History of Union and Middlesex Counties, New Jersey with Biographical Sketches of many of their Pioneers and Prominent Men, Part 104

Author: W. Woodford Clayton, Ed.
Publication date: 1882
Publisher: Philadelphia: Everts
Number of Pages: 1224

USA > New Jersey > Middlesex County > History of Union and Middlesex Counties, New Jersey with Biographical Sketches of many of their Pioneers and Prominent Men > Part 104
USA > New Jersey > Union County > History of Union and Middlesex Counties, New Jersey with Biographical Sketches of many of their Pioneers and Prominent Men > Part 104

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or worked for its clays. Bowlders from one to three feet in diameter are abundant, both in the drift-bed and on the surface. Occasionally thin and irregular layers of white, sandy clay and clayey-like pebbles occur in this drift. These are, however, of very lim- ited extent and not common.

The surface of much of the area occupied by this drift is remarkably uneven. The hills are irregular in outline and of uneven slopes, and sink-holes and small ponds are numerous. These irregularities of the surface are striking features in the higher grounds west and southwest of Woodbridge, in what may be termed a continuation of the Short Hills.

The thickness of the red shale drift as cut in many places does not exceed twenty feet, but in Poplar Hill there must be a much greater thickness, possibly more than a hundred feet. The average or mean thickness may be put at twenty feet. An examina- tion of the table of elevations of the clays, kaolins, feldspars, and fire-sands, and a comparison of these heights and the heights of the surface at these places, shows that there is not anywhere more than forty feet of drift, excepting in Poplar Hill. So far as ex- cavations indicate it is frequently quite thin, some- times amounting to little more than a soil and subsoil. This is more particularly the case towards the south- east and near its boundary lines, or where the sheet thins out and disappears.

That this drift is a part of the great northern drift and of the glacial epoch is evident from the nature of the materials. The large and numerous bowlders in it belong to rocks whose outcrop is to the north, and these occur in numbers proportional to the nearness of such rock formations. Thus the trap rocks and sandstones are in excess over the gneiss and conglom- erates. Then the great mass of shaly material has certainly not traveled far, as much of this is in the form of fragments, which are incapable of long trans- portation without being reduced to earth. This char- acter of constituent materials and entire absence of all sorting or stratification corresponds with what is observed in the great northern drift elsewhere. No organic remains have been discovered in it, although it has been so largely excavated and at so many points.

2. YELLOW SAND AND GRAVEL .- This so-called sand and gravel drift includes all the more or less sandy and gravelly layers which form the surface materials or superficial covering of this clay district outside of the lines above given as the boundaries of the more recent red shale or northern drift. As has already been stated, it underlies much of the latter, and extends north and northwest beyond the limits of this district. In all directions it goes beyond the comparatively small area represented by the map. The almost endless gradations of sand, sandy loams, gravel, gravelly loams, etc., generally of a yellowish color, but with many other shades acci- dental to the surface, are embraced in this forma-

427

THE CLAY DISTRICT OF MIDDLESEX COUNTY.

tion. It is not only thus marked by the general character of its material components, but more defi- nitely by the sorted or stratified arrangement of these materials, a characteristic which everywhere distin- guishes it from the unsorted red shale drift. And it might very appropriately be termed the stratified drift. Towards the northwest, between Bonhamtown and Martin's Dock, some red shale earth and frag- ments and bowlders appear in it, as if there had been a mingling of materials by alternate currents carry- ing shale and sand and gravel. Excepting on the northwest border of this district, there is a remarkable absence of shale in this formation. And this is another of its distinguishing features.

This sand and gravel or stratified drift is found as a surface covering, unconformably resting upon all the clay and other beds of the plastic clay series, except- ing in the area of the red shale drift, where it is over- laid by the latter.

The thickness of this surface formation varies ex- ceedingly from point to point, even within the limits of a single clay bank. In those about Woodbridge and north of the Raritan River it ranges from one to thirty feet, or possibly in rare instances even more widely. In William P. Edgar's clay bank it is thirty feet thick, and the red shale drift is wanting, this forming the surface. In the bank of William H. Berry, a few rods southwest of Edgar's, it is cut twenty to twenty-five feet thick under six feet of red shale drift. A few rods west of this and on the same property the latter rests immediately upon the top black clays. The same irregularities and breaks appear in it in the Mutton Hollow clay banks, west of Woodbridge, and in those of the Salamander Works and others, north of the New Brunswick road. And the two in their relation to each other and in their varying thickness are beautifully exposed in Anness' feldspar bank, in E. F. Roberts' bank, near Eagleswood, in the cuts of the Easton and Amboy Railroad, in the east bank of the Crossman Clay and Manufacturing Company, and at many other points which might be mentioned, since most of the digging for clay abont Woodbridge has to penetrate both of these drift formations. The average thickness may be put at ten feet. In the clay banks at the Sand Hills and along the north shore of the Raritan River the thickness is from four to twenty-five feet. Here it forms the surface material. South of the Raritan it appears to be thicker, ranging from fifteen to forty feet in the several clay banks from Sayreville to South Amboy. At the sand bank of Maxfield & Parisen, in South Amboy, it is at least thirty feet ; at Otto Ernst's clay-mines, near Chesquake Creek, it is about forty feet thick. From the elevation of some of the hills and ridges in the district southwest of South Amboy (one hundred and forty to one hun- dred and eighty feet), the maximum thickness of this sand and gravel is thought to be not less than one hundred feet.

The materials of this formation, whether sand, gravel, or less rounded rock fragments, are always stratified. The lines of stratification or layers are sometimes horizontal, but frequently they are seen to be wavy or gently undulating. The dip or incli- nation of these lamina or layers is not uniform in direction. A prevailing dip towards the north- west, as might be expected, is not shown by the observations. This sorted arrangement appears in the layers of sauds, gravels, etc., although these layers are not, generally, persistent to any great distance, but taper out and are then replaced by others. In the examination of the surface of the country a marked feature is nearly everywhere ob- served in the gravelly hills and crests of ridges and more sandy valleys and depressions. This may be owing to some systematic arrangement of the gravels and sands, but more likely the result of surface drain- age, which, operating through ages, has carried down the more easily transported sands and left these grav- elly accumulations in the shape of hills and ridges such as we now see. The sand and gravel generally alternate, but irregularly, and in some places there are thick beds of sand without any lines of gravel, as, for example, at the clay banks of Sayre & Fisher, George Such, Messrs. Roberts, and the sand bank at South Amboy. Very frequently a thin gravel stratum, a few inches thick, is seen lying immediately upon the clay. The sand-beds generally exhibit a double system of lines or oblique lamination, known as cross stratification. This can be seen at nearly all of the clay banks on the sonth shore of the Raritan, from Sayreville to South Amboy. The sand is mostly a fine white to a yellowish-white granular quartz mass, which is in some layers mixed with earthy matter. On the north side of the Raritan there is less sand and a larger proportion of earth and gravel. Quartz constitutes nearly the whole of the yellow sands, and most of this is in the form of grains and pebbles of white to yellowish, transparent, translucent, chalce- donic varieties. Some black grains of hornblende and very small, angular grains of magnetite occur with the quartz. In some places these grains are ce- mented together by oxide of iron, making a friable, stony mass. Fragments of feldspar are rare; and most strange is the general absence of mica from these yellow sands and gravels. It does occur in places, as in Whitehead's moulding-sand, east of Sayerville, and in the South Amboy pits. This absence of so common a mineral and rock constituent may, per- haps, be suggestive of the source of the materials found in this drift. In the vicinity of Piscataway, and at Weidner's cut near Martin's Dock, both round and angular fragments of red shale are quite abund- ant in this formation. This exceptional occurrence of the shale is also seen farther southwest, beyond the limits of this map, and always near the southeast border of the shale outcrop. But here the deposition was in water, and a mixture of materials was such as

428

HISTORY OF UNION AND MIDDLESEX COUNTIES, NEW JERSEY.

would be expected. Farther east the glacial action ! carried the red shale farther south and covered the stratified drift, and in that manner made a marked line between the two surface formations.

Wherever the white sands of this formation consti- tute the surface the soil is light and poor, and the timber is mainly yellow pine, chestnnt, and scrubby oak. The gravel has more earth in it, and makes a tighter and better soil. But as a whole the area oc- cupied by this sand and gravel formation is quite in- ferior as a soil to the red shale drift north of the Rar- itan River. As these formations make the soil, their occurrence explains the differences so marked in this district, not only in the natural soil itself but in its forest covering. And much of the general develop- ment of the agricultural wealth of this part of the State is also due to this occurrence of the northern drift. The mouth of the Raritan River also owes its place to the glacier whose foot terminated at Perth Amboy. So that the glacier of the past geological age has left an impress upon this country which all subsequent tillage and improvement has not effaced.

This formation has been described as drift. It must not be confounded with glacial drift, as its origin was due to water. Its stratification, its lines and lay- ers, indicate that flowing water and not ice was the moving power. And these alternations of pebbles and sand show that there were great changes in the force of the currents that carried them. The dip of these layers is not at all uniform, although several to the northwest have been observed. These may point to a northward movement of these currents. The general absence of red shale also points to a southern origin. Again the prevalence of pebbles of mottled white and chalcedonic quartz, and of a reddish varie- gated quartz, unlike any known rocks to the north or northwest, and the existence of rolled fossils, more abundant than in the more northern gravels and true bowlder drift, all point to a southeastern origin, -a wash or drift from lands now under the waves of the Atlantic. Possibly the same continent furnished the materials for the older beds below, the clays, kaolins, and fire-sands, and this in part gravelly for- mation may have been the last of the successive floods that came from that direction. If so there must have been a long interval between the deposition of these clays and this drift, since these, as well as the more recent green-sand marl-beds of the creta- ceous and tertiary ages, are all alike covered uncon- formably by it. The glacial drift came later and partly covered this, but as to the length of time be- tween the two formations we have no data for know- ing. As no fossils have been found in the older sand and gravel drift, excepting the rolled pebbles and fragments, it is impossible to determine its age. It may belong to the later tertiary and have preceded the glacial age. It is hoped that future explorations in many localities may result in the discovery of some remains which will enable us to determine its place

in the geological series, and also point more conclu- sively to the source of its materials.

In this notice of the surface these two drift forma- tions have been described as constituting the whole of the area of this clay district. They do not, how- ever, form the whole surface, since there are bere and there small, isolated outcrops of the several clays, kaolins, feldspars, and fire-sands. These are, as it were, little islands in the great sea of drift. But these outcrops are of so limited extent, and they have been so nearly all dug out for their materials, that they are altogether insignificant so far as surface features are concerned.

There is one other outcrop deserving attention, not so much from its size as its geological importance, this is the red shade hill in Perth Amboy township, one and a half miles northwest of Perth Amboy, and about a third of a mile east of the Woodbridge aod Perth Amboy road. This outcrop of shale is not more than an eighth of a mile in diameter, and is surrounded on all sides by drift. The shale has a northwestern dip and appears to be fast rock. It is probably an elevated point in the floor, on which the clays and drift have been successively deposited. And it was probably never covered by them, or at least not by the clay and feldspar bed. The drift may have been removed by subsequent denndation. This hill or ontcrop of shale in situ is at least two miles from any other, or from the southeast border of the shale formation, and appears to be an outlier from the main body.

The tidal meadows have already been referred to in the above general description of the surface of this clay district. They constitute the more recent al- luvial formation. The boundary lines of such meadows are easily traced, and are represented on the map. This alluvium rests unconformably upon the older formations. Very generally there is either red shale drift, or the sand and gravel under the meadow inud. At a few points valuable clays have been found a few feet beneath the surface of the tide meadows. The depth of the workable deposits below tide-water level and the expenses of raising both water and clay from such pits have retarded the examination of such ground for clay, and consequently only a few pits have been dug in the meadows, and these are near the upland border. The depths below mean tide- level at which clays have in several places been dis- covered show that the beds are continuous under- neath the meadows and the Raritan River. It is only the difficulty and expense of contending against water that hinders the opening of clay pits at any proper place in these meadows. The beds of clay were deposited before the Raritan had cut its present channel to the sea.

Geology .- The geology of the clay district will be best understood by a general review of the geology of the State in which it occurs, and of the geological formations which are associated with it. For this

429

THE CLAY DISTRICT OF MIDDLESEX COUNTY.

reason we here present a condensed statement of the geology of New Jersey.

Nearly all the great geological classes of rocks and earths are represented in this State. Its oldest rocks make up the mountain range which crosses the northern part of the State from northeast to south- west in parts of Sussex, Passaic and Bergen, Warren and Morris, Hunterdon and Somerset, and which is known in New York as the Highlands, in Pennsyl- vania as Sonth Mountain, and is here without any general name, but its individual ridges are known as Ramapo Mountain, Hamburg Mountain, Schooley's Mountain, Trowbridge Mountain, Watnong Moun- tain, Musconetcong Mountain, Scott's Mountain, Marble Mountain, and others. The newer geolog- ical formations lie upon each side of this central ridge and run parallel with it, the Silurian and Devonian limestones and other formations being mostly in a broad belt upon its northwest side, and a little in its valleys; the Triassic red sandstone ad- joins it in a broad belt on its southeast side ; the Cretaceous clays and marls stretch across the State in a belt just southeast of the red sandstones; and the Tertiary and the Recent formations lie southeast of the marls. The Azoic, Cretaceous, Tertiary, and most of the Recent have a prevailing dip towards the southeast, while the Silnrian, Devonian, and Triassic mostly dip towards the northwest.

The boundaries of the Middlesex clay district are as follows : The northwestern boundary, beginning at Woodbridge Neck, on the shore of Staten Island Sound, passes just north of the villages of Wood- bridge and Bonhamtown to the Raritan River, a few rods below the mouth of Mill Brook. Then crossing the Raritan it is easily traced along the south side of Lawrence Brook, and at distances varying from a few rods to a quarter of a mile from the stream to the bend of the brook a mile west of Dean's Pond. From there it can be traced in almost a straight line to the Delaware and Raritan Canal, half-way be- tween Clarksville and Baker's Basin, and then near the line of the canal to Trenton and the Delaware River. From Trenton to Salem the Delaware marks the northwestern and western boundary, with the ex- ception of some limited patches of marsh and allu- vium along the river. Its southeast border can be traced from the shore of Raritan Bay, a little south of Chesquake Creek, in a southwesterly direction in a line passing north of the village of Morristown, and on just sonth of Jacksonville; then across the coun- try by the house of the late Parker Brown to the little village called Texas, on the Matchaponix Creek ; and from thence directly on, passing about a mile south of Jamesburg Station, and crossing the Camden and Amboy Railroad near Cranbury Station, it passes abont a half-mile north of Hightstown, and thence in a line a half-mile north of the railroad to the mouth of Crosswick's Creek on the Delaware at Bordentown. It follows the bank of the river to

Kinkora, from which place it is extremely difficult to trace it with accuracy, the characteristic clays being entirely hidden by superficial deposits and soil, except in the banks of the streams. Guided by these marks the line has been drawn. It follows near the line of the railroad east of Florence ; a half- mile east of Burlington crosses the Rancocus a mile above Bridgeboro', and the Pensauken some distance above Cinnaminson bridge; it comes to the bank of the Delaware again at Gloucester City ; it passes back of Red Bank, crosses Woodbury Creek a mile above its mouth, Mantua Creek near Paulsboro', and Raccoon Creek a mile above Bridgeport; thence it continnes in the same direction to the Delaware near Pennsgrove.

The area comprehended within this formation is three hundred and twenty square miles.

The materials of the clay formation are earthy, and no rocky or stony layers or beds are to be found in it. There are some small places in which the sand and gravel have been cemented with oxide of iron suffi- ciently to form a rough building stone, and concre- tions of clay and oxide of iron of a stony hardness are found in some of the clay beds, but the layers of sand and clay of which the formation is made up are all earthy, and so soft that they can be dug with a spade.

The whole formation is composed of a series of strata of fire-clay, potters' clay, brick-clay, sand, and lignite. The details of these, with their order, thick- ness, and qualities, will be given farther on in this report. The thickness of the series of strata is nearly three hundred and fifty feet. The strata are gener- ally parallel to each other, and are all inclined down- wards towards the southeast with an average dip of about forty-five feet per mile. The direction or strike of the outcropping edges of the strata is south 46º west true bearing.

The geological age of this formation is determined entirely from its fossils, the series of earlier forma- tions between this and the Azoic period being want- ing here, and this lying directly upon the crystalline gneissic rocks. Fossil wood is abundant in many places, and the roots, leaves, and fruit of plants are sometimes found. Shells and remains of animals are rare.

Fossil leaves from the clay banks at Washington and Sayreville, from the clay pits at Burt's Creek, from Mrs. Allen's pit at South Amboy, and from the clay in the bluff bank of the Delaware two miles below Trenton were collected. These were submit- ted to the examination of Prof. Leo Lesquereux, of Columbus, Ohio, who makes a special study of vege- table paleontology, and is one of the most eminent authorities upon the subject. He reports as follows : "The specimens, very numerous, badly preserved, from Sayreville and other localities in the leaf-bed overlying the Woodbridge fire-clay bed, have, so far as they are determinable, the characters of the flora

430

HISTORY OF UNION AND MIDDLESEX COUNTIES, NEW JERSEY.

of the Dakota group, or of the lower Cretaceous of Nebraska and Kansas. This is lower Cretaceous for this country equivalent to a lower member of the upper Cretaceous of Europe. The species identical to both formations in New Jersey and Kansas are Magnolia Capellini, Heer; M. alternans, Heer; Persea Necrascensis, Lesqr .; Salix protæfolia, Lesqr .; two spe- cies of Proteoides ; Glyptostrobus gracillimus, Lesqr. ; Sequoia condita, Lesqr. I noted some other species as new, but they are not named or described; in- deed, from the bad state of preservation of the leaves, it would not be possible to make a diagnosis without a comparative study of specimens with those I have on hand. Among others there are fragments of an Araliopsis, the basilar part of a leaf only, and we have from the Cretaceous of Kansas and now also from that of Colorado numerous species of the same genus.

" The flora of South Amboy, as collected from Mrs. Allen's clay pit, totally differs in its character, as far represented by the few species known as yet, from that at Sayreville.1 It has one, a single species, a Sterculia (new species), in common, and it is the only one. Most of the leaves of the lower Cretaceous stage have entire borders; on the contrary, those of this upper stage are serrate or denticulate on the borders. As said above, these upper Cretaceous leaves repre- sent mostly new species referable to the genera Salix, Proteoides, Andromeda, Myrica, and perhaps a Pru- nus. There are many specimens of small cuneate flabellate leaflets, referable to a new genus of ferns ; also leaves of Quercus, of the section Dryophyllum, and another narrow denticulate, apparently a Loma- tia or a Myrica. The leaves of Salix are like those of S. protifolia of the lower stage, but are covered with a coating of carbonaceous matter which renders their nervation obsolete. One of the leaves is referable to Andromeda, like A. parlatori, Heer .; another to Cin- namomum Heeri, and two species of conifers, Sequoia rigida, Heer., and S. Reichenbachi, Heer., the leaves being shorter and narrower.

" Resuming :

1. Pettit's clay bauk near Washington, S. R.

Sterenlia, undetermined species. Rootlete of equisetum. Andromeda. Proteoides Dapb nogenvides.

Platanus Heerii, Lesqr.

2. Sayre & Fisher's clay bank, at Sayreville.

Glyptostrobus grarillimus, Lesqr. Sequvia condita, Lesqr. S. Smithsinia, Heer. S. Subulata, Heer.

Araliop-is, undeterminable.

· Magnolia alternans, Heer. M. Capellini, Heer. Cinnamomum Heerii, Lesgr. laurus,-species. Persen Nebiascensis, Lesqr. Daphnophyllum ?

Salix protæfolia, Lesqr.

2 It is comparable to an upper Cretaceous bed of Southwest Colorado. See Ann. Rep. of Dr. F. V. Hayden, 1874, p. 360.

Proteoides Daphnogenoides, Heer.

P., uudeterminable. Sterculia, species.

3. J. K. Brick's clay bank, Burts1 Creek. Sassafras (Araliopeis). Seed of Conifer. Rootlets. A Sequoia with thick leaves. Sequoia Reichenbachi.

4. Mrs. Allan'e clay pit, South Amboy. Quercus, dentate leaves. (Dryophyllum.) Sterculia, same as above. Myrica or Lomatia. Salix protætolia.

Andromeda. Ciunamomum Heerii, Leegr.

Sequoia rigida, Heer.

S. Reichenbachi, Heer. Leaves of a peculiar new kind of fern.

"These specimens are few and poor, and therefore the determinations are not positively ascertained."

Two specimeus only of shells have been collected from the clays during the surveys. These are not very well preserved, but they have been examined by Prof. W. M. Gabb, of Philadelphia, and by him de- termined to be the Cucullwa antrorsa, a species com- mon in the green sand-marl bed. It is undoubtedly of the Cretaceous age.

Pebbles containing fossils are not uncommon in the gravel fonud in all parts of the clay district. Several small lots submitted to Prof. R. P. Whitfield, of the American Museum of Natural History, Central Park, New York, were reported on as follows: "The fossils in the various lots are nearly all from the Upper Hel- derberg limestone group. Those from Martin's Dock contain three species of Favosites, several fragments of cyathophylloid corals, a Michelina, also allied to Favosites, Atrypa reticularis, Strophodonta parra, and some other shells, fragmentary, also several specimens of an undescribed Stromatopora (spongoid).

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History of Union and Middlesex Counties, New Jersey with Biographical Sketches of many of their Pioneers and Prominent Men, Part 104

Author: W. Woodford Clayton, Ed. Publication date: 1882 Publisher: Philadelphia: Everts Number of Pages: 1224

Author: W. Woodford Clayton, Ed.
Publication date: 1882
Publisher: Philadelphia: Everts
Number of Pages: 1224