to one-half of the adult population, but it is contrary to our theory of government. For years some women have been paying their taxes under protest ** the only course now left us is to refuse to pay the tax
* We believe that when the attention of men is called to the wide difference between their theory of government and their practice the sense of justice which is in all good men will lead them to correct it. Then we shall cheerfully pay our taxes -not till then."
NEWARK RETAINS COUNTY SEAT.
The Court House stayed in Newark, despite the great scandal, and authority to erect a new one here was obtained from the Legis- lature. A site was donated for the purpose by Governor William S. Pennington, on the north corner of Broad and Walnut streets, where Grace Episcopal Church now stands, and ground for the new edifice was broken in October, 1810. The stone out of the old meeting house, and the jail and Court House adjoining each other in Branford place were used in the Broad and Walnut street building. It was a large three-story structure, with cells for the jail prisoners in the cellar, traces of which may still be made out under the church. There was a debtors' prison on the top floor. While the Court House was being erected court was held in the Eagle Tavern, at Broad and William streets, and a brick house adjoining, on Broad street, was used as a jail.
On August 15, 1835, the Broad and Walnut street Court House was burned down, when it was at first proposed to erect a new temple of justice in Lincoln Park. The foundations were actually begun, but the project was abandoned and the grim old brown stone structure, on the site of the present Court House, at the junction
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of Market street and Springfield avenue (and its immediate prede- cessor), was built. The present building was completed in 1907, and its predecessor in 1837, the cost of the latter being in part defrayed by the county's portion of the surplus revenue of the Federal government distributed in 1836. In the wall at the right of the 1837 Court House was a large block of marble, part of the old meeting house, the immediate predecessor of the present First Presbyterian Church, and which was devoted, as already told, to court purposes in 1791 when the new church was finished.
When the Court House at Springfield avenue and Market street was erected, the present county jail, at Newark and Wilsey streets, was built.
SUNDAY OBSERVANCE.
In sharp and striking contrast to the lamentable moral lapse evidenced in the altogether remarkable Court House election of 1807 is the movement for stricter Sunday observance, inaugurated in 1798, in Newark, and continued with intermittent vigor for several decades; indeed, occasional evidence of much the same spirit may occasionally be detected down to this day. The descendants of the Puritan founders of Newark could tolerate such license as that described in connection with the Court House election, and even participate in the illegalities then practiced; and at the very same time they were striving to enforce the "bluest" of "old blue laws" to be found on the statute books. It is hard indeed to reconcile the inconsistencies in their code of morals and ethics; in fact they are irreconcilable.
As the village began to bestir itself, throwing off its ancient seclusion and repose, in response to the quickening influences of industrial activity and the opening of an ever-increasing number of lines of communication with the outside and surrounding world, the leading residents became gravely apprehensive lest their pretty little community was to be given over to an abuse of many of the rules for right living and good conduct which they had had instilled into them from generations back. So, in 1798, on July 10,
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a "Voluntary Association of the People of Newark to Observe the Sabbath" was organized. This was its own statement of its case:
"It being at all times proper for those who acknowledge them- selves dependent creatures on the Supreme Being, and who call themselves Christians, to reflect upon their ways and reform what- ever they think is contrary to the word of God; but more especially when the Judgements of God are abroad in the world, and appear with a menacing aspect on our own country-And as the sanctity of the Sabbath is generally acknowledged by all Christians; and the experience of ages teaches, that whenever a vice, like a flood deluges a land, it commonly breaks in with a destruction of the holiness of that day, the observance of which seems to be daily lessening in this Country, to prevent which dreadful calamity- We, the subscribers, Inhabitants of Newark in New Jersey, deeply impressed with the importance of the religious observance of the Sabbath, not only to the existence of our holy religion, but to the happiness of our Country-do associate and agree as follows :
"1. That we will neither give nor partake of parties of pleasure or entertainment on that day.
"2. That we will neither ride out nor travel (except in cases of necessity) on that day.
"3. That we will regularly attend divine worship on that day, and compel our children, apprentices and servants to the same as far as in our power lies.
"4. That after divine service is over we will keep our children, apprentices and servants at home and not suffer them to go abroad on that day.
"5. That we will exert ourselves to suppress all manner of employment and worldly business on the Sabbath.
"6. That we will exert ourselves to assist and support the officers of Justice to put the laws in force against those who shall violate them on that day-and we will appoint a Committee from time to time of at least seven persons to assist the officers in carry- ing these Resolutions into effect.
"7. That we will also extend our exertions to support the magistrates and officers of Justice to prevent all the immoralities and vices pointed out in the law for preventing vice and immorality."
To this document were signed the names of nearly ninety of the leading citizens.
ZEALOTS COME TO GRIEF.
This law and order movement continued for a long time. It carried its promoters into strange excesses of zeal; for while they
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reduced the local offenders to a state of comparative inoffensive- ness, for periods, they could not carry out their ideas of Sabbath observances upon occasional visitors without arousing opposition. Members of the committee actually forbade the coach carrying the United States mail to leave the town on Sunday. They were promptly notified that upon the next offense they would be taken in irons as prisoners to Washington. The mail coaches were unmo- lested thereafter. Two Frenchmen, on their way through Newark to embark on a vessel for France, from New York, reached this town on Sunday. They were told they must remain here until the following day. They consulted counsel, and the law and order supporters were advised to let the strangers pass on, and the travelers proceeded.
A young army lieutenant, believed to have been none other than the future General Winfield Scott, was stopped by the zealots as he was driving through the town in a curricle. Scott did not appeal to the law, but drew his pistol and threatened to shoot those interfer- ing with his progress, and he had no further trouble.
Another group of travelers, in 1814, when told they must remain here until Monday, submitted, with apparent resignation, putting up at one of the taverns in Market street. But on Monday, as the travelers were leaving, they told the landlord to collect his bill of $16 from the members of the committee who had stopped them. And this "mine host" is understood to have succeeded in doing by means of a law suit.
Simultaneously with the Sabbath observance crusade there was a strenuous effort to eradicate intemperance. Stocks were set up on a plot of ground in front of the Old Burying Ground, at Bran- ford place, and persons in their cups were to be confined there. This roused violent opposition on the part of a number of young men, who were members of the "Garret Society," a company of congenial spirits, apparently apprentices or young mechanics. The "Garrets" and others descended upon the stocks the very first night after they were erected, tore them apart and piled the fragments upon the town pump, which stood in the centre of the "Four Corners" plaza
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of Broad and Market streets. On another occasion they made a demonstration in front of the home of one of the chief leaders of the temperance movement and proposed giving him a coat of tar and feathers. He escaped this ignominy by use of his mother's hat and cloak, passing from the house unidentified.
The Garret Society once published a little book in which its members voiced their protest against their strait-laced fellow townsmen. In it we find the following:
"There are a set of designing men in this peaceable and flourish- ing village who are disturbing the characteristic peace and harmony of the place-who, under the cloak of religion, or through a blind zeal, are making an attempt against your birthright-Liberty. They aim at universal dominion ; will have church and state united -they will govern with a rod of iron-citizens of Newark we fore- warn you of your danger, we beseech you to pause, to reflect, to act ere it is too late. Act with calmness, but act firmly and show them by your deeds that you yet deserve the name of freemen. It is duty you owe your children, your country and your God."
SOME CAUSES OF THE UNREST.
But the Sunday observance and the "cold water" movements were by no means made up entirely of intolerants. There was a certain basis for concern over the future of the little community, early in the last century. To begin with, it must be remembered that morals, in this country, immediately after the War for Inde- pendence, were at a rather low ebb, and the laws enacted in the young States did not always command the respect desired. The churches roused themselves to improve matters, and here in Newark they were exceedingly active. The stirring of the indus- tries brought many boys and young men into the town as appren- tices. Their masters often made too rigid rules to promote their good conduct and right living, and the youngsters naturally enough objected, but they did not always express their disapproval either wisely or well. There were no police, and only three or four con- stables, who were never very active at night. Then came a revival of the night watch, organized in 1798 or thereabouts. But these worthies were quite unable to cope with the situation. The young-
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sters occasionally ripped off the gates from in front of the homes of the most dignified citizens, piled them in a heap and burned them. They enjoyed the tumult and the racing and chasing and were very willing to hazard the chances of capture for the fun they got out of it.
THE NIGHT WATCH IN 1827.
In 1827 the Newark Town Meeting decided to ask the Legis- lature for the power to raise money for the maintenance of a night watch, the cost to be assessed upon the inhabitants of the town. This was virtually the beginning of a police force, although such an institution did not actually arrive until the city government was formed. In 1827, too, the section of the town to be patrolled by the night watch was set down, as follows: "Commencing at Mill Brook [Clay street], running along the Passaic river to Commercial Dock; up Mulberry street, down Broad street to the forks of the road by David Hay's house at the south end of the town [at Clinton avenue and South Broad street]; along the south [west] side of High street to the place of beginning." This gives us a good idea of the real area of the town proper in 1827.
Newark seems to have taken the initiative in the Sunday observance movement in this section of the State. When the com- mittee organized in 1798, as already told, it does not seem to have thought of its neighbors. It soon found, however, that strict meth- ods here might tend to drive some of its inhabitants into other places for Sunday relaxation. So in 1801 it issued a statement that it would "stop all gaming, horse-racing, Sabbath-breaking (such as unneces- sary travel by stages or in any other way)", and invited the adja- cent towns to co-operate with it.
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