History of Monmouth county, New Jersey, Part 4

Author: Ellis, Franklin, 1828-1885; Swan, Norma Lippincott. [from old catalog]
Publication date: 1885
Publisher: Philadelphia, R. T. Peck & co.
Number of Pages: 1148

USA > New Jersey > Monmouth County > History of Monmouth county, New Jersey > Part 4

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In Monmouth County, besides the Cretaccous marls, are those known to the geologist as the Tertiary marls. Here is found Dinophis, the earliest serpent, over twenty feet in length. The reptiles are now so diminished in number and reduced in size as no longer to domineer the depths ; for the sharks, which were at best but secondary in the Cretaceous seas, are now the dominant race. Specimens in my possession demonstrate the fact that some of these immense

fishes could not only swallow a Jonah upon occasion without injuring the specimen in the act of deglutition, but conld. if needed, stow away, sardine-like, a round score of Jonah's brethren.

And there were sword-fishes, too-some not greatly unlike those in modern seas; but others, altogether unlike these, had a bowsprit exten- sion of the upper jaw. It was a conical ram of solid, pointed bone, something like a marline- spike. These I have obtained from the pits at Farmingdale. One other of these sword-fishes must be mentioned, the Colorhyncus ornatus. This is certainly a "taney " name; for, literally rendered, it means the ornate, beautiful snout. The ram in this instance is quite an elegant weapon, and in form almost identical with the "steel " on which the butcher sharpens his knife. So far as I can learn, they never exceeded eighteen inches in length, being at the base less than one inch in diameter, and terminating in a sharp point. This cylindrical weapon, like the " steel " mentioned, had fine parallel striæe throughout its entire length. A more murder- ous instrument for impaling fishes could not be devised. A curious fact, too, is this, that it is harder than the butcher's steel. Desiring to share a fragment of one of these swords with a friend, it was entrusted to a jeweler to eut in two. The speeimen was but half an inch thick, and yet the operation destroyed two saws.

But our sense of limitation becomes oppress- ive. We feel like a tourist on a fast horse-so little can be accomplished, though the opportu- tunity is so rich and grand. Passing to the Quaternary Age, a few words, and we have done.

In the so-called Drift, one phase of the gla- cial period, we have collected in Monmouth County relies of the reindeer, walrus, and even a species of dugong. There was also in this period a great beaver, now extinct. The beaver of the present, which also is extinct in these parts, was a later creation. It is interesting to note that as to-day there are two species of ele- phant, the one in Africa and the one in India, so in these remote times of which we write there were two elephants, whose remains are with us: the elephas, or mammoth, and the

HISTORY OF MONMOUTH COUNTY, NEW JERSEY.

mastodon. With the period of the drift, when the climate became cold, the great fossil-beaver and the mammoth perished. The mastodon survived, until it found itself confronted with the autochthonic man, the insurmountable en- emy, to whom it succumbed. Of this, the last of the great paleontologie beasts, it would be easy to write a volume. But here the pen drops its eunning ; for of its slayer, the Ameri- can prehistorie man, that child of mystery, of the when and the whence of whose coming we know less than we do of the brutes which perish.

CHAPTER FFI.

THE DUTCH, ENGLISH AND PROPRIETARY RULE IN NEW JERSEY.

THE first European occupants and rulers of the valley of the Hudson River, and of all the territory extending thence to the Delaware and to the ocean, were the Dutch, under whose auspices, in the year 1609, the famed navigator, Henry Hudson, discovered and explored the great river that has since borne his name, and on which discovery and exploration the Dutch based their elaim to the country to which they gave the name New Netherlands,-embracing not only the present State of New Jersey, but a vast area of country to the north, cast and south of it, now in the States of New York, Pennsylvania and Delaware.

The actual occupation of the country by the Dutch began in 1610,' when they sent over a

1 " When, therefore, Ilndson had returned, towards the end of autumn, to Amsterdam in his bark, and made known what he had discovered repecting the river (which he called Manhattes, from the name of the people who (welt at its mouth), immediately. in 1610, some Amster- dam merchants [the Dutch East India Company ] sent thither a vessel loaded with a variety of goods, and hav- ing obtained from the States-General exclusive anthority to visit the river and neighboring regions for purposes of trade, they carried on a commerce with the natives for several succeeding years ; for which purpose our people remained there during winter, and finally, in 1615, built a fort under the auspices of the States-General, and garri- soned it with soldiers. . . . Such was the commence- ment of what resulted in the application of the name, New

vessel with a cargo proper for the opening of a fur trade with the natives. This they accom- plished, carrying on their trade at first directly from the vessel; but in two or three years they had established trading posts (unfortified until 1715) at the sites of the present cities of New York and Albany, and at another point between these on the Hudson. It is often mentioned in history that these posts were established in 1614; but the fact that the post at Manhattan (New York) was in existence as early as 1613, and was in that year reduced by an English expedition from the James River, Virginia, will be shown in a following account of that occurrence.

The occupation of Manhattan by the Dutch is narrated in Heylin's Cosmography (published in 1652), which, after mentioning the fact that they had become established there, proceeds : "But they were hardly warm in their new habitations when Sir Samuel Argall, Governor of Virginia, specially so called (having dispos- sessed the French of that part of Canada now called Nova Scotia, August, 1613), disputed the possession with them, alleging that Hudson, under whose sale they claimed that country, being an Englishman, could not alienate or dis- member it (being but a part or province of Virginia), from the crown thereof. Hereupon the Dutch Governor2 submits himself and his plantation to His Majesty of England and the Governor of Virginia for and under him. But a new Governor being sent from Amsterdam in the year next following, not only failed in pay- ing the conditioned tributes, but began to fortify himself and entitle those of Amsterdam to a just propriety."

The statement made in the foregoing account, that Argall was then Governor of Virginia, is incorrect, the Governor at that time being Sir Thomas Gates, under whom Capt. Sir Samuel Argall was commander of several vessels be- longing to the Virginia Company. In the sum- mer of the year 1613 he (Argall) sailed from the

Netherlands, to that part of the northern continent."- De Laet' " New World," published in 1633.

2 The " Dutch Governor " here referred to was Hendrick Christiaensen, or Corstainsen, a superintendent of the Dutch West India Company's little trading settlement, then re- cently established on Manhattan Island.

THE DUTCH, ENGLISH AND PROPRIETARY RULE IN NEW JERSEY.

C'apes of Virginia on a fishing expedition 1 to the vicinity of the island of Mount Desert, off' the coast of Maine, for the purpose of securing a · supply of cod for the use of the English colo- nists on the James River. He and his party were driven ashore by a storm near the mouth of the Penobscot River, where they were told by Indians that a French ship was at Mount Des- ert, " whereupon Argall, being in want of pro- visions, and his men in a shattered, half-naked con- dition, resolved, after ascertaining the strength of the intruders [as they considered the French to he], to attack them." They did so, successfully, taking and plundering the ship, killing a French Jesuit priest (Gilbert du Thet), wound- ing several others, and making prisoners of all the survivors, except five of the French party, who, as it appeared, had come out from France with the intention of establishing, under the au- spices of the Jesuits, a colony within the limits of Acadia-afterwards known as Nova Scotia. " The liberal supplies which they had brought from France," says the French writer Lescar- hot, " for the intended colony, the offerings of pions zeal, were plundered and carried away to

I " It appears from a letter addressed by him [ Argall] to a friend in England, dated June, 1613, that he had arrived in the prceeding year ; and in the spring of that year [1613] he was employed in exploring the eastern side of Chesapeake Bay in a shallop. During this time his ship was left to be got ready for a fishing voyage ; and on his return, May 12, 1618, he completed his preparations, and at the date of his letter was about sailing on his intended voyage, Hle says : . Thus having put my ship in hand, to be fitted for an intended fishing voyage, I left that business to be followed by my master with a ginge [gang] of men, and my lieutenant fortified on shore with another ginge to fell timber and cleave planks, to build a fishing boat ; my ensign with another ginge was employed in the frigate for getting of fish at l'ape Charles, and transporting it to llenry's town for the relief of such men as were there ; and myself, with a fourth ginge, departed ont of the river in my shallop the first of May for to discover the east side of our Bay, which I found to have many small rivers in it, and very good barbours for boats and barges, but not for ships of any great burthen. . . . So having discovered along the shore some forty leagues northward, I returned again to mny ship the 12th of May, and hastened forward my busi- ness left in hand at my departure, and fitted up my ship, and built my fishing-boat, and made ready to take the first. opportunity of the wind for my fishing voyage, of which I beseeeli God of his merey to bless us.'"-N. Y. Historical Collections, New Series, vol. i. p. 338. 2

minister to the wants of the English hereties in Virginia." Argall also took with him to Vir- ginia three Jesuit priests, " le Capitaine de Ma- rine, Charles Fleuri d' Abbeville, and fourteen other prisoners.

The unexpected success of this voyage of Argall in the acquisition of plunder stimulated the Virginia authorities to further attempts against the French colonists in the northeast, "and an armed expedition, consisting of three vessels, commanded by Argall, sailed forthwith for Aca- dia. Touching at the scene of their late outrage on the island of Mount Desert, they set up there a cross bearing the name of the King of Great Britain instead of the one erected by the Jesuits, and then sailed to St. Croix, where they de- stroved all the remains of a former settlement. Crossing the Bay of Fundy, they next landed at Port Royal (now Annapolis, Nova Scotia), and finding the town deserted, the Governor be- ing absent and the people at work several miles from the fort, they met with no resistance in pillaging and stripping the place of whatever it contained, loading their ships with the spoil and destroying what they could not carry away. The settlement had existed eight or nine years and had cost its founders more than one hun- dred thousand crowns in money, besides the la- bor and anxiety that necessarily attended their efforts to plant civilization upon a desolate roast." 2

It was asserted by the French authorities that Père Biart, one of the Jesuit priests whom Ar- gall took with him to Virginia, on the return from Mount Desert, acted as pilot or guide to the Englishman on the expedition against the Acadian towns. Argall arrived at Port Royal on the 1st of November, 1613, and after destroy- ing the place, and having gathered his plunder on board the ships, set sail on the return on the 9th of the same month. A violent storm arose soon afterwards and dispersed the vessels. One of them (a barqne) was never again heard from ; the ship having the Jesuit priests and a good share of the plunder was driven to the Azores Islands, and thence made her way safely to England, while the one commanded by Argall

2 N. Y. list. Collections.

HISTORY OF MONMOUTH COUNTY, NEW JERSEY.

in person, being carried far away from her true course by stress of weather, entered the bay within the shelter of Sandy Hook, and passed up to Manhattan Island, where (doubtless unex- pectedly) the commander found the trading post of the Dutch, and at once reduced them to ten- porary submission to the English authority, as before narrated.

Argall's expedition against the Acadian French colonists, and his reduction of the Dutch trading settlement on Manhattan Island, are mentioned by Plantagenet1 as follows : " Then Virginia being planted, settled, and all that part now called Maryland, New Albion and New Scotland [Nova Scotia] being part of Virginia, Sir Thomas Dale and Sir Samuel Argall, Cap- tains and Counsellors of Virginia, hearing of divers aliens and intruders, and traders without license, with a vessel and forty soldiers, landed at a place called Mount Desert, in Nova Scotia, near St. John's River, or Tweed, possessed by the French ; there killed some French, took away their guns and dismantled the fort, and in their return 3 landed at Manhatas Isle, in Hudson's River, where they found four houses built, and a pretended Duteh Governor under the West India Company, of Amsterdam, share or part, who kept trading boats and trucking with the Indians ; but the said knights told him their commission was to expel him and all alien in- truders on his Majesty's dominion and territo- ries ; this being part of Virginia, and this river an English discovery of Hudson, an English- man. The Dutchman contented them for their charge and voyage, and by his letter sent to Virginia and recorded, submitted himself, eom- pany and plantation to his Majesty and to the Governor and government of Virginia ; but the next pretended Dutch Governor, in maps of printed eards, calling this, part New Nether- lands, failing in paying of customs at his return to Plymouth, in England, was there, with his

beaver, goods and person, attached to his dant- age of £1500. Whereupon, at the suit of the Governor and Council of Virginia, his now Maj- esty [Charles I. ], by his embassador in Holland, complaining of the said aliens' intrusion on such his territories and domains, the said lords, the States of Holland by their publick instrument de- clared that they did not avow, nor would pro- tect them, being a private party of the Amster- dam West India Company, but left them to his Majesty's will and mercy ; whereupon three sev- eral orders from the Couneil table and commis- sions have been granted for the expelling and removing them from thence, of which they, tak- ing notice, and knowing their weakness and want of vietuals, have offered to sell the same for &2500. And lastly, taking advantage of our present war and distraction now ask £5000, and have lately offered many affronts and dam- ages to his Majesty's subjeets in New England ; and in general endanger all his Majesty's adjoin- ing countries most wiekedly, feloniously and traitorously, and contrary to the marine and ad- miral laws of all Christians, sell by wholesale, guns, powder, shot and ammunition to the In- dians, instructing them in the use of our fights and arms : inasmuch as 2000 Indians by them armed, Mohocks, Raritons and some of Long Isle, with their own guns, so sold them, fell into war with the Dutch, destroyed all their scattering farms and boors, foreing them all to retire to their upper fort, forty leagues up that river [at Albany] and to Manhatas ; for all or most retreating to Manhatas, it is now a pretty town of trade, having more English than Dutch."

The foregoing account, however, is errone- ous in its statement that the claim of the crown of England to New York and New Jersey was based on "an English discovery by Hudson, an Englishman." It was based chiefly on the discovery of the entire eastern coast, from New- foundland southward to Virginia, by John Cabot, in command of an English fleet, in the year 1497, during the reign of King Henry the Seventb, and under his commission and orders, the objeet of his exploration being, like that of nearly all the other discoverers of that period, to find a western passage to the

" Beauchamp Plantaganet, Esq., in his " Description of the Province of New Albion," published in London in 1648.

2 Here Plantaganet makes the mistake of supposing that Argall came to Manhattan Island on the return from his first voyage in 1613, instead of his second, made in the fall of the year.

THE DUTCH, ENGLISH AND PROPRIETARY RULE IN NEW JERSEY.

famed land of Cathay. Accompanied by his son, Sebastian, he first came with his ships to the southern coast of Labrador, and sailed thence to Newfoundland, which he reached in June of the year mentioned " and took posses- sion of that island and of all the coast of the northeast part of America as far as Cape Flor- ida, which he also, by landing in several parts of it, claimed in the name of his master, the King of England."1 He made no landing, however, between Nova Scotia and abont lati- tude 38º north ; and, finally, fearing that his ships would run short of provisions (and prob)- ably despairing of finding the desired pas- sage), he returned to England,2 taking with him several of the natives of Newfoundland, whose appearance excited great curiosity in London.

This ancient claim of the English crown to the ownership and sovereignty of North America, based on the discoveries in 1497, re- mained dormant, at least with regard to any vig- orous attempt at enforcement within the territory now embraced in the States of New York and

1 Sir Humphrey Gilbert.

2 Sebastian Cabot made a map of the coasts discovered on this voyage ; upon which map was given an account of the expedition, a part of which, referring to the discovery of Newfoundland, was as follows : " In the year of our Lord 1497, John Cabot, a Venitian, and his son, Sebastian (with an English fleet), set out from Bristol and discovered that land which no man had before attempted. This discovery was made on the 24th of June, about five o'clock in the morning. This land he called Prima Vista (or the first seen), because it was that part of which they had the first sight from the sea. It is now called Bonavista. The Island which lies out before the land he called the Island of St. John, because it was discovered on the festival of St. John the Baptist."

Plantagenet, in his " Description of New Albion," gives the following in reference to Cabot's discovery of the American coast. viz. : " Then the most powerful and richest King of Europe, King llenry the Seventh of England, sent ont an Englishman, born at Bristol, called Cabot, granted under his greate seale to him all places and countrys to be discovered and possesst ; who, then beginning at Care Florida, discovered, entered on, took possession of, set up crosses and procured atturnment and acknowledgement of the Indian Kings to his then Majesty, as head, lord and emperor of the south west of America, all along that coast, both in Florida, from 20 degrees to 35. where old Virginia, in 35 and 30 minutes, 65 years since was seated by the five several colonies about Croatan Cape. Haloraske and Rawley's Isle, by Sir Walter Rawley."

New Jersey, for more than a century and a half from the time of Cabot's voyages, this inaction being caused by the wars in which England was involved in Europe, and particu- larly in the first half of the seventeenth cen- tury by the home troubles which resulted in the Cromwellian Revolution, and the loss of throne and life by King Charles. Meanwhile, the Dutch had established their settlements on the Hudson and Delaware, built forts and held almost undisputed possession of the country, which they named New Netherlands (in which all of the present State of New Jer- sey was included), with its capital at Fort Am- sterdam or New Amsterdam, where New York City now stands. After Capt. Samuel Argall's reduction of that place, in 1613, the Dutch remained there in possession, without further molestation from the Virginia government or from the English, for more than sixty years, during which time they also retained control of all the territory of New Jersey, except that a small portion of it on the Delaware was held for a short time by the Swedes; and also excepting an abortive attempt made by some English adventurers to settle and establish what they called the " Province of New Albion."

The grant of New Albion was made to Sir Edmund Ployden, Knight, and certain as- sociates, on the 21st of June, 1634, by the King of England, in the expectation that the grantees would plant settlements within the territory and thus enforce the English right which had so long been dormant. The boun- daries and extent of the grant were very vaguely described, but it included all of the present State of New Jersey, all of Long Island, with a part of New York lying west of the Hudson River, and parts of the States of Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland. In the " Description of New Albion," before referred to, published in 1648, by Beauchamp Plantagenet, who was one of the associates of Ployden, it is mentioned as follows: "The bounds is a thousand miles compass of this most temperate and rich prov- ince, for our south bound is Maryland north bounds, and beginneth at Aquats or the south- ernmost or first cape of Delaware Bay [Cape llenlopen], in thirty-eight and forty minutes.

HISTORY OF MONMOUTH COUNTY, NEW JERSEY.

and so runneth by, or through, or including Keut Isle through Chisapeask Bay to Piscata- way ; including the falls of Patowmecke River to the head or northernmost branch of that river, being three hundred miles due west, and thence northward to the head of Hudson's River fifty leagues, and so down Hudson's River to the ocean, sixty leagues, and thence to the ocean isles across Delaware Bay to the South Cape, fifty leagues; in all seven hun- dred and eighty miles. Then all Hudson's River, isles, Long Isle or Pamunke, and all isles within ten leagues of said province being; and note, Long Isle alone is twenty broad and one hundred and eighty miles long, so that alone is four hundred miles compasse."

The full title of the pamphlet from which the foregoing is extracted is " A Description of the Province of New Albion and a Direction for Adventurers with small stock to get two for one and good land freely ; and for Gentlemen and all Servants, Labourers and Artificers to live plentifully, and a former Description, re- printed, of the healthiest, pleasantest and richest Plantation of New Albion, in North Virginia, proved by thirteen Witnesses; together with a Letter from Master Robert Evelin, that lived there many years, showing the Partieularities and Excellency thereof; with a brief of the charge of Vietualling and Necessaries to trans- port and buy stock for each Planter and La- bourer there to get his Master fifty pounds per anmum or more, in twelve Trades, and at ten pounds Charges only a man." And the work was addressed or dedieated by its author, Plan- tagenet, " To the Right Honorable and mighty Lord Edmund by Divine Providenee Lord Proprietor, Earl Palatine, Governor and Cap- tain-General of the Province of New Albion ; and to the Right Honorable, the Lord Vis- count Monson, of Castlemain ; the Lord Sher- ard, Baron of Leitrim, and to all other, the Viscounts, Barons, Baronets, Knights and Gentlemen, merchants, adventurers and plant- ers of the hopeful Company of New Albion ; in all forty-four undertakers and subscribers, bound by Indenture to bring and settle three thousand able, trained men in our several Plan- tations to the said Province."

The seductive title and high-sounding ad- dress of Plantagenet's work explains in a great degree the plan and character of the New Al- bion project. The chief, Sir Edmund Ployden, was called the Lord Palatine, a title and dig- nity which was to be hereditary, and in which was vested the power of government and the creation of barons, baronets and other orders of nobility, to whom were to be granted the man- ors into which the whole territory of New Al- bion was to be laid out. The Palatine gave a barony to Beauchamp Plantagenet and several others whom he created nobles, and also to each member of his own family ; and to his ekdl- est son, heir apparent and Governor, Francis, Lord Ployden, Baron of Mount Royal, a very large manor on the Elk River; to Thomas, Lord Ployden, High Admiral and Baron of Roymount, the manor of Roymount, including the site of the town of Lewes, Del .; and to the Lady Winifred Ployden, Baroness of Uvedale, a manor of that name, which was given " from its abundance of grapes ; producing the Tou- louse, Muscat and others." The residence of the Earl Palatine was the great manor of " Wateessit," near Salem, N. J. Plantagenet was made Baron of Belvill, with the grant of a manor of that name, containing ten thousand acres of land. An order of knighthood was also instituted, to be composed of persons of con- dition who would emigrate to the province and there assist in efforts to convert the native say- ages to the Christian religion, and the members of this order were to be styled " The Albion Knights of the Conversion of the Twenty-three Kings,"-this being, as was supposed, the number of Indian " Kings " who lived and ruled within the province.

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History of Monmouth county, New Jersey, Part 4

Author: Ellis, Franklin, 1828-1885; Swan, Norma Lippincott. [from old catalog] Publication date: 1885 Publisher: Philadelphia, R. T. Peck & co. Number of Pages: 1148

Author: Ellis, Franklin, 1828-1885; Swan, Norma Lippincott. [from old catalog]
Publication date: 1885
Publisher: Philadelphia, R. T. Peck & co.
Number of Pages: 1148