History of Monmouth County, New Jersey. Pt. 1, Part 14

Author: Ellis, Franklin, 1828-1885
Publication date: 1885
Publisher: Philadelphia : R.T. Peck & Co.
Number of Pages: 974

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Previous residence unknown except where men- tioned .- John Bird, Joseph Boyer, William Cheeseman, Edward Crome, Daniel Estell, Ralph Gouldsmith, John Hall, John Hance (Westchester, N. Y.), John Haundell, Thomas Hart, John Hawes, James Heard, Richard Harts- horne (England), Tobias Haudson, John Horabin, Joseph Huet, Randall Huet, Randall Huet, Jr., John Jobs, Robert Jones (New York), Gabriel Kirk, Edmund Lafetra, Francis Masters, George Mount, William Newman, Anthony Page, Joseph Parker, Peter Parker, Henry Percy, Bartholomew Shamgungue, Richard Sissell, Robert Story, John Tomson, Marma- duke Ward, John Wilson, John Wood, Thomas Wright.

On the 8th of July, 1670, the patentees met at Portland Point and voted to admit as associ- ates "a convenient number of purchasers who ' were the first and principal in the purchase of

the three necks: Newasink, Navarumsunk and Pootapeck, . . . henceforth to have a full interest, right and claim in y® Patent given and granted to ye Patentees by Richard Nicolls, E-q'., late Governour of New York." The associate- then chosen were William Bowne, Thomas Whit- lock, John Wilson, John Ruckman, Walter Wall, John Smith, Richard Richardson, John Horabin, James Bowne, Jonathan Holmes, Christopher Allmy, Eliakim Wardell, Bartholomew We-t, John Haunce, James Ashton, Edward Pattison, William Shaddock, Thomas Winterton, Edward Tartt, Benjamin Burden (Borden). On the 31-t of May, 1672, Richard Lippincott and Nicholas Browne were added to the list of associates.

Of the persons mentioned in the foregoing list, the following named, though owners of shares in the Indian purchases (and some of them being also original grantees in the Mon- mouth patent), did not become settlers here, viz .: Henry Bull, Robert Carr, Walter Clarke (pat- entee), William Coddington, Joshua Coggeshall, John Coggeshall, Nicholas Davis (patentee), Zachary Gauntt, Daniel Gould, Edward Thurs- ton and Obadiah Holmes (patentee), all of Rhode Island; Nathaniel Sylvester (patentee), of Long Island; and John Jenkins and Edward Whar- ton, of Massachusetts Bay. The last named had been imprisoned and publicly whipped as a Quaker in the Massachusetts colony, and he came to Monmouth County probably with the intention of making it his permanent home; but after a brief stay he returned to New Eng- land, for some reason which does not appear.

Henry Bull, Walter Clarke, William Cod- dington and John Coggeshall were Governors of Rhode Island.1 Robert Carr sold his share to Giles Slocum, of Newport, R. I., for his son. John Slocum, who became a settler. Zachariah Gauntt sold his share to his brother, Annia-, who became a permanent settler on the Mon- mouth purchase.

Joshua Coggeshall, Edward Thurston and Daniel Gould were Deputy or Lieutenant-Gov- ernors of Rhode Island, as were also several others, who became permanent settlers, viz. :

1 Coggeshall in 1647 and 1668; Clark in 1676, 1686 and 1699; Coddington in 1683-85 (died 1688) ; Bull in 1655 and 1690.

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EARLY SETTLEMENTS AND LAND TITLES.

Francis Brindley, William Reape, Edward Smith, Stephen Arnold, Job Allmy and Christopher Allmy.

Nicholas Davis (patentee) was living in the Massachusetts Bay colony at the time when the Quakers began preaching there, about 1656, and he soon afterwards became a member of that society, for which offense he was indicted in April, 1659, and in July of the same year he was sentenced to death. Mary Dyer,1 William Robinson and Marmaduke Stevenson were also sentenced at the same time, and they were hung at Boston. Davis' sentence was commuted to banishment, and he removed to Newport, R. I., where he was living when he became interested in the Monmouth patent. He was drowned about the year 1672.

The Rev. Obadiah Holmes, one of the twelve patentees of Monmouth, was living in 1639 at Salem, Mass., where he was engaged with Law- rence Southwick and Ananias Conklin (descend- ants of both of whom became settlers on the Monmouth purchase) in the manufacture of glass, they being among the first, and probably the first, in that business in America. Mr. Holmes afterwards joined the Baptists and be- came a prominent minister in that denomina- tion, for which offense he was indicted at Ply- mouth, in October, 1650, with Edward Smith, John Hazell and William Deuell, and tried before Governor William Bradford, Captain Miles Standish and other dignitaries, the result of which trial is not very clearly to be under- stood from the record. In the following year (July, 1651) the Rev. Obadiah Holmes, John Clarke and John Crandal went to Lynn and there held services at the house of William Witter, he being an old and feeble man, unable to journey far to hear the Gospel preached. While engaged in services at Witter's house they were arrested, and thence taken before Magistrate Robert Bridges, who committed them to jail in Boston, where, on the 31st of July, Holmes and Clarke were brought before the court (presided over by His Excellency, Governor

! Her son, Henry Dyer, was among the early settlers in Monmouth County, though his name does not appear in the foregoing list.

John Endicott), found guilty2 and sentenced to pay each a fine of £30 or be "well whipt." A friend of Clarke's paid his fine for him, but Mr. Holmes "refused to pay, though able to do so. He deemed a payment of the fine to be an ac- knowledgment of error, and he chose rather to suffer than to 'deny his Lord.'" So he suffered the punishment-thirty lashes "with a three- corded whip"-without a murmur, praying to the Lord the while to forgive his persecutors for their sin and cruelty. "Mr. Holmes," says Backus, in his " History of the Baptists," "was whipt thirty stripes, and in such an unmerciful manner that in many days, if not some weeks, he could take no rest but as he lay upon his knees and elbows, not being able to suffer any part of his body to touch the bed whereon he lay." After this outrage he lived more than

2 The crime of which these New England bigots found him guilty is set forth in the following :

"The sentence of Obadiah Holmes, of Seaconk, the 31st of the 5th m. [O. S.], 1651.

" Forasmuch as you, Obadiah Holmes, being come into this jurisdiction about the 21 of the 5 m., did meet at one William Witter's house at Lynn, and did there privately (and at other times, being an excommunicate person, did take upon you to preach and baptize), upon the Lord's day or other days, and being taken then by the constable, and coming afterwards to the assembly at Lynn, did, in disre- spect to the ordinance of God and his worship, keep on your hat, the pastor being in prayer, insomuch that you would not give reverence in vailing your hat, till it was forced off your head, to the disturbance of the congrega- tion, and professing against the institution of the church as not being according to the gospel of Jesus Christ ; and that you, the said Obadiah Holmes, did, upon the day following, meet again at the said William Witter's in contempt to authority, you being then in the custody of the law, and did there receive the sacrament, being excommunicate, and that you did baptize such as were baptized before, and thereby did necessarily deny the baptism that was before administered to be baptism, the churches no churches, and also other ordinances and ministers, as if all were a nullity ; and also did deny the lawfulness of baptizing of infants ; and all this tends to the dishonor of God, the despising the ordinances of God among us, the peace of the churches, and seducing the subjects of this commonwealth from the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and perverting the strait ways of the Lord, the Court doth fine you thirty pounds, to be paid, or sufficient sureties that the said sum shall be paid, by the first day of the next Court of Assist- ants, or else to be well whipt, and that you shall remain in prison till it be paid, or security given for it. By the Court.

"INCREASE NOWELL."

HISTORY OF MONMOUTH COUNTY, NEW JERSEY,

thirty years, principally at and near Newport, R. I., which was his residence at the time when he became one of the Monmouth patentees. Though he never settled on his Monmouth lands, he made occasional visits here, one of which was upon the organization of the Baptist Church at Middletown, which was the first of that de- nomination in New Jersey and the third or fourth in America. Two of his sons, Obadiah and Jonathan, became settlers in Monmouth. The first named returned to Rhode Island after a few years, but Jonathan remained, and was one of the first officials elected at a meeting of the inhabitants of " Middletown, on Newasunk Neck, and Shrewsbury, on Navarumsunk Neck," held on the 19th of December, 1667. His father, the Rev. Obadiah Holmes (the patentee), died at Newport on the 15th of October, 1682.

Nathaniel Sylvester, a non-resident patentee 'of Moumouth, was a Quaker, and the prin- cipal owner of Shelter Island, near the eastern end of Long Island. His house afforded an asylum for Lawrence Southwick (one of Rev. Obadiah Holmes' partners in the glass-works at Salem, Mass.) and his wife, Cassandra, who, with their son, Josiah, had joined the Quakers in Massachusetts Bay Colony, and had on this account been frequently and cruelly punished by whipping, and were finally banished from the colony. Being old people, they were com- pletely broken down by the severity of their punishments and persecutions, and they died at Mr. Sylvester's house, in 1659, within three days of each other. Their daughter, Provided Southwick, married Samuel Gaskell, and from them descended the numerous family of Gaskell in New Jersey.

Captain John Bowne was a leader in the project of purchasing from the Indian sachems the three " Necks" of Newasink, Navarumsunk, and Pootapeck, and was one of the company who sailed from Gravesend, L. I., in Christo- pher Ellsworth's sloop, in December, 1663, in the prosecution of that enterprise, as is mentioned in the preceding account of the trip of Govert Loockermans and others to the Nave-ink region, in the same month. Captain Bowne became one of the patentees of the Monmouth grant, by Governor Nicolls, and was one of the first five

families who made a permanent settlement on the great tract. The place where he located is in the present township of Holmdel, though in the old records he is mentioned as one of the settlers of Middletown,-a name which was at that time applied to a large and somewhat vaguely-defined region surrounding the " town" or central settlement. Until Captain Bowne's death, in the early part of 1684, he seems to have been the most prominent citizen of the county, esteemed for his integrity and ability. He had been compelled to leave the Massachu- setts colony on account of his sympathy with the Baptists, and he was one of the founders of the Baptist Church at Middletown. He appeared as a deputy to the first Assembly in Governor Carteret's time, which met May 26, 1668, the members of the Lower House being then called " burgesses." He was deputy again in 1675, after Carteret's return from England ; and in the first Legislature under the twenty-four pro- prietors, in 1683, he was a member and the Speaker, and acted until the December following. He held other positions of trust. March 12, 1677, a commission was issued to him as presi- dent of the court to hold a term at Middletown. In December, 1683, shortly before his last ill- ness, he was appointed major of the militia of Monmouth County. He died in January, 1683- 84, leaving two sons, Obadiah and John, the latter of whom was also a prominent man in the province, and a candidate for the office of Speaker of Assembly in Lord Cornbury's administration ; but he was expelled from the House on a charge of having taken part in the raising of a large sum of money in the province to be paid to Cornbury as a bribe for corrupt official action. No such charge could ever have been brought against the rigid virtue and up- rightness of the first John Bowne, of Mon- mouth.

Captain Andrew Bowne, a somewhat later set- tler in Monmouth County, who was a member of the Governor's Council, and also Acting Governor just prior to the surrender by the proprietors to Queen Anne, is supposed to have been a brother of Captain John Bowne.

Richard Stout was one of the Monmouth pat- [ entees, and his was also one of the first five fam-

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EARLY SETTLEMENTS AND LAND TITLES.

ilies who settled on the Indian purchase in 1664. He had previously lived a number of years ou Long Island, and while there had been married to a young Dutch widow, of whom and her two husbands the following account is found in a "History of New Jersey," published in 1765 :

" While New York was in possession of the Dutch, about the time of the Indian war in New England, a Dutch ship coming from Amster- dam was stranded on Sandy Hook, but the pas- sengers got on shore; among them was a young Dutchman, who had been sick most of the voy- age ; he was taken so bad after landing that he could not travel, and the other passengers being afraid of the Indians, would not stay till he re- covered, but made what haste they could to go to New Amsterdam ; his wife, however, would not leave him, and the rest promised to send as soon as they arrived. They had not been long gone before a company of Indians coming down to the water-side discovered them on the beach, and, hastening to the spot, soon killed the man, and cut and mangled the woman insuch a man- ner that they left her for dead. She had strength enough to crawl up to some old logs not far dis- tant, and getting into a hollow tree, lived mostly in it for several days, subsisting in part by eat- ing the excrescences that grew from it; the In- dians had left some fire on the shore, which she kept together for warmth ; having remained in this manner for some time, an old Indian and a young one, coming down to the beach, found her; they were soon in high words, which she afterwards understood was a dispute, the for- mer being for keeping her alive, the other for dispatching. After they had debated the point awhile the first hastily took her up, and, tossing her upon his shoulder, carried her to a place near where Middletown now stands, where he dressed her wounds and soon cured her. After some time the Dutch at New Amsterdam, hear- ing of a white woman among the Indians, con- cluded who it must be, and some of them went to her relief; the old Indian, her preserver, gave her the choice either to go or stay ; she chose the first. A while after, marrying to one Stout [ Richard], they lived together at Middle- town among other Dutch [?] inhabitants. The

old Indian who saved her life used frequently to visit her; at one of his visits she observed him to be more pensive than common, and sit- ting down, he gave three heavy sighs; after the last she thought herself at liberty to ask him what was the matter. He told her he had some- thing to tell her in friendship, though at the risk of his own life, which was, that the Indians were that night to kill all the whites, and ad- vised her to go off for New Amsterdam ; she asked him how she could get off; he told her he had provided a canoe at a place which he named. Being gone from her, she sent for her husband out of the field and discovered the matter to him, who not believing it, she told him the old man nerer deceived her, and that she with the children would go ; accordingly, going to the place appointed, they found the canoe, and paddled off. When they were gone the husband began to consider the thing, and sending for five or six of his neighbors, they set upon their guard. About midnight they heard the dismal war-whoop; presently came up a company of Indians ; they first expostulated, and then told them that if they persisted in their bloody design, they would sell their lives very dear. Their arguments prevailed, the In- dians desisted, and entered into a league of peace, which was kept without violation. From this woman thus remarkably saved, with her scars visible through a long life, is descended a nu- merous posterity of the name of Stout, now inhabiting New Jersey."

In another account of these events, based on the same authority (Benedict's " History of the Baptists"), it is added that Mrs. Stout's maiden- name was Penelope Van Princes ; that she was born in Amsterdam about the year 1602 ; that she married Richard Stout in New York when she was in her twenty-second year and he in his fortieth, he being an Englishman of good family ; that they afterwards settled at Middle- town ; that she lived to the age of one hundred and ten years, having borne to Richard Stout seven sons and three daughters,' and before her

1 The sons were Jonathan, John, Richard, James, Peter, David, Benjamin ; the daughters were Mary, Sarah and Alice. Benedict says Richard Stout was a son of John Stout, of Nottinghamshire, England.

HISTORY OF MONMOUTH COUNTY, NEW JERSEY.

death saw her offspring multiplied to five hun- dred and two in about eighty-eight years.

There is, beyond doubt, a good deal of ro- mance and inaccuracy in both these accounts, though in their main features they are probably correct. The statement that they lived " among other Dutch " at Middletown is clearly incor- rect, as there were no Dutch among the early settlers there. The story of the intended In- dian massacre, too, is undoubtedly the product . of a fertile imagination, as it is well known that the Indians of this region were always friendly to the English settlers, and never gave them any trouble except an occasional drunken brawl, which the white men punished by plac- ing the noble red men in the stocks or pillory, just as they did the same class of white offenders, -a fact which in itself shows that they had no fear of any Indian massacre. As to Benedict's statement, if it is true that she was born in 1602, and was married to Richard Stout when she was twenty-two, the time of their marriage must have been the year 1624, at which time he was forty years of age. They went to Mid- dletown, with the first settlers, in 1664, at which time (if this statement is correct) her age was sixty-two, and his eighty years. At that time, and for several succeeding years, Richard Stout was a prominent man in the public affairs of the Navesink settlements, which would hardly have been the case at such an age; and in 1669, when (according to the above supposi- tion) he was eighty-five years old, Richard Stout, Jonathan Holmes, Edward Smith and James Bowne were chosen "overseers" of Middletown, and Stout made his X mark to the "Ingadgement " in lieu of signature,- which last-mentioned fact makes it improbable that he was, as stated, an Englishman " of good family," according to the usual English under- standing of that term. Richard Stout was, however, one of the most respectable and re- spected men in his day in the Monmouth settle- ments.

William Reape (Monmouth patentee) was a Long Island settler and a Quaker, on which account he had been arrested and imprisoned by the Dutch Governor, Peter Stuyvesant, who could hardly be termed a religious bigot, but

who became a mild persecutor of Quakers be- cause his instructions from the States-General re- quired him to discountenance all forms of religion but that prescribed by the Synod of Dordrecht. Soon after his liberation Reape went to New- port, R. I., where he engaged in mercantile business, and was living there when he became interested in the Monmouth patent. He was one of the first settlers who came to make their homes on the Navesink Indian purchase in 1665.

John Tilton was another of the twelve Mon- mouth patentees. " When he first came from England he located at Lynn, Massachusetts. His wife was a Baptist, and in December, 1642, she was indicted for ' holdinge that the Baptism of Infants is no Ordinance of God.' They left Massachusetts with Lady Deborah Moody and other Baptists and settled at Gravesend, Long Island, where again they were made to suffer for conscience' sake. In 1658 he was fined by the Dutch authorities for allowing a Quaker woman to stop at his house. In Sep- tember, 1662, he was fined for 'permitting Quakers to quake at his house.' In October of the same year himself and wife were summoned before Governor Stuyvesant and Council at New Amsterdam (now New York), charged with having entertained Quakers, and frequent- ing their conventicles. They were condemned and ordered to leave the province before the 20th day of November following, under pain of corporal punishment. It is supposed that through the efforts of Lady Moody, who had great influence with the Dutch Governor, the sentence was either reversed or changed to the payment of a fine."1 They came to Mou- mouth among the settlers of 1665. Jonathan Tilton, who was also one of the earliest settlers, was an ancestor of Theodore Tilton, of Brook- lyn, the famous lecturer. The residence of Jonathan Tilton (and the place where he died) was an old house, still (or recently) standing between Balm Hollow and Middletown, just east of Beekman's Woods.

James Grover, one of the patentees, be- came a permanent settler, and built the first iron-

1 Hon. Edwin Salter.

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EARLY SETTLEMENTS AND LAND TITLES.

works in New Jersey. Their location was at Tinton Falls. They were sold, with a large tract of adjacent land, to Colonel Lewis Morris, the elder, in 1676.

William Goulding (whose name heads the list of Monmouth patentees) was one of the Massachusetts Bay Baptists, who were perse- cuted and banished from that colony on account of their religion. He became a permanent wttler, and was one of the founders of the old Baptist Church at Middletown.

Richard Gibbons, who is mentioned as "Sergeant Gybbings " in the account of the visit of the Long Islanders to the Navesinks in December, 1663, was one of the twelve pat- entees of Monmouth, and an early settler on the great tract. The old records do not men- tion his name as frequently as those of many of the other patentees and settlers.

Samuel Spicer, a patentee and one of the settlers of 1665, had previously resided at Grave- send, L. I. He was a member of the Society of Friends, and, like Reape, Tilton and others, had been severely dealt with by Governor Stuyvesant for non-conformity to the estab- lished religion of the Synod,of Dordrecht.

Edward Smith, whose name appears as a purchaser of lands within the Monmouth pat- ent, was one of those who were indicted at Plymouth with Rev. Obadiah Holmes and John Hazell, in October, 1650, as before mentioned. The indictment was as follows :

" October second, 1650.

" Wee whose names are here underwritten, being the Grand Inquest, doe present to this Court John Hazell, Mr. Edward Smith and his wife, Obadiah Holmes, Joseph Tory and his wife, and the wife of James Man, William Deuell and his wife, of the town of Rehoboth, for the continuing of a meeting upon the Lord's day, from house to house, contrary to the order of this Court, enacted June 12, 1650.

THOMAS ROBINSON, HENRY TOMSON, etc., to the number of 14."

They were tried before Governor William Bradford, Capt. Miles Standish and other magistrates, and soon afterwards Edward Smith

and William Deuell removed to Rhode Island, where Smith became Lieutenant-Governor. Both he and Deuell settled in what is now Mon- mouth County in or about the year 1665.

"John Hance was one of the original settlers of Shrewsbury. He is named as a deputy and overseer at a court held at Portland Point, December 28, 1669. He held various positions in the county, among which was justice, and that of 'schepen,' to which latter he was ap- pointed by the Dutch during their brief rule in 1673. He was a deputy to the Assembly in 1668, but refused to take or subscribe the oath of allegiance but with provisos, and would not yield the claims of his people under the Mon- mouth patent, and submit to the laws and gov- ernment of the proprietors when directed against those claims, in consequence of which he was rejected as a member, as was also Jona- than Holmes, Edward Tartt and Thomas Win- terton, at the same session, for the same reasons. Hance was re-elected a deputy in 1680 and at other times." 1

William Shattock was a native of Boston, who, about 1656, joined the Quakers in the Massachusetts Bay colony, and for this offense was imprisoned, cruelly whipped and banished. He removed to Rhode Island and thence to New Jersey in or about 1665, settling on lands of the Monmouth patent. A few years after- wards he moved to Burlington. His daughter Hannah married Restore Lippincott, son of Richard Lippincott.

Samuel Shattock (or Shaddock), who was a settler on the Navesink purchase, was a Massa- chusetts Quaker, who removed thence to Rhode Island before his settlement in New Jersey. Not long after the persecution and banishment of Lawrence Southwick and his wife from Massachusetts Bay, their son, Josiah 2 (who had also been banished), with Samuel Shattock and Nicholas Phelps, went to England, where, after long and persistent efforts, they procured the King's order that thereafter all persons indicted as Quakers should be sent to England for trial instead of being tried in the Massachusetts Bay

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History of Monmouth County, New Jersey. Pt. 1, Part 14

Author: Ellis, Franklin, 1828-1885 Publication date: 1885 Publisher: Philadelphia : R.T. Peck & Co. Number of Pages: 974

Author: Ellis, Franklin, 1828-1885
Publication date: 1885
Publisher: Philadelphia : R.T. Peck & Co.
Number of Pages: 974