History of Union and Middlesex Counties, New Jersey with Biographical Sketches of many of their Pioneers and Prominent Men, Part 122

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 122
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 122

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BENCH AND BAR OF MIDDLESEX.

securing the convicted loyalist. Fortunately its mistress was absent; but it was under any circum- stances a trial of no ordinary character to have one who had dwelt beneath their roof, and been warmly cherished, thus diligently seeking to entrap the object of her highest regard, particularly as there was no reason for presuming Mr. Skinner to be in Amboy."

There can be no doubt but Bloomfield acted under precise orders, and he may have been selected on account of his knowledge of the premises. The company remained two days at Amboy, and then proceeded to Albany, arriving there on the 3d of May. On the 5th they were to be in readiness to march to Quebec; but the news of the retreat from that city caused a change, and on the 20th a part of the regiment was ordered to march up the Mohawk, " to subdue Johnston and his brood of Tories." On the evening of May 19th, Capt. Bloomfield returned to Albany with Lady Johnston a prisoner, bringing news that the regiment was to be stationed at or near Johnston Hall to keep back the Indians. Johnston and his Mohawks fled to Canada, where they remained permanently.

Mr. Skinner " took a commission as brigadier-gen- eral from General Howe, with authority to raise five battalions from among the disaffected of New Jersey, of which he only succeeded in obtaining five hundred and seventeen. He did all he could to aid the royal cause, and after the Revolution went to England with his family, and received from the government compensation for his forfeited estate, and half-pay for life."

Mr. Skinner was the eldest son of Rev. William Skinner, who in 1721 was sent out as a missionary to Perth Amboy by the "Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts," and became the first rector of St. Peter's Church of that place. His mother was Elizabeth, youngest daughter of Stephen Van Cortlandt. His brothers and sisters were Ste- phen, William, John, and Gertrude. Cortlandt Skinner was educated for the bar, and studied the profession with David Ogden, of Newark, who pre- ceded him and was associated with him at the bar of this county.

In 1752 he married Elizabeth, daughter of Philip Kearney, Esq., of Amboy, another distinguished legal | in Deerfield, Cumberland Co., after which he be-

contemporary at the Middlesex bar. As a lawyer, Mr. Skinner took first rank among those of his day. " Al- though not of studious habits, he became eminent in his profession, his natural abilities being good, and his oratorical powers considerably above mediocrity."

It is stated by Elmer and others that Cortlandt Skinner died at Bristol, England, in 1799, at the age of seventy-one. We think the statement with regard to his age must be.a mistake. It would make his birth to have occurred in 1728, and the minutes of the courts of this county show that he was in the practice of law in 1742; hence he must have been in practice at the age of fourteen, which is improbable.

His father died at the age of seventy-one in 1758. Cortlandt Skinner had been ten years in practice before he was married, and at that time he was prob- ably about twenty-eight.

STEPHEN SKINNER, a younger brother of Cort- landt Skinner, of Perth Amboy, was one of the judges of the Court of Common Pleas of Middlesex County. He was also treasurer of East Jersey, and claimed to have been robbed on the night of July 21, 1768, of over six thousand pounds in coin and bills. Suspicions were entertained of various individuals, and some doubted whether there had been any rob- bery. In 1770 the General Assembly took up the subject and referred it to a committee, who reported that the loss should be attributed to the negligence of the treasurer, and that he should be held accountable for it, and to this report the Assembly agreed. The Governor (Franklin) took part with Skinner, and a controversy arose which was ended only when the Revolution had so far progressed as to make other questions more engrossing. James (afterwards chief justice) Kinsey was put at the head of the other com- mittee in 1773, to whom the message of the Governor on the subject was referred. His report took a dif- ferent view of the subject from that advanced by the Governor. The subject was resumed in 1774, when the committee reported : " It would give us pleasure to be able to join your excellency in opinion that the robbery of the Eastern Treasury had been brought to light ; but after having considered your excellency's message, and examined the papers laid before us, we cannot but think that this affair still remains in an obscurity which we must leave for time to unravel." The popular feeling both against Skinner and the Governor became so great that the former was com- pelled to resign the treasuryship, and the latter, with his Council, confirmed a new nomination by the As- sembly. A suit was commenced against Skinner, but it was never tried; he adhered to the royal cause, be- came a wanderer, and died in Nova Scotia.

GEN. JOSEPH BLOOMFIELD was born and spent the early part of his life in this county. He was the son of Dr. Moses Bloomfield, of Woodbridge, in which town- ship he was born in 1755. While a youth he was sent to a classical school taught by Rev. Enoch Green came a student of law in the office of Cortlandt Skin- ner, attorney-general of the province, at Amboy, and was admitted to practice in 1775. He settled as a lawyer at Bridgeton, but in 1776 entered the mili- tary service of the colonies, in which he remained till 1778, when he resigned his commission. In the fall of that year he was chosen clerk of the Assembly, and was for several years register of the Court of Ad- miralty:

In 1783, upon the resignation of William Paterson, he was elected by the joint meeting attorney-general of the State; was re-elected in 1788, and resigned in 1792, being then succeeded by Aaron D. Woodruff.

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HISTORY OF UNION AND MIDDLESEX COUNTIES, NEW JERSEY.

He was the first Governor of the State elected on the Democratic (then called Republican) ticket. In the fall of 1801 the Legislature of New Jersey (for the first time) was Democratic, and at a joint meeting held Oc- tober 31st, Joseph Bloomfield received thirty votes for Governor, against twenty cast for Richard Stockton. In 1802 the parties were equally divided, so that on the first ballot Bloomfield received twenty-six votes and Stockton twenty-six, and on the second ballot there was a like result; on the third ballot Aaron Ogden was substituted for Stockton, but there was no change in the vote. An attempt was made to compromise, the Federalists offering to give the Den- ocrats their choice of the Governor or the senator if they would give the other to them; but the Demo- crats, under the lead of William S. Pennington, re- fused the proposition, and the consequence was that the State had no Governor during that year, the duties of the office being performed by the Demo- cratic vice-president of the Council, John Lambert. The next year Bloomfield had thirty-three votes and Richard Stockton seventeen, and in 1804 he had thirty-seven and Stockton sixteen votes. Afterwards he was re-elected up to 1812 without opposition.

It was while first presiding in the Court of Chan- cery that Governor Bloomfield took occasion to make a short address to those present, saying that he was a Republican, and did not desire to be addressed by the title of excellency, and was replied to as follows by Samuel Leake, an old and somewhat eccentric law- yer :

" May it please your excellency : Your excel- lency's predecessors were always addressed by the title 'your excellency,' and if your excellency please, the proper title of the Governor of the State was and is your excellency. I humbly pray, therefore, on my own behalf, and in behalf of the bar generally, that we may be permitted by your excellency's leave to address your excellency when sitting in the high Court of Chancery by the ancient title of your excel- lency."

Gen. Bloomfield, the head of the Democratic party at this period, has been compared in point of ability with Alexander 1Iamilton, the great leader of the Federalists, who in 1804 sacrificed his life rather than his honor as a soldier in a duel with Aaron Burr. He was a general of militia, and in 1794 took the field as a commander of a brigade called into ser- vice to quell the Whiskey Insurrection in Pennsyl- vania, proceeding with the troops into the immediate neighborhood of Pittsburgh, and accomplishing the object intended without bloodshed.'

1 It was for the occasion of this expedition that Governor Howell* composed the song entitled " Jersey Bine," to be eung by the soldiers :

* Richard Howell, Governor of New Jersey from 1793 to 1801. Ile come from Wales in 1729; at twenty-one entered Col. Maxwell'e brigade as captain, served till nearly the close of the war, became a lawyer do Cumberland County ; commaoded the right wing of the army in the

In the war of 1812 he was appointed by President Madison a brigadier-general in the army designed for the invasion of Canada. His brigade marched to Sackett's Harbor, and early in the spring of 1813 a part of the troops under the command of Gen. Pike crossed into that province and made an attack on Fort George, but were repulsed, and Gen. Pike was killed by the fall of a stone from the blown-up magazine. It does not appear that Gen. Bloomfield gained any laurels as a military commander.

In 1816 he was elected on the Democratic ticket a member of Congress, and was re-elected in 1818, serving from March 4, 1817, to March 4, 1821. He was very appropriately placed at the head of the committee on Revolutionary pensions, and introduced and carried through the bills granting pensions to the veteran soldiers of the Revolution and their widows. He died in 1825, in the seventieth year of his age, in Burlington, where he had resided since his entrance upon public life.

RICHARD STOCKTON, SR .- The name of this dis- tinguished lawyer and judge appears frequently upon the minutes of the courts of this county before the Revolution. The first record of his presence ap- pears in 1755. He married a sister of Elisha Boudi- not, an accomplished woman of highly cultivated

"To arms, once more our hero cries, Sedition lives and order dies ;

To peace and ease then bid adien, And dash to the mountains, Jersey Blue.

" CHOAUS.

" Dash to the mountains, Jersey Blue, Jersey Blue, Jersey Bhie, And dash to the mountains, Jersey Blue.

"Since proud ambition rears ite head, And murders rege, and discorda spread, To save from spoil the virtnous few Daeh over the mountains, Jersey Blue. Dash to the mountains, Jersey Blue, etc.

" Roused at the call, with magic sound The drums and trumpets circle round, As soon as the corps their route pursue; So dash to the mountains, Jersey Blue. Dash to the mountains, Jersey Blne, etc.

"Unstained with crime, unused to feer, In deep array our youths appear, And fly to crush the rebel crew, Or die in the mountains, Jersey Blue. Dash to the mountains, Jersey Blue, etc.

" The tears bedew the maiden'a cheek, And storms hang round the mountains blesk ; "Tis glory calls, to love adieu, Then dash to the mountains, Jersey Blue. Dash to the mountains, Jersey Bine, etc.

Should foul misrule and party rage With law and liberty engage, Push home your steel, you'll soon review Yuur native pleine, brave Jersey Blue. Dash to the mountains, Jersey Blue, etc."

Whiskey riots; died at Trenton at the age of forty-three in 1803. He wee the grandfather of Mrs. Jefferson Davis, wife of the late President of the O. S. A.

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mind and literary taste, and lived upon his estate at Princeton. These were the parents of Richard Stock- ton, Jr., the eminent statesman and lawyer. The latter graduated at Princeton before he was seven- teen years of age, studied law at Newark with his uncle, Elisha Boudinot, afterwards one of the justices of the Supreme Court, was licensed as an attorney in 1784, when only abont twenty years old, was after- wards admitted as a counselor, and in 1792 made a sergeant-at-law.

The younger Richard Stockton had no superior- if indeed he had an equal-at the bar of the State during the first quarter of the present century. One of the marked traits in his character was the pleasure it evidently gave him to assist younger members of the profession. He, with Josiah Ogden Hoffman, afterwards a distinguished lawyer in New York, Gabriel H. Ford, and Alexander C. McWhorter, | who were law students together in Newark, founded the " Institutio Legalis," a sort of mock court, which was kept up for many years, and which helped to pre- pare them and others who succeeded them for those forensic encounters in which they became so famons. In the absence of any law-school, this institution was a great benefit to the profession for many years.

Mr. Stockton was during his time almost the only lawyer of New Jersey who argned causes before the Supreme Court at Washington. His manner in speaking was dignified and impassioned, and he held his subject with a profound and comprehensive grasp, no less than with a thorough knowledge of its details.

In 1796 he was chosen a senator of the United States, and served in that body until 1799. In 1813 he was elected a member of the Thirteenth Congress. He took a leading part among the able men then in the House, including Webster, Calhoun, and Clay.

The elder Richard Stockton was an accomplished and eloquent lawyer, a judge of the Supreme Court before the Revolution, and one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Several of the early lawyers of the State were trained to the profession by him,-Jonathan Dickerson Sergeant, William Pa- terson, and others. His name appears in the court records of this county in many of the most important cases from 1755 to the outbreak of the Revolution.

JAMES HUDE was one of the prominent citizens of New Brunswick. His father was a Scotch Presbyte- rian who had fled from religious oppression in his native country, and came early to America. Mr. Hude was judge of the Common Pleas of Middlesex County for eleven years, filled all the civil offices in the city, and spent most of his life in the service of the government. He was a member of the Assembly in 1738, was one of the council of Governor Morris, and for several terms mayor of the city. He was a man of great benevolence, and on his death, Nov. 1, 1762, the New York Mercury in an obituary notice speaks of him as "a gentleman of great probity, justice, affability, moral and political virtues." His

residence was on Albany Street in the house known as the Bell Tavern. Catherine, a daughter of Mr. Hude, married Cornelius Lowe, and a danghter of theirs married Hon. J. R. Hardenbergh. 1

LEWIS MORRIS, whose name appears as a lawyer at the bar of this connty in 1742, was at that time Governor of New Jersey, and resided in the guberna- torial mansion at Perth Amboy. His ancestor, Col. Lewis Morris, came from the island of Barbadoes in 1676 and located a tract of three thousand five hundred and forty acres of land in the township of Shrewsbury, Monmouth County. The grant is dated Oct. 25, 1676. Full liberty was given to him and his associates " to dig, delve, and carry away all such mines for iron as they shall find or see fit to dig and carry away to the iron-works, or that shall be found in that tract of land that lies inclosed between the southeast branch of the Raritan River and the Whale Pond on the seaside, and is bounded from thence by the sea and branch of the sea to the east- ward to the Raritan River, he or they paying all such just damages to the owners of the land where they shall dig mine as is judged is done by trespass of cattle or otherwise sustained by the carting and car- rying of the said mine to the work." 2 In 1682, Col. Morris had on this land "extensive iron-works, em- ploying sixty or seventy negroes, in addition to the white servants and dependents."

Col. Morris was one of the councilors under Rud- yard in 1682. His son Lewis first appears as a mem- ber of the Council of Governor Hamilton in 1695, to- gether with " John Inians, of Raritan River, David Mudie and James Dundas, of Perth Amboy, John Royse, of Roysefield, Samuel Dennis, of Woodbridge, and John Bishop, of Rahway." Mr. Morris repre- sented Monmonth Connty. He was not in the Coun- cil of Governor Basse, owing to his opposition to the Governor. The record of the first court under Gov- ernor Basse, held in May, 1798, contains the following entry :

" Lewis Morris, Esq., came in open Court and demanded by what au- thoritie they kept Court. The Court declared by ye Kinge Authoritie. He denied it, and being asked, Who was dissatisfied besides himself, he said One and all. The Court commaodiog ye said Morris to be taken in custody, Col. Richard Townley, Andrew Hamilton, both of Elizabeth- town, and three or four more cried one and all, and ye said Lewis Morris said he would fain eee who durst lay hold on him, and when a Constable by order of ye Court laid hold va himi, he, in ye face of ye Conrt, re- Bisted."

A mannscript in the library of the New Jersey Historical Society gives the result :

" Att the Court of Common Right, held at Perth Amboy ye 11th day of May, 1698, the Court ordered that Lewie Morrie, Esq., for denying ye Authoritie of this Court, And his other contempte, shall be fined fifty pounds, and be Committed tu prison till paid. By order of ye Court, Edward Slater, Clerke. To ye Sheriff of ye County of Mddx :

" A True Copy.

" JOSEPH ROLPH, Shr'f."

1 Whitehead's Amboy, p. 374; Dr. Steele's Discourse, p. 38.

2 East Jersey Records, B. p. 155.

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HISTORY OF UNION AND MIDDLESEX COUNTIES, NEW JERSEY.

Mr. Morris was imprisoned in a log house, but his friends raised the logs sufficiently for him to escape.

Morris lived at this time in Amboy, for when the Assembly, resolving that no one who favored the pro- prietors should hold a seat in their body, summarily expelled George Willocks in 1699, the people of Am- boy returned Morris to fill the vacancy, although he was still a firm supporter of the proprietary interests. Both Morris and Willocks were summoned to appear before the Court of Common Right at its October term, and to give security for their good behavior, but they refused so to do, and were allowed to go on their parole, and on the 16th of May they wrote a letter to the Council informing that body that they were prepared to resist any proceedings against them. They were neither of them ever tried, for every day brought greater anarchy, and hastened the downfall of the government under Basse. Under the adminis- tration of Hamilton, which succeeded, Morris was restored to the Council. In the spring of 1701 he went to England for the purpose of aiding in the es- tablishment of a settled government. He desired to secure the confirmation of Hamilton's authority until the proprietary right to the government could be de- termined or measures taken for its relinquishment to the crown. The former could not be accomplished, and in the latter Mr. Morris took a prominent and influential part.

He was very popular with the people. In the new government under Cornbury he was appointed a member of the Council, and held various other re- sponsible offices during the rest of his life.

He was the first Governor of New Jersey appointed from among the people, a native of the province, and the first under the crown who had not also been Gov- ernor of New York. In the summer of 1738 a royal commission arrived from England to Lewis Morris as Governor of New Jersey separate from New York; he served until his death, 1746. He was followed successively by President Hamilton, 1746; John Reading, 1746; Jonathan Belcher, 1747 ; John Read- ing, 1757; Francis Bernard, 1758; Thomas Boone, 1760 ; Josiah Hardy, 1761 ; and William Franklin, son of Benjamin Franklin, in 1763, the last royal Governor, he being deposed, arrested, and sent a pris- oner to Connecticut in 1776.

ROBERT MORRIS, the chief justice, resided at New Brunswick. He was a son of Robert Hunter Morris, chief justice of the province from 1738 un- til his death in 1764. The son Robert was the first chief justice of the State under the constitution, having been elected by joint meeting in February, 1777. His associates were Isaac Smith and John Cleves Symmes. They entered upon their respective duties, and appear afterwards to have opened a court and sworn a grand jury as was the custom then at the regular terms held in April, May, September, and November.

In May, 1777, it was the province of Chief Justice

Morris to hold a term of the Oyer and Terminer in Sussex County, in obedience to an appointment made by the State Council. Many prisoners of the State, charged with treason and other crimes, were lodged in the jail at Newton, and the government deemed it expedient that they should be speedily tried, and that, too, by the most competent judge of the bench. None of them except Morris had had any experience, he only through what he knew by his study of the English courts, and the proceedings of his father upon the bench when he was a young man. The situation would have been trying even to the most experienced judge, for it was in that transition state when the old colonial forms were awkward and inap- plicable, and nothing had been done towards the re- organization of the courts under the constitution. Judge Morris wrote from Newton a characteristic letter to Governor Livingston, showing how the situ- ation appeared to him, June 14, 1777 :

"SIR: Ioclosed your excellency has a list of the convictions and the judgments thereon at this very tedious and I would have said premature court if the Council had not thought expedient ou tnature deliberation to have appointed it. I had the pleasure to find Mr. Justice Symimes here at my errival, and confess if I had supposed the Council would have spared him for the business, I would not have traveled fast over the mountaine through the rain and late into the night on so very short notice."

He then goes on to describe the condition of things :

"Judges young in office, and not appointed for their legal erudition ; associates but reputable farmers, doctors, or shopkeepers ; young officere, no counsel nor clerk, for went of timely notice, which was not even given to the ehieriff; and this in a disaffected county, both witnesses and criminals to be collected from all parts of the State Thus circum- stanced was a court of the highest expectation ever held in New Jersey ; a court for the trial of a number of State criminale, some for high trea- son, a crime so little known in New Jersey that perhaps the first lawyer in it would not know how to enter judgment under our Constitution. It would make en excellent paragraph in Gaines' ' Veritable Mercury ;' no other printer could venture to publish it. ... We have sat with great patience, and have now closed the third week. Had it not been for the negligence or villany of a rascally jailor in suffering John Eddy, the only person indicted for high treason, to escape yesterday morning, I flatter myself we should have acquitted ourselves with tolerable suc- cese, and I hope have given satisfaction to the good people."

It was too bad that this traitor, Eddy, after having been suitably caged and indicted already for these raw justices to try their hands upon, should have escaped and robbed them of their anticipated glory ! In this letter Mr. Morris rather curtly answers an in- sinuation in Governor Livingston's letter to him that his not attending the court at Burlington had given some uneasiness :

" Whatever private individuals might have thought, 1 am persuaded no member of the Legislature had the least right to expect my attend- auce. Two hundred miles a day is rather hard travelling, end even that would not have done unless they supposed me possessed of a spirit of divination. I accepted my present office to manifest my resolution to serve my country. I orean to do the duty of it while I hold it accord- ing to my best judgment. Whenever the Legislature think they can fill it any more advantageously, the tenor of Dry commission shall not disappoint them."

In accordance with his recommendation the Legis- lature in September, 1777, passed an act directing

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that when any person should be convicted of treason the sentence therefor should be the same as in case of murder, hanging, instead of quartering, as under the English law; and that all persons who before July 2, 1776, had committed a crime not barred by the statute of limitation might be proceeded against and punished as if committed against the State ; and that all indictments found in the name of the king should be prosecuted as if in the name of the State. An act was also passed by virtue of which special commissions for Courts of Over and Terminer con- tinued to be issued until 1794, when an act was passed constituting these courts substantially as they now are.

Chief Justice Morris held the office only about two years, resigning in 1779. In 1790, upon the death of Judge Brearly, he was appointed by President Wash- ington judge of the District Court of the United States for New Jersey, an office which he held until his death in 1815.

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History of Union and Middlesex Counties, New Jersey with Biographical Sketches of many of their Pioneers and Prominent Men, Part 122

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