USA > New Jersey > Monmouth County > Celebration of the bi-centennial anniversary of the New Jersey legislatue, 1683-1883 > Part 3
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The settlers in Monmouth from Rhode Island brought with them the best features of the early Rhode Island government, and left behind such questionable ones as have been referred to elsewhere. Rhode Island was far in advance of the rest of New England ; and the principles established in Monmouth of uni- versal suffrage and unrestricted tolerance were decidedly in advance of Rhode Island.
About 1682-5 there were very many refugee Scotch Quakers and Scotch Presbyterians, who had fled from persecution in Scot- land, who located in East Jersey. These are noticed in the standard historical works of Mr. Whitehead. Occasional de- scendants of the persecuted and banished Huguenots also came to this State ; among them, it is said, were Bodines, Gaskell or Gaskins, Depuy, Soper and Dobbins, which name, as before stated, was originally D'Aubigne, corrupted to Dawbeens, and finally Dobbins .*
PRESIDENT LINCOLN DESCENDED FROM FIRST SETTLERS IN NEW JERSEY.
Monmouth county, one of the earliest refuges for the persecuted of different sects, has been not inaptly termed " The mother of colonies," because so many offshoots of families of early settlers, went to other States and established, or aided in establishing, set-
*NOTE .- In speaking of New Jersey being a refuge, it may not be much of a digression to recall the fact that the humorous appellation of "foreigners " applied to Jerseymen had its origin in the fact that this State became the refuge of the ex- King of Spain, Joseph Bonaparte. After he was compelled to leave Europe, he seemed desirous of making a home for himself in or near Philadelphia, but the laws of Pennsylvania prevented an alien from holding real estate. New Jersey allowed him to purchase lands at Bordentown, upon which he erected one of the finest buildings then known in America. He was liberal in expending money in the vicinity, and was of great advantage to the business there. The Philadelphians were chagrined to find that a man so desirable to the business of their city had been driven away, and whenever, after that, a Jerseyman visited Philadelphia he was liable to be saluted with the exclamation, " You have got a king among you ; you must be foreigners !"
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tlements. The first place to which they went was Eastern Penn- sylvania; from thence some went farther west, others to Mary- land, Virginia, particularly to the Valley of Virginia, to the Carolinas, Georgia, and in the course of years to almost every Sourthern and Western State. That these emigrants favorably remembered from whence they came is shown by the number of places named for the county and State. Among the first settlers of the Valley of Virginia, who began to locate there about 1732, were Formans, Taylors, Stocktons, Throckmortons, Van Meters, Pattersons, Vances, Allens, Willets or Willis, Larues, Lucas' and others of familiar New Jersey names. Fourteen or fifteen Bap- tist families from New Jersey settled near Gerardstown, and there were also many Scotch Presbyterians from New Jersey, among whom were Crawfords, McDowells, Stuarts, Alexanders, Kerrs, Browns and Cummings. Members of these families eventually passed into the Carolinas, Kentucky and elsewhere, and descendants of some became noted not only in the localties or States where they settled, but in the annals of the nation. Among those of Scotch origin may be named William H. Craw- ford, of Georgia, once a United States Senator from that State and also a Presidential candidate, and General Leslie Combs, of Kentucky.
Another man still more noted in the history of the nation, who descended from early settlers of New Jersey and whose an- cestors went to Eastern Pennsylvania and thence to the Valley of Virginia, was the late President Abraham Lincoln, one of whose ancestors was John Bowne, Speaker of the House of Assembly, two hundred years ago. A few years ago, Judge George C. Beek- man, in looking over ancient records in the Court House, at Freehold, found frequent mention of the name of Mordecai Lin- coln, and he supposed it was possible that this man might be the ancestor of Abraham Lincoln, as he went to Eastern Pennsyl- vania, and the late President said that according to a tradition in his family his ancestors came from thence. But in his life time he could trace his ancestry no farther back than to his grandfather, Abraham, who originally lived in Rockingham county, in the Valley of Virginia. Within the last two or three months it has been definitely ascertained that Judge Beekman's supposition was correct. A relative of the Lincoln family, Mr. Samuel Shackford, of Cook county, Illinois, has been most inde- fatigable in efforts to trace back the ancestry of the late President by visits to and searches in records in Kentucky, the Valley of Virginia and Eastern Pennsylvania He found that the great grandfather of the late President was named John, who came from Eastern Pennsylvania, where his father, a Mordecai Lin- colu, had settled. Mr. Shackford gained the impression that Mordecai and his son John came from New Jersey, and about two months ago he wrote to persons he supposed familiar with
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old records here, inquiring if there was any mention of a Mor- decai and his son John in ancient New Jersey records. The records in the office of the Secretary of State at Trenton fur- nished the desired information. In that office is the record of a deed dated November 8th, 1748, in Book H, p 437, from John Lincoln, who describes himself as son and heir of Mordecai Lincoln, late of Caernaven township, Lancaster county, Penn- sylvania, formerly of New Jersey, for lands in Middlesex county, New Jersey. By reference to a previous record in the same Book p. 150, it is found that this was the same land deeded to Mordecai Lincoln, of Monmouth county, February 12th, 1720. Thus after patient researches, running through some twenty-five years, records are discovered in the State House which enable those interested, to trace the late President's ancestry in an un- broken chain back to New Jersey, and thence to the first comer from England.
As the genealogy of President Lincoln has never been pub- lished in full, because it was not until so recently that the miss- ing links in the chain were discovered, it may be briefly given here.
The founder of the family was Samuel Lincoln, who came from Norwich, England, to Massachusetts. He had a son, Mor- decai the first, who in turn had sons, Mordecai the second and Abraham, both of whom came to New Jersey. Both subse- quently moved to Eastern Pennsylvania. Mordecai the second had a son, John, born in New Jersey, who moved to the valley of Virginia and had a son named Abraham, who in turn had a son Thomas, who was father of the late President Abraham Lincoln.
The descendants of the early settlers of New Jersey, in their migrations to other States, it may be presumed, carried with them the liberal principles of government on which our State was founded. Our ancestors had hardly erected shelters for themselves before they established the church and the school. In addition to unrestricted religious toleration, they established the principle of equality of all men before the law. Said the founders of West Jersey :
" We lay a foundation for after ages to understand their liberty as Christians and as men, that they may not be brought into bondage but by their own consent. FOR WE PUT THE POWER IN THE PEOPLE."
After generations did understand it and the foremost mnan of his day only reiterated their sentiment when he advocated " A government of the people, by the people, for the people."
The founders of West Jersey further declared :
" We, the Governor and proprietors, freeholders and inhabit- ants of West Jersey, by mutual consent and agreement, for the prevention of innovations and oppressions either upon us or our
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posterity, and for the preservation of the peace and tranquillity of the same; and that all may be encouraged to go on cheer- fully in their several places, we do make and constitute these, our agreements, to be as fundamentals to us and our posterity, etc."
It is remarkable to note how similar to the above, is the Pre- amble to our National Constitution adopted one hundred and six years later. It says :
" We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our pos- terity, do ordain and establish this constitution for the United States."
The fundamental principles upon which the government of our nation is based, are, that just governments should be derived from the people, and that liberty of conscience should be guaranteed to all. It is a striking testimony to the wisdom of the first settlers of New Jersey that their sentiments and almost their very words on these subjects were eventually adopted by the nation.
Are we not then, as Jerseymen, justifiable in honoring the memory of the wise, just, God-fearing founders of our State, who were first and foremost in proclaiming and establishing these principles, which are now the corner stone of the great American Republic ?*
After which the American Singing Society, of Newark, sang two hymns, one of which was " The Centennial Hymn," followed by an address from the Hon. Charles D. Deshler, of New Bruns- wick.
ADDRESS BY HON. CHARLES D. DESHLER, OF NEW BRUNSWICK.
Mr. President, gentlemen of the Senate and House of Assembly, la- dies and gentlemen :
It is something more than an empty sentiment that prompts men of all ages and countries to dwell upon the beginnings of their life as a people, and to commemorate the institutions which their ancestors founded. For no man can be deeply interested in studying the history of the formative periods of the common- wealth of which he is a member who is not moved by a feeling of patriotism, nor can he be greatly concerned in recalling the memory of his ancestors if he have not an honorable pride in their character, and be not animated by a lively desire for the perpetuation of the institutions which they transmitted.
*For "Notes " accompanying Mr. Salter's address, see Appendix, page 41.
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In truth, the revival of the memory of the early days of a country or commonwealth, whether informal and occasional. or on fixed commemorative seasons, at the instance of public bodies, such as that which now brings us together, and the study of the institutions which were then laid with great toil, with inadequate means, and under most unpropitious circumstances, must be a perpetual incitement to the men of after-times to vigilantly guard and reverently preserve the political rights and privileges, and to more highly prize the social blessings, which have been be- queathed to them. Men are greatly prone, while they uncon- sciously enjoy essential privileges and blessings that seem as common to them as the natural benisons, light, and air, and water, to forget that these were not their heritage by the bounty of nature, but that they were evolved through slow and painful processes by the toil, the energy, the patience, the intelligence, and the wise foresight of man, and that what was thus slowly and painfully built up and established can only be preserved and augmented by the continued loyal, honest, unselfish, and patriotic exertions of other men.
Therefore, when the honorable, the Senate and General As- sembly of our State-justly mindful of the debt which the present owes to the past, and wisely conceiving that to revive the memory of the past was also to awaken a fuller and deeper sense of re- sponsibility for the present-paused in the midst of their labors, and invited their fellow citizens to join them in celebrating the legislative birthday of the commonwealth, and in recalling the agency of the Jerseymen of 1683 in giving form and direction to the mind and purposes of the then infant colony, it was not the indulgence merely of a graceful sentiment, but was em- phatically the performance of a pious and patriotic duty, calcu- lated to exert a definite, a practical, and a wholesome influence upon the character, the aims, the aspirations and the public and private spirit of the Jerseymen of to-day.
Following the line of thought which I have thus suggested, I invite your attention to a cursory general view of the province and people of New Jersey prior to and including the year of our Lord 1683.
On the 12th of March, 1664, Charles the Second of England, in virtue of the alleged sovereignty acquired by the Crown, through the discovery of this part of the Continent in 1498, by Sebastian Cabot, an English navigator, sailing under the Eng- lish flag, granted to his brother James, then Duke of York, but afterward King of England, all those territories extending along the sea coast. from New Scotland, as it was then styled, but now known as Nova Scotia, to the east side of Delaware bay and river. The indenture conveyed to James and his legal succes- sors, not only the lands, minerals, waters, forests and wild animals of these territories, but also the right and power to
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nominate, make, constitute, ordain and confirm, and likewise to revoke, discharge, change and alter, the governors, oficers and ministers thereof, as he thought fit and needful; and further, the right and power to make, ordain and establish, and to abro- gate, revoke or change, all manner of orders, laws, directions, instructions, forms and ceremonies of government and magistracy, not contrary to the laws and statutes of England, that he might think fit and necessary for the government of the same. And a few months later, on the 24th of June, of the same year, the Duke of York, by an indenture of that date, sold and assigned to John, Lord Berkeley, Baron of Stratton, and Sir George Car- teret, of Saltrum, in the county of Devon, all that portion of the land conveyed to him by Charles II., "lying and being to the westward of Long Island and Manhitas Island, and bounded on the east part by the main sea and part by Hudson's river, and hath upon the west Delaware bay or river, and extendeth southward to the main ocean as far as Cape May, at the mouth of Delaware bay ; and to the northward as far as the norther- most branch of the said bay or river of Delaware, which is forty-one degrees and forty minutes of latitude, and crosseth over thence in a strait line to Hudson's river in forty-one degrees of latitude ; which said tract of land is hereafter to be called by the name or names of New Casaria or New Jersey."
This indenture is a document of great historical significance to Jerseymen. It was the revival and first practical assertion of the long dormant title of the English Crown to the sove- reignty and ownership of the territory, from the Hudson to the Delaware, that had been hitherto occupied by the Dutch as a part of their Colony of New Netherlands, a title, we pause to say, which it had not been convenient for the English govern- ment to assert during the foreign wars and complications, and the domestic dissensions and civil wars that had rocked Eng- land to its foundations in the preceding years of the century, but which was now promptly and effectively enforced in the month of August following, by the display of overpowering force at New Amsterdam, and the surrender of New Nether- lands to the English a month later. By this instrument New Jersey was converted from a Dutch into an English colony ; was given the name it still bears and cherishes ; was, for the first, constituted a geographical unit with the definite prescribed boundaries that exist, with slight modifications at this day ; and it was the real source and starting point of our political organization and existence as a State, modelled on the popular liberties of England instead of on the aristocratic liberties of Holland.
Previous to this, under the Dutch rule, the province had no prescribed boundaries, no distinct existence, and no vitalizing and conterminous political or institutional organization. For
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during the entire period of the Dutch ascendancy, from 1618 to 1664, the interior of New Jersey was almost wholly unoccupied by white men. The Dutch loved trade better than adventure. They had little of the restless energy and daring spirit of the pioneer. For the most part, they were content to settle down placidly and gregariously in their settlements along the Hudson and on the Delaware. And, beyond an occasional spot upon which some of their more enterprising companions had estab- lished themselves, the entire district between the two rivers, and indeed, the province at large, was in the undisturbed possession of the Indians, whose enmity they had managed thoroughly to arouse. On the Hudson, they had gathered in sufficient num- bers to found a petty town on Bergen Neck, which they styled Bergentown; and the plantations on both sides of the Neck, as far as Hackensack, were under its jurisdiction, and were all com- prised under the title of the " Towne of Bergen." A part of this tract, being the portion lying on the North River, including Paulus Hook (now Jersey City), and extending to the marshes north and south, was bought of the Indians by Michael Pauw, in July and November, 1630. Another portion, extending from Newark Bay northward to Tappan, and including the Valley of the Hackensack, was bought of the Indians by Myndert Van Horst, in 1641; and in that year he established a colony, with its headquarters about five or six hundred paces from the vil- lage of the Hackensack Indians. This was the germ of the town of Hackensack. In 1651, " courts of justice " had been estab. lished at "Hopating," near Hackensack. In 1658, Governor Stuyvesant-" Hard-Koppig Piet"-bought that part of Bergen from the Indians, which extended from "the great rock above Wiehacken to the Kill von Kull." Before this, however, as early as 1640, that section had been already occupied by some settlers, especially at the town of Bergen; and the settlements at Com- munipaw, Paulus Hook, and Hoboken were made still earlier, from 1630 to 1636. By 1661, Bergen had become quite a thriving village, and in that year it was erected into a distinct municipality, with a charter from the government of New Neth- erlands, empowering it to hold courts, and ornamenting it with such civil dignitaries as a " schout," or sheriff, and three magis- trates, who united the functions of burgesses and justices. This was the earliest municipal organization in New Jersey.
Turning now from the Hudson to the Delaware, let us trace the early settlements there under the Dutch rule. The vicinity of Salem was probably the first spot in West Jersey visited by white men. Hendrick Hudson had anchored the Half-Moon in Delaware Bay, in 1609, but did not land. In 1616, Cornelius Hendricksen sailed from Manhattan, and explored the "South River," as the Delaware was styled by the Dutch, first landing at the mouth of Salem Creek, and afterward continuing up the
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river to its confluence with the Schuylkill. In 1621, the West India Company projected a settlement on the Delaware, and the expedition again landed at, or near the site of Salem, from whence its commander, Cornelis Jacobse May (after whom Cape May was named), led a party to Sassackon, or Timmer Kill (now Timber Creek), near the present town of Gloucester, and established a colony and built a fort* there in 1623. Among the original settlers who composed this little colony were four Dutch couples, who had been married on shipboard, during their voyage from Holland to New Amsterdam, and who, soon after their arrival at the infant metropolis, had been sent from there in a vessel, with eight others, by order of the Dutch gov- ernor, to assist in forming this settlement. Other parties fol- lowed, under the direction of the West India Company, till 1629, when the colony was scattered and the settlements de- stroyed by the Indians. Still another attempt was made soon after to establish a settlement at Fort Nassau, but the settlers were all massacred or made captive by the Indians, and their houses burned. And in 1632, discouraged by their ill-fortune, the Dutch, for the time, abandoned their efforts to plant a colony here. It is probable that in the following year, not a single European remained on the Delaware, below Trenton or Burling- ton, save those who were Indian captives. The years 1637 and 1638. were the era of the Swedish attempt at colonization in West Jersey. In the former year they landed at Cape Henlopen, and purchased, or alleged that they had purchased, the soil from the Indians, from the Capes of the Delaware to the falls at Sanhi- kans, or Trenton. Between 1637 and 1654, they had planted several settlements on the east side of the Delaware, extending from Cape May to Burlington, the earliest and most important being at the mouth of Salem Creek, some three and a half miles from the site of Salem, where they built Fort Helsingborg. Late in 1640, or early in 1641, an English colony of sixty per- sons, from New Haven, settled near this point, and maintained themselves for several years, but were broken up and driven away by the Swedes and Dutch combined, partially in 1642, and finally in 1648, by which time the Dutch had again succeeded in establishing a few scattered settlements along the Delaware.
Besides these settlements of the Dutch on the Hudson, and of the Dutch and Swedes on the Delaware, prior to 1664, there were several interesting instances of exceptional adventuresomeness by Dutchmen, in whom the instincts of the pioneer were more largely developed than in the great body of their compatriots.
One of these, which was projected at a very early day, is so largely invested with the element of romance, so completely en- vironed with an atmosphere of legend and mystery, and so sug-
*Fort Nassau.
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gestive of dramatic incident and vicissitude, as to excite surprise that it has not been made the groundwork of a historical novel by some one among our native authors. About the year 1632, a number of Dutch miners gathere | from some Indians, who were visiting New Amsterdam and had become garrulous over the fire- water with which they were plied, that at a remote spot in the territory across the Hudson rich ores were to be found ; and also extracted from them a description of the appearance of this spot and tolerably clear directions as to its bearings and how to reach it. Animated by the hope of gain combined with the spirit of adventure these bold fellows furtively left New Amsterdam with their families, and striking and following the old "Minisink Path " pierced the "everlasting hills" of Sussex and Morris counties, penetrated the trackless forest wilds that then overspread the northern part of the province, and reached the spot that had been revealed to them. It lay near Minisink Island, on the Delaware, partly in the present limits of New Jersey and partly in Pennsylvania. Here they opened mines, which, as the re- mains testify to this day, were on a scale of great magnitude. To conceal the treasure they had discovered from the envious eyes of others, and to ensure the harvest which they anticipated from it for themselves, they so covertly and adroitly disposed of the fruit of their labors and kept up their needful supplies, and managed so completely to bury themselves in the wilderness, that they became lost, not only to the sight, but to the memory even of their quondam companions at New Amsterdam. Tradi- tion says that for more than a hundred years these voluntary exiles toiled in the mines they had opened, holding no direct communication with the outer world, their numbers yearly growing fewer and fewer, until at last all had vanished from the scene, and with them the history of the episode and the secrets they had discovered.
Such, then, was the state of the province when it changed hands from the Dutch to the English, in 1664. A few small settlements fringed the Hudson for ten or fifteen miles opposite New Amsterdam, and Delaware river and bay from Cape May to Trenton. But the whole interior was unsettled and unex- plored. Its soil remained virgin, and its mighty forests unshorn of their primeval majesty. The land lay silent and buried in mystery. Silent! save for the song of the birds, the fitful cry of the wild beasts, the music of breeze and brook and river in sum- mer, the roar of torrent and tempest in winter, the everlasting boom of the ocean, the hum of the insect world, and all the other multitudinous voices of nature, interrupted now and anon by the whoop of the Indian. The entire population numbered less than five hundred souls. The distant and feeble sectlements were held loosely together by two roads which traversed the province, and were more especially designed to keep the com-
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