USA > New Jersey > Warren County > History of Warren County, New Jersey > Part 3
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The deeds for land in Warren County are recorded in the office of
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WARREN COUNTY.
the Secretary of State at Trenton till about 1780 and after that in the office of the County Clerk, that is, at Newton, till 1824, and at Belvi- dere since 1824. By far the greater number of old parchment deeds were never put on record.
Since the point has been raised as to the ownership of land in the Delaware river the following will be of interest:
On May 17, 1722, in a report to His Majesty by the Lords of a Committee appointed to act on a petition wherein the ownership of the Delaware river and islands in it was in question, we find that they "have taken the opinion of Mr. Attorney and Mr. Sollicitor Generall whereby it appears that no part of Delaware River or the islands lying therein are comprised within the aforementioned grants but that the right to the same still remains in the crown and that his Majty. may grant all or any of the said islands if his Majty. shall so think fitt," and again "That as to the islands in the River Delaware it did plainly appear that they were not comprehended within the boundaries of either of the two provinces of Pensilvania or New Jersey but that the same remain in the Crown."
The writer has not yet discovered any grant from the Crown for the Delaware river and its islands, but such a grant may have been given.
When the Federal government was formed, it consisted of a con- federacy of States, each of which retained its proprietary rights and proper sovereignty, so that the United States acquired by the Union no property in the soil. Uninhabited lands, not as yet clearly defined by established boundaries, were claimed by the adjacent States.
CHAPTER III.
FROM EARLIEST SETTLEMENTS TO THE FORMATION OF SUSSEX COUNTY.
1725-1753.
The first record we have of any visitors to this region dates back to 1614, when three Hollanders, on exploration bent, "left Fort Nassau, now Albany, and wandered into the interior along the Mohawk river and crossed the dividing watershed to Otsego Lake, the source of the Susquehanna river, and by the Lackawanna and Lehigh passed over to the Delaware river where, below Trenton Falls, they were rescued from the Indians, who had them in captivity, by Captain Hendrickson, who happened to be there exploring."
They gave the first European account of the geography of the region, and are doubtless responsible for the old maps which show the Delaware and Hudson rivers connected.
The next visitors to this region were the copper miners in Paha- quarry, who at some time before 1659 built the Old Mine Road to within six miles of the Water Gap. "In the 'Documentary History of New York' we find that Claaus de Ruyter exhibited in Amsterdam, Holland, in 1659, specimens of copper ore taken from the Minisinks in America."
Thomas Budd, in an Account of Pennsylvania and New Jersey, published in 1684, says that the Indians go up the Delaware from the falls (at Trenton) in canoes to the Indian town called Minisinks.
On August 18, 1713, the commissioners appointed by Governor Hunter to buy lands of the Indians secured their signatures to deeds for all the land in Warren county. This must have been at a great Indian
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WARREN COUNTY.
council, but we find no record of it. In 1714-15-16 and thereafter, deputy surveyors and proprietors were busy locating all the best land in the county, but, so far as can be learned, none was located for settlers before 1725.
The earliest deed that Francis J. Swayze could find recorded in the clerk's office at Newton, is dated September 10 "in the tenth year of our sovereign Lord King George," or 1723. "By this deed Joseph Kirkbride, of Pennsylvania, conveys to John Hutchinson, of Pennsyl- vania, 1250 acres surveyed by virtue of a warrant dated March 10, 1715." There is no evidence that this was to a settler.
In 1725, George Green and John Axford surveyed their tracts of land, the one at Green's Pond, of 600 acres, the other at Oxford Fur- nace, of 1600 acres.
In 1725, Nicolaes Dupui came down the Old Mine Road and, crossing the river to Shawnee, made peace with the Indians, from two of whom he secured a deed for land in 1727. Here he and his four sons settled. They were visited by Nicolas Scull, who was sent in 1729 by the government of Pennsylvania to drive away any settlers who had not bought land of the proprietors of Pennsylvania. He was given deeds in 1730 and 1733.
By 1730, nearly all of the most fertile land in our county was taken up by the proprietors, a good deal of which they held for many years before selling it to settlers.
William Penn laid out a tract of 11,000 acres in the vicinity of Waterloo that reached well over into Warren county; 12,000 acres in the vicinity of Newton; 5,000 acres between Blairstown and Silver Lake; 1,250 acres at Belvidere; a large tract in Allamuchy; 1,735 acres in Harmony.
As early as 1732, advertisements appeared in the Philadelphia papers offering land for sale along Paulin's Kill and the Pequest, for the use of settlers, most of whom entered the country by way of Phila- delphia.
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WARREN COUNTY.
In 1732, Abram Van Campen bought 1,666 acres, comprising all the upper half of Pahaquarry, from the heirs of George Hutcheson, one of the proprietors of New Jersey.
In 1737, Lodewick Titman came from Saxony and purchased several hundred acres at the foot of the Blue Mountains, six miles from the Water Gap.
By this time there must have been a considerable number of set- tlers in the county whose names we may never know. In 1737 the total population of what is now Hunterdon, Morris, Sussex and Warren counties was 5,570, which increased to 8,080 by 1745.
In the Pole of freeholders of the County of Hunterdon for repre- sentatives to serve in General Assembly of the Province of New Jersey for the County of Hunterdon taken per Christopher Search, one of the clerks, October 9, 1738, before David Martin, Esq., high sheriff, we find the names of Samuel Green, Henry Stewart, John Anderson, and Thomas Anderson, all of Greenwich.
In 1739 the first call for preaching went forth from the county to the Presbytery of New Brunswick for supplies to Mr. Barber's neigh- borhood near Musconnekunk. In 1740 Jacobus Vanetta and his brothers settled at Foul Rift.
In 1741, Aaron Dupui opened the first store in the county at Oxford, and in the same year Jonathan Robeson started to build the old iron furnace, which was completed and delivered its first iron March 9, 1743. The original stack is still standing, and produced iron as late as 1882.
In 1742, John Casper Freyenmuth took charge of four Dutch churches along the Delaware above the Water Gap, but so far as can be learned, none of these was in Warren county. One was at Smith- field, and the others along the Old Mine Road. He received seventy pounds a year, one-fourth of which was paid by each church.
Before 1744 there was a Presbyterian church built at Greenwich,
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WARREN COUNTY.
another at Mansfield Wood House, and services were held at Axford's, or Oxford.
On May 13, 1744, David Brainerd, the missionary, began his labors among the Indians and the Irish and Dutch people, about twelve miles above the Forks of the Delaware, in Pennsylvania, where he labored for three years, occasionally preaching in New Jersey. His cabin was on the banks of Martin's creek.
Prior to 1693, West Jersey had been divided into Burlington, Salem and Falls counties. Until 1714 this part of New Jersey was nominally in Burlington county. But since at that time there was not a single white settler in what is now Warren county, it does not concern us materially.
On March 11, 1714, an act of the General Assembly erected "the upper parts of the western division of New Jersey into a county" called Hunterdon, which included all of Warren, Sussex, Morris, Hun- terdon and Mercer counties, with the county seat at Trenton.
On March 15, 1739, Morris county was set off from Hunterdon, and comprised the present counties of Morris, Sussex and Warren, with Morristown as the county seat.
The inconvenience of going so far to court caused further divi- sions to be made, and on June 8, 1753, Sussex county was erected, including Warren. For seventy-one years, or during most of our early history, "our county" was Sussex, and did not become Warren until an Act of the Legislature, on November 20, 1824, formed a new county called Warren, from the southwestern part of Sussex.
Sussex County, when first formed, contained four townships- New Town, Walpack, Hardwick and Greenwich. Of these, Green- wich, nearly all of Hardwick, and one-half of Walpack, were within the present limits of Warren county.
The county courts of Sussex were established by an ordinance emanating from the governor of New Jersey and his council, and exe- cuted in the name of King George the Second. The first Court of
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WARREN COUNTY.
General Sessions of the Peace and of Common Pleas for Sussex County was opened on November 20, 1753, at what is now Johnsonburg, at the public house of Jonathan Pettit. The first judges were Jonathan Robeson, Abram Van Campen, John Anderson, Jonathan Pettit and Thomas Wolverton. Joseph Perry was sworn in as constable. Some licenses to taverns were granted, rates established for entertainment thereat, and then the first court adjourned.
In April, 1754, all the qualified voters of the county were asked to meet at the house of Samuel Green to select a place to build a jail and courthouse. A jail of logs was ordered built on the lands of Samuel Green, at what is now Johnsonburg, but no provision was made for building a courthouse there. The courts were held at Pettit's or Wolverton's tavern, near the Log Jail, which gave its name to the · place.
After nine years the General Assembly of New Jersey ordered a courthouse built on Hairlocker's plantation, now Newton. The court- house and a new jail were completed, and courts for the May term of 1765 were held at the new site. During the nine years that the Log Jail was the county seat, no important cases were tried, although there is a tradition that a negro wench was hanged there, presumably for theft.
CHAPTER IV.
FROM THE FORMATION OF SUSSEX COUNTY TO THE END OF THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR.
1753-1763.
The most rapid period of growth of our county was for ten years after 1753. It was difficult to get enough bread corn (wheat or rye) for the people to eat, so that the county advanced money to buy bread corn for them, and they were to pay the loan back in two years. Michi- gan, a hundred years later, was in the same predicament when settlers were coming in so fast, and many of them were from Warren County.
In 1755 Lewis Evans published in London a Map of the Middle British Colonies in America, in which are found the names of Sussex, Walpack, Philipsburg, Changewater and Easton.
Francis J. Swayze says :
"The eleven years between 1753 and 1764 were filled with great events. The hostility of the house of Austria to Frederick the Great culminated at last in what is known as the Seven Years' War, and this conflict between two European powers involved all of western Europe in war, and let loose upon the colonists in America, thousands of miles distant, and entirely unconcerned in the struggle, the Indian tribes. Sussex county (which included Warren) was then upon the frontier. An almost unbroken wilderness occupied only by Indians stretched between the Delaware and the French settlements on the Ohio. Up to this time the Indians whom the citizens of New Jersey had met, had been peaceable and well disposed. No Indian wars or massacres stain our earlier annals, * *
* * The pacific disposition which the colonists adopted from the Quakers had been aided by the policy of peaceful trade which they inherited from the Dutch."
The French and Indian war had a peculiar significance for War-
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WARREN COUNTY.
ren county, owing to its near vicinity to the land in the Forks of the Delaware and to the Pennsylvania Minisink, which the Indians claimed had been unfairly taken from them by "the Indian Walk" in 1737. This "walk" was made by Edward Marshall, for the purpose of meas- uring the extent of a purchase of land made by Governor Penn from the Indians. Marshall walked (or the Indians said ran) all the way to the Pocono mountains, while the Indians had understood a day and a half's walk to mean only as far as the Kittatinny mountains. This lost to them their favorite hunting and camping grounds on the Minisink, and caused the Delaware Indians for the first time to be hostile.
To be sure, they had no fault to find with their treatment by New Jersey, but many of the settlers in Pennsylvania fled across the river, and Warren county suffered to some extent.
The dissatisfaction of the Delaware Indians with "the Indian Walk" made it easy for the French in Canada to secure them as allies when France and England came to war. The Delawares were heredi- tary enemies of the Iroquois in New York, who already had an alliance with the English, which alliance later was to cost them so dearly in the Revolution.
Indian hostilities began in this section on November 24, 1755, by an attack on Gnadenhutten, a Moravian settlement on the Lehigh, twenty-eight miles from Bethlehem, where eleven persons were killed. So vigorously did they prosecute the war in Northampton county that by September, 1757, from a list made out by Captain Jacob Orndt, one hundred and fourteen persons were killed and fifty-two taken prisoners, of whom only seven afterwards returned." Within four weeks in 1755, more than fifty persons had been killed and forty-one houses burned.
A letter from Easton, dated December 25, 1755, states that "the country all above this town for fifty miles is mostly evacuated and ruined, excepting only the neighborhood of Dupue's five families, which stand their ground. The people have chiefly fled into Jersey. Many of them have threshed out their corn and carried it off with their cattle
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WARREN COUNTY.
and best household goods, but a vast deal is left to the enemy. Many offered half their corn, horses, cows, goods, etc., to save the rest, but. could not obtain assistance enough to remove them in time. The enemy made but few prisoners, murdering almost all that fell into their hands, of all ages and both sexes. All business is at an end, and the few remaining starving inhabitants in this town are quite dejected and dis- pirited. Captains Ashton and Trump march up to Dupue's this day and are to build two block houses for defence of the country between that settlement and Gnadenhutten, which, when finished, the inhabitants that are fled say they will return."
Another writer, under date of December 31, 1755, says that "Indians known to be principally from Susquehanna have during this month been making incursions into the county of Northampton, where they have already burned fifty houses, murdered above one hundred persons and are still continuing their ravages, murders and devasta- tions, and have actually overrun and laid waste a great part of the country even as far as within twenty miles of Easton, its chief town." "This state of things actually continued with but little intermission until into 1764, a period of over eight years, during which time scenes of the most atrocious character were enacted, as if each side endeavored to excel the other in cruelty, it appearing on the part of the Delaware and Shawanese Indians as their last and most determined efforts to secure the lands out of which they believed they had been unjustly defrauded by the proprietaries and which records establish were con- veyed unto William Allen as early as November 16, 1727, and from which they were afterwards forcibly dispossessed through connivance with the powerful Iroquois."
The Indians had an especial animosity against Edward Marshall, who had made "the walk," and tried in every way to capture him. He moved his family over into New Jersey until 1757, when he returned to his home below Jacobus creek, near Portland, Pennsylvania. On May 23, when he was away from home, sixteen Indians attacked the
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WARREN COUNTY.
house. One of them threw his coat on a hive of bees, which caused sufficient diversion to enable five of the children to hide in the bushes. One daughter was shot, but not killed. They made a prisoner of Mrs. Marshall, and proceeded northwards. Six months later her body was found on the Blue mountain, with tomahawk marks on her skull and breast, and with her the remains of twins. In August Marshall's eldest son was shot while at work.
In the presence of such occurrences it is not surprising that repri- sals were thought of. Seven hundred dollars were subscribed to pay bounties for Indian scalps at forty dollars apiece, and several companies were formed of men used to deer hunting for hunting the Indians. Governor Morris in 1756 offered 138 Spanish dollars for every Indian scalp.
It was at this time that took place the occurrences that are the basis of the stories concerning Tom Quick, the Indian Slayer. His father, also called Thomas Quick, resided near Milford, Pennsylvania, and in 1738 was a voter from Walpack. One day, when the father and two of his sons were after hoop poles, they were fired upon by the Indians, and the father was killed, but the two sons escaped, although young Tom was wounded, and he swore that he would never be at peace with the Indians as long as one could be found on the banks of the Delaware. He killed many Indians and had many close escapes from capture, but finally died at a good old age, and is buried near his old home at Milford, Pennsylvania, where a fine monument has been erected to his memory,
Stories similar to those filling the life of Tom Quick are also told of LaBar, Houser, Tom Casper and Edward Marshall himself, who admits killing some Indians, but feared to let it be known on account of reprisals on his family. A great granddaughter of Marshall's, Mrs. Mary Myers, died in Belvidere in 1910.
At the beginning of the French and Indian War, Abraham Van Campen was appointed colonel of a regiment of militia, and assigned
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WARREN COUNTY.
to the protection of the frontier, and Colonel John Anderson, with four hundred men, secured the upper part of the State. All the militia of our county was kept in readiness to repel attacks, and a proclamation was issued on June 2, 1756, offering a reward of one hundred and thirty Spanish dollars for destroying any hostile male Indian above fifteen years of age. This was in effect only one month, or till July 11, when a treaty of peace between New Jersey and the Delawares and Shawa- nees was made.
But this did not end the war, or the danger. In 1758 the legisla- ture by special act gave a reward of money and silver medals to Ser- geant John Vantile and a lad named Titsort, to the latter for killing an Indian in Sussex county.
To protect the frontier from attacks by the Indians, block houses were erected and garrisoned. One was at the mouth of the Pequest, near the end of the present bridge; one at the mouth of the Paulin's Kill; one at the house of Dupui at Shawnee; and plans were made for the erection of several more as occasional outbreaks occurred.
In 1756, when a number of cavalry horses were pasturing on a meadow known as the Marsh, near the mouth of the Paulins Kill, a cloud-burst caused such a flood as to drown the horses.
Among those from this county who served in the French and Indian war were William Maxwell, of Greenwich, who "was with General Braddock at the battle of Fort Duquesne, July 9, 1755, and with General Abercrombie on his expedition of July, 1759, against Ticonderoga, and is reported to have been with General Wolfe at the fall of Quebec, 1759. He was subsequently attached to the commissary department of the British army at Mackinaw, Michigan, with the rank of colonel."
In this way he learned the principles of war that made him the most prominent of New Jersey's officers in the Revolution.
The French and Indian war was brought to a close by the Treaty of Paris, made on the eighteenth of February, 1763.
CHAPTER V
FROM THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR TO THE END OF THE REVO- LUTION.
1763-1783.
Smith, in his history printed in 1765, says of Sussex County, which then included Warren :
"It being the newest county and a frontier (Pennsylvania and New York both meet against it, but have few settlements) is not much improved, and has but few inhabitants. It lies toward the head of the Delaware; about fifteen miles was exposed to the Indians in the late wars, and fortified by a frontier guard, and several block houses at provincial expense. The courts for the county are held at Hairlocker's plantation, where a new courthouse is lately built. Near the river lies the noted Paoqualin hill, being part of the Continental Chain or Ridge, called the Blue Mountains, supposed to contain valuable ore. Between that and the river is low intervale excellent land, containing a few plantations. This county raises some wheat, pork and cattle for New York and Philadelphia markets, and cuts lumber. It contains of low Dutch Presbyterian meeting houses five, Baptists two, German Luth- erans one, Quakers one."
Our county increased rapidly in population in the years following the French and Indian war. By 1771 the population of Sussex, which included Warren, was 8,944, and there were 1,469 dwellings. In 1768 Sussex was authorized to elect two representatives to the Assembly.
The first bridge recorded as having been erected by the board of freeholders was one across the Musconetcong, built in 1770, while in 1773, 150 pounds were appropriated for bridges.
In a map published by William Faden, at Charing Cross, London, in 1777, from surveys made in 1769, we find the names Water Gap,
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WARREN COUNTY.
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34
WARREN COUNTY.
Foul Rift, Philippsburg, Easton, Bloomsburg, Greenwich, Change- water, Halketstown, Oxford and Andover, and the various streams of the county as at present.
In the government of New Jersey the governor and his council represented the interests of the Crown, while the Assembly represented the people. Our Colonial political history was one continuous strug- gle, which had its counterpart in the other colonies, between these two opposed elements, the one seeking to restrict the rights and powers of the people, the other to extend them. Before the outbreak of the Revo- lution, the people of New Jersey had been educated for a century in the principles of self-government, the love of which became greater as they saw it slipping from them.
In 1763, Mr. Grenville, first Commissioner of the Treasury of Great Britain, made public his intention to draw a revenue from Amer- ica by means of a stamp duty. This was objected to by the people of New Jersey as a violation of the concessions of the proprietors, which provided that no tax whatsoever should be imposed upon the inhabi- tants without their own consent.
The colonies offered to raise, by taxing themselves, more revenue than a stamp tax could produce. Nevertheless the stamp act was passed in March, 1765, and stamp officers appointed to carry it out. William Coxe, Esq., was appointed for New Jersey, but resigned in September, 1765. The act provided that no writing could have a legal value unless on stamped paper. The act aroused such bitter opposition in the Colo- nies that it was repealed in 1766, but the repeal was accompanied by a declaration that parliament had a right to tax the Colonies without con- sulting their assemblies.
This was followed by an act imposing duties on tea, glass, paper and pigments. But this was still a tax without representation, and was bitterly opposed by the Colonies, who agreed to import nothing from Great Britain that was taxed.
As a protest against the right of the British government to levy
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WARREN COUNTY.
taxes directly, the "Boston Tea Party" was held on December 16, 1773, at which three hundred and forty-three chests of tea on which the gov- ernment had hoped to collect three pence a pound, were thrown into Boston harbor. This caused Parliament to close the port of Boston to all shipping, and later to subvert the constitution and charter of Massa- chusetts, vesting all power in the Crown. Great indignation was aroused, and meetings were held in all the Colonies. The following minutes show the sentiment in this county :
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