History of Union and Middlesex Counties, New Jersey with Biographical Sketches of many of their Pioneers and Prominent Men, Part 8

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 8
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 8

Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).

14 Mass. His. Soc. Coll., i. 101 : ii. 383. Thompson's L. I., i. 395; ii. 381-383. E. J. Records, i. 1, 25, 26; ii. 18, 105 ; o. e. 26 ; iii. 7, 8. E. T. Bill, pp. 61, 109, 110. New York Doc. History, ii. 451, 455, 536.

2 Hedges' E. Hampton, pp. 4, 63. Thumpsun's L. 1., i. 295, 310. Littell's Passaic Valley, pp. 83-90, 500-501.

3 E. J. Records, i. 98, 131 ; iii. 8.

4 N. Y. Col. Docmts, ii. 470; iii. 293-300, 752. Valentine's Manual for 1852, pp. 483, 492, 495. 3 Mass. His. Soc. Coll., x. 52. E. J. Records, i. 89 ; iii. 6; A. 1.

HISTORY OF UNION AND MIDDLESEX COUNTIES, NEW JERSEY.

Robert Sealey (Seeley) came over probably with Winthrop. He was at Watertown, Mass., in 1630; was employed as surveyor in 1634; came to Wetliers- field, Conn., in 1636; was a lieutenant in the Pequot war of 1637; was one of the first settlers of New Haven in 1639; returned to England about 1646; came back and joined the Delaware Colony that was driven off by the Dutch in 1651; had command of the troops raised by New Haven to resist the Dutch in 1654; was at Saybrook in 1662; was at Huntington, I. I., and in charge of the militia in 1663; and was at New York in 1664. The next year he united with Ogden and others in settling Elizabethtown. His house-lot contained six acres, bounded north by Rev. Jeremiah Peck, west by the Mill Creek, east by the highway, and south by "the Parson's house Lott." John and Nathaniel Seeley, of Fairfield (1657), and Obadiah, of Stamford, Conn., it is thought, were his sons by his first wife. In December, 1666, he married Nancy Walker, at New York. He died intestate in October, 1668, and his widow sold, Nov. 2, 1668, his lands and rights here for £45 to Governor Carteret The latter resold it Feb. 22, 1669-70, to one of his old Jersey friends, Claude Vallot, " of Champagne, in the kingdom of France," who had come over with the Governor, and having lived here five years as one of Carteret's "menial servants," had 12 days before been naturalized. In the list of Associates "Sealy Cham- pain" is mentioned; it should be "Robert Sealy, transferred to Claude Vallot, of Champagne." Vallot exchanged the property Aug. 8, 1672, with Benjamin Parkhurst, of Woodbridge, and thenceforward made the latter place his home.1

Capt. Philip Carteret, the Governor, is usually styled "the brother" of Sir George Carteret. Philip, the brother of Sir George, died in 1665. Consequently the Elizabeth Town Philip could not be the proprietor's brother. Nor could he be a brother-in-law. Lady Elizabeth Carteret, the wife of Sir George, had also a brother Philip, but he died in 1662. The mother of Sir George was Elizabeth Dumaresque, and the mother of the Lady Elizabeth was Ann Dowse, but Capt. Philip, the Governor, in his will speaks of his mother as " Rachel." Samuel Maverick, one of the royal commissioners, who knew Governor Carteret intimately, says, June 29, 1669, “ As Sir George Car- terett writes to his cosen, the present Gouernor." The confusion may have been owing in part to the fact that each of them was the son of a Helier Carteret. But the father of Sir George was the great-grandson of Edward, and the father of Philip was the great- grandson of Edward's brother Richard, so that Sir George was but the fourth cousin of the Governor.

Philip Carteret was the son of Helier De Carteret, attorney-general of Jersey, and of Rachel -. He

was the first born of his mother, his birth having oc- curred in 1639, the year after her marriage. As such he became seigneur of the manor of La Houque, parish of St. Peter, Jersey. He was the grandson of Peter De Carteret, jurat of the Royal Court of Jer- sev, whose father, Francis, was the second son of Richard, seigneur of the manor of Vincheles, and brother of Edward, the ancestor of Sir George. Philip was forty years the junior of Sir George, being only in his twenty-sixth year, full of the vigor and elastic- ity of early manhood, when he embarked to seek his fortune in the New World. His subsequent history is elsewhere in this narrative related at length.

The family and their friends in Jersey were origi- nally French, and the language, manners, and customs of France prevailed on the island. Most of those who came with Carteret in the ship " Philip" were prob- ably from the Carteret estates in Jersey, and of French origin. The family, as has been seen, had been ar- dently devoted throughout the civil war to the for- tunes of the house of Stuart, and were high in the favor of the king and the Duke of York.2

It appears from this review, therefore, that the num- ber of planters found here in February, 1666, or, if not on the ground, yet identified with the settlement, was about seventy. A large proportion, nearly all, had brought their wives with them. Some of them had several children also. A small number were considerably in years. The most of them, however, were young, vigorons, robust men, between the ages of twenty-five and forty,-just the men to lay the foundations of many generations.

CHAPTER V.

INDIAN OCCUPATION.

IT would seem from Hudson's journal that the In- dians on the east side of the Hudson River held no intercourse with those on the west side, and that the former were a much more fierce and implacable people than the latter. This probably arose from the fact that those east of the Hudson and along its upper banks were allies of the Iroquois, which were then the dominating confederacy of the red republicans of the forest. They had not only carried their conquests along the Hudson to the ocean, but along East River and Long Island Sound to the Connecticut, exacting submission and tribute from all the tribes of this region of country. They had also carried their con- quering arms southward along the Susquehanna and the Delaware, reducing to submission the Andastes and the Lenni Lenapè; and even the Anticokes, or tide-water people, along the Delaware and Chesa- peake Bays, trembled at their vindictive prowess.

1 MA88. His. Soc. Coll., iii. 143, 153. Bacon's New Haven, p. 315. Cha- pin's Glastonbury, p. 46. N. Y. Marriages, p. 345. Savage, iv. 49. E. T. Bill, p. 108. E. J. Records, i. 6, 7; ii. 96. N. Y. Wille, i. 64

2 Collins' Peerage (ed. of 1735), iv. 321-328.

INDIAN OCCUPATION.

Rev. Mr. Abeel, quoted by Moulton, says that on the point where New York is now built Hudson found a very hostile people. But those living on the western side, from the Kills upward, " came daily on board of the vessel while she lay at anchor in the river, bring- ing with them to barter furs; the largest and finest oysters, Indian corn, beans, pumpkins, squashes, grapes, and some apples, all of which they exchanged for trifles."

That Hudson and the traders who followed him had gained some knowledge of the strength and resources of the Iroquois country is evident from the fact that they established their first trading-post at Albany instead of Manhattan. They must have also learned that the Iroquois, especially the Mohawks, the eastern branch of the confederacy, held an ascendency over the lower tribes, and on this account sought first to gain the friendship and trade of the former. No doubt such an alliance with the masters enabled them the better to control the subjects, and prepared the way for their successful erection of a trading-post at Manhattan after they had carried on a successful and uninterrupted commerce at Fort Orange for at least ten years. During this time they had cemented such a friendship with the Mohawks as availed them for assistance in their subsequent struggle with the sev- eral tribes inhabiting this region.

The Delawares, or Lenni Lenape -Most writers on Indian antiquities have considered the tribes of the lower Hudson and of East New Jersey as branches of the general Delaware nation or Lenni Lenapè, which means original people. Those most intimately connected with this region'were the Min- sies and Mohicans-the former being the inhabit- ants of the range of country from the Minisink to Staten Island and from the Hudson to the Raritan Valley. The latter inhabited the east side of the lower Hudson to its mouth. The Dutch called them respectively the Sanhikans and the Manhikans. Ac- cording to Brodhead,1 the former were also called Wabingi, or Wappinges, the latter, as Heckewelder claims, being derived from the Delaware word waping, signifying opossum. These were divided into numer- ous tribes, and these again into clans. In this section of New Jersey they were called Raritans, Hacken- sacks, Pomptons, and Tappeans. On the island of New York dwelt the fierce Manhattans, whom De Laet calls " a wicked nation," and " enemies of the Dutch." On Long Island, called by the natives Se- wan-hacky, the land of shells, were the savage Meton- wacks, divided into several tribes. The names of thirteen of these tribes have been preserved, viz., the Canarse and Nyack Indians, settled at the Narrows in Kings County ; the Rockaway, Merrikoke, Mar-a- peagne, and Matinecoe tribes in Queens County ; and the Nissaquage, Setauket, Corchaug, Secatang, Patchogue, Shinnecoe, and Montauk, in Suffolk

County. These Indians sold their lands to the whites in 1702-3, except about five hundred acres, on which lived a remnant of the Montauks as late as 1829. Great efforts were made to civilize them by means of missions and schools, Rev. Azariah Horton being missionary among them in 1741; but all these efforts proved unavailing ; they gradually became extinct .?

The Delawares-the Indian people with which this history has principally to deal-occupied a domain extending along the sea-shore from the Chesapeake to the country bordering Long Island Sound. Back from the coast it reached beyond the Susquehanna Valley to the foot of the Alleghany Mountains, and on the north joined the southern frontier of their domineer- ing neighbors, the hated and dreaded Iroqois. This domain, of course, included not only the counties of Bergen and Passaic, but all of the State of New Jer- sey.

The principal tribes composing the Lenni Lenapè or Delaware nation were those of the Unamis or Turtle, the Unalachtgo or Turkey, and the Minsi or Wolf. The latter, which was by far the most powerful and warlike of all these tribes, occupied the most northerly portion of the country of the Lenape and kept guard along the Iroquois border, from whence their domain extended southward to the Musconetcong3 Mountains, abont the northern boundary of the present county of Hunterdon. The Unamis and Unalachtgo branches of the Lenape or Delaware nation (comprising the tribes of Assanpinks, Matas, Shackamaxons, Chiche- quaas, Raritans, Nanticokes, Tutelos, and many others) inhabited the country between that of the Minsi and the sea-coast, embracing the present coun- ties of Hunterdon and Somerset, and all that part of the State of New Jersey south of their northern boundaries. The tribes who occupied and roamed over the counties of Bergen and Passaic were those of the Turkey and Wolf branches of the Lenni Lenapè nation, but the possessions and boundaries of each cannot be clearly defined.

The Indian name of the Delaware nation, Lenni Lenapè, signifies, in their tongue, " the original peo-

2 Furpian's Notes to Denton's " Brief Description of New York, ' pp. 37-42.

3 " The Wulf, commonly called the Minsi, which we have corrupted into Mon-rys, had chosen to live back of the other two tribes, and formed a kind of bulwark for their protection, watching the muntjes of the Mengwe and being at hand to afford aid in case of a mature w th them. The Minsi were considered the must warlike and active branch of the Lenape. They extended their settlements from the Minisink. a place natord after them, where they had their conucil-sent and fire, quite up to the Hadsub on the east, and to the west and sonth far beyond the Sus- quehanna. Their northern boundaries were supposed originally to le the heads of the great rivers Susquehanna and Delaware, and their Bonthern that ridge of hills known in New Jersey by the name of Muy- kanecmm, and in Pennsylvania by those of Lehigh, Conowego, etc. Within this lumindury were theit principal settlements : and even as late as the year 1742 they had a town with a peach-orchard on the trart of land where Nazareth, in Pennsylvania, has since teen Imilt, another on the Lehigh, and others beyond the Blue Ridge, besides many Man ly set- thements here and there scattered."-History, Manners, and Customs of the Indian Nations who once inhabited Pennsylvania, by Rev. Jokn Hecke- welder.

1 Brodhead. i. 73.

HISTORY OF UNION AND MIDDLESEX COUNTIES, NEW JERSEY.

ple," -- a title which they had adopted under the claim that they were descended from the most ancient of all Indian ancestry. This claim was admitted by the Wyandots, Miamis, and more than twenty other aboriginal nations, who accorded to the Lenapè the title of grandfathers, or a people whose ancestry ante- dated their own. The Rev. John Heckewelder, in his "History of the Manners and Customs of the Indian Nations," says of the Delaware nation, ---

" They will not admit that the whites are enperior beings. They say that the hair of their heads, their features, and the various colors of their eyes evince that they are not, like themselves, Lenni Lenape,-an original prople,-a race of men that has existed unchanged from the be- ginning of time ; but that they are a mixed race, and therefore a trouble- some one. Wherever they may be, the Great Spirit, knowing the wick- edness of their disposition, found it necessary to give them a Great Book, and tanght them how to read it that they might know and ob- serve what He wished them to do and what to abstain from. But they -the Indians-bave no need of nuy euch book to let them know the will of their Maker: they find it engraved on their own hearte; they have had sufficient discernment given to them to distinguish good from evil, and by following that guide they are sure not to err."

Traditions among the Delaware Tribes .- Con- cerning the origin of the Lenape, numerous and essentially differing traditions were current among the various tribes. One of these traditions is men- tioned by Loskiel in his " History of the Mission of the United Brethren among the North American In- dians," as follows :

" Among the Delawnres, those of the Minsi or Wolf tribe ssy that io the beginning they dwelt io the earth under a lake, and were fortu- nately extricated from this unpleasant abode by the discovery which one of their men made of a hole, through which he ascended to the surface; on which, as he was walking, he found a deer, which be carried back with him into his enbterrancoue habitation ; that the deer was eaten, and he and his compamons found the meat so good that they unani- mouely determined to leave their dark abode and remove to a place where they could enjoy the light of heaven and have such excellent game in abundance.

"The two uther tribes, the Unamis or Tortoise, and the Unalachtgos or Turkey, have much similar notions, but reject the story of the lake, which seems peculiar to the Minei tribe."

There was another leading tradition current among the nations of the Lenape, which was to the effect that, ages before, their ancestors had lived in a far-off country to the west, beyond great rivers and moun- tains, and that, in the belief that there existed, away towards the rising sun, a red man's paradise, -a land of deer and beaver and salmon,-they had left their · western home and traveled eastward for many moons, until they stood on the western shore of the Namisi Sipu (Mississippi), and there they met a numerous nation, migrating like themselves. They were a stran- ger tribe, of whose very existence the Lenape had been ignorant. They were none other than the Meng- we; and this was the first meeting of those two peo- ples, who afterwards became rivals and enemies, and continued such for centuries. Both were now trav- elers and bound on the same errand. But they found a lion in their path, for beyond the great river lay the domain of a nation called Allegewi, who were not only strong in numbers and brave, but more skilled than themselves in the art of war, who had reared

great defenses of earth inelosing their villages and strongholds. In the true spirit of military strategy, they permitted a part of the emigrants to cross the river, and then, having divided their antagonists, fell upon them with great fury to annihilate them. But when the Lenape saw this they at once formed an al- liance, offensive and defensive, with the Mengwe. The main body crossed the river and attacked the Al- legewi with such desperate energy that they defeated and afterwards drove them into the interior, where they fought from stronghold to stronghold, till finally, after a long and bloody war, the Allegewi were not only humiliated, but exterminated, and their country was occupied by the victors. After this both nations ranged eastward, the Mengwe taking the northern and the Lenapè still keeping the more southern route, until, after long journeyings, the former reached the Mohicanittuck (Hudson River) and the latter rested upon the banks of the Lenape Wihittuck,-the beau- tiful river now known as the Delaware,-and here they found that Indian elysium of which they had dreamed before they left their okdl homes in the land of the setting sun.

These and other similar Indian traditions may or may not have some degree of foundation in fact. There are to-day many enthusiastic searchers through the realms of aboriginal lore who accept them as au- thentic, and who believe that the combined Lenape and Mengwe did destroy a great and comparatively civilized people, and that the unfortunate Allegewi who were thus extinguished were none others than the mysterious Mound-Builders of the Mississippi Valley. This, however, is but one of the many profit- less conjectures which have been indulged in with reference to that unknown people, and is in no way pertinent to this history. All Indian tribes were fond of narrating the long journeys and great deeds of their forefathers, and of tracing their ancestry back for centuries, some of them claiming descent from the great Manitou himself. Missionaries and travelers among them who were, or professed to be, familiar with their language and customs have spoken with apparent sincerity of Indian chronology running back to a period before the Christian era, and some of the old enthusiasts claimed that these aborigines were de- scendants of the lost tribes of Israel.1 But all the

1 Io a small, quaint, and now very rare voline entitled " An Hist ri- cal Description of the Province and Country of West New Jersey in America, Never made Publick till now, by Gabriel Thomas, London, 1198," and dedicated "To the Right Honourable Sir John Moor, Sir Thomas Lane, Knights and Aldermen of the City of London, and to the rest of the Worthy members of the West Jersey Proprietors," is found the following in reference to the aborigines of this region : " The first Inhabitants of this Conutrey were the Indians, being supposed to be purt of the Ten dispersed Tribes of Israel, for indeed they are very like the Jews in their Persons, and something in their Practicesamt Worship; for they (as the Pensilvania Indians) observe the New Moons with great de- votion and Reverence : And their first Fruits they offer, with their Corn and Hunting-Game they get in the whole year, to a False Deity or Sham God whoor they omst please, else (as they fancy ) many misfortunes will befall them, and great injuries will be done them. When they bury their

INDIAN OCCUPATION.

traditions of the Indians were so clouded and involved in improbability and so interwoven with superstition, and the speculations of antiquarian writers have almost uniformly been so baseless and chimerical, that the whole subject of Indian origin may be dismissed as profitless.

Totems, or Tribal Badges of the Indians .- The Indians, from the earliest times, considered themselves in a manner connected with certain animals, as is evident from various customs preserved among them, and from the fact that, both collectively and indi- vidually, they assumed the names of such animals. Loskiel says,-

" It might iodeed be supposed that those animals' names which they have given to their several tribes were mere badges of distinction, or ' coats-of-arms,' as Pyrlaeus calls them ; but if we pay attention to the reasuna which they give for those denominationa, the idea of a supposed faonly connection is easily discernible. The Tortoise-or, as they are commonly called, the Turtle-tribe, among the Lenape, claim a supe- riurity and ascendency over the others, because their relation, the great Tortoise, a fabled monster, the Atlas of their mythology, bears, according to their traditivos, this great ixbend on his back,1 and also because he is amphibious and can live both on land and in the water, which neither of the heads of the other tribes can do. The merits of the Turkey, which gives its name to the second tribe, are that he is stationary and always remains with or about them. As to the Wolf, after which the third tribe is named, he is a rambler by nature, running from one place to another in quest of his prey ; yet they consider him as their benefactor, as it was by his means that the Indiana got out of the interior of the earth. It was he, they believe, who by the appointment of the Great Spirit killed the deer which the Monsey found who first discovered the way to the aurface of the earth. and which allured them to come out of their damp aod dark residence. For that reason the wolf is to be honored and his name to be preserved forever among them.

"These animala' names, it is true, they all use as national badges, in order to distinguish their tribes from each other at home and abroad. In this point of view Mr. Pyrlaeus was right in considering them as ' conta- of-arms.' The Turtle warrior draws, either with a coal or with paint, here and there on the trees along the war-path, the whole animal, car- rying a gun with the muzzle projecting forward ; and if he leaves a omark at the place where be has made a stroke on his enemy, it will be the picture of a Tortoise. Those of the Turkey tribe paint ouly one foot of a turkey, and the Wolf tribe sometinies a wolf at large with one foot and leg raised up to serve as a hand, io which the animal also carries a gun with the muzzle forward. They. however, do not generally use the word 'wolf' when speaking of their tribe. but call themselves P'duk-sit, which means round foot, tliat animal having a round foot, like a dog."

Indian Population in New Jersey .- It does not appear that the Indians inhabiting New Jersey were very numerous. In an old publication entitled " A Description of New Albion," and dated A.D. 1648, it is found stated that the native people in this section were governed by about twenty kings; but the in- significance of the power of those "kings" may be inferred from the accompanying statement that there were " twelve hundred [Indians] under the two Rari- tan kings on the north side, next to Hudson's River, and those came down to the ocean about Little Egg- bay and Sandy Barnegatte; and about the South Cape two small kings of forty men apiece, and a third

reduced to fourteen men, at Roymont." From which it appears evident that the so-called "kings" were no more than ordinary chiefs, and that some of these scarcely had a following. Whitehead, in his " East Jersey under the Proprietary Governments," con- cludes, from the above-quoted statement, " that there were probably not more than two thousand [Indians] within the province while it was under the domina- tion of the Dutch." And in a publication2 bearing date fifty years later (1698) the statement is made that "the Dutch and Swedes inform us that they [the Indians] are greatly decrea-ed in number to what they were when they came first into this country. And the Indians themselves say that two of them die to every one Christian that comes in here."

Conquest of the Lenni Lenapè by the Iroquois. -Before the European explorers had penetrated to the territories of the Lenape the power and prowess of the Iroquois had reduced the former nation to the condition of vassals. The attitude of the Iroquois, however, was not wholly that of conquerors over the Delawares, for they mingled, to some extent, the character of protectors with that of masters. It has been said of them that "the humiliation of tributary nations was to them [the Iroquois] tempered with a paternal regard for their interests in all negotiations with the whites, and care was taken that no tres- passes should be committed on their rights, and that they should be justly dealt with." This means, simply, that the Mengwe would, so far as lay in their power, see that none others than themselves should be permitted to despoil the Lenape They exacted from them an annual tribute, an acknowledgment of their state of vassalage, and on this condition they were permitted to occupy their former hunting- grounds. Bands of the Five Nations, however, were interspersed among the Delawares,3 probably more as a sort of police, and for the purpose of keeping a watchful eye upon them, than for any other purpose.

Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.

History of Union and Middlesex Counties, New Jersey with Biographical Sketches of many of their Pioneers and Prominent Men, Part 8

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