A History of the city of Newark, New Jersey : embracing practically two and a half centuries, 1666-1913, Volume I, Part 6

Author: Urquhart, Frank J. (Frank John), 1865- 4n; Lewis Historical Publishing Company. 4n
Publication date: 1913
Publisher: New York, N.Y. ; Chicago, Ill. : The Lewis Historical Publishing Co.
Number of Pages: 1186


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 6


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THE LANDING PLACE.


Where did they land? This fact, too, is shrouded in uncer- tainty. The spot, in all probability lay somewhere between the present location of the Market street and Centre street bridges, and probably nearer the latter. Almost immediately below the Market street bridge were the marshes. There was in fact, a marshy fringe along the Newark side of the river nearly all the way to what is now Belleville. Immediately back of the marsh was a ridge or bluff whose lines can still be traced. Only six months after the settlement, reference was made in the Minute Book to the "landing place" in locating the home lot of Thomas Richards, and from the description there given the spot would appear to have been close to Centre street bridge, possibly a little below it.


There is a pretty little story to the effect that the first to set foot on the shore was Elizabeth, daughter of Captain Samuel Swarne, Swaine or Swain, one of the leading men among the founders. She is said to have been assisted to land by Josiah Ward, whom she afterward married. This story seems to have been handed down by word of mouth through the long line of genera- tions of Newark folk, and like most traditions it has possibly been unconsciously perverted from the original story. The Swains and Wards were of the Branford group, and very few of the people from that town came to Newark until months after the settlement


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HISTORY OF NEWARK


in May, those who did come with the pioneers being the "agents" referred to elsewhere. It was originally intended, before the actual settlement, to found four towns, the groups from the Connecticut towns to retain identity as so many communities. Elizabeth Swain was probably the first of the Branford group, but not of the pioneers, to land.


DIVIDENT HILL AND THE TRIANGLE.


While the bill of sale settled the boundaries of the new com- munity so far as the Indians were concerned, the Newark settlers had still to reckon with their neighbors in Elizabethtown as to the precise line of partition between them. Representatives of the two towns assembled at Weequahic creek in 1668, and solemnly and amicably fixed the boundary there, with prayer and thanks- giving. Thereafter the little stream was called Bound Creek, which name it shares with the older Indian name, Weequahic, to this day. It is well worth remembering that Weequahic creek was the boundary line between the Hackensack and Raritan tribes of the Lenni Lenape for many generations before the white man came. It possesses another feature of value, since the creek is probably the last surviving trace of the prehistoric Passaic river outlet, which flowed through the Short Hills and down to the sea, when the present course was blocked with the glacial ice pack near Little Falls, and for an unknown duration of time before the glacial era.


The ceremonies attending the fixing of the boundary were held on an eminence, called "Divident Hill" thereafter, and on May 20. We cannot but wonder if that date was chosen as the anniversary of the landing of the Newark settlers, or if it was only by chance that it fell so close to, if not actually upon, the second anniversary of that important event. The agents for the two towns in fixing the boundaries were: For Newark-Jasper Crane, Robert Treat, Matthias Canfield, Richard Harris and Thomas Johnson. For Elizabethtown-John Ogden, Luke Watson, Robert Bond and Jefferey Jones.


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HISTORY OF NEWARK


One interesting part of the ceremonies on Divident Hill was the cutting of the letter E on the south side of an oak tree and of the letter N on the north side, to mark the boundary line for future reference. Similar markings were cut upon trees along the rest of the boundary line westward.


The business done on that memorable day, May 20, 1668, settled for the time being an important point, as to whether the boundary line was to run due west from the lower reaches of Weequahic creek or northwest to the Watchung mountains. A great triangle of land, of great length westward, lay between those two imaginary lines. On Divident Hill the men of Newark solemnly gave up all claims to that triangle and accepted a bound- ary line running northwest from that hill to the break in Watchung mountain, virtually at the southern end of what is now known as the South Mountain reservation.


In compensation for the concession of the triangle, or such part of it as lay east of Watchung Mountain, the people of Eliza- bethtown agreed to give to Newark the salt meadows, from Snake Hill to Barbadoes Neck, being the tract between the Hackensack and Passaic rivers and including the ridge then, or soon afterwards, known as Barbadoes Neck, and being the ridge which we now call Kearny. Later, however, it was found that a prior grant for that territory had been given to the Kingsland and Sandford fam- ilies, English settlers who had come from the West Indies, and who supplied the name "Barbadoes." When this became known the Newark men demanded that the "triangle," to which they had surrendered all title on Divident Hill, be given them since they had nothing to show in place of it. But their demands did not prevail. During the short period in which the Dutch were again in authority, the Newarkers purchased the tract from them, but later the Proprietory government restored it to Kingsland and Sandford without remuneration to the Newark folk.


The subsequent history of the "triangle" is interesting. It remained a part of the borough of Elizabeth until 1834, when a portion of it was included within the limits of the township of


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HISTORY OF NEWARK


Clinton. This township was annexed to Newark about 1902, and thus, after the lapse of nearly a century and three-quarters, a goodly portion of the ancient triangle became a part of Newark.


THE ELIZABETHTOWN BILL IN CHANCERY.


The Barbadoes Neck controversy dwindled into insignificance before the far more important discussions involved in the cele- brated Elizabethtown Chancery case, the suit being begun with the filing of a voluminous Bill in Chancery on April 13, 1745, by the Earl of Stair and other proprietors of the Eastern Division of New Jersey against what were known as the Clinker Lot Right men who claimed title to the land under the grant of Governor Nicholls of New York, made by him a little before Governor Car- teret appeared on the scene in 1665. There were thirty complain- ants in the case and four hundred and sixty-two defendants.


In this suit the proprietors asked the governor of the Province to grant writs of injunction "commanding the defendants and confederates to commit no further waste or spoil upon the lands in question by the cutting of timber or other abuse whatsoever until your Excellency shall have given farther instructions therein."


The writs were never granted, nor was any decision ever given in the case. The excitement immediately before and throughout the French and Indian war seems to have prevented a decision in the 1750's; (the defendants filed an "Answer" to the bill in 1752). Before the courts were again ready to move, the promulgation of the Stamp Act made a decision impracticable or unwise. Then came the War for Independence and no more has ever been heard of the Elizabethtown Bill in Chancery, except in the pages of history and in legal proceedings where citations from proceedings with reference to it have been considered of value to counsel. .


OTHER LAND CONTROVERSIES.


In the controversy embodied in the Elizabethtown Bill in Chancery, the Bound Creek partition and Divident Hill played an active part, much information of the greatest value to Newark's


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historians being there set down, usually in the form of affidavits. The struggle between the proprietors and the people for possession of the land hereabouts first found its way into the courts in the form of prosecutions to test the validity of the Nicholls grant, as early as the first year of the reign of George I, causing troublous times in Newark, Elizabethtown and other places affected. The interests of Newark's people were closely identified with those of Elizabethtown, not only in these prosecutions but in the Bill in Chancery, since Newark's territory was held to be included in the Nicholls grant whose soundness the proprietors sought to destroy. As the Elizabethtown settlers gave up all rights to the Newark territory at the time of the ceremonies on Divident Hill, the two had common cause against the proprietors.


It is strange how ancient controversies like this are often given to cropping out in new forms in succeeding generations. In 1857 Union County was set off from Essex, and the boundary line was declared to be that of the two municipalities, Newark and Elizabeth. No attempt was made in the law to accurately define that boundary. In 1880, however, the Board of Chosen Free- holders of Essex County applied to the Supreme Court of the State, under a statute then in force, for the appointment of commission- ers to locate the line. "At that time," wrote Frank Bergen, who represented the county of Union, as counsel, "it was supposed that a. surveyor could easily ascertain the line and that the dispute would be settled by the commission without trouble. It turned out, however, that there was no reliable evidence in existence as to the location of the boundary, and a mass of historical matter was collected running back for more than two hundred years.3


After many months of controversy in the courts during which the Legislature twice interposed, a law was enacted locating the boundary between the two counties, as it had been fixed partly-by the settlers on Divident Hill and determined by the old deeds, records, mortgages, tax receipts, etc.


" From an article entitled "Newark's Boundary Fight," by Frank Bergen, General Counsel for the Public Service Corporation, in the Newark Sunday Call, Anniversary Number, May 12, 1912.


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HISTORY OF NEWARK


LOCATION OF DIVIDENT HILL.


As for Divident Hill, it deserves to be reckoned as one of the most precious of Newark's landmarks, since it was on an ancient division line established no one knows how long before the coming of the white man; since on its summit the settlers of two of the leading communities in all New Jersey fixed their bounds, and because the hill figured in great controversies between the people and the Lords Proprietors, from the early days of settlement down to the War for Independence.


There seems to have been no question of its precise location until about 1880, when the suits to determine the boundary between Essex and Union counties began as already described. The parties to the suits sought, with true human characteristics,to have the boundary moved further north or south according to the county in which their interests lay.


The strongest testimony as to the location of the historic hill fixed it a short distance east of Elizabeth avenue and about on a line with Lyons avenue, if that thoroughfare had been cut through. A recently constructed park boulevard (1913) runs around part of the hill base. Following these directions one finds himself upon perhaps the highest eminence in the entire neighborhood, upon just such a hill as one might imagine surveyors and engineers would select for a boundary. It is well within the confines of the Weequahic Reservation and its preservation thus falls into the appreciative hands of the Essex County Park Commission. This hill, it may be added, was the one given as Divident Hill by William A. Whitehead, one of New Jersey's most reliable historians, who lived in Newark and whose personal recollections of it extended back to at least 1820, and who no doubt fixed its location partly by the information given him by residents whose memories carried them back at least a half century before his own time.


EARLY ORGANIZATION OF NEWARK SETTLERS.


Returning to the main narrative after this long but essen- tial digression :


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HISTORY OF NEWARK


Agents from the towns of Guilford, New Haven and Branford were with the first settlers that memorable May time, 1666. They approved of all that was done in the selection and purchase of the town site, and they were told that if the people of their towns who had thought of joining in the new venture should make favorable answer before the following November, the Milford folk, already on the ground, and the prospective new arrivals, whom they called "associates," should constitute one township only; "to be," as the Minute Book declares in the true Puritan style, "of one heart and consent with God's blessing in endeavoring to carry on their spirit- ual concernments, as well as their civil and town affairs, according to God and a Godly government."


It was the men of Milford who really founded the town and devised the beginnings of the town government; for at the gather- ing held on May 21, 1666, while negotiations with the Indians were pending, and which we have already spoken of as Newark's first town meeting, they chose their first officers, in the form of an executive or emergency committee of eleven members, "for the speedier and better expedition of things then emergent to be done," as follows:


FIRST TOWN COMMITTEE.


Captain Robert Treat, Lieutenant Samuel Swain, Mr. [a title of distinction at that time] Samuel Kitchell, Michael Tompkins [or Micah Tomkins], Mr. Morris, Sergt. Richard Beckly, Richard Harrison, Thomas Blatchly, Edward Riggs, Stephen Freeman and Thomas Johnson. This committee was to have charge of the system of home lot distribution and to pass upon the rights and credentials of all whom the agents of Guilford and Branford might declare were privileged to join in settlement, their rights to lots as associates to be held open for them until June of the next year.


BRANFORD GROUP AND THE "FUNDAMENTAL AGREEMENTS."


It was the Branford group, however, that drew up the religious foundation upon which the town was to be erected, and in which Newark's first pastor was no doubt largely instrumental.


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This it did at a public meeting in Branford, on October 30, 1666, just previous to leaving. This was the only one of the four com- munities that brought practically all of its people to New Jersey. They drew up two "fundamental agreements," in accordance with the term of agreement laid down by the Milford folk at the "first town meeting," on May 21, after the manner of the "fundamental agreement" of the New Haven Colony, and embodying their per- fervid Puritan ideals described in a previous chapter, as follows:


"Ist. That none shall be admitted freemen or free Burgesses within our town upon Passaick River, in the province of New Jersey, but such planters as are members of some or other of the Congrega- tional Churches; nor shall any but such be chosen to Magistracy, or to carry on any part of Civil Judicature, or as deputies or assistants to have power to vote in establishing Laws, and making or repeal- ing them, or to any chief Military Trust or office. Nor shall any but such Church members have any Vote in any such elections: Tho' all others admitted to Be planters have Right to their proper Inheritances, and do and shall enjoy all other Civil Liberties and Privileges, According to Laws, Orders, Grants, which are or here- after shall Be Made for this Town.


"2nd. We shall with Care and Diligence provide for the main- tenance of the purity of Religion professed in the Congregational Churches."


NEWARK'S FOUR SCRIPTURAL FOUNDATION STONES.


The document bearing these agreements had written at the head of it four texts from the Old Testament, which the people of Branford had selected as the pillars, or foundation stones upon which this, the last Puritan theocracy, or Kingdom of God on earth, was erected, in sublime indifference to any and all laws that might be set up by Governor Carteret, or any other representative of the Lords Proprietors, or of the British crown. These texts were as follows :


Deuteronomy, i, 13. "Take you wise men and understanding, and known among your tribes, and I will make them rulers over you."


Exodus, xviii, 21. "Moreover, thou shalt provide out of all the people, able men, such as fear God, men of truth, hating coveteousness, and place such over them to be rulers of thousands and rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens."


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Deuteronomy, xvii, 15. "Thou shalt in any wise set him King over thee whom the Lord thy God shall choose: one from among thy brethren shalt thou set King over thee: thou mayst not set a stranger over thee, which is not thy brother."


Jeremiah, xxx, 21. "And their nobles shall be of themselves, and their governor shall proceed from the midst of them."


SUBORDINATE AGREEMENTS.


Upon these two "fundamental agreements" several others were devised, not by the Branford men but by the Milford company with the New Haven and Guilford agents, during the delay inci- dental to the settlement as to the land with the Indians, or shortly after; and it was these first agreements that the Branford men are believed to have scanned before they drew up the foundation just described. One of these read:


"It is agreed upon, that in case any shall come in to us, or arise amongst us, that shall willingly or willfully disturb us in our peace and settlements, especially that would subvert us from the true religion and worship of God, and can not or will not keep their opinion to themselves, or be reclaimed after due time and means of conviction and reclaiming hath been used; it is unanimously agreed upon, and consented unto, as a fundamental agreement and order, that all such persons so ill-disposed and affected, shall, after due notice given them from the town, quietly depart the place seasonably, the town allowing them such valuable consideration for their lands or homes as indifferent men shall price them, or else leave them to make the best of them to any man the town shall approve of."


Another most significant item, apparently not drawn until 1667, was one by which they deliberately set about to establish their own courts, with refreshing indifference to the fact that they were about to make their homes in a British Colony whose officers would naturally expect to order the manner of judicial proceedings themselves :


"It is solemnly consented unto and agreed by all the planters and inhabitants of the Town of Newark from their settling together at first, and again publickly renewed as their joint covenant one with another, that they will from time to time all submit one to another to be lead, ruled and governed by such magistrates and rulers in the town, as shall be annually chosen by the freemen"


" The word is written "friends" in the copy of the Minute Book made in 1775, but is generally believed to be an error.


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from among themselves, with such orders and law whilst they are settled here by themselves as they had in the place from whence they came, under such penalties as the magistrates upon the nature of the offence shall determine."


THE "SPECIAL CONCESSIONS" THEORY.


The settlers of Newark, while not willing to grant much in the way of independence to those who might wish to abide with them, were most insistent upon their independence as a community when dealing with Governor Carteret, and for that matter, with his successors. It was until quite recently thought that the founders had some special concessions from Carteret other than those set down in the original document circulated by his agents and upon the strength of which Newark and the other early Eng- lish settlements were founded. Weight was lent to this argument by items in the Newark "agreements" such as that last quoted. It is highly probable, however, that they had no right or authority to set up their own courts or to make sundry other town laws which they did. They sought to separate themselves as absolutely as possible from all the rest of the colony, as early as they could, before the Colonial government had been fully organized and had time to make laws that would interfere with them. Treat and the other leaders who first consulted with the Governor found him willing to concede almost everything they wished except to give up the quit-rent; but if he made any special concessions to them, in writing and therefore binding, they have been completely lost.


A "WALL" THAT SOON CRUMBLED.


Thus was a wall to be built about Newark, to be maintained, the would-be builders fervently trusted, to the very end of time. And these austere "agreements" are filed away in the archives of history, side by side, we may say, with the progressive and kindly "Grants and Concessions" of the Lords Proprietors, with their never-to-be-forgotten "liberty of conscience" clause. By very con- trast between the two, the intolerance and narrowness of the Puritan plan stands out in sharp relief. The unending wonder of


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it is that a community planned on such lines could spring imme- diately into prominence as one of the most prosperous and forceful in all the colony.


The signing of the "fundamental agreements" was enforced with rigidity for about a decade and a half. After that settlers were sometimes admitted upon the payment of the purchase money for the land. In 1680, eleven were admitted in that way; at least there is no record that they signed the agreements. In 1685 a committee was chosen to make a house-to-house canvass in search of all non-signers and to report to town meeting. There is nothing in the Minute Book to show that the committee ever reported. A year later a settler was admitted, "he submitting to all wholesome orders." Thereafter no mention is made of the agreements, and we are no doubt safe in believing that they were disregarded thereafter, although a strict censorship over all new comers was kept for several generations.


CHAPTER V. THE FOUNDERS.1


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CHAPTER V.


THE FOUNDERS.1


W E fortunately have preserved to us in the old Minute Book the names of the sixty-three founders of Newark, and it is possible also to describe with considerable detail the personalities of the leading men. This chapter is devoted to that purpose, for certain it is, no Newarker can hope to know his Newark thoroughly until he has some understanding of the individual characters of the founders, until he realizes that they were men, taking the group as a whole, of more than ordinary calibre; systematic, painstaking and orderly in their methods, sin- gularly well equipped to lay down the foundations of what is now one of the greatest cities on the continent, upon a sure, safe and enduring basis.


The Milford, Guilford and New Haven men, forty-one in num- ber, signed the "fundamental agreements" described in the last chapter, on or before June 24, 1667, and their names are given here just as they are believed to have written them.


THE MILFORD, GUILFORD AND NEW HAVEN SIGNERS.


Robert Treat


his


Hauns Albers


Obadiah Bruen


Francis F. Linle


Thom. Morris


Matthew Camfield


mark


Hugh Roberts


Samuel Kitchell


Daniel Tichenor John Bauldwin, Sr.


Eph'm Pennington


Jeremiah Pecke


Martin Tichenor


Michah Tomkins


John Bauldwin, Jr.


John Browne, Jr.


Stephen Freeman


Jona Tomkins


Jona Seargeant .


George Day


Azariah Crane


Henry Lyon John Browne


Thomas Johnson


Samuel Lyon


The sketches of the leading men among the founders in this chapter are designedly devoid of genealogical detail, which will be found either in the chapters in this work devoted to such material or in the following authorities from which most of the accompanying data is drawn: "Genealogical Notices of the Settlers," by S. H. Conger; Dr. Stearns' "History of the First Church," and Francis Bazely Lee's Biographical and Genealogical Ilistory of New Jersey.


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HISTORY OF NEWARK


John Rogers Stephen Davis


John Curtis Ephraim Burwell his


Joseph Riggs Stephen Bond


Edward Rigs


Robert Kitchell his J. B. Brooks mark


Robert R. Denison mark


Nathaniel Wheeler


Zachariah Burwell


his


William Camp


Robert V. Lymens mark


Joseph Walters Robert Dalglesh


The first signers to the "agreements" were, of course, the Bran- ford group, who set down their signatures when they drafted them, October 3, 1666. The Milford pioneers, the "thirty heads of families," are included in the above list. The Branford list, with the name of Pastor Pierson second in line, is as follows:


THE SIGNERS OF BRANFORD.


Jasper Crane


Josiah Ward


Ebenezer Camfield


Abra Pierson


Samuel Rose


John Ward, Sr.


Samuel Swaine


Thomas Pierson Ed. Ball


Laurence Ward


John Warde


John Harrison


Thomas Blacthly


John Catling


John Crane


Samuel Plum


Richard Harrison


Thomas Huntington


Delivered Crane


Aaron Blacthly


John Johnson his


Richard Laurence


Thomas L. Lyon


mark


Out of the sixty-four founders as above set down, we find but five unable to write their names, one among the Branford men and the remaining four from the three other towns. Among the women and the servants the percentage of illiteracy was of course very high, although it must be remembered that these people were far beyond the average intelligence of the so-called illiterates of our day. They spelt their names in divers ways at different times. To avoid confusion the spelling generally accepted by their descend- ants is used here. They were all of them, as their names clearly indicate, of English stock, with the exception of Dalglesh (believed to be a curious spelling of Douglass), a Scotchman, and Hans or




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