USA > New Jersey > Warren County > History of Warren County, New Jersey > Part 7
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CHAPTER VIII.
FROM THE FORMATION OF WARREN COUNTY TO THE END OF THE CIVIL WAR.
1824-1865.
From 1793 until the outbreak of the Civil War the militia formed an important part of the defenses of our country. Every able-bodied. male citizen between the ages of eighteen and forty-five was to be en- rolled in the militia, and was to arm and equip himself and appear for exercise when called, which was usually once a year. A company of militia consisted of sixty-four men; a battalion contained five com- panies; two battalions made a regiment, and four regiments constituted a brigade. The commander of a regiment ranked as lieutenant-colonel. The officers of the militia were commissioned by the Legislature on recommendation of the companies. Among them may be mentioned Captain John Howell, Captain Peter Young, Captain Edward Hunt, General Samuel Wilson, Major George Creveling, Captain E. Hunt.
In 1828 the Warren Brigade consisted of three regiments command- ed by Colonels James Davison, George Bowlsby and Charles F. Line- bach, and an independent uniform battalion commanded by Major Charles Sitgreaves, all under Brigadier-General Williamson. The Belvidere Apollo mentions the following militia :
"Washington Troop of Horse, of which Lefford H. Persell was captain in 1827, and Mark Thompson O. S.
"Uniform Independent Battalion of Warren Brigade, E. Hunt, captain Com., in 1827.
"Union Blues, James Hiles, captain.
"The several regiments of Warren Brigade to be reviewed by Brigadier-General Williamson."
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The annual reviews finally became very unpopular and degenerat- ed into a mere farce and, in Warren County at least, were for many years dispensed with altogether.
The most important event in the thirties for our county was the opening of the Morris Canal, in 1831. This gave freight connection with the rest of the world, and brought about a readjustment in the development of villages in the county, and ultimately led to the extinc- tion of some not favorably situated.
The Morris Canal and Banking Company was chartered in 1824, to construct a public waterway from Phillipsburg to Newark, connect- ing the Delaware and Lehigh rivers with the Passaic. At that time canals were considered the best known method of overland freight transportation. It was a difficult engineering feat. The boats had to be lifted by locks and inclined planes to a total height of 900 feet, and lowered again to sea level. It was the first use of inclined planes for such a purpose.
The canal was opened for business in 1831, but its income was so small that it failed in 1841, but was reorganized in 1844. It cost $5,000,000, and had a possible carrying capacity of 1,000,000 tons annually in each direction. Its greatest tonnage was carried in 1866, when it amounted to 889,220 tons. From that time on its tonnage rapidly fell off, owing to competition by the railroads, until in 1877 it failed to pay expenses, and since then it has been operated at a total loss of $5,000,000.
The canal has a total length of 107 miles. In our county it passes through Phillipsburg, Stewartsville, New Village, Broadway, Wash- ington, Port Colden, Port Murray, Rockport and Hackettstown to the Guard Lock. In 1871 the canal was leased perpetually to the Lehigh Valley Railroad Company. At present it is practically abandoned as a public waterway.
Judge Swayze says: "The exhibition of an elephant in 1823 attracted attention then, but would be unnoticed now. Soon the circuses
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began to come regularly every year. Baseball is first mentioned in 1865, croquet in 1867, velocipedes in 1869; in 1871 occurred the first excursion to the sea shore and Rockaway Beach."
Grass was cut by the scythe until the advent of the mowing machine
ยท in 1853.
The first mention of slate for roofing in this region was in 1847.
The first musical instrument maker in the county was John A. Smith, who, about 1850, began the manufacture of melodeons at Wash- ington.
At the time of the famine in Ireland in 1847 contributions of money and corn meal were forwarded from Warren County.
"The Mexican war caused but little concern in this region." But several men from our county joined troops from other States and passed through the conflict.
In 1820 it was with difficulty that 365 tons of anthracite coal were sold in the United States. In 1850 3,000,000 tons were mined and sold. In 1839 anthracite was first used on steamboats, but it did not come into general use until 1844, and by 1850 manufacturing by steam power was becoming as common as by water power.
In January, 1851, the following post offices were listed in Warren County, the absence of Washington and Phillipsburg being noteworthy : Allamuchy, Anderson, Asbury, Beatyestown, Belvidere, Blairstown, Bloomsbury, Broadway, Brotzmanville, Calno, Columbia, Danville, Hackettstown, Hainesburg, Harmony, Hope, Johnsonburg, Mansfield, Marksboro, Mill Brook, New Village, Oxford Furnace, Paulina, Polk- ville, Ramsaysburg, Rocksburgh, Serepta, Stewartsville, Still Valley, Townsbury and Walnut Valley.
Slavery was popular with large land owners in this county from its first settlement. Colonel Abram Van Campen's will, made in 1766, mentions eleven that he owned. In Sussex (including Warren) there were 439 slaves in 1790, and 514 in 1800. Their numbers decreased under the operation of laws unfavorable to slavery to 478 in 1810, and
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to 338 in 1820. At Warren's first census in 1830 there were only 47 slaves in a total population of 18,627. One of the last slaves in the county is buried in the new cemetery at Hazen, and on her tombstone is inscribed: "Lizzie, slave of Jacob Titman, died Aug. 6th, 1858, aged 57 years." She was the daughter of a slave couple that had been owned by the Titman family for many years.
Many families in the county manumitted or set free their slaves voluntarily under the influence of popular sentiment. Many of the manumission papers are on file in the county clerk's offices at Newton and Belvidere. The following is a copy of one of these interesting documents :
"To All Whom It May Concern, Know ye that I, Thomas Paul, of Belvedere, in the Township of Oxford, County of Sussex and State of New Jersey, have the ninth day of June in the year of our Lord Eighteen Hundred, manumitted and hereby do manumit and set free my negro wench slave called Cate, wife of Thomas Gardner, aged about twenty-three years, who is sound of mind and bodily capacity to the best of my knowledge. In witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand and seal the day and year aforesaid. * THOMAS PAUL. "Witnesses present :
"BENJ'N SEXTON,
"JOSHUA SWEAZE." [L. s.]
Professor Armstrong says :
"The Quaker settlement was a station on the Underground Rail- road. Slaves fleeing from bondage would pass through Philadelphia to Burlington, N. J., and then traveling northward by way of Quaker- town or Plainfield would reach Quaker Settlement. Here they ob- tained rest and food and were concealed in barns and cellars. Witnesses to these scenes are still living; they remember hearing voices of prayer from fugitives hidden in the cellar and they remember seeing a black mother start like a wild bird as she sat behind the stove feeding her two children when she heard a horse and carriage drive up to the door.
"These fugitives came in the night and went away in the night. They were always carefully directed to the next station, and some times taken part of the way concealed in the bottom of a wagon. The next station in their long flight to Canada was among the families of some
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Friends who lived on the Drowned Lands in the valley of the Wallkill River, Sussex County, near the New York State line."
One may gain an idea of the life work of Benjamin Lundy, the founder of American Abolitionism, from the following account con- densed from a lecture given by William Clinton Armstrong, also a Warren County boy, before the Historical Club of Rutgers College in 1897:
"After the close of the Revolutionary War anti-slavery views were quite popular in this country, but activity along that line soon ceased. This early anti-slavery sentiment seems to have been a mere corollary to the discussion that had raged concerning the rights of man as set forth in the Declaration of Independence. It never called forth much self-sacrifice, but it did lead to the extinction of slavery in the northern States."
"No greater conflict has ever rocked this continent than that which grew out of the agitation commenced by Benjamin Lundy, the 'Aboli- tionist,' who was born and nutured to manhood at the Quaker settle- ment in Warren County, New Jersey.
"Horace Greely, a man well qualified to speak, says of Lundy : 'He was the first of our countrymen who devoted his life and all his powers to the cause of slaves His courage, perseverence and devotion were unsurpassed.'
"Benjamin Lundy, son of Joseph and Elizabeth (Shotwell) Lundy, was born on the fourth day of first month, 1789, at the Quaker Settlement, and lived there for nineteen years. Benjamin was brought up in the religious faith of the Society of Friends and was trained to their plain way of living, and in this faith and way he lived and died.
"The doctrine of the Society of Friends against human slavery was clear and strong; the Quakers have been the boldest and most aggres- sive advocates of personal freedom. Benjamin Lundy went to Wheel- ing, West Virginia.
"Perhaps in no part of the United States did the system of Afri- can slavery exhibit its repulsive features in so open a form unrelieved by any redeeming trait as it did at this very time at the city of Wheeling, the western terminus of the National Turnpike that had been built by Congress, to which the slaves bought in Maryland and Virginia were brought chained together in long gangs. Here they were kept in slave pens awaiting transportation. He formed the Union Humane Society
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in 1815, which soon enrolled 500 members. He published articles against slavery in a local newspaper, and in 182 1 published No. 1, Vol. I of The Genius of Universal Emancipation, the first newspaper in America, perhaps in the world, devoted exclusively to abolition. In 1824, in North Carolina, he gave the first public lecture ever delivered in America in favor of the aboltion of slavery.
"He delivered over two hundred lectures before 1829. General Lafayette encouraged him to go on and expressed his regret at finding so many slaves still in the country.
"On a lecture trip through the East, when in Boston, he converted William Lloyd Garrison, the editor of the National Philanthropist, to his way of thinking, and for six months they were partners in the publication of Lundy's paper, the Genius.
"Remember that Lundy never dreamed of an emancipation backed by the sword; he was opposed to violence and war; his appeal was solely to the reason and the conscience. He planned colonies of emancipated slaves in Africa and Mexico. He obtained from the Governor of Tamaulipas, in Mexico, a grant of 138,000 acres of land for his colonization scheme in 1835, but the plan had to be abandoned, owing to the Declaration of Independence of Texas and the resulting unsettled state of affairs."
In a pamphlet published in 1836 he says :
"Our countrymen, in fighting for the union of Texas with the United States, will be fighting for that which at no distant period will inevitably dissolve the Union. The slave States, having the eligible addition to their land of bondage, will ere long cut asunder the federal tie, and confederate a new and distinct slave-holding republic in opposi- tion to the whole free republic of the North."
He continued to sow the seeds of abolition, despite mob violence, personal assault and financial ruin, until his death, in 1839.
In 1850 the slave owners became so great a power politically with both the Whigs and Democrats that they were able to secure the pas- sage by Congress of the Fugitive Slave Law, to the support of which even the great Webster sold himself in hopes of furthering his chances of being elected President. This law was so unjust and so tyrannous that it acted as a boomerang to the slave interests, and the Presidential
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WARREN COUNTY.
election of 1852 showed plainly that a new political party had arisen in spirit if not in name-a party founded on stronger opposition to the slave holders' aggressiveness. In 1856 this new party became a reality, and, as the Republican party, presented John C. Fremont as its candi- date for president.
Two years after the Fugitive Slave Law was passed, Harriet Beecher Stowe gave to the world "Uncle Tom's Cabin," the perusal of which convinced many that slavery was essentially immoral. This work proved a powerful weapon for the Abolitionists.
In 1857 the slave interests were so powerful as to secure from the United States Supreme Court the Dred Scott decision, in which Judge Taney said, "The black man has no rights that the white man is bound to respect." This phrase was used with telling effect by the Abolitionists all over the country.
The civil war in Kansas, following the passage of the Kansas- Nebraska bill and the repeal of the Missouri compromise, aroused thousands of Free Soil champions. In the conflict in Kansas, John Brown took part against the slave holders, and there conceived the idea of becoming the liberator of all the slaves, which idea resulted in his seizing the United States armory at Harper's Ferry in, October, 1859, and arming a few negroes. While John Brown's raid was a total failure, it helped to bring about the result he so much desired, and many a soldier marched to the song, "John Brown's body lies moldering in the grave, his soul goes marching on."
On April 15, 1861, three days after the first gun was fired at Fort Sumter, President Lincoln issued his call for three months' men. On April 18th, Captain Edward Campbell, at Belvidere, had replied to this call by raising a company of seven officers and fifty privates. On the 19th the company was complete, and arrived at Trenton before the authorities were ready to muster them in! These were the earliest troops raised in the State in answer to Lincoln's call, outside of existing
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military organizations. Thus New Jersey was the first of the States, and Warren the first of Jersey's counties, to furnish volunteers for the rebellion ! . These troops became part of the Third Regiment on May 18, and served for three years.
Captain De Witt Clinton Blair, then as now of Belvidere, raised and equipped a company. But so rapid had been the response all over our State that its full quota was raised before he and his company arrived at Trenton !
Captain Joseph J. Henry, of Oxford, then in Washington, D. C., was the first volunteer from that township, and was the first officer from New Jersey to fall in battle. Captain Henry Post, G. A. R., of Belvi- dere, is named in his honor.
Colonel Charles Scranton said in his address at Belvidere, July 4, 1876:
"What memories cluster around those days of April and May, 1861, and all through the terrible war! And later, as further calls for troops came, how nobly did our county of Warren respond! You knew these noble, brave young men. I knew them by the thousand in the State. I loved them and cherish their memories. Thousands and thousands fell with their face to the foe! Henry, Brewster, Lawrence, Hilton, Hicks, Armstrong and scores of other noble heroes from old Warren fell. I shrink from the calling of the roll of those honored dead. Our county furnished one thousands four hundred and thirty- seven men, besides those from her to other counties and States, of whom one hundred and seventy-six fell in battle or died of disease contracted in the army, or from inhuman treatment in prisons. Of these brave men who thus died, some lie in our own cemeteries, some on the field where they fell, in graves unknown, and though no 'storied urn or animated bust,' or marble shaft or granite pile marks their last resting place here on earth, yet their memories will live in story and history, and annually as their loved ones gather flowers to strew on their tombs or bedew them with their tears, will there grow an increasing love for their memories.
Company D, First Regiment New Jersey Infantry, was recruited at Phillipsburg, New Jersey, and its regiment was mustered into service
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on May 18, 1861, for three years' service. It was officered by Captain (later Major) Valentine Mutchler, Lieutenant (later Captain) Charles Sitgreaves, Jr., Lieutenant H. A. Mclaughlin and Sergeant (later Lieutenant) Charles W. Mutchler. The First Regiment took part in all the principal battles in Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania; and was present when Lee surrendered at Appomattox, April 9, 1865.
The original Lieutenant-Colonel of the First Regiment was Robert McAllister, of Oxford. He later became colonel of the Eleventh Regiment and was breveted Brigadier-General for "gallant and distinguished services at Boydton Plank Road," and Major-Gen- eral "for meritorious services during the war." "He shared the first battle of the war, and participated in the last." He lies buried beneath a handsome monument in the Belvidere Cemetary.
Lieutenant-Colonel William Henry, Jr., of Oxford commanded the First Regiment during a great part of the war, and between May 21 and June 4, 1864, in the Wilderness, all but three of the twenty-seven line officers of this regiment were killed or wounded.
The second Regiment, Company B, was commanded for a time by Captain (later Colonel) John A. Wildrick.
The Third Regiment, Company D, contained nine men from War- ren County who were at Bull Run and Gaines' Farm.
The Seventh Regiment, Company E, was successively officered by Captain Henry C. Cooper, Captain Joseph Abbott, Jr., Captain Daniel Hart, Captain David H. Ayres, and Lieutenants Edward Gephart, Charles C. Dally, Frederick Koch, Merritt Bruen, Alfred H. Austin, William H. Clark and James T. Odem. The regiment took part in the battle of Williamsburg, May 5, 1862; Chancellorsville, May, 1863; Gettysburg, July, 1863; Spottsylvania Court House, and at the Tucker House. Here the Seventh formed part of General McAllister's brigade, which kept at bay three full rebel divisions. The Seventh Regiment participated in nearly all the movements and battles of the Army of the Potomac.
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WARREN COUNTY.
The Ninth Regiment, Company H, was commanded by Captain Joseph J. Henry, who was the first officer of New Jersey to fall in battle. It was also officered successively by Captains James Stuart, Jr., Joseph B. Lawrence, Edward S. Pullen, and Lieutenants Jacob L. Hawk, Edward S. Carrell and Lucius C. Bonham. Lieutenant-Colonel Heckman, of Phillipsburg, assumed command of the Ninth Regiment before the battle of Roanoke Island, when Captain Henry was killed, on February 8, 1862. The regiment performed nobly in the battles of Newberne, Young's Cross-Roads, at Tarborough, Kinston, before Petersburg, and, in all the achievements of the army in Virginia and North Carolina, in which it participated, fully sustained the honor of their State.
Colonel Heckman, of the Ninth, was promoted to the rank of Brigadier-General and finally received a Major-General brevet. He was one of the few Warren County men in the Mexican war. Colonel James Stewart, Jr., of the Ninth, was breveted Brigadier-General, "and come home at the close of the war at the head of the regiment, with merited honors and hearty applause." The Ninth Regiment had partici- pated in forty-two battles or engagements. Eight officers lost their lives and twenty-three were wounded; sixty-one men were killed and four hundred wounded, of whom forty-three died of their wounds. Their total loss was one thousand six hundred and forty-six.
Two companies of the Fifteenth Regiment were recruited in War- ren County. The regiment was under command of Colonel Samuel Fowler and was a part of the famous Sixth Corps, which took part in the battles of Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Salem Heights, Frank- lin's Crossing, Gettysburg, Fairfield, Funktown, Rappahannock Sta- tion, Mine Run, Wilderness, Spottsylvania, Spottsylvania Court House, Hanover Court House, Cold Harbor, Petersburg, Winchester, Cedar Creek and Appomattox.
Company D of the Thirtieth Regiment contained thirty men
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from Warren County, who, with Lieutenant Edward S. Barnes, of Pahaquarry, were unable to enter the Thirty-first.
Warren County furnished six companies of the Thirty-first Regi- ment, and officers Colonel Alexander P. Berthand, Lieutenant-Colonel William Hold and Adjutant Martin Wyckoff, in all 694 men. Com- pany B was officered by Captain Joseph W. Johnson and Lieutenants John C. Felver and Frank P. Weymouth; Company C by Captain Andrew J. Raub and Lieutenants Thomas T. Stewart and Silas Hul- sizer; Company E by Captain Woodbury D. Holt and Lieutenants William L. Rodenburgh and John Alpaugh; Company G by Captain Benjamin F. Howey and Lieutenants William C. Larzelier and James F. Green; Company H by Captain David M. Trimmer and Lieutenants John N. Givens and Henry Hance, and Company I by Captain Calvin T. James and Lieutenants Richard T. Drake and James Prall.
The Thirty-first Regiment took part in the spring campaign of 1863, which included the disastrous battle of Chancellorsville and the engagement at Fredericksburg on April 30 and May 2. The Thirty- first was mustered out just before the battle of Gettysburg.
Colonel John A. Wildrick was commissioned First Lieutenant of the Sussex Rifles, and served under General Kearney. He was made Colonel of the Twenty-eighth New Jersey Regiment before the battle of Chancellorsville. He and Colonel Schoonover are the only two sur- vivors of those who commanded regiments from this vicinity.
CHAPTER IX.
FROM THE END OF THE CIVIL WAR TO THE PRESENT TIME.
1865-19II.
The period since the Civil War has been preeminently the period of the development of the towns at the expense of the country. In 1865 the most pretentious of our towns were merely villages, while the whole country was dotted with villages, each with its own industries. In the years that have intervened most of the industries in the scattered villages have disappeared or have merely a local character, the popula- tion of the country districts has dwindled, while the few larger towns have taken to themselves all the increase of population and wealth.
The period since the war has seen the change in farming opera- tions from the time when everything was done laboriously by hand, to the performance of nearly every farming operation by specialized ma- chinery. Then, the cradle, scythe, plow, flail and wind mill were in evidence on every farm. Now, mowing machines, binders, cultivators, threshers, gasoline engines, potato diggers and grain drills are the rule and have rendered smaller the number of laborers needed on a farm, and so brought about a decrease in the country population.
The decline in value of farming lands from their highest point in 1873, when they were valued as high as $250 an acre, to the lowest point in 1900, when nearly any farm in the county could have been bought for the value of the improvements on it, has happily given way to a steady increase in values which bids fair to continue until our land will be worth as much as similar land in the West, namely from $100 to $200 per acre.
In the years following the Civil War, the cabinet organ flourished.
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During the seventies and eighties these instruments were made by the thousands in our county and shipped to all parts of the world. They are still made, but their popularity has given way to the piano, the manufacture of which has made this part of New Jersey known in a way that nothing else has equaled, not excepting our world-famed Delaware Water Gap, which is mentioned by foreign guide books along with Niagara, the Yosemite and the National Park, as a sight not to be missed.
Before the days of the automobile the manufacture of wagons was an important industry in several of our towns, notably Hackettstown and Belvidere. The great development of nearly all that we consider distinctively modern has taken place in the past fifty years, such as rail- roads, trolleys, telephone lines, electric lighting plants, bicycles, automo- biles and the application of machinery to every department of human activity.
Warren County is crossed by more railway lines than any county in the State, namely, by the New Jersey Central, the Lehigh Valley, the Pennsylvania, the Lehigh and Hudson River, the New York, Susque- hanna and Western, the Lehigh and New England, and three times by the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western, making nine lines of railroad.
The pioneer railroad of this region was the Somerville and Easton railroad, which changed its name to the New Jersey Central in 1849. The road reached the White House in Hunterdon County in 1848, and the last rail was laid at Phillipsburg on July 1, 1852. The New Jersey Central railroad was opened on July 2, 1852. On that date the first train of eight cars arrived at Phillipsburg, at 2 o'clock, having traveled from Elizabeth in five hours, bringing five hundred passengers, who were met by a brass band and reception committee. After a stay of three hours the passengers returned by train to their homes.
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