History of Union and Middlesex Counties, New Jersey with Biographical Sketches of many of their Pioneers and Prominent Men, Part 199

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 199
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 199

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be a prominent shipping-point, and the locality of the ; stead on the Bordentown road after his father's re- transfer of the freights of a great extent of territory, moval, and yet lives upon it. William lives near Jacksonville. Elias, brother of Ephraim, married a Miss Brown and located near his father. His sons, John and William, died young. embracing numerous large cities and populous towns, but it would never have that steady and substantial growth which makes a town to which a rich and fer- tile agricultural section is tributary. Nature did little The Disbrow family, of which John Disbrow was the earliest remembered representative, at the begin- to render the soil attractive either to the tiller or the resident, much of the area now covered by South . ning of the present century, and perhaps earlier,

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HISTORY OF UNION AND MIDDLESEX COUNTIES, NEW JERSEY.

owned a considerable tract of land embracing the eastern part of the village of South Amboy, and extending down to the bay. John Disbrow, whose mother is said to have been a sister of William Bur- net, of Allentown, N. J., sold this tract to Samuel Gordon, Sr., in 1808, and removed to Roundabout, now in Sayreville township. This property is his- torically of much local interest, and will be seen to figure prominently in the subsequent history of South : Amboy.

Early in this century there were residing along the bay-shore, within and adjacent to the present borders of South Amboy, several families, among them the Morgans (from whom were descended Gen. James Morgan and his grandsons, Dr. L. O. Morgan and Charles Morgan, counselor-at-law, the two latter resi- dents of South Amboy village at this time), some of the Wilmurts and Roses previously mentioned ; Phin- eas Rolfe, father of Hon. Isaac Rolfe, of New Bruns- wick, then a waterman and later a boat captain ; Jacob Brookfield, Joseph Bloodgood, and Matthias Jobnson, and also the Hansel, Kearney, and Hanks families. In 1806 there were only three habitations within view from the central part of the present vil- lage of South Amboy. These were the farm-houses of John Disbrow and Joshua Wilmurt and an an- cient public-house, later known as the "Railroad House."

THE OLD RATTOONE HOUSE .- By the above name was the old hostelry just referred to known at the time under consideration. Its beginning is shrouded in the past, and uncertain tradition discloses no date at which it was probably built. It was located at the end of the old Bordentown road, extending in an east- and-west direction nearly parallel with the bay-shore. The main part was three stories high and about sixty feet by forty. At the east side was a wing long and low, being only a story and a half high and about fifty feet by twenty-five, and at the west side was a wing about forty feet by thirty, and two stories high. The latter was known early as "the Princeton end," probably because it was in the direction of Princeton, then one of the few places of importance near Amboy inland. The latter wing is thought to have been the original portion of the rambling structure, and for many years perhaps all of it that existed.

There is a tradition of "the Princeton end" of this old house which, while it is too improbable to throw any light upon prehistoric events there, may at least prove interesting as illustrating the conjectural range of the human mind. Seventy-five years ago it was sometimes said, but with no tangible authority, that before the days of stages drawn by horses and before the beginning of any considerable shipping traffic be- tween New York and Philadelphia by way of the bay and the Delaware River and the intervening country, merchandise was carried overland from South Amboy to the Delaware by means of heavy wagons drawn by cattle, and that there was a passenger line with the

same motive-power, which, if it ever really existed, could scarcely have been regarded as a means of rapid transit, "the Princeton end" of the old hotel and a dilapidated dock, which was then located at the salt meadows half a mile above, playing their part in the accommodation of passengers en route and the transfer of goods to and from vessels.

The hotel entire as it has been described was cer- tainly standing there during the Revolutionary war, when it was kept by John Rattoone, of Perth Amboy, who was a justice of the peace in 1791 and 1792, and was familiarly referred to in 1800 and later as "Squire" Rattoone, and it remained there until destroyed by fire only a few years since, a link connecting the locality in the unknown past with the South Amboy of the last decade. During the Revolution it is said to have been much frequented by British, and to some extent by American, officers. It is related of Rat- toone that he was a man of infinite tact, and was able to entertain British and American officers in the house at the same time, locating them in the opposite ends without allowing either to know of the presence of the other, and was " hail fellow well met" with all. If this is true he must have possessed diplomatic tal- ent of a high order, which he could doubtless have em- ployed more profitably during those troublous times. After the Revolution the hotel and much land, em- bracing the western part of the village and township as now bounded, passed into the possession of Daniel Wilmurt, who was " mine host" at the old stand up to April 1, 1806, when he sold the property described, measuring, with a water-front .nearly a mile long, about three hundred and forty acres, to Gen. Obediah Herbert and his brother John. Immediately there- after Samuel Gordon, Sr., purchased a half-interest of the Herberts in this property, and became the land- lord at the ancient hostelry.

THE FIRST ERA OF BUSINESS ACTIVITY .- The advent of Samuel Gordon, Sr., in South Amboy marked the beginning of a new era, an era of progress and sharp business competition, which resulted in much substantial good to the locality. He came from Bordentown, where he had been a tavern-keeper and stage proprietor, and was a man of enterprise and ability, daring in his conceptions and far-seeing in his plans, and bold in their execution, resolute, pushing, and untiring, not given to hesitating at obstacles.

Daniel Wilmurt was a man of similar mental char- acteristics. Gordon and Wilmurt became enemies and rivals in business, and the sharp competition be- tween these two men, each determined to outdo the other in enterprise and gain the greater popularity with the public, was a means of advancement to South Amboy and the whole country between there and the Delaware. Previous to 1830, or thereabout, stage-lines carried passengers between Bordentown and South Amboy, and they were conveyed by sloops between New York and South Amboy, and Borden- town and Philadelphia.

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SOUTH AMBOY.

No sooner had Gordon taken possession of the old hotel in 1806, becoming half-owner of the stand and the adjacent property, than he established a line of sloops between New York and South Amboy, and put a line of stages on the road between South Amboy and Bordentown, beginning what soon proved to be a profitable business, observing which, Wilmurt, in 1807, probably with the thought of sharing in the en- terprise, purchased of Obediah and John Herbert the other half-interest in the property, thus becoming an equal sharer with Gordon in its ownership. For a few months the two attempted to manage the hotel as partners, but each was too much set in his own way and too tenacious of his own rights to agree with the other, and it soon became apparent to both that an early separation and the withdrawal of one or the other from the stand was inevitable. But each wished to stay and neither wished to go. The business was too profitable and was growing too fast for either to consent to relinquish his share of it without a struggle. It is not improbable that Wilmurt thought to take the carrying trade from Gordon if he could obtain entire possession of the hotel, land, and dock, and that it was the dislike to yield to another the business he had built up that led Gordon to strenuously refuse to sell his share of the property, for presently there came a time when each clamored for the privilege of buying out the other, and both refused to sell. This state of things could not long continue, and they at last de- cided mutually to leave the adjustment of their diffi- culty to three referees, one of whom was to be chosen by Gordon, one by Wilmurt, and one by the two so chosen.

Robert Montgomery and Joseph Marsh, of Allen- town, N. J., and George Compton, of Perth Amboy, were selected and consented to act as referees in the matter in dispute, and they decided that Gordon should leave the property in the possession of Wil- murt, and that the latter should pay Gordon the cost price of everything he had bonght to furnish the hotel with, or stock its larder and its wine-cellar, reimburse him in the sum of ten thousand dollars for the pur- chase-money he had paid for his half-interest in the property, and pay him a bonus of one thousand dol- lars for the trouble and inconvenience attendant upon the relinquishment of his share of the land, house, dock, and hotel business. To this decree Gordon assented, and left the premises as soon as he conveni- ently could, refusing a liberal offer from Wilmurt for his sloops, stages, horses, and other property employed in the transportation of passengers between New York and Bordentown.

If Wilmurt had calculated upon being left in un- disputed possession of the carrying trade at South Amboy by this purchase of Gordon's interest in the old hotel and dock, he had done so without an ade- quate knowledge of Gordon's character and resources. No sooner did the latter become aware that he must relinquish the hotel and water-privileges to Wilmurt

than he purchased the John Disbrow farm, on the bay-shore in the eastern portion of the present village, previously referred to, and began at once to enlarge and remodel the old farm-house for use as a hotel, running his packets to a point opposite there, and taking passengers from his stages to his boats and from his boats to his stages by means of row-boats until he could construct a landing-place and dock.

A few years later the Bordentown turnpike was chartered and constructed, and Gordon, who was a stockholder, secured its terminus in South Amboy at his hotel, a measure which proved very favorable to his business, and a year or two afterwards Wil- murt obtained a charter for a branch of the Bor- dentown turnpike to his hotel and dock. The con- petition thus early begun between these two men was continued, it is said somewhat acrimoniously, for years. Each exerted himself to the utmost to gain favor with the public, and to shorten the time con- sumed in a passage between New York and Philadel- phia. It is related that one of them boastingly proph- esied that he would cut the time down to a day and a half between the two cities. This then unattained so-called quick time seems long when compared with the present transit from Jersey City to Philadelphia in an hour and fifty minutes, much of the way over nearly the same route. Both stage proprietors liad extra relays of horses, and in speaking of this period it is common for old residents of South Amboy to remark that " things were kept hot between Amboy and Bordentown." Each line ran two or three stages each way every day between South Amboy and Bor- dentown in the summer, and between South Amboy and Camden in the winter, when the ice prevented the navigation of the Delaware. The late John Sew-) ard and William P. Wisner, who is eighty-three years of age and still a resident of South Amboy, were drivers over this route, and Samuel Gordon, Jr., son of Samuel Gordon, Sr., now living in Washington, in East Brunswick, at an advanced age, was also identified with the business.

The passengers in transit both ways invariably stopped in South Amboy overnight, the stages from Bordentown and Camden and the sloops from New York both arriving there late in the day or at night, and starting on their return trips in the morning. This rendered hotel-keeping very profitable, and the travelers often made the two hotels there the scenes of jollifications which they doubtless, some of them, remember to the present time. It is claimed by those who had an opportunity to know that good liquor was sold in South Amboy in those days, and much of it was drank there. The bar in the old Rattoone House during this time was partitioned off from the bar-room proper, and communication with the bar-tender was had only through a large wicket or window-hole, which was part of the time closed, and opened only at the will of that functionary. It is stated that business was conducted on the most democratic plan

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HISTORY OF UNION AND MIDDLESEX COUNTIES, NEW JERSEY.

imaginable, patrons of high and low degree all faring alike, each receiving through the aperture an honest gill of such kind of " liquid cheer" as he called for, no more, no less. Whether that amount made a drink larger or smaller than the customer desired was a question about which the bartender did not trouble his brain. Often both houses were jammed almost to suffocation, and it is said travelers fre- quently found themselves in the company of strange bedfellows, and submitted to inconvenience with commendable grace and resignation, the landlords possessing the tact to very often happily turn into a joke, by an opportune pleasantry, affairs that other- wise would have become so serious as to demand recourse to pugilistic displays, with a fair field and no favors asked. The business was exacting, and . from its very nature trying, to both Gordon and Wil- murt, but they made it profitable, and kept up their rivalry till the latter's death, about 1824, Gordon's hotel burning down in 1814, and being immediately rebuilt.

From 1823 to 1825, Gordon was at Washington, en- gaged in the construction of the Washington Canal, from South River to the Raritan, and during that time he leased or otherwise disposed of the hotel at the new dock, later keeping it from 1828 to 1834. It was afterwards kept by George Parisen and others, then converted to other purposes, and burned about 1846. After the death of Daniel Wilmurt his widow kept the Rattoone House about a year, and in 1825 was succeeded by Samuel Gordon, Sr., who was again, after a lapse of seventeen years, in possession of the house he had resigned to Wilmurt in 1808, and con- tinued in charge until 1828. Saxon M. Tice was his successor, giving place, two or three years later, to mine host Brookfield, who, like Tice, is remembered by many who were once patrons of the house. In 1846, Samnel Gordon, Jr., became landlord, remain- ing till 1849. Subsequently to the completion of the Camden and Amboy Railroad the hotel became known as the Railroad House. After Gordon left it it had several other landlords in succession, the last being Willett Martin, who was doing the honors of the establishment at the time of its destruction.

The Camden and Amboy Railroad did away with any necessity for stage-travel between the two points named, and the packets which had been so long and so profitably run between South Amboy and New York were forced to give way to the more rapid steam navigation introduced by Cornelius Vanderbilt and others.

The Village of South Amboy .- The Camden and Amboy Railroad was chartered Feb. 4, 1830; $1,000,000 stock was subscribed by April 12th ; work was commenced by June or July, and Sept. 19, 1832, the track from Bordentown to Hightstown was first used with horse-cars, and December 17th following passengers were conveyed from Bordentown to South Amboy. The first car of freight over the road was

drawn by horses driven by Mr. Benjamin Fish, leav- ing Amboy Jan. 24, 1833. It was not until Septem- ber of the same year that trains were drawn by a locomotive, which had that year been built in Eng- land for use on this road. It was on exhibition at the Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia in 1876, and is still in the shop of the Camden and Amboy Railroad Company at Bordentown. It has always been known as the " Johnny Bull" on account of its English manufacture. There are yet living at Soutlı Amboy several persons who saw it set out on its first trip over the road, and relate that the day on which it did so was long remembered as a red-letter day in the memory of the inhabitants. The passenger-cars composing the train were like the old-fashioned round-bodied coaches, with doors at the sides, and were intended to seat six persons each.

Such in brief is the early history of the Camden and Amboy Railroad. It introduced a new element at South Amboy and changed the occupation and aspira- tions of the few people there, building up new indus- tries on the ruins of those it destroyed, and causing the then sparse settlement to grow to a flourishing village of nearly 4000 souls. But this development was far from being as rapid as it has been in other places under like circumstances.

LAND PURCHASES AND SPECULATIONS. - The Camden and Amboy Railroad Company purchased the land upon which their depot, offices, tracks, shops, docks, and other property are located, and several hundred acres, including the western part of the village, of William Gibbons, who had bought it of the representatives of the estate of Daniel Wil- murt, deceased, in 1827, and built houses upon it for the use of some of their employés, the first so erected having been the brick ones on Main Street below Broadway ; but aside from these, few dwellings were built anywhere in the village for some years. Re- taining control of the hotel and dock on the Disbrow farm, in 1816, Samuel Gordon, Sr., sold a half-interest in the land to Lewis Abrahams. From the latter it passed to Daniel Wilmurt in 1822, and until the death of Wilmurt, soon after, he and Gordon were again partners in the ownership of real estate. In 1824, Wiłmurt's interest passed by inheritance into the possession of his daughter, Mrs. Andrew K. Morehouse, who sold it to Henry and David Cotheal in 1832. Abont 1830, Gordon sold the remaining half-interest, and the title to it presently became vested in George C. Thomas, from whom Gordon bought a one-fourth interest in 1832, and dying in 1834, bequeathed it to his son, Samuel Gordon, Jr.

This tract embraced much of the eastern portion of the village. In 1833 it was surveyed into lots by a civil engineer of Brooklyn, N. Y., named Graves. These lots were of the usual size of village lots, and were 2900 in number. They were offered at reason- able prices, but found no purchasers. In 1834, Samuel Gordon, Jr., sold one-half of his one fourth interest

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SOUTH AMBOY.

in the property to Messrs. Graves and Butler, of Brooklyn. It was then owned as follows : One-fourth each by Henry Cotheal, David Cotheal, and George C. Thomas, and one-eighth each by Samuel Gordon, Jr., and Graves and Butler conjointly. Some years later the whole tract was sold at auction in New York to various parties for $22,300. None of the purchasers ever located on their lots, and few of them ever saw them. No important improvements were made in the village during the following few years other than those which were gradually appearing on the railroad company's lands in the western part. In 1834, Gordon, in his "Gazetteer," stated that the village contained " a hotel and some fifteen or twenty dwellings, and an extensive manufactory of stone- ware." The latter was in the eastern part of the present village, and its history is given elsewhere.

About 1848, Samuel Gordon, Jr., bought two hun- dred and forty of the lots above referred to at one dollar each of Messrs. Pine & Van Antwerp, of New York, who had purchased them at the auction sale, and been unable to dispose of them since then. Meeting Abraham Everett the next day, he informed him of the transaction, and asked him to become a partner in the speculation, to which he consented, later buying and selling several hundred lots on his individual account. A short time afterwards Samuel Gordon, Jr., and George H. Weston bargained with David Hill, a speculator of New York, for one hun- dred and forty lots at one dollar each. Hill was not by any means a substantial man, and his business was so precarious that it is said he seldom occupied the same office more than a few days, and when Weston went to New York to pay him for the lots and receive the titles to the same, he was unable to find him. Re- turning to South Amboy, he was advised by Gordon to write a letter to Hill asking the latter to appoint an interview at which money and titles could be ex- changed. Hill responded, meeting Gordon and Wes- ton at some convenient place in the lower part of the city. In the course of the conversation which ensued, Hill said something which indicated that he was greatly in need of money, and did not regard the lots as of any particular value, from which Weston sur- mised that a better bargain might have been made with him, a supposition which he, Yankee-like, re- solved to put to a practical test. Presently he in- formed Hill that it would be inconvenient for him to pay him the cash that day, and hinted that an ar- rangement of a different kind would be desirable to him. Hill insisted on having the money, and finally offered to deduct twenty-five dollars from the total price of the lots (one hundred and forty dollars) if he could have the money then. Weston intimated that he hoped to be able to raise the required amount among his friends in the city, and went out. After a while he returned, and paid Hill one hundred and fifteen dollars for the one hundred and forty lots, ef- fecting a saving of twenty-five dollars on the trans-

action. Samuel Gordon, Jr., who related this inci- dent to the writer, states that he and Weston soon sold a majority of these lots at ten to twenty dollars each, and some of the choicest of them at fifty to seventy dollars each, clearing a nice little sum by the specu- lation. This circumstance has been given place in these pages to show how cheaply lands were regarded in South Amboy less than thirty-five years ago. Hill, like other New York owners of these lots, had no idea that they were becoming valuable, and during the few years following many of the lots which had been almost literally "sent to New York to market" were eagerly bought back by residents of South Amboy, and by them sold at a good profit to men who bought them at only fair prices and reared up homes upon them one after another until what was at a comparatively recent date a barren waste grew to be a thrifty village. Among those not already mentioned who bought and sold village-lots in South Amboy were Charles Fish, freight agent for many years for the Camden and Amboy Railroad Company ; Ward C. Perrine, merchant and clay operator ; and Philip J. Parisen, formerly also a dealer in merchan- dise and clay, but now dead. The dwellings belong- ing to the Camden and Amboy Railroad Company gradually increased in numbers, and the space be- tween the "railroad tract" and the "Gordon tract" in time became thickly settled, uniting the once iso- lated eastern and western portions of the village.

BUILDING LOANS .- Building loans have assisted very materially in building up the village. The first loan was organized in 1853, and through its means a good many houses were erected. Loan No. 2 was organized iu 1865, and proved very successful, running out in less than eleven years, and greatly facilitating the growth of the place. The continued demand for dwellings led to the organization, in 1868, of Loan No. 3, with thirteen hundred shares. Within three years, as the result of this movement, new dwellings were erected in all parts of the village, and there was a considerable increase in population. In 1881 its affairs were wound up, and an extra dividend of three dollars and sixty-nine cents was returned to each stockholder. In 1873, Enterprise Building Loan was organized, and twenty-two hundred shares were is- sued. It was successful for a short time, until the panic caused a sudden cessation of all active business. Among the prominent projectors of and workers for the success of these loans were Abraham Everett, Edward O. Howell, Albert Roll, R. H. Guild, and Bernard Roddy.

RAILROADS .- The liberal policy of the early pro- moters of the Camden and Amboy Railroad, Messrs. John C. and R. C. Stevens, then of New York, and Edwin Stevens, of Hoboken, aided the growth of the village to a great extent, and they and members of their families were foremost with labor and means in establishing schools and churches,-a task in which they were aided and succeeded by the Conover family,

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HISTORY OF UNION AND MIDDLESEX COUNTIES, NEW JERSEY.

now represented at South Amboy by Mr. R. S. Cono- ver. Due mention of the benefactions of these fami- lies will be seen in the histories of the educational and religious interests of the township. Mr. John C. Stevens and others of his family became permanent residents. Messrs. Abraham Everett, Charles Fish, Aaron H. Van Cleve, William G. Wisner, John Sex- ton, and other employés of the company, were men of enterprise and sound judgment, and became iden- tified with the leading interests of the place, making a record as good and progressive citizens.

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History of Union and Middlesex Counties, New Jersey with Biographical Sketches of many of their Pioneers and Prominent Men, Part 199

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