USA > New Jersey > Genealogical and memorial history of the state of New Jersey, Volume I > Part 39
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master of the sloop "Martha ;" and in 1741, in the brigantine "Catharine," he took a cargo of flour to Medeira, and returned with one of. wine. A couple of years later, in a letter dated. December 10, 1743, he says, "I am now on settling my self at Perth Amboy and believe I shall not go to sea again." Whether he did do so or not there is no record to show ; he how -. ever continued in business some time longer,. and apparently retired from active mercantile life in 1761, when he gave himself over to the- management of his large landed estates and his various mining projects and properties. Among his other lands he owned in connection with Andrew and John Johnson a tract of sixty-one thousand acres in Hunterdon county, and he was also a large proprietor in the tract which is now the site of Elizabethport, as shown by his petition to the legislature in regard to the: changing of the course of the road from the town of Elizabeth. He likewise possessed a controlling interest in the Rocky Hill and Well copper mines at Rocky Hill.
In April, 1752, he removed from Perth Am- boy and made his winter quarters in New York City, where nine years later, in 1761, he bought and occupied No. 7 Broadway, which was then in the most fashionable part of the town. No. I, which stood next to Fort George, was owned by Mr. Archibald Kennedy, and was General Israel Putnam's headquarters during the occu- pation of New York by the Continental troops. in the spring and summer of 1776. It was also used by General Howe and other British com- manders, and when New York was regarded as the site of the capital of the Federal govern- ment it was selected as the presidential man- sion. Next door to it, No. 3, was the Watts' mansion ; while No. 5 was the home of Chief Justice Livingston, and No. 9 the Van Cort- landt residence, No. II being the house of Mrs. Eve Van Cortlandt White. After ten years of residence in this New York home. John Stevens, in 1771, removed his New Jer- sey quarters to Lebanon Valley, Hunterdon county, building himself a large house, known for a long time afterwards as the "Stevens mansion." It was situated a few miles south of the present Lebanon station, on the Central Railroad of New Jersey, and was standing until 1873, when it was torn down.
About a year previous to his removal to New York, on May 20, 1751, John Stevens made his first appearance in political life, as one of the members of the general assembly, meeting at Perth Amboy ; and from his very first entrance into that body he assumed a most prominent
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position, becoming a member of all of its most important committees. In 1755 he took a very active part in the raising of troops and money to send to Crown Point, which was originally an English trading station, but which had been seized twenty-four years before by the French, who had built there Fort Saint Frederick. In the discussions and balloting regarding this, the first of the expeditions to retake this frontier post, John Stevens gave his voice and his vote in every instance for the largest ap- propriation of money and the greatest number of troops. It was in this same year that, with Andrew and John Johnson, Mr. Stevens was engaged in the building of the blockhouses at Drake's Fort, at Normenach, and at Phillips- burg ; and it was in the ensuing December that with Andrew Johnson he was appointed a committee to wait upon Gov. Thomas Hardy, of New Jersey, Gen. William Shirley, the commander-in-chief of the provincial forces, and Gov. Robert Hunter Morris, of Pennsyl- vania, to ascertain what steps they had taken for defending the frontiers of New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania against the devasta- tions and cruelties of the Indians. For nearly a century such of the red men as were natives of New Jersey had all along maintained an intercourse of great cordiality and friendship with the colonists, being interspersed among them, frequently receiving meat at their houses and other marks of good will and esteem. When the troubles broke out among the frontier Indians it was observed that some of the well disposed Indians were missing, and a few murders having alarmed the province, the legislature appointed commissioners to exam- ine into the treatment the Indians had received. Two members of the governor's council, An- drew Johnson and Richard Salter, and four special commissioners, Charles Read, John Ste- vens, William Foster and Jacob Spicer, had a conference with the Indians in 1756 and re- ported to the legislature the following year when they were given increased powers ; and in the ensuing February, 1758, held a confer- ence at Crosswicks, Burlington county, with Teedyescunk, king of the Delawares, George Hopayock, from the Susquehanah, and thirty other chiefs, which resulted in two treaty con- ferences being held, one at Burlington, August 7-8, 1758, and the other at Easton, Pennsyl- vania, October 8-26, 1758, in which the Indian claims were fully satisfied and their differences with the colonists adjusted. It was also during this period that John Stevens was paymaster of the "Old Blues," of which Colonel Schuyler
was colonel, and in which his brother Campbeli Stevens was a captain. Mr. Stevens's regi- mental account book has been preserved, and is full of interesting items and valuable infor- mation, especially in regard to the hardships endured by the different privates who were made prisoners at Oswego and Fort William Henry.
From his first appointment up to 1762, Mr. Stevens was a member of the lower house of the assembly ; but on January 8, of the latter year, he received his appointment as a member of the governor's council, of which body he remained a member until its dissolution. In the fall of 1765, while John Stevens was re- siding at New York, the British parliament passed its famous "Stamp Act," whereby "all legal and mercantile documents and contracts. newspapers, pamphlets, almanachs, etc., were required to written or printed on stamped paper upon which a duty was to be imposed payable to officials appointed by the Crown." This act was to have gone into effect Novem- ber I, 1765. On that day the flags in New York were hung at halfmast, stores were closed, bells were tolled, and the streets were thronged with excited crowds. The Sons of Liberty, a loose secret organization extending through the colonies, and formed for the pur- pose of concerting resistance to the act, broke . open the governor's coach-house, took out his chariot of state and put into it two images, one of the governor himself, the other of the devil, so arranged that he seemed to be whispering in the governor's ear. Hauling the chariot and its effigies through the streets until they came to Fort George, with lighted torches, they wound up their demonstration by stoning the fort and burning the chariot in a bonfire. So high ran the excitement that civil war was imminent ; and Gov. Colden, in order to allay the apprehensions of the populace, November 4. 1765, addressed a letter to Mayor John Cruger and Messrs. Robert R. Livingston, John Stevens and Beverley Robinson, in which he promised that "he would not issue or suffer to be issued any of the stamps now in Fort George," and requesting these gentlemen to take such steps as would insure the preserva- tion of the public peace and safety. This letter brought forth the following manifesto: "The Freemen, Freeholders, and Inhabitants of this City, being satisfied that the stamps are not to be issued, are determined to keep the peace of the City at all events, except they shall see cause of complaint." (Signed) "John Cruger. Robert R. Livingston, John Stevens, Beverley
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Robinson." As a result of this, the obnoxious stamped paper was delivered into the hands of the mayor and the corporation of the city, and ' when shortly afterwards a vessel arrived with a new supply, it was forcibly taken out and destroyed.
In 1770, in reply to a letter from Gov. Will- iam Franklin in regard to certain questions which had arisen concerning the court of chan- cery, Mr. Stevens wrote as follows: "I am of the opinion that a Court of Chancery in this Province is requisite, and that it ought to be kept open, but that at this Time and ever since the year 1713, the Court has not been held on a proper Establishment, as no Ordinance for erecting said Court, or qualification of several of the Chancellors appears. I therefore with submission, advise that the Governor and Council do form an Ordinance for the Estab- lishment of the Court of Chancery, to consist of his Excellency the Governor, with such of the Council or others as shall be thought proper or fitting for the Trust, and that they all take the necessary qualification for the due dis- charge of their duty ; and that every step may be taken to give authority and permanence to the Court I would propose that a full State of the Court of Chancery as to the manner in which it has been from time to time held, be made and transmitted to our Most Gracious Sovereign for his further instruction to the Governor with regard to his will and pleasure therein" * In 1774, together with his wife's brother-in-law, Walter Ruther furd, John Stevens was appointed on the joint com- mission which undertook to settle the differ- ences which had arisen with respect to the boundary lines between the colonies of New York and New Jersey, and their report was filed in the following November.
At the outbreak of the war, John Stevens was presiding over the colonial council, and feeling that the prominent position he held obliged him to take some active steps against the encroachments of the Crown, he wrote in June, 1776, to Governor William Franklin : "Sir: It is with the greatest concern I see the dispute between Great Britain and these Colo- nies arisen to the present alarming situation of both countries. While I had hopes of an accommodation of our unhappy controversy I was unwilling to quit a station which enabled me to be serviceable to my Country, but the Continuation of Hostilities by the British Min- istery, and the large Armament of Foreign Troops daily expected to invest our Country leaves me no longer room to doubt that an
entire submission of these Colonies with a view of Internal Taxation is their ultimate object. Your Excellency will not wonder that I should prefer the duty I owe my Native Country to any other consideration. I therefore beg leave to resign my seat at the Council Board. I am sir, Your Excellency's Most Obedient, Humble Servant, John Stevens." On August 27 follow- ing he was chosen to represent Hunterdon county in the new patriotic council which was then formed; and one week later, September 3, 1776, he was unanimously elected to fill the chair of the vice-president, a position which he held continuously until October 5, 1782, and being found almost always in his seat. An- other of Mr. Stevens's anxieties at this time was the care of the treasury of the new state. Not only did he frequently supply its defi- ciencies from his own purse, but being also one of the sureties for the provincial treasurer, John Smyth, he seems to have had the actual care of the money chest; and in several of his letters he alludes to his fear that it will be cap- tured by the enemy, and also speaks of its being removed to various places for greater security. This responsibility was finally re- moved from his shoulders by the appointment of his son, Col. John Stevens, to succeed him. In 1781, John Stevens was chosen vice-presi- dent of the board of East Jersey proprietors, and two years later, in 1783, became president of that body.
November 6, 1782, Mr. Stevens was elected a member of the Continental congress as a representative of New Jersey, and took his seat May 20, 1783, but the session was simply a business one, and nothing worthy of notice transacted. September 17, 1787, Mr. Stevens was elected president of the New Jersey state convention that ratified the Constitution of the United States ; and instead of sending the rati- fication to congress by mail or by a special messenger, he deemed it "more seemly to the dignity of the body" he represented and of the one to which he was accredited to deliver it in person. His own account of the delivery, which was the fitting close to a long and event- ful political career, worthily sustained, is thus given in a letter to his friend, Chief Justice Brearley. "Hoboken, February 11, 1788: Dear Sir :- As soon as I had heard there was a sufficient number of members met to make a Congress I proceeded to New York, and on Friday the first instant I delivered to the Presi- dent in Congress assembled the New Jersey Ratification of the proposed Constitution of the United States; and I have the pleasure to
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inform you that in conversation with the Presi- dent at the Chancellor's (Robert R. Livingston, son-in-law of John Stevens) he sayd he had no instructions to make me any answer to what I said to him on delivering the Ratifica- tion, but that he thought it the most ample of any that had been delivered to Congress, and in particular the Convention's reciting the powers by which they were conveyed. I was exactly in time, as the first of February was set down for taking up and entering the sev- eral Certificates and I delivered ours before they began that business."
John Stevens, it is said, was no orator, al- though he was a very fair debater, owing to his legal training, and was a fluent speaker of great clearness and conciseness. Throughout his life he was a zealous supporter of the Established Church of England. During his residence at Perth Amboy he was a vestryman of St. Peter's, 1749-52, when he removed to New York and was transferred as a communi- cant to Trinity Church in that city. May 13- 14, 1774, with his brother Richard, Mr. Hiet and Richard Dennis, he represented the laity in the convention at New Brunswick; and he contributed largely to the building of the frame meetinghouse at Lebanon, besides being one of the principal supporters of St. Thomas's church at Palmyra, Hunterdon county, near the Cornwall mansion, the residence of his brothers Lewis and Richard. His latter days were spent with his son, Col. John Stevens, at Hoboken, where he died early in May, 1792, and was buried at the frame meetinghouse.
In 1748 John Stevens married Elizabeth, fourth child and second daughter of James Alexander and Mary (Sprat) Provoost, daugh- ter of John Sprat and Maria De Peyster, and widow of Samuel Provoost, whose son John, by his marriage with Eve Rutgers, had a son Samuel, who became the first bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church in New York. James Alexander, born 1691, in Scotland, died in New York City, 1756, was second and youngest son of William Alexander, of Edin- burg. Emigrating to New Jersey in 1715, he settled as a practicing lawyer at Perth Amboy, of which city he became the first recorder. For his defence of John Peter Zenger, when the latter was accused of sedition in 1733, he was temporarily disbarred. He became suc- cessively surveyor-general of East and West Jersey, receiver-general of quit-rents for East Jersey, advocate-general, member of the King's council, attorney-general, and again advocate- general. Besides being one of the most promi-
nent men in the colony, he was one of the founders of the American Philosophical Soci- ety. Mary, his eldest child, married Peter van Brugh, second son of Philip, Lord of Livings- ton Manor, by his second wife, the widow Ricketts. James Alexander (2) died at eight years of age. William Alexander, his only other son, was the famous patriot, Major-Gen- eral Lord Stirling, who claimed that earldom through descent from his great-grandfather, Sir William Alexander, Earl of Stirling, 1580- 1640. Elizabeth Alexander, wife of John Ste- vens, was born December 15, 1726, and died at Clermont, Livingston Manor, September, 1800. Catharine Alexander married (first) Elisha, son of Col. John and Janet (Johnstone) Parker, and grandson of Elisha Parker, the emigrant to Perth Amboy, by his second wife, Hannah Rolph; and ( second) Major Walter Ruther- furd, son of Sir John Rutherfurd, of Edgers- ton, Scotland. Anne Alexander died single, and Susannah Alexander married John Reid, of Scotland.
Children of John and Elizabeth ( Alexander ) Stevens: I. John, referred to below. 2. Mary, died in Washington, D. C., 1814; married, September 9, 1770, Chancellor Robert R. Liv- ingston, to whom she bore daughters-Eliza- beth Stevens Livingston, born May 5, 1780, died June 10, 1827, married, 1800, Edward Philip Livingston; and Margaret Maria Liv- ingston, born April II, 1783, died March 8, 1818, married, 1799, Robert L. Livingston.
(III) John (3), son of John Stevens (2) and Elizabeth (Alexander) Stevens, was born in Perth Amboy, in 1749, and died at his home in Hoboken, New Jersey, March 6, 1838. He graduated from King's (now Columbia) Col- lege, 1768, and shortly afterwards was ad- mitted to the bar. He practiced, however, very little, and his life was chiefly devoted to engineering experiments at his own cost for the common good. He ranks "among the great- est of the engineers and naval architects of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries." During the revolutionary war he held several public offices. He and his uncle Richard were both of them deputies from Hunterdon county to the last of the royal provincial congresses which met during May, June and August. 1775 ; and he was the treasurer of the state of New Jersey, 1776-79. At the close of the war of Independence he married and settled down, living in the winter at No. 7 Broadway, New York City, and in the summer on the island of Hoboken, which had been confiscated by the state of New Jersey from William Bayard, the
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royalist, and sold, March 16, 1784, to John Stevens, for £18,360. About 1800, Charles Loss, a civil engineer, made for John Stevens a map of about half the upland within the present city limits of Hoboken, and March 20, 1804, the first sale of lots from this map was made at the Tontine coffee house, in New York, by David Dixon, auctioneer. Early in 1774 a ferry had been established to connect the corporation dock at Bear market in New York with the island of Hoboken. At first the ferry was in charge of Cornelius Haring, agent for the state of New Jersey. During the revo- lution, like all other ferries, it was under mili- tary control, and up to 1811 the common coun- cil of New York leased it to different parties, although since 1784 its owner was John Ste- vens, who, April 13, 1811, obtained the lease for himself and immediately constructed his steam ferry-boat the "Juliana," which carried one hundred passengers and was the first steam ferry-boat in the world. It made sixteen trips but not being as economical as the old horse- boats, was then taken off. In June, 1817, John Stevens sold all of his interest in the ferry to John, Robert and Samuel Swartwout, who assigned it in 1819 to Philip Horne, at which time the New York landing was changed from Vesey to Barclay street. In May, 1821, the Stevens family repurchased the ferry and agreed to pay the city of New York $1,800 annual rent for landing privileges. John Ste- vens then re-established the steam ferry-boats. the first being the "Hoboken," which made regular trips "every hour by the St. Paul's clock." In this boat the ladies' cabin was below deck, carpeted and warmed by open fireplaces. In July, 1836, the old Spring street landing, which had been in use since 1774, was changed to the present Christopher street slip. In 1895 the Stevens family transferred the ferry.
In 1787 the legislature of New York granted John Fitch the exclusive right to navigate the waters of that state with steam propelled vessels. This same year, while driving along the banks of the Delaware, near Burlington, John Stevens saw Fitch's steamboat pass up the river against the tide. His interest was excited, and he followed the boat to the land- ing where he examined carefully the engines and the mechanism of the pushing paddles ; and "from that hour he became a thoroughly excited and unwearied experimenter in the application of steam to locomotion." In 1790 he petitioned congress to protect the rights of American inventors, with the result that the committee to whom his petition was referred,
reported the bill which, as the law of April 10, 1790, forms the foundation of the American patent system. Under this law, in 1792, John Stevens took out patents for propelling vessels by steam pumps, modified from the original steam pumps of Savary. Continuing his ex- periments on different modes of propulsion by steam, John Stevens now associated with him- self the elder Brunel constructor of the Thames tunnel, Chancellor Robert R. Livingston, his brother-in-law, and Nicholas J. Roosevelt, and in 1798, when the legislature of New York offered a monopoly of exclusive privileges to the owner of a boat that would comply with given conditions and at the same time attain a speed of three miles an hour, John Stevens ·launched the first steamboat that navigated the Hudson. This boat was completed in 1801, but failed to fulfill the speed conditions im- posed, and the appointment of Robert R. Liv- ingston as minister plenipotentiary to France the same year, interrupted the joint experi- ments, and resulted from Livingston's subse- quent association with Robert Fulton, whom he met in Paris, in the latter winning the monopoly with the "Clermont." Meanwhile Stevens persevered by himself, and in 1804 made the first practical application of steam to the screw propeller. His boiler, which was multitubular, he had patented in the United States the year before, and the year after in England. His propeller was the twin-screw, and as his letter to Dr. Robert Hare, of Phila- delphia, shows, a helix, and identically the short four-headed screw that is now in use. The engine and boiler of this steamboat are now preserved in the museum of the Smith- sonian Institution. Shortly after their father's death his sons placed this engine and boiler in a boat which was tested before a committee of the American Institute of New York, and the speed it attained was about nine miles an hour. "The engine and screw *
* * show the correctness of his ideas, as well as the imper- fection of the workmanship of that period that prevented success." To the day of his death, John Stevens always upheld the efficacy of his screw and its great advantages for ocean navi- gation, and the years succeeding him have vindicated his contention. For over thirty years, however, he stood alone; but in 1837 experiments were simultaneously begun both in England and the United States, in the for- mer country by the introduction of the Archi- median screw of a single thread, and in Amer- ica by the trial of a multi-threaded screw on the surface of a cylinder. Both of these, how-
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ever, were soon replaced by the short four- bladed screw of Stevens, the conversion in England being about 1842, and in the United States about 1847. Three years after launch- ing his first steamboat, John Stevens, together with his son, Robert Livingston Stevens, per- fected the invention so as to meet the require- ments of the New York legislature, but he did this not with his screw propeller but with his paddle wheel steamboat, the "Phoenix;" and being a few days later than Fulton in launch- ing his boat, he was shut out of New York waters by the monopoly of Fulton and Liv- ingston. As a consequence, he conceived the bold design of conveying his boat to the Dela- ware river by sea, so in June, 1808, his son, Robert L. Stevens, took the "Phoenix" down . the coast from New York to Philadelphia, thus reaping the honor of having commanded, and with his father of having invented and built, the first boat to navigate the ocean by steam power. For the next six years the "Phoenix" plied the waters of the Delaware and proved that the steam navigation of that river was a commercial success.
In 1813, John Stevens designed an iron-clad steam vessel with a "saucer shaped" hull which was to be plated with iron and to carry a heavy battery. This vessel was designed to be secured to a swivel which was to be held in position by an anchor in the channel of the stream to be defended. Screw propellers driven by steam engines were to be placed beneath the vessel, where they would be safe from injury by shot, and connected with the machinery, which was arranged to cause the vessel to be rapidly re- volved about the swivel in its center. Each gun was to be fired as it was brought into line, and was to be reloaded before it came around again. This was an early embodiment of the Monitor principle, and was the first iron-clad ever designed.
In February, 1812, shortly before the war with England, and five years before the com- mencement of work on the Erie canal, John Stevens addressed a memoir to the New York state commission appointed to devise water communication between the seaboard and the lakes, urging, instead of a canal, the immediate construction of a railroad. This memoir, to- gether with the adverse report of the com- missioners-De Witt Clinton, Gouverneur Morris and Chancellor Robert R. Livingston- was published at the time, also in 1852, with a preface by Charles King, president of Colum- bia College, and again in 1882, by the Railroad Gazette. When the memoir was first written,
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