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 II > Part 12
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MAY-30-1912 -BY-THE-STVDEN'S.DE
BARRINGER HIGH SCHOOLRY
REGIMENES ENCAMPET
HERE AND
DATE DE MYSTER PRED SEPT-5- 1865
[BTH -AVG4 25-1862
26TH SEPT 18 1862
@ # BREX -19 1862
MEN FROM THESE REGIMEMIS TIR BYNIE !
EVERY-IMPORTANT BAHLEVEL!
PROM ANTIETAMAISHARPO MATIOR
CAMP FRELINGHUYSEN TABLET
Erected in Branch Brook Park, May 29, 1912, by the pupils of Barringer High School
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Brook Park, nearly opposite the school and on the western side of the park lake, "To commemorate," as the tablet reads, "the Patriotism of the men of New Jersey who marched from that place to perform Faithfully and Gloriously their part in the Civil War." Then follows on the tablet the names of the six regiments that were there prepared for the front and the dates on which they left, as follows: Thirteenth Regiment, August 25, 1862; Twenty- sixth Regiment, September 18, 1862; Twenty-seventh Regiment, September 19, 1862; Thirty-third Regiment, September 5, 1863; Thirty-seventh Regiment, June 23, 1864; Thirty-ninth Regiment, October 11, 1864.
Below the list of regiments on the tablet is this stirring sen- tence: "Men from these Regiments lie buried on every important Battlefield from Antietam to Appomattox."
Monuments and markers for all New Jersey regiments have been set up, chiefly by the State, upon all important fields where they were in action.
NEWARK'S STERLING PATRIOTS.
Newark was an intensely patriotic city once the war was really going on in grim carnest. The "copperheads" gradually became less and less demonstrative in the face of a strong and sometimes physically, aggressive public opinion. Not a few changed their views, coming in time into a broader and clearer understanding of the real things at issue. Newark was an exceed- ingly busy place, too, throughout the war, with the organizing of companies, and occasionally of regiments, the caring for the sol- diers in the Ward Hospital, and the manufacture of vast quantities of war equipment. The Newark manufacturers obtained many con- tracts for shoes, boots, saddles, harness, etc. There were the ova- tions to returning troops and the enthusiastic, but often teary, farewells to those going forth.
A veteran of the Thirteenth New Jersey wrote for this work:
"An incident that I personally witnessed that showed the temper as well as the power of control of the Newark people, occurred one Sunday evening in the Franklin Street M. E. Church.
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The pastor, who was an ardent patriot and one who lost no opportu- nity to further the cause of the Union, was preaching to a crowded church one of his eloquently patriotic sermons that seemed to meet with the hearty approval of his congregation, when from a point in the gallery near the pulpit on the right of the speaker came a loud- spoken denial of a statement of fact just made. Of course, all attention was turned in the direction of the man in the gallery. The man now stood up and repeated his denial of the pastor's statement.
"Only the quiet, persuasive appeal of the pastor and the effort of a few influential members of the congregation saved this man from the fate that was loudly threatened him-hanging from the nearest lamppost."
A MEMORABLE INDEPENDENCE DAY.
One of the most memorable of all Independence Day celebra- tions in Newark should be that of 1863. The usual exercises were held in the Central Methodist Church on Market street, with the church packed with people. It was in the afternoon, and it was breathlessly hot. One of the speakers was proceeding with his address when a hatless man, with a piece of paper in his hand, was noticed struggling to make his way through the crowd up the middle aisle to the pulpit. After a time he reached the platform and held up the paper to the speaker. The latter read it, and became dazed and momentarily unable to speak. Then another of those on the platform took the crumpled piece of paper, studied it a moment, and, with a face glowing with the deep joy of the moment, read it to the congregation. It was a telegram from Gettysburg and told of the repulse of what we now know as Pickett's charge, and that Lee was in retreat. There was tense silence for an instant; everyone seemed incapable of expressing the emotions that thrilled them. Then, someone on the platform said: "Let us close the exercises by singing, 'Praise God, From Whom All Blessings Flow.'" The grand old hymn was sung as never before, by men and women with streaming eyes, and the throng moved out of the church just as a sound of cheering from the corners of Market and Broad streets arose and grew rapidly louder and louder until it swelled into a mighty roar of jubilation.
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A WAR-TIME EXTRA.
After the first battle in the Peninsula campaign in which Newark troops were engaged in 1862, a great crowd gathered about the office of the Daily Advertiser, pale of face and anxious for news of the losses. As the list of killed, wounded and miss- ing came slowly into the office over the telegraph, it was put into type and a proof sheet tacked on an elm tree in front of the newspaper office, on Broad street at the southeast corner of Market. This was miserably inadequate, as but few of the rapidly increasing throng could get near the tree. The same genius in the office had a hundred or so more proof sheets struck off and threw them out of the window. This caused something little short of a riot. It was on a Sunday, and finally it was decided to make a new first page for the paper of the previous day, giving the list of losses and use the forms that had printed the other three pages of the day before. Thus the demand of the people for news of how the Jersey Blue was faring in Virginia was grati- fied. This was one of the first "extra" editions published by a Newark newspaper.
None who did not live in those times of intense feeling, those fearful years of alternating hope and fear, dread and jubilation, can put himself precisely in the place of the men and women of Sixty-one, Sixty-five. The following incident, short in words, but long in meaning, will help some to better grasp some phases of the popular feeling: A Newark woman told the writer (in 1913) that she well remembered her aunt telling her how, late one night in the middle of the war, she awoke suddenly from sleep in her home in Philadelphia, to hear the rhythmic tramp of marching men, and then their voices rising in one great chorus of, "Glory, Glory, Hallelujah!" "For a moment," the woman said afterward, "I thought I was in Heaven." It was a regiment going to the front.
THE ASSASSINATION OF LINCOLN.
The rejoicings over the return of peace had scarcely reached their fullness when the terrible news of Lincoln's assassination
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struck the city of Newark, as it did hundreds of others throughout a great part of the land, a stunning blow. "We have no heart to contemplate the event," said the Newark Journal, which had throughout the war been out of sympathy with the President's war policy. "For whatever objections we may have editorially expressed in times past in reference to the President's policy, recent important events had led us, in common with the entire Demo- cratic press, to a higher appreciation of the man than we had ever before held." "The grief of the people," said the same newspaper, "at the death of Mr. Lincoln is deep and intense. The evidences of public mourning are all around us ; in the streets, in the churches, at places of private business and on the apparel of our citizens."
On Monday, April 10, after the announcement of the surren- der at Appomattox, the city had given itself over to the expression of intense relief that the long, cruel struggle was at last over, and the common exuberance vented itself in the ringing of bells, firing of cannon, blowing of shop whistles, etc. That night, a great "jubilee" was held in Library Hall, which was densely packed with people, and with thousands left upon the streets unable to get inside. The whole community was quietly recovering from the celebrations and preparing to pull itself together to enjoy the blessings of peace returned-when suddenly the telegraph told of John Wilkes Booth's dastardly act.
The flags dropped sadly to half mast, and the people walked the streets by day and night with pale, drawn faces. Between the lines of the newspaper narratives of the daily events, we of to-day may read ourselves into a vivid appreciation of the undeniable fact that Newark felt the loss of President Lincoln as keenly as any community throughout the sorely-tried Union. The Post- office, the building occupied by the Provost Marshal, the Ward Hospital and other public buildings, in common with many homes, were quickly draped in black and white. Legends like these appeared on many structures: "We Mourn Our Loss," "The Nation Mourns," "The Fathers of Our Country Have Met."
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On Thursday, April 20, 1865, the funeral exercises were held here in Newark, simultaneously with the ceremonies in Washing- ton. The schools were closed, and all business suspended. There was a most imposing procession, with Major William Morris as grand marshal. It was led by the Putnam Horse Guards, followed by the First Regiment, National Guard, Colonel Peckwell; Captain Tipson's Rifle Corps; invalid soldiers from the Ward Hospital on foot; convalescent soldiers in carriages loaned for the occasion by citizens, and in wagons. Next came a float bearing a Temple of Liberty containing an empty chair. Next came officers and soldiers out of the service, and then the hearse, swathed in red, white and blue, with black and white plumes, drawn by six horses, covered with heavy black palls. The pallbearers walked on either side of the hearse, wearing red-white-and-blue sashes and mourn- ing badges. They were: Marcus L. Ward, William A. Whitehead, James M. Quinby, William A. Myer, Thomas B. Peddie, Beach Vanderpool, Joseph Ward, Samuel P. Smith, John A. Boppe, Dr. Fridolin Ill, Cornelius Walsh, Moses T. Baker and Frederick Mulsthoff.
A battalion of the Veteran Reserve Corps came next, and then a great throng of the clergy, physicians, Government officers, lawyers, the Mayor and Common Council, the Fire Department, police, Free Masons, Odd Fellows, benevolent associations, German and Irish societies, etc., and lastly citizens on horseback and in their carriages. It took the procession nearly an hour to pass a given point, and was undoubtedly the greatest popular demonstra- tion held in Newark up to that time and for many years thereafter. It was the people's way of expressing their deep grief. There were no less than 2,500 members of German societies in line alone. Said the Daily Advertiser in describing the remarkable event:
"During the march, the tolling of the bells, the booming of the minute guns, the steady tramp of the mourning multitude, the melancholy flapping of the muffled flags, the sombre appearance of the buildings, and the sad faces of the immense and quiet throngs which filled the streets, the balconies, the windows, and clustered even upon the housetops, all assisted in composing a
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scene of such real and extensive woe and mourning as this city has never witnessed."
When the procession arrived at Military Park, Marcus L. Ward became chairman of the great meeting. There was a prayer, the singing of a hymn by a local German singing society, and an eloquent funeral oration by Frederick T. Frelinghuysen. The ceremonies closed with the singing by the vast throng of "Praise God From Whom All Blessings Flow."
The body of the martyred Lincoln was moved by train from Washington to Baltimore, Harrisburg, Philadelphia, across New Jersey to New York; thence to Albany, Buffalo, Cleveland, Colum- bus, Indianapolis, Chicago, and thus to Springfield, Illinois. A great part of the way it passed, literally, between dense throngs of mourning Americans.
It became so manifest, the day before the cortege passed through Newark, that the crowds were to be very great, that the superintendent of schools, George B. Sears, issued an announce- ment that the public schools would not be closed on that day for fear that many children would be injured. The announcement closed with this sentence: "If children attend, their parents will take the responsibility." The funeral train passed through New- ark on the morning of April 24.
"Shortly after 7 o'clock this morning," reported the Daily Advertiser, "crowds of people began to gather upon Railroad ave- nue, between Market and Chestnut streets, and soon not only covered the entire street, but all the adjoining housetops, sheds and windows. A feeling of deep sorrow appeared to pervade the entire mass, while the fluttering of black trimmings from the neighboring buildings, the mourning badges upon the coat or mantle, and the other tokens of grief, gave an unusually sombre cast to the scene.
"Shortly before 9 o'clock the members of the Common Council, city officers, clergy, a detachment of the Veteran Reserve Corps and the city police, took possession of the Market street station, and, after removing the crowd, awaited the arrival of the train, whose approach had been announced by the arrival of the pilot locomotive heavily draped in mourning. Its appearance was heralded by the tolling of bells and the firing of minute guns, and
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as the train with the remains passed slowly along the avenue, heads were uncovered and bowed with reverence, many persons shedding tears.
"The cars remained at the depot only a few minutes and then proceeded to Jersey City, passing large numbers of people who had gathered at the various street crossings, and the Centre street crossing, and East Newark."
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CHAPTER XXIX.
EDUCATION-THE EVOLUTION OF THE NEWARK PUBLIC SCHOOLS-1676-1913.
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CHAPTER XXIX.
EDUCATION-THE EVOLUTION OF THE NEWARK PUBLIC SCHOOLS-1676-1913.
T HE Newark of to-day and of succeeding generations will never comprehend the actual debt it owes to the founders and their immediate descendants for their unvarying insistence upon education for the young of the community. In the face of every trial, in the very heat of every struggle with the Lords Pro- prietors, with the Crown, and with the inanimate obstacles offered by the virgin ground and the wilderness about them, the pioneers seem never to have forgotten that their children must be taught to read, to write, to cypher, and when special precocity was shown, to pursue their studies further in order to fit themselves for the ministry, medicine or the law. Newark was not only, for a full quarter of a century, an outpost of civilization on the edge of the wilderness, in the things physical, but in moral and intellectual affairs as well.
There is a tablet of bronze on the building at the south corner of Broad and Commerce streets, erected by the Newark Schoolmen's Club, to mark the site of the first Newark school, for it is there that John Catlin, the first among the founders to be formally given the care of the children's schooling, by the Town Meeting, in 1676, had his home. As there was no school building for many years there- after, and as the church, the only public meeting place in the settle- ment, was expensive to heat and to guard from Indian alarms, it is practically certain that the children were assembled in this settler's home for their daily attacks upon the rudiments of learning.
FIRST SCHOOL BUILDING, ABOUT 1700.
The town erected its first school building about the year 1700 on the south side of Market street, a little east of Halsey, on the northern edge of the Old Burying Ground, on the spot where the Century building now (1913) stands. It was a small, one-story structure, of stone, brownstone, from the Newark quarries, no
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doubt. Soon after it was built, the first floor laid down in the original meeting house, around the corner on Broad street, near Branford place, was taken up (in order that a better one might be laid) and put down in the school. For many years this was the only school in Newark; one of the few schools in all New Jersey.
So far as is known, Newark extended no opportunities for education beyond the common English branches, until the fifth pastor of the village church, the Rev. Dr. Aaron Burr, came to Newark, in 1736. Dr. Burr was a learned man, and a born teacher. He was virtually the first president of Princeton College and main- tained it here as the College of New Jersey for eight hard, struggling years, as we have seen in Chapter X of this work. But even before the days of the college, Dr. Burr had set up a school for the youth of the village and the surrounding countryside. His Latin school was established soon after his coming, about 1740. It had a wide reputation and was, according to modern interpretation, what might be termed a college preparatory school. Dr. Burr was not content to teach the grown people the true path of righteousness; his soul burned within him to instruct youth, a most fortunate circumstance for Newark. It is a most interesting fact that he seems to have found time while guiding the perilous affairs of the infant college to continue his Latin school and to attend to his mani- fold duties as pastor of the flock. He was a man of strenuous activity.
DR. BURR'S LATIN GRAMMAR.
While doing all these things he found time, somehow, to write a Latin Grammar, to which the New York Gazette and Weekly Post Boy for April 27, 1752, refers in the following language: "Just published, and to be sold by the Printer hereof, Price 2s. 3d. by the Dozen, or 2s. 6d. single. A Complete Introduction to the Latin Tongue: Wherein is contained, all that is necessary to be learn'd on the several Parts of Grammar, in a plain, easy, rational Method: Comprehending the Substance of what has been taught by some of the best Grammarians, viz. Lilly, Ruddiman, Phillipps, Holmes, Bp. Wettenhall, Cheever, Clarke, Read, &c. Publish'd principally for
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the Use of the Grammar-School at Newark; and recommended to all who design to send their Children to New-Jersey College."
The College of New Jersey was removed from Newark to the town of Princeton in the autumn of 1756, and there is no evidence that the Latin school remained behind. It is practically certain that it, too, was transferred, as it was intended primarily as a prepara- tory school for the college. Whether there was a lapse in secondary education after the departure of the college will probably never be known. In the meantime, the town school for the children was continued, and it is in the old Town Minute Book for March 14, 1769, that we find the first intimation in all Newark's history that it was thought either desirable or necessary to provide education for the children of the poor. Hitherto, education had been con- sidered much in the same light as food and clothing; a man was supposed to provide all three for his offspring. Freedom of speech, of thought and of action, for which the Puritans' ancestors had fought in England, and for which they had contended after coming to this country, in ways be it ever so narrow, had never before, here, called for free education as an essential of actual liberty. So, in the records of the town of Newark for 1769 we read: "Caleb Camp bid off the poor at one hundred pounds light money, and is to keep them in sufficient victuals and clothing and grammar schooling to such children as require it, which said schooling &c., is left at the discretion of Samuel Huntington, one of the assessors."
EDUCATION FOR THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR, 1774.
Newark was ahead of many of the other communities on the continent in thus preparing the way for the public school. In 1774 the Minute Book records: "It was voted that the poor children shall be constantly sent to school at the expense of the person that takes them," and similar action was taken nearly every year up to and including 1792, which would seem to mean that the town had repented of its original motion to provide schooling for the poor, perhaps having found that more were ready to avail themselves of this privilege than the community stood ready to pay for.
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Twelve years after the removal of the college and grammar school, another grammar school was established in Newark. If it was the first after the departure the interval was short, indeed. The probabilities are that it had predecessors. Here is the announce- ment of the new school, published in the New York Gazette and Weekly Mercury for April 18, 1768:
"The subscriber, who has taught the classicks, and most useful branches of the mathematicks, upwards of seven years at Bound Brook, humbly begs leave to acquaint the publick that he is now mov'd to Newark. where he proposes to open school about the 10th of May, and teach as above; he begs to return his most grateful thanks to those gentlemen and ladies who have formerly been pleased to honour him with the care of their children. Any gentle- men or ladies who are pleased to favour him for the future may depend upon his utmost care and assiduity, and know the terms of board and education by applying to Mr. Stephen Dwight, carver, in New-York, or H. Gaine, and from the
"Publick's most obedient, "much obliged, and "Very humble Servant, William Haddon. "Newark, April 18, 1768."
THE FIRST NEWARK ACADEMY, 1774.
Master Haddon was well received in Newark, and the leading residents of the village recognized his worth by banding themselves together to provide a school house or academy, where he could properly instruct his pupils. Where Master Haddon first held his academy is not known, but in all probability it was in the Court House. In 1774 the pastors of the two churches, the First Presby- terian and Trinity Episcopal, and their most influential church members, forgot the ancient animosities that had existed ever since Colonel Ogden harvested his grain on Sunday a full generation before, raised money by subscription and caused the town to grant one and one-half acres at the southern end of what is now Washing- ton Park, and was then known as the Upper Common, "to a body of citizens as trustees of an Academy to be carried on for English and Classical education." The plot chosen was opposite the west corner of Halsey street and Washington place. The following were
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appointed a committee to lay out the land: Lewis Ogden, Esqr., William Camp, Isaac Ogden, Capt. Anthony Rutgers, Joseph Hed- den, Jr. (the Newark martyr to the cause of independence half a dozen years later), Samuel Hayes and Joseph Alling. The building erected was a two-story structure, of stone, afterwards described as "an elegant stone building with fences," and its value estimated at £1,400. These facts were set down in a claim for damages done by the British on the occasion of the burning of the Academy, and in this claim we find the only known list of part of the original trustees: "Rev. Alexander Macwhorter, William Burnet, Esqr., Caleb Camp, Esqr., Jonathan Crane and Alexander Eagles." These are called the "surviving trustees" in the claim for damages, which was prepared in 1780. William Haddon was the first headmaster of the institution. This, the first Newark Academy, was opened, with formal exercises, on January 4, 1775.
"The following verses," remarked a New York newspaper, "were spoken by a boy at the opening of the Academy in Newark, New Jersey, upon the fourth instant, addressed to the Gentlemen concerned in building that elegant structure:
"Amidst the ranks who try by different ways, To purchase honours or to merit praise, The God-like man how rare! How few like you, Disinterested paths to fame pursue ?
"You who lavished sums ( the fruit of peace), To bless the present and succeeding race! To sing your praise my infant muse is weak, But what she cannot, let this fabric speak: Yet deign t' accept the tribute of my lay, For thanks is all a poet has to pay.
"O may your labours with success be crown'd And Newark still for lit'rature renowned, So shall fair Science bless our happy land, And in fame's roll, your names immortal stand."
It is unfortunate that the name of the youth who delivered these verses has not been preserved to us. It is pretty certain,
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whoever he was, that they were not of his own composition, but were most likely from the pen of Master Haddon.
The Academy began to advertise in the New York prints for pupils as early as March, 1775, as appears from the following, which tells how it is "fitted up for the reception of youth and such children as can conveniently lodge and board therein. These will be taught the Learned Languages and the several branches of Mathematics &c., Reading, Writing, Arithmetic and Bookkeeping in the usual Italian method. Mr. William Haddon will be the teacher of Lan- guages and Mathematics, and Robert Allen to have charge of the Department for English. Care will be taken that the pupils attend public worship, there being two churches, the church of England and the Presbyterian, the ministers of each to be the governors of the institution."
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