A History of the city of Newark, New Jersey : embracing practically two and a half centuries, 1666-1913, Volume II, 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: 1136


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 6


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"On the east side of the street there were a few cottage homes, but I believe my grandfather, William Pennington, was the pioneer of High street, in so far as building a real mansion and establishing a residence is concerned. So, in 1839, having bought a large tract of land, he erected thereon the comfortable, roomy dwelling, which remained, with but very slight changes, just as originally built, until torn down a few months ago to make room for the Synagogue Oheb Shalom.


"The house was originally painted white, with green blinds, and about the front door there were arbors and trellis work, with seats within, and over these arbors were growing sweet peas and honeysuckle.


"At the time my grandfather settled in his new home he was Governor of New Jersey, having been elected in 1837 under the old Constitution.


' Shaw's History of Essex and Hudson Counties, vol. 1, pp. 251-252.


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"Just after the house was finished Joseph Bonaparte, who owned an estate at Bordentown, N. J., and a brother of the emperor, Napoleon, stopped at the homestead and was the guest of my grand- father, at dinner and over night, and out in the arbored entrance the Governor of the State and the brother of the erstwhile Emperor of the French enjoyed an interchange of views, political and otherwise.


"It is also a family tradition that Daniel Webster once called upon my grandfather during the famous 'Broad Seal' controversy, which at the time agitated not only this State, but attracted the attention of the country at large.


"However, it was not until Governor Pennington became a member of Congress and Speaker of the National House of Repre- sentatives in 1860 that the old house really came into its own, in so far as harboring distinguished guests was concerned. William H. Seward, Secretary of State under President Lincoln; Henry Winter Davis, George M. Robeson, afterward Secretary of the Navy under President Grant; John Sherman, who was himself a candi- date for Speaker when my grandfather was elected; General Win- field Scott, and once, for a short time, the great war secretary, Edwin M. Stanton, were all guests under this historic roof during the soul-stirring days of 1860 to 1862."


WILLIAM B. KINNEY, 1799-1880.


William B. Kinney was a man who exercised a potent and highly beneficial influence upon Newark's welfare. He was born at Speedwell, Morris County, in 1799, a son of Sir Thomas T. Kinney, an Englishman who had been knighted for his scientific attainments, especially in mineralogy, and who visited America before the War for Independence to examine the mineral resources of New Jersey. William B. Kinney's mother was Hannah Burnet, a daughter of Dr. William Burnet, who was one of the most useful patriots in Newark during the War for Independence. As a boy, William was a despatch bearer during part of the War of 1812. Later he entered West Point Military Academy, but on the death of his father his mother, a woman of unusual intellect and force of character, believing that his bent was more toward literature and oratory than to the pro- fession of arms, withdrew him. He then became a student in the Bloomfield, N. J., Academy, an institution with a wide reputation at the time, and he later studied law in the office of his brother, Thomas T. Kinney, in Newark. Afterwards he was in the office of his cousin by marriage, Chief Justice Hornblower.


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But the law seems to have had little attraction for him, and in 1820 Mr. Kinney became editor of the New Jersey Eagle, a Newark weekly newspaper. In 1825 he went to New York to continue his studies and while there was active in the establishment of the Mercantile Library, of which he was made librarian. He acted as an advisor for Harper & Brothers, who had a short time before set up their publishing business. In 1833 he took the management of the Newark Daily Advertiser, then the only daily paper in New Jer- sey and but recently established. This he united with the Sentinel of Freedom (for many years after its founding known as the Cen- tinel of Freedom). In 1836 he received the honorary degree of Master of Arts from Princeton, and was elected a trustee of that institution in 1840. The same year he was chosen a delegate to the Presidential convention which nominated General Harrison, but he declined to serve. He was chosen a delegate-at-large to the Balti- more Whig Convention in 1844, and it was in no small measure due to his eloquent and convincing speeches that his old friend and fellow-townsman, Theodore Frelinghuysen, was nominated for the Vice Presidency on the ticket with Henry Clay. In 1843 Mr. Kinney was defeated for Congress by William Wright, of this city.


Mr. Kinney was appointed United States Minister to Sardinia. It was largely through Mr. Kinney's endeavors that Daniel Webster and others were able to forestall the efforts of Louis Kossuth, the Hungarian exile who was about to proceed from Constantinople to the United States, with the main object of persuading this country to assist in obtaining the freedom of Hungary. Possible foreign complications were thus avoided. Upon the expiration of his term as Minister to Sardinia, Mr. Kinney left Turin and lived for some time in Florence, there enjoying the friendship of Robert and Eliza- beth Barrett Browning, the Trollopes, Hiram Powers, the sculptor, and others of similar intellectual calibre. He returned to Newark near the close of the Civil War, living a retired life; passing away in 1880.


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FREDERICK T. FRELINGHUYSEN, 1817-1885.


Another Newarker of the Frelinghuysen family who attained to eminence was Frederick T. Frelinghuysen, whose father was the youngest son of Brigadier General Frelinghuysen. The father died at an early age, and when the son (grandson of the General) was but three years old. He was adopted by his uncle, Mayor Freling- huysen, attended Rutgers College and was graduated in 1836. He began the practice of law in 1839. He was Newark's city counsel from 1849 until 1854. He was counsel for the Central Railroad in its early days, and served the Morris Canal and Banking Company in a similar capacity. He was a member of Newark's Common Council in 1846. In 1861 he was appointed a member of the Peace Congress which assembled at Washington in February of that year. He was made Attorney General of New Jersey that same year, and served in that capacity until 1866. He was appointed to fill out the vacancy in the United States Senate caused by the death of Senator Wright of this city, in 1867. Shortly after the expiration of this unexpired term he was nominated by President Grant for the min- istry to England, and the nomination was at once confirmed by the Senate. Mr. Frelinghuysen, however, declined to serve, explaining that he did not care to remain so long away from his home in a foreign country. The following winter he was returned to the Senate for a full term, which he served. He was a most influential member. He introduced the bill prohibiting polygamy, and secured its passage in the Senate. He was also father of the bill returning to Japan what was known as the Japanese Indemnity Fund, which became a law. He made numerous reports and addresses which were regarded as public documents of great value. Says one writer:


"The trouble which arose in 1877 in regard to counting the electoral votes seems to have been anticipated by Mr. Frelinghuysen in the summer of the previous year, and, to avoid it, he introduced a bill referring the decision of any such controversy to the President of the Senate, Speaker of the House and the Chief Justice. The Senate adjourned before the bill could be acted upon. When, in 1877, his anticipations were realized, he was one of the joint com- mittee of the Senate and the House that reported a bill creating the Electoral Commission, which substituted five Senators, five repre-


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sentatives and five justices for the three officers named in his own bill, and he was appointed a member of the Commission.


"On the expiration of his term as United States Senator, Mr. Frelinghuysen returned to Newark, where he remained quietly attending to his private affairs until his appointment as Secretary of State, which was made by President Arthur, December 12, 1881, and promptly confirmed by the Senate." He died in 1885. A statue in his memory stands in Military Park.


JOSEPH P. BRADLEY, 1813-1892.


Joseph P. Bradley was another of that remarkable group of young men who, in the second quarter of the last century selected Newark as a field for their endeavors in one learned profession or another. He was born near Albany, N. Y., in 1813 of Puritan ancestry. He was graduated from Rutgers in 1836, presided over an academy at Millstone, Somerset County, for a short time and then came to Newark to study in the law office of Archer Gifford. He practiced law in Newark for thirty years. He was for a long time a director in and counsel to the Camden and Amboy Railroad Company, and was successful in many legal cases of the highest importance. He was defeated for Congress in 1862, being a Whig and later a Republican. He headed the Grant and Colfax electoral ticket in this State in 1868. From 1851 to 1853 he was mathemati- cian for the Mutual Benefit Life Insurance Company. He was appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States on the nom- ination of General Grant, in 1870. His was the deciding vote in the memorable Electoral Commission of 1877, and but few who either condemned or praised him for his stand ever read his able argument in explanation of his position.


It was left to him to decide who should be President of the United States, Rutherford B. Hays or Samuel Tilden. This did not come about by law or rule. The others in the Commission had given their votes, and there was a tie. He met the trying and unique situation with his characteristic fearlessness, knowing, of course, that he would be censured quite as vehemently by one great portion of the United States as he would be commended by the other.


He was called upon to decide many questions of the gravest


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Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court


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THE CORTLANDT PARKER HOMESTEAD AT BROAD AND FULTON STREETS As it was in the 18 10's. Site directly opposite P'eddie Memorial Church


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importance, and was not adversely criticised except in the case of the Electoral Commission. He was a man of great industry and seems to have delighted in the most exacting of intellectual labor. He wrote many profound papers which he read before college societies and other literary and scientific associations. His learning was recognized as early as 1859, when the degree of LL. D. was conferred upon him by Lafayette College. In recent years many of his writings have been preserved in book form by his son, Charles Bradley. Justice Bradley died on January 22, 1892.


CORTLANDT PARKER, 1818-1907.


An active figure in Newark life for nearly seventy years was Cortlandt Parker, who died on July 29, 1907, a day or two before his eighty-ninth birthday. His earliest American ancestor was Elisha Parker, one of the group that came from Massachusetts Bay Colony to settle at Woodbridge, in Middlesex County, in New Jersey. The family was prominently identified with the Colonial history of East Jersey. Cortlandt Parker was born in 1818, at Perth Amboy, in the home of three preceding generations of his family. He was admitted to Rutgers College when he was fourteen, and was graduated with first honors in 1836, and among his classmates were: Joseph P. Bradley, later a justice of the United States Supreme Court; Fred- erick T. Frelinghuysen, later Secretary of State of the United . States; William A. Newell, Governor of New Jersey; Henry Waldron, long a member of Congress from Michigan; Professor Coakley, of New York University, and several doctors of divinity in the Reformed Dutch Church. He studied law in Newark, and was admitted to the bar in 1839. Said the writer of a carefully prepared article : "


"From his first appearance at the bar, Mr. Parker, as a lawyer, met with uninterrupted success. He held but one public office, that of Prosecutor of the Pleas of Essex County, upon which he entered in 1857, and from which he retired in 1867, with repute as an efficient, conscientious, fearless and upright officer. Though he never held any other office, it was not for lack of opportunity. He was named to the Legislature as a proper


Newark Sunday Call, for August 7, 1907.


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selection for Chancellor in 1857, and twice was prominently named as Attorney General of the State. He was offered also the post of Justice of the State Supreme Court. By Secretary Fish and General Grant he was tendered a judgeship on the bench of the court for settling the Alabama claims. All these positions he declined. President Hayes tendered him the mission to Russia, and President Arthur that to Vienna. These offers he also declined, and, at a later period, declined a nomination for Congress made in opposition to his wishes by a Republican convention. His legal knowledge and experience were, however, never withheld from the State when, upon important occasions, they were demanded.


"The difficult task of revising the laws was assigned to him jointly with Chief Justice Beasley and Justice Depue by the Legis- lature, and was performed to the satisfaction of the courts and the people. He served also on a commission to settle the disputed boundary lines between New Jersey and Delaware. To him is the State largely indebted for the passage of the General Railroad law, which has been the means of ridding it of a most abundant source of corruption. * *


"But not to the State alone did he give the benefits of his legal attainments and his experience. The Protestant Episcopal Church, with which he was connected, numbered him among its most valued laymen, and to its diocesan conventions he was year after year chosen a delegate, while he was a member of the General Convention six times. * **


"For many years Mr. Parker was spoken of as leader of the New Jersey bar, but as such his speeches and powerful arguments are not preserved in a form in which they are easily accessible to the general reader. Many, however, of his orations and addresses, delivered before public assemblies and learned societies, may be found in leading public libraries. Some of them are published under the following titles: 'The Moral Guilt of the Rebellion,' 1862; 'Philip Kearny, Soldier and Patriot,' 1863; 'Our Triumphs and Our Duties,' 1865, all these bearing upon the Civil War; 'New Jersey, Her Present and Future,' 1870; 'Abraham Lincoln,' 1872; 'The Open Bible, or Tolerance and Christianity,' 1876; 'Alexander Hamilton and William Paterson,' 1880, delivered before the American Bar Association, of which he was subsequently president, and as such delivered another address, 'Justice Joseph P. Bradley,' 1893. Mr. Parker's scholarly and literary labors won for him the degree of L.L. D. from his alma mater, Rutgers College, as well as from the College of New Jersey, now called Princeton College."


Cortlandt Parker was a member of Trinity Episcopal Church for more than seventy years, a vestryman and warden for more than fifty years and at one time superintendent of the Sunday


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School. Up to an advanced age he was a devoted equestrian, and took long rides in the early morning with some of his sons or with close friends, returning to the city about the time most of its people were rising for their daily work. He was tall and remarkably straight, to his last years. He was often to be seen in the last years of his life strolling, alone, in Mt. Pleasant Cemetery, and he is said to have remarked that most of the best friends he had had in all his long life were at rest there.


AMAZING GROWTH OF NEWARK, 1826-1836.


If the statistics of Newark's population for 1826 up to the establishment of the city are reliable (and there are some doubts as to their being little more than approximations), the population grew nearly two and one-half times greater in the decade ending in 1836. This is by far the most rapid rate of increase in the history of the city, the township or the village. If the figures (8,017 in 1826, and 19,732 for 1836, city census) are erroneous, it is still highly probable that the number of inhabitants doubled in those remarkable ten years, when the industries waxed and grew strong with astonishing swiftness.


In her charter year, Newark had no less than nineteen churches, twenty-three physicians, twenty-six lawyers, three banks, three insurance companies, four newspapers, including one daily, one semi-weekly and two weeklies; eighteen inns and taverns, and three drug stores. The first railroad was in operation, the Morris and Essex was getting ready, the boats of the Morris Canal were mov- ing in and out of Newark in swarms, and one steamboat and several stage coaches made daily trips to and from New York. These and many other innovations are noted in the first and second issues of B. T. Pierson's Newark City Directory, itself created almost simul- taneous with the founding of the city.


The first city directory contained but 5,094 names, but the writer of it, for the year 1835, estimated the actual population as follows:


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Free white ..


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Irish (about) . 6,000


English and Scotch (about) 1,000


Germans (about). 300


359


Free People of Color


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18,201


The most rapid increase in Newark population seems to have been the period embraced between the years 1830 and 1836, when it nearly doubled. This, it was said in the old directory, was the result of "no factitious causes," but was "to be traced entirely to the regular and wholesome growth of the various branches of indus- try-manufactures and commerce." Another writer declared: "We doubt if there is a more active community in the country ; a more prosperous one certainly cannot be desired."


"LEST WE FORGET."


Still, the writer last quoted was fearful that Newark might go astray in the fog of its own vanity. So he preached a little sermon, a "Lest we forget" appeal, seventy-five years before Kipling wrote his "Recessional." Part of it was as follows: "We do not wish to see a just pride in our country discouraged. It would be a matter of infinite sorrow were our people to lose that sanguine character so well suited to their condition. It would be lamentable, indeed, were that happy spirit of confidence in the future and complacency in our own destiny turned into discontent and melancholy fore- boding. But we should be sorry to see the disposition cherished to our own hurt. We should be sorry to see a people made vain because they are prosperous, or withheld from improvement because some things are already well. The voice of kindness is not always the voice of praise. Generous spirits, it is true, require the stimulus of approbation, but they need also something more. A higher degree of perfection should be shown them-a more noble pre- eminence to which they should aspire. Great and strong as we are, there are yet many things in which we are little and weak, and if the future has its promise, it also has its perils."


These were wise words, no matter how quaintly put their . message may seem to us to-day. The high, patriotic principles


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upon which the leaders of the previous generation had builded the new Newark after the War for Independence were being lost sight of. The utilities of the day, the bridges, turnpikes, etc., estab- lished by companies of citizens chiefly for the common good, were now to be utilized for personal gain. Newark's post-Revolutionary industries were founded with patriotism, the best interests of all the people, as the dominant idea. Personal aggrandizement was now becoming the chief end and aim of the second and third genera- tions that followed the war for freedom.


In 1836, Newark still had a few slaves. There were 1,814 frame dwellings, 144 dwellings of brick and stone, 78 brick stores, 19 frame stores, 18 brick workshops and 200 of frame.


SIGNIFICANT CRITICISM.


Even contemporary writers of neighboring communities occa- sionally endulged in rhetoric complimentary of Newark at the time she took on the dignity of a city. Now and then, Newark writers could not refrain from pointing out a few of its faults, as in the following paragraph:


"We have seen it stated that no English town, containing 10,000 inhabitants, is without pavements and lamps; and many with less than 5,000 are as well paved and lighted as the finest quarter of London. While here is the proud city of Newark, with a population of twenty thousand, and doing a profitable business to the amount of eight millions a year, without books, pavements, lights, or any other common comfort which it is impossible for such a com- munity to live without. And yet there is hardly a business man or manufacturer amongst us who is not abundantly able to bear any tax necessary to the possession of all these conveniences. Still, the most of us love to boast our superiority to any other people on the face of the earth."


This was searching criticism, but just. Newark was seized with something little short of a passion for wealth. It was becom- ing sordid. The town, or a great part of it, was for many years thereafter to be little else than a workshop, with the refuse scat- tered everywhere. The beautiful village had been sacrificed. The enthusiastic travelers of a generation before, quoted in a previous chapter, would not have repeated the pretty things they penned


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could they have revisited Newark at the time it became a city. Never in all the two hundred and fifty years of Newark's history did civic pride reach a lower ebb than at that time. The city, even to-day (1913), bears many of the scars of that money-mad period.


THE COMING OF THE IRISH.


The shops of Newark had begun to demand more workmen than the town could supply even in the early twenties, and for- eigners began to appear. First came the Irish, and no man can say when the pioneers among them reached Newark. Immediately after the War for Independence there was at least one family in Newark, that of M. B. Higgins, a manufacturer of paints and oils, and it was his young son who distinguished himself by painting a patriotic transparency for one of the first Independence Day cele- brations (as described in an earlier chapter).


The Irish immigrants were here in large numbers-if one con- sider the total population as given in the census of 1836 table on a preceding page in this chapter-long before the Germans had thought of coming.3


"Among the first of the Emerald Islanders to take up their residence here were John Hawthorn, Robert Riley (who is said to have lived in Newark as early as 1810), Charles Durning, John Sherlock, Christopher Rourke, Thomas Garland, the brothers Arthur and William Sanders, Robert Selfrage, Thomas Clark, Mar- tin Rowan, Thomas Brannan, the brothers Gillespie, Daniel Elliott, Maurice Fitzgerald, Thomas Corrigan, Michael O'Connor, Edward C. Quinn, John Kelly, Timothy Bestick, the Duffys, Carrs, Dennys,


* Crocketts, Kearnys and Rowes. * * According to several venerable Irishmen still [1878] living, there were of their race only about half a dozen families here in 1820.


"One of the very earliest of the Irish to settle in Newark was John Hawthorn, a North of Ireland Presbyterian, who removed hurriedly to this country because of the famous 'troubles of '98' in Ireland. In his own country Mr. Hawthorn was a man of consid- erable substance-owned a fine farm and other property. During the heroic but disastrous revolutionary outbreak which cost the noble young Emmet his life upon the scaffold, Hawthorn was 'called out' by the British Government. Being a Protestant and com- fortably situated, it was assumed by the government that he would


" Atkinson's History of Newark, pp. 194-199.


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at once respond to the call. Instead of doing so, he immediately disposed of his property and sailed for this country. 'I will never wear a red coat for the British Government,' he said to his wife, who was equally enthusiastic in opposition to British aggressions in Ireland. Upon coming to Newark, Mr. Hawthorn purchased a con- siderable tract of land on the west side of Belleville avenue, and for many years carried on the quarrying business at the 'Old Town Quarry' [presumably near the line of the present Bloomfield ave- nue], residing in a house adjoining St. John's Cemetery. He was a man of very powerful physique, and rather inclined to eccentricity. Once, it is stated, some athlete in Pennsylvania having issued a challenge to wrestle any Irishman in the land, Hawthorn visited the quarry, told one of his foremen to take charge of it for a few days, and started off, merely saying he would be heard from before he was seen again in Newark. And so it proved, for the news- papers announced that he had 'tossed' the challenger and carried off the $500 stakes.




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