USA > New Jersey > Essex County > Orange > History of the Oranges, in Essex County, N.J., from 1666 to 1806 > Part 7
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I. Jesse Williams.
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History of the Oranges.
came to Newark. He, however, migrated, with his neighbors, to Long Island instead of to Newark, and re- mained there until his departure for the West Indies.
matthow williams
In Hotton's Record of Emigration is the following record : "In Jan. 14, 1678, Matthew Williams was granted a ticket of emigration from Barbadoes to the Colonies with his servant, 1 and James Maynard."
Soon after the third division he took up lands near the Mountain at "the North Corner," in 1686. In 1688, he increased his acres there by giving his home lot, with many improvements, to George Day, in exchange for two tracts at the Mountain, one of which was contig- nous to the land he had located, and the other was, probably, on the north side of Main Street, near Hillyer Street. It is supposed that the earlier locators occu- pied their lands before warrants were granted and sur- veys made. The earliest surveys were made in 1684. The appointment of "surveyors to lay out highways as far as the Mountain and passages to all lands," in 1681, 2 proves occupation at that date.
Matthew Williams was born in 1651, and died No- vember 12, 1732, aged 81. His descendants were nu- merous. Some of them are found to this day at the "North Corner," living upon the lands of their fathers. On migrating from Connecticut he left there a brother, Amos. The latter never settled here, though he visited his brother, and it is said became owner of some lands. He had a son, Samuel, who came as a settler, and took up land on the top of the First Mountain. Samuel
I. Slavery was recognized by the Mother country. Carteret brought with him eighteen, whose names are given, and he imported others afterwards.
2. See Newark Town Records, p. 86.
M W
17:24
Here Lies the Body Of MIELREW MITRAITS
HERE LYEST HE BODYOF RUTH WILLIAMS WHO DEPARED THIS LIFE JULY 27 AND INTE- 67TH YE OF HER
November Ja 1732 le ine 81 Yearofthe
GRAVES OF MATTHEW WILLIAMS, 1732; AND HIS WIFE, RUTH, 1724.
85
Land Tenures.
died in 1812, aged 99, leaving a numerous posterity who settled around him. St. Cloud now covers the old Williams farms and homesteads. The homestead of Samuel, now modified, stands diagonally opposite the St. Cloud Presbyterian Church.
Samuel Harrison (2) was an early settler at the Moun- tain. He was the grand-son of Sergeant Richard, a Branford Associate,
Sami Harrison who remained on his home lot in the town. Samuel (2) first settled about 1720, on land west of Wigwam Brook. His house was at the turn of the Swinefield Road, where it intersects the Valley Road. About the year 1769 he built a house which stood upon what is now the corner of Valley Street and Lakeside Avenue. This was his home till his death in 1776. His son, Samuel, who never married, and who died at the age of 91, lived with him in this house. It was occupied also by his grand-son, Major Aaron Harrison, till his death. The house was re- cently removed to the immediate neighborhood of the triangle where the first school-house was built, at the Aaron Flamingon intersection of Val- ley Road with the Eagle Rock Road. It is now used as a wheelwright and blacksmith shop. His descendants, through his sons, Amos and Matthew, occupied the east slope of the Mountain; nearly all the acres now constituting Llewellyn Park from the Mt. Pleasant Turnpike north, to the Williams land on the corner.
The tribes of Joseph, George and Daniel, also sons of Sergeant Richard Harrison, were numerous. They settled through Joseph (2) on the east side of the Mountain, and beyond it at Caldwell; and through
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History of the Oranges.
Stephen, brother of Joseph (2), on the ridge through which Harrison Street is now laid, and east of it; Stephen's sons, Stephen (2), Jotham and Daniel hav- ing large holdings contiguous. Joseph (1) had one hundred acres fronting on the north side of the high- way, now Main Street, from a point two hundred and fifty feet west of Ridge Street to Parrow Creek, and bounded north by the lands of the Williams.
The tribes of George and Daniel Harrison, located themselves in Bloomfield.
Azariah and Nathaniel Crane, sons of Jasper, were large land owners. Their lands were bounded south
Nathanael Crane
by the Swinefield Road, east by the Cranetown Road, now Park Street, west by Wigwam Brook, which was the division line between the Crane lands and those of the Harrisons and Williams, and on the north by Antony's Brook at Montclair, the northern tributary of Second River. The family of Crane held also land on the south side of the Northfield Road to the summit of the Mountain. It afterwards came into the posses- sion of Simeon Harrison (1), being conveyed to him by the executors of Caleb Crane. There is a tradi- tion that when the Lords Proprietors claimed the pay- ments of the quit-rents for lands taken by Azariah and Nathaniel Crane, they brought in a bill for their services as surveyors in the employ. of the Proprietors as an offset. Their bill was not accepted, and the con- troversy was finally settled in the Supreme Court in favor of the surveyors.
John Condit (Conduit, Cundit), in 1690 was in New- ark, where he purchased nineteen acres on Mill Brook
87
Controversy with Lords Proprietors.
plain. His will was probated 1714. He left a son, Peter, who married Mary, daughter of Samuel Har- rison (2). Peter was the progenitor of the tribes of Condit in Essex County, and, through his sons, Peter and Philip, in Morris County. Samuel, his eldest son, had lands in the Second Valley, where he located, about 1720. John, Nathaniel and Isaac remained east of the Mountain. John was the only one who had lands on the south side of the Main Street from Scot- land Street, or near it, to the vicinity of Parrow Brook. The family and tribes of Dod were chiefly in Bloom- field, as were also those of Ward, Davis, Baldwin. Those of Peck, Canfield, Jones, Munn, Hedden, were in the eastern parts of East Orange. Those of Linds- ley, Pierson, Ball, Freeman, Riggs, Bruen, Brown, Tichenor, Young, were the primitive settlers of South Orange. The Camps were in Camptown, now Irving- ton.
CONTROVERSY WITH THE LORDS PROPRIETORS.
The Duke of York having received from his brother, Charles II., in 1664, a grant for all the lands lying between the Connecticut River and the Delaware Bay, fitted out a fleet consisting of four armed vessels in April of that year, to take possession of New Amster- dam.1 The expedition was under the command of Col. Richard Nichols, to whom the duke granted a commission to serve as his Deputy Governor within his grant. The surrender of New Amsterdam occurred in the August following. 2
To the English on the west end of Long Island the change of government was very acceptable, and an association was immediately formed to go to New
I. See Whitehead's East Jersey under the Proprietors, p. 25.
2. Ibid. p. 26.
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History of the Oranges.
York and secure from the Governor the liberty to pur- chase and settle a plantation. In September of the same year liberty was granted to purchase of the In- dians, and settle a parcel of land upon After Cull Baye. 1
The purchase was made of the Sagamores in Octo- ber, and a deed obtained of what became known as the Elizabethtown purchase. The associate purchasers submitted the transaction to Governor Nichols, who gave official confirmation of their title by grant in due form.
In the next year, August, 1665, a ship bringing Philip Carteret, with a company of about thirty per- sons, appeared at Elizabethtown Point. The com- mander presented his papers to Governor Nichols, and his commission as Governor from Lord Berkely and Sir George Carteret, to whom the Duke of York had granted the territory of East Jersey, after Nichols had received his commission to dispossess the Dutch at New Amsterdam.
The Associates of Elizabethtown had acted in good faith in making their purchase, and had received the confirmation of Governor Nichols, while yet unac- quainted with the fact that the country was no longer a part of his government, or subject to his control. They were not disposed to waive the rights which they believed had been acquired by them. Notwithstand- ing their claim to the soil, it does not appear to have prevented a harmonious co-operation with Governor Carteret in forwarding the prosperity of the new set- tlement. 2
The purchase from the natives of the Elizabethtown territory, with the concessions of the Lords Proprie-
I. See Whitehead's East Jersey under the Proprietors, p. 42.
2. Ibid. p. 64,
Controversy with Lords Proprietors. 89
tors, became a source of controversy, from the year 1670, when these patents were given, and the quit- rents for the lands ceded by the latter became due. The planters claimed to have a clear title to their lands in fee, while the Proprietors held that their title to the same was from the Crown, and that quit-rents were due to them as owners of the soil. They claimed that the deed from the natives extinguished their right of occupancy and no more. The question at issue was a disturbing element for a long series of years, and, finally, gave origin to the historically famous Bill in Chancery, in 1745, when the grievances were fully set forth as the complainants understood them.
The settlers of Elizabethtown and of Newark were of like traditionary sympathies in religious opinions and in their methods of action in civil affairs. While some controversies arose between them upon boundary lines, they were cordial in their neighborhood rela- tions, and their interests as a community of planters were identical.
The liberal acts of concession made by Berkely and Carteret in 1666, were satisfactory to the people. Their rights in matters of religion and of civil government were as well protected and as liberal as they are to us of this day. Upon the death of Charles II. the Duke of York succeeded to the throne as James II., 1685. Twenty years had now elapsed since he conveyed East Jersey to his friends, Berkely and Carteret, and they, in their turn, had bestowed their grants and conces- sions. James II., as King, now aimed to make the territory, which, by different patents and other doc- uments he had made and confirmed to others, "more dependent" upon his sovereign will and pleasure. For a series of years the Proprietors made earnest, but fruitless, efforts to secure the rights originally
90
History of the Oranges.
granted to them. They represented to the king that they had not received the province as a benevolence, but had expended for it twelve thousand pounds, and that, too, under his own confirmation of their title and his assurance of protection. They had reaped but few of the advantages expected from the settlement and improvement of the province. The future seemed to them to afford little promise. Prompted by these con- siderations they resolved to make a formal surrender of their patent, and to abandon a hopeless contest for their previously conceded privileges, obtaining only the king's guarantee to respect the rights in the soil. 1
After the surrender of the proprietary government to the Crown in 1702, Lord Cornbury, the first Gover- nor under Queen Anne, made himself obnoxious to the people by his acts of tyranny and oppression. "Their indignation was kindled by his despotic rule, savage bigotry, insatiable avarice and injustice, not only to the public but even to his private creditors." 2
His administration of six years was a disgrace to himself, and a source of evil in the province by foster- ing among the planters their hatred to the Crown and their hostility towards the Proprietors.
These facts, from a mass of others of the same effect, illustrate the lack of success experienced by the Pro- prietors themselves, in their venture in settling their lands in the New World. They came to East Jersey with little means and little principle. Bancroft (His- tory of United States, Vol. II., p. 130,) says of them : "Avarice is the vice of declining years ; most of the Proprietors were past middle life. They begged the country under a pretence of a 'pious zeal for the pro-
I. Whitehead, East Jersey under the Proprietors, p. 159.
2. Smith's History of New Jersey, p. 352.
91
Anti-Renters.
pagation of the Gospel,' and their sole object was the increase of their own wealth and dignity."
After the surrender of the proprietary government, the Constitution of the General Assembly, though good in itself, became a source of great dissatisfaction to the people. The lower house was made up of rep- resentatives elected by the people, and the upper house by the Governor and his Council. The latter house too often favored the purposes of the Proprie- tors, and thwarted, or set at naught, the popular will. In 1738, Lewis Morris, a native of New Jersey, re- ceived the commission of Governor. He had previ- ously been a man of the people, when in opposition to the royal governors who had preceded him. When he became a royal governor himself, he was overbear- ing, exacting and selfish to such a degree that his career was one of discord in the legislature, and of in- justice to the inhabitants of the Province. His ser- vices of eight years were terminated by his death in 1746.1
ANTI-RENTERS.
During the eighty years in which the events con- concisely given above were transpiring, the planters of Newark township increased in numbers and in wealth. With them there was an under-current of peaceful life promotive of industry and of self-reliance. Their rulers failed to secure their respect and confidence. The proprietors of their lands had failed in any good degree to obtain their quit-rents. The sons and grand- sons of the original settlers located on unoccupied lands, or took deeds from the Indians. To the second and third generations, the paying of quit-rents was only a tradition of the past. Many more settlers had
I. See Field's Provincial Courts of New Jersey, pp. 70-83.
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History of the Oranges.
come in to add to the natural increase of the first associates. In 1701, a large Indian purchase was made, the deed for which was lost by fire, and a new deed was obtained about 1744, from certain descendants of the old Sagamores. In 1745, another large Indian pur- chase was made by an association formed for the pur- pose. No proprietary claims were recognized. It was fifteen miles square and was known as the Horseneck purchase.
The time for a contest with the Proprietors was now fully ripe. Lewis Morris was the royal Governor ; his son was chief justice of the colony. Both were claim- ants, as holders of proprietary rights. The best legal counsel in New York and in the Province of New Jersey, was retained-other counsel and attorneys, though applied to, refused to undertake the cause of the planters, being awed by the power of the opulent claimants. These instituted suits at law for the re- covery of their quit-rents ; instituted actions of eject- ment ; arrested and committed to jail those who cut timber, or who ran a surveyor's chain upon plantations which had been held in peaceable possession for more than sixty years.
The contest between the grantees of Berkely and Carteret, and the claimants under Indian titles, had slept for many years. The measures now adopted by the Proprietors led these claimants to associate them- selves for their defence. They set at defiance the laws, broke open the jail in 1745, and set at liberty a person imprisoned at the suit of the Proprietors. "For sev- eral years thereafter all persons confined for like cause, or on charge of high treason and rebellion for resist- ing the laws, were released at the will of the insur- gents ; so that, in this respect, the arm of government was wholly paralyzed." Persons who had long held
93
Anti-Renters.
under the Proprietors were forcibly ejected, others were compelled to take leases from landlords whom they were not disposed to acknowledge, while those who had the courage to stand out, were threatened with, and in many cases received, personal violence. 1
In 1750 the inhabitants of Newark Township, to the number of four hundred and four, petitioned the Crown upon their grievances. They represented that from 1677 to 1744-5, they had purchased lands from the Indians then in possession, the acknowledged owners of the soil having refused to allow or permit a sur- veyor, or settlement, without a precedent purchase, thus obliging them to compound with the native occu- pants ; that the town of Newark and out settlements contained from "ten to twelve hundred houses and families dependent, with a few exceptions only, on titles derived as in the manner above set forth ;" that the present owners had been in possession " some twenty, some forty and some four-score years ;" that it appears to them (the Proprietors,) "that the grant of the Duke of York must be understood to intend no more than a grant of a power of government over, and a right to purchase those lands which the Indians had the occupancy of, and by the law of nature and na- tions had a right to, and could not justly be deprived of without a voluntary agreement to part with them. That such purchases must necessarily be made to vest the fee and soil in the Crown ;" that the improvements of the same, paying taxes and rates are a just founda- tion of title, and that thereby the present possessors are entitled to their quiet and peaceable enjoyment. The petitioners then say: "We have the witness of our own conscience and the testimony of our own
I. See New Jersey Archives, Vol. VII., pp. 210-226 ; also 402-458.
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History of the Oranges.
countrymen universally (the Proprietors and their de- scendants only excepted) that we have demeaned our- selves with entire submission to the laws, paying all dues, duties, taxes and rates whatsoever, for the sup- port of government at all times, as readily as any of your Majesty's good and faithful subjects have done, and behaved ourselves in all other respects as quiet and faithful subjects," except as they were "led on to oppose force to the injurious oppressive proceedings of their adversaries." 1
The distracting events of this period of our colonial history, signalized the latter years of the long pastor- ate of Rev. Daniel Taylor. Many of the leading men in the parish-his most worthy men-were anti-renters. He was a holder himself of lands, and an associate in the fifteen-mile purchase. As the guide of his people in morals and religion, and recognized as knowing something of law, he was, doubtless, as the clergy at that day were apt to be, a leader in civil affairs. He had the courage of his convictions, and, from what has come down to us in the history of his day, he did not hesitate to give expression to them. Nothing is on record to discredit him as a Christian teacher and conscientious citizen. In 1746-
"A BRIEF VINDICATION OF THE PURCHASERS AGAINST THE PROPRIETORS IN A CHRISTIAN MANNER,"
was printed in New York and issued in pamphlet .? It had a large circulation in the Province. Its writer's name does not appear, but it was generally accepted that Mr. Taylor was its author. It was so much to the
I. See Manuscript Copy of "Petition of 404 Inhabitants of Newark, to the King in Council." In the Library of the New Jersey Historical Society.
2. See New Jersey Archives, VI. 266, where it is re-printed.
95
A Brief Vindication of Purchasers.
point and so damaging to the Proprietors that they noticed it in the New York Post Boy.
Its arguments and trenchant appeals to their sense of right were met, in their review of it, only by de- faming the writer and holding up him and those for whom he pleaded for abuse and contempt ; thus inten- sifying the hostility of the planters towards themselves, and confirming them in their purposes of opposition to what they considered unjust claims. An extract from an account book of Samuel Harrison, which was opened as early as 1727, 1 illustrates the activity of its owner in his defence of the Indian titles held by him and by his associates at the Mountain. The entries are made in 1744.
An a count of what each one hath paid in order to the estab- lishing their Right of Land in Defraing the Charge :
Nathanel Crane in cash, £01 10 0
Samull Harrison in cash to Capt. Wheler, 00
07
O
Nathanel Camp, 00 07 0
Samll Baldwin,
00
07 0
Samll Harrison paid to Mr. tayler,
00
03 6
John Cundict paid to Mr. tayler,
00 07 O
Aug. 2 of Garshom Willams,
00 07 0
Oct. 7 I received of Amos Williams on acompt of the charge of the purch Right, . 00 07 0
The following are Mr. Harrison's charges for his services and disbursements in the same matter :
Paid to Stephen Morris the sum of
£03 4 0
Paid to Eliphelet Johnson the sum of
03 4 0
To two days going to Hanover, 00 IO 0
00
03 o
Samll Wheler, 17 and six pens, .
00 17 6
Oct., 1744. to going to New England 4 days,
I 04 0
Thomas Willams,
I. This book is still preserved, and in the possession of one of his de- scendants.
96
History of the Oranges.
December, to going to New England 9 days, . 2 14 0 to going to horsneck with Mr. Tayler, . o 07
O to going to horsneck with Dan Lamson, . O 05 0
cash paid to Mr. taylor, . 0 03 O
August ye Ist, 1744, Cash paid to Mr. Tayler, 00
3 6
14 0 paid to John Cundict fourteen shillings,
paid to John Cundict, O 02 0
paid again to John Tomkins, O 17 IO
to going to New York,
to going to Paramus two days, 00
12 0
paid to John Vincent, . 00 15 8
paid to Steven Young, York money, 00 6 8
paid to Robet Young, upon Acquackuk Right-cash, 00 17 4
We annex a reduced fac simile copy of a part of page 199 of the account book, as illustrating Mr. Harrison's methods. Major Johnson, to whom two guineas were paid, seems to have been one of the lawyers who were employed in the litigation.
199 Apriel 1751 Paid to mager Elepilet Johnson on
acount of his Demand for the trouble he had Been at Concerning the purch Right -- - 02-02-0 may
Recevied of farvel person inner on account of the purchisRight the fume of - - 05 -06-20
The questions at issue were never settled. The Bill in Chancery did not come to a legal termination. Suits and counter suits, ejectments, legal and illegal, marked the whole of the colonial era. The stamp act soon followed and not many years afterwards the Rev- olution · brought to a close, forever, the numerous con- troversies with the Proprietors, the Crown and the British Parliament.
.
IO C
paid Thomas Williams, 00 17 5
CHAPTER VI.
"THE MOUNTAIN SOCIETY."
ITS FIRST YEARS.
TT is uncertain when the "Town at the River" began to furnish settlers to the outlying lands which were a part of the original purchase of 1666. In fifteen years there was a population at the Mountain which required highways for its use and an increased acreage for cul- tivation. The town at this time, 1681, voted surveyors to be chosen to lay out the former, and provision for the latter was made by another division of lands.1 In about thirty-five years after the action of the town, the mountain region west of the river, from two miles north of Bloomfield to the Elizabethtown line, was occupied by a thriving people. Successful in their worldly schemes, they did not forget the house of God-the meeting-house at the river. The Mountain planters gave it their Christian sympathy and their cordial ma- terial aid ; and this, too, notwithstanding the remote- Joseph WieBB. ness of their homes, the imperfect roads, the ex. posures to the weather, and the inconvenient modes of travel. The purpose, doubtless, long entertained, to form a religious society more adapted to their needs, finally took shape. The
I. See Newark Town Records, p. 86.
7
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History of the Oranges.
year 1719 was memorable in the history of the Church at the river by the settlement there of Rev. Joseph Webb, as pastor, by the Presbytery of Philadelphia.
The four years succeeding the death of Mr. Bowers, pastor of the Newark Church, were distinguished by differences of opinion upon Church order. The people at the river favored Presbytery.
"The way had been preparing for such a step from the very first introduction of the Presbyterian polity in this region. Scotch families, and probably, with decided Scotch predilections, formed a part of the population of Newark before the close of the 17th century, and were intermingled extensively by marriage with the families of the first settlers. * Francis Makemie, the father of the Presbyterian Church in America, had friends and partizans in Newark, when he first visited this part of the country in 1708."1
The planters of the township, being in a great meas- ure removed from the influences, of which Dr. Stearns writes, were decided, and, as it will appear, were a unit in their adherence to the Congregational order.
The death of Rev. Mr. Bowers, which occurred about the time of the formation of the first Synod, (of Phil- adelphia) August, 1716, became the occasion of bring- ing to the surface the questions of difference in the parish. Its first measure, in the way of provision for
Alead. Mcwhorter
another pastor, was an invitation to Rev. Jedidiah Buckingham to occupy the pulpit, as a candidate for settlement. He ministered to the church during the last months of 1716 and the early months of 1717. Mr. McWhorter, in his century sermon, says of him : "Warm disputes arose in the congregation concerning
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