USA > New Jersey > Salem County > History of the counties of Gloucester, Salem, and Cumberland New Jersey, with biographical sketches of their prominent citizens, vol. 1 > Part 4
USA > New Jersey > Gloucester County > History of the counties of Gloucester, Salem, and Cumberland New Jersey, with biographical sketches of their prominent citizens, vol. 1 > Part 4
USA > New Jersey > Cumberland County > History of the counties of Gloucester, Salem, and Cumberland New Jersey, with biographical sketches of their prominent citizens, vol. 1 > Part 4
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Governor Printz returned to Sweden in 1652, leav- ing the administration of governmental affairs in the hands of his son-in-law, John Papeoija.
In 1654 the ship " Eagle" came from Sweden, bring- ing John Claudius Rising, who assumed the guberna- torial functions under the title of " General Director of New Sweden," and Papeoija returned to his native country. Immediately on the arrival of Rising he took possession of Fort Casimir, which was surren- dered by the Dutch commandant without bloodshed, and it was rebuilt and christened Fort Trinity.
An engineer named Lindstrom, who came over with Rising, made a map of Swedes River, on which the following places on the eastern side were named :
" Cape May, which is still so called; Asteelvens River in Indian, called in Swedish Kiddare Kihl, now comnnwvaly ( English) Prince Maur- ice River; Fogelsland, Sw., now Egg Island; Sepaharking, or Co- banzy Creek, the Indian name being retathiel in English ; Roiter River, Dow Atlevas (Allovoways?), or Oliver's Creek ; A-ammhacking, Oijtscs- ning, Wootsesaungsing, Ind. ; Elt-borg, Sw., now Elsingborg ; Warken's Kihl in Dutch, Ilog Creek in Eng., now salem Creek ; Obisquahosit, t Ind., now Pennsneck ; Kaghikanizarkins Kihl, Ind .; Aldman's Kihl, Sw., now OMdinan's Creek; Memiraco, Narriticon, Ind., now Raccoon Creek. (N.B .- This name has undergone various changes: Memiraco, Raccoon, Racunn, Narraticon, Araratcung, Rateung.) Mackle's Kihl,
now Manto's Creek ; Piscozackasing's Kihl, Ind., now Woodbury Creak Tetamekanekz Kihl. Ind., now Timler Creek; Arwamre, Tekoke, T. kaacho, Hermaomissing, Ind .; Fort Nassan in Holland, now Gloucest .. Point." 1
From the time that Fort Casimir was taken by Di- rector Rising, and the Dutch thus practically expelled from New Sweden, the Hollanders at New Amster dam began to make preparations for retaliation. Their plans were matured. and in 1655 Governor Peter Stuy. vesant, with seven vessels and from six hundred t. seven hundred men from New Amsterdam, sailed up the river, encamped one night at the abandoned and decayed Fort Elfsborg, then sailed past Fort Trinity. landed and invested that fort, which, after a delay of a day, surrendered. Thence the Hollanders marched against Fort Christina, which also surrendered with- out resistance. Thus terminated the Swedish author- ity on the Delaware.
Ferris says, "The war now brought to an issne by the vigorous hand of Stuyvesant was, in many respect .. a singular one. It was waged by the most powerful fleet and army that had ever been engaged in North America. It was prosecuted by a skillful, experi- enced general, and finally closed without the loss of a single victim on either side."
Of the customs of the Swedes an intelligent and observing countryman of theirs ( Professor Kalm). who resided some time among them in New Jersey. relates in substance: "They had neither tea, coffee. chocolate, nor sugar, and were too poor to buy any intoxicating drinks, or vessels to distill them in. The i first settlers drank at table, as a substitute for tea, a decoction of sassafras, and even as late as 1748 they mixed the tea they then used with all sorts of herbs. so that it no longer deserved the name of tea. For a long time they continued to make their candles and soap from bayberry bushes. Their buckwheat cakes. which were a standard dish, were baked in frying- pans, or on stones. The men wore caps, breeches. and vests of the skins of various animals. The women wore jackets and petticoats of the same ma- terials. Their beds, except the sheets, were composed ! of the skins of wolves, bears, panthers, and other beasts, with which the woods once abounded. They made their own leather for shoes and other articles. dyeing it red with chestnut bark, or the moss of a cer- tain tree not now known, or black with a preparation of common field-sorrel." Among the customs meu- tioned by Kalm, as peculiar to some of the settle- ments on the banks of the Delaware, there was one which may be adverted to. When a man died in such circumstances that his widow could not pay his debt>, if she had an offer of a second husband she was obliged to marry him en chemise. In this plight. on her wedding day, she went out from her former house to that of her new spouse, who met her half- way with a full snit of clothes, which he presented to ber, saying he only rented them, because had he given
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1 Acrelins, p. 69.
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GENERAL HISTORY.
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them to her the creditors of the first husband might take them from her.
Until the English arrived the Swedes bathed regu- ; other." larly every Saturday. Christmas they celebrated with various games, and by serving up certain pecu- 'iar dishes at table, as was customary in old Sweden.
They made their cart and wagon wheels by sawing thick seetions out of liquidambar-trees, but when the English came they began to use spokes and fel- loes of white- and Spanish-oak. They made their bedposts of sassafras wood to keep away the bugs. Holly-leaves, dried and bruised in a mortar, they used as a cure for the pleurisy. Against the ague they employed the root of the tulip-tree, the bark of the dogwood, the yellow bark of the peach, the leaves of the potentilla reptans, and several other indigenous preparations which they adopted from the Indians. As an anti-febrile they sometimes tied wisps of mullein or Indian tobacco around their arms and feet. The root of the bayberry-tree they used as a eure for the toothache.
"Kalm says, "The house of the first Swedish set- tlers was very indifferent. It consisted of but one room ; the door was so low as to require one to stoop to enter. Instead of window-panes of glass they had little holes, before which a sliding-board was put, or on other occasions they had isinglass. The crevices between the logs were filled with clay, the chimneys in a corner were generally of gray sandstone, or for want of it sometimes of mere clay ; the ovens were in the same room. They had at first separate stables for the cattle, but after the English came and set the example they let their eattle suffer in the open win- ter air."
CHAPTER IV. DUTCH RÉGIME.
" Since this country has ceased to be under the government of Sweden, we are bound to acknowledge and declare, for the mike of truth, that we
have been well and kindly treated as well by the Dutch as by his majesty the king of England. We have always had over na good and gracious magistrates, and we live in the greatest union and harmony with each
The Dutch were a commercial people, and the pro- motion of their trade on the Delaware was the object they sought in the recovery of their possessions from the Swedes. They cared little for land, which could be had anywhere by taking it up, and during their possession of the region they gave the Swedes only three deeds for real estate,-two for plantations and one for a mill,-and these were deeds of confirma- tion for the satisfaction of occupants. Many such deeds were afterwards executed by the English au- thorities. They were willing to encourage agriculture, because it tended to promote eommeree: and where that encouragement depended on the easy acquisition of land they placed no restrictions on it. They wished to trade, and not to govern ; hence the lenity which they exercised.
In 1656 the colony was strengthened by the acces- sion of families from New Amsterdam, who were or- dered by the government to settle in villages of six- teen to twenty families for protection against the , natives, who, in the vicinity of North River, had been hostile.
On retiring from the scene of his conquest, Gover- nor Stuyvesant left Deryk Smidt in charge of the settlements, but on his arrival at New Amsterdam he commissioned Johan Paul Jaquet as Governor.
From all their municipal regulations it appears evident that the Dutch were not desirous of strength- ening their colonies by filling them with a vigorous population. They appear to have acted more in fear that the presence of such a population among the Indians would interfere with their trade than in the hope that it would give support in time of danger. " Present gain seems to have closed their eyes to fu- ture evils, and blinded them to the fact that a very extensive fertile country could not be long retained for the benefit of a mere trading company."
ALTHOUGH Swedish historians have complained of After baving been established in America during half a century the Dutch had only a meagre popula- had so expanded that they were crowding the Dutch from their trading-places. the grievousness and afflietive character of the sub- jugation of the Swedes to the authority of the Dutch, i tion, while the colonies in New England, in less time, it does not appear to have been in reality afflictive or grievons to them. They were for a time cut off from as frequent intercourse with the mother-country as In April, 1657, Jaquet was superseded by Jacob Alrichi, and in October, 1658, William Beekman was appointed Vice-Governor over a part of the colony. Goeran Van Dyke was made inspector over the Swedes, under the Dutch title of Schout fiseal, and an unsuccessful effort was made to gather these peo- ple from the places where they had settled and im- proved their lands into one settlement. The admini -- tration of Alrich was not marked by that liberality which characterized that of the other Dutch Gov- ernors. before, but their rights were seropulously respected, and in the exercise of their religious beliefs they were left wholly free. In his mortifieation at the loss of the colony, Rising sought to induce the Swedish govern- ment to undertake the reconquest of the country, and endeavored to make the impression that the Swedish colonists were badly treated and oppressed. As time wore on, however, this wrong impression was corrected, and in a letter from thirty-six of the principal Swedes on the Delaware it was stated,-
At that time the number of Swedish families in the i colony was one hundred and thirty, and they consti-
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HISTORY OF GLOUCESTER, SALEM, AND CUMBERLAND COUNTIES.
tuted a majority of the population. Estimated from . Dutch West India Company on the banks of the Del that basis, the European population on the Delaware aware, in disappointment." in 1659 did not exceed twelve hundred.
In May, 1659, Beekman, acting under orders from Stuyvesant, purchased from the Indians the land from Bambo Hook to Cape Henlopen, and erected a fort at Hoorn Kill. In this purchase no regard ap- . pears to have been had for the purchase either of Godyn or of the Swedes.
On the New Jersey side of the Delaware the Dutch had at this time acquired several tracts of country, and it is reasonable to suppose that the road between the colonies on the North and South Rivers was not without inhabitants.
1
After the failure of the attempts to collect the Swedes into a settlement by themselves a more lib- eral policy was pursued, and these people quietly settled down among their Dutch neighbors, and in a few years, by family alliances, they became one . people. The Swedes maintained publie worship, while the Dutch had no regular ministry among them. The children of the Dutch soon came to un- derstand the religious service in the Swedish churches, and gradually they lost their Dutch character and language, so that the people became homogeneous, and in their manners and customs they were purely Swedish.
Governor Alrich died in 1659, and was succeeded by Alexander Hinoyosa, who administered the gov- ernment jointly with Beekman during three years, when Hinoyosa became sole Governor under Stuy- vesant.
The profits to the West India Company from its trade on the Delaware were not remunerative. The stringent regulations of the government in relation to trade were not conducive to the prosperity of the colony. It has been said, "On a review of the state of the Swedish settlements on the Delaware, under the dominion of the Dutch, there is little to incline the friends of civil liberty to love or admire the gov- ernment whose sole object is pecuniary emolument. Its policy was not only mercenary but highly injurious to the civil and intellectual improvement of the in- habitants. Under the leaden sceptre of a Dutch trading company everything beautiful, and fair, and good drooped and languished. The people were dis- couraged and indolent, the lands, by nature fruitful, and offering rich returns to the diligent cultivator, were neglected and lay waste. The manners of the people were rnde and unpolished, education was not promoted, the standard of morals was low, and the population, which had been gradually augmenting under the Swedish dominion, had increased but little under that of the Dutch.
"The rational nature of man requires higher aspi- rations and aims than those which find their fruition in the accumulation of wealth or personal aggrandize- ment, and governments which fail to promote such aims and aspirations will end, as did the rule of the
CHAPTER V.
EARLY SETTLEMENTS AND FINAL CONQUEST BI THE ENGLISH.
THE successor of Peter Minuit as director-genera or Governor of New Netherlands was Wouter va! Twiller, who was appointed in 1033. He was sue- ceeded in 1638 by William Kieft, and he, in 1646, br Peter Stuyvesant, the last Dutch Governor of tha. province.
It may here be remarked that the English neve: abandoned their claim to the country on which tis Dutch and Swedes settled in North America. The claim to these regions was based on the discoverle of Cabot, Hudson. and others, and though its validity has been more than questioned, it was never relin- quished. The English nation has always been fertil: in pretexts for claims on anything which it coveted.
In 1606 James I. granted letters patent dividin; that portion of the American continent which stretches from the thirty-fourth to the forry-sixth degrees of north latitude into two nearly equal di- triets. The south, or Virginia district, was allotted to Sir Thomas Gates, Richard Hackluyt, and others of London, and the other to sundry knights, gentle- men, and merchants of Plymouth, Bristol, and other parts of Western England. Under this charter, and another granted to the Plymouth Company in 1620. the settlement of Virginia and New England were commenced.
It is not necessary here to trace the growth of thes and other colonies, or to make allusions to them, ex- cept as they are directly or remotely connected with events which transpired with the settlements on the Delaware; and here it may be remarked that so inti- mately were the settlements on the eastern and westers sides of the river connected, that the early history c the former cannot be separated from that of the latter.
Early during the administration by Van Twiller of the government of New Netherland, the relation between the Dutch and English in New England be- gan to assume a threatening character. The Dutch had entered Connectient River and established 3 trading-post. The expansion of the New England colony in that direction led to questions of jurisdic tion, protests, and finally to threatened hostilitie- with the result of the loss by the Dutch of the foot- hold which they had acquired there.
In the year of the arrival of Director Kieft the English formed a settlement at a place which they named New Haven, but which had been called by the Dutch Roodeberg, and notwithstanding the pro
GENERAL HISTORY.
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:: + of Kieft they continued to hold possession. In its better success attended the enterprise in person. al lition to the lands occupied there they sought fur- der acquisitions, and in the following year they sent An agent, Capt. Nathaniel Turner, who purchased from the Indians a tract for plantations on both sides . f the river Delaware.
Many of the grants from the English king appear to have been made in ignorance or forgetfulness of the limits of previons grants, and the result, in many | extent was divided into several manors, and these, instances, was confusion and conflict of jurisdiction. . The grant to the Virginia Company had lapsed by the dissolution of that company, and a portion of the territory had been regranted, in 1632, to George Cal- rert, Lord Baltimore, and had become the province of Maryland.
Ile condneted a company into the province, though it would seem that but a small part of the promised number of men were in actual attendance. Either from the smallness of his force or from some other cause the earl did not succeed in his endeavors to establish a settlement, but he remained in the country, and engaged in exploring his province. The whole
being dignified with well-chosen names, served to give titles to each member of the earl palatine's family. Thus there were the son and heir appar- ent, and Governor, Francis, Lord Ployden, baron of Mount Royal, an extensive manor on Elk River, and Thomas, Lord Ployden, high admiral, baron of Roy- mount, a manor on the Delaware Bay in the vicinity
In 1634 a grant in favor of Sir Edmund Ployden, knight, and his associates, was made. This grant , of Lewistown, and the Lady Winifrid, baroness of included territory bounded by a line running west- Uvedale in Webb's Neck.
wardly from Cape May forty leagnes, northwardly forty leagues, northeastwardly forty leagnes; then, "descending, tonching, and including the top of Sandhoey (Sandy Hook), to the promontory of Cape May aforesaid." This grant included portions of Maryland and of the territory of New England, and all these grants wholly ignored the title of the Dutch. "Almost at the same time with the arrival of the earl a company of persons entered the province with a view to effect a permanent settlement therein. This was the body sent out by the New Haven colony to take possession of the lands upon the Del- aware that had been purchased by Capt. Turner, as has heretofore been mentioned. They were instructed This grant was ample and full in the title to the lands conveyed ; and in the powers which it conferred to act in close connection with the mother colony ; they were to plant the lands and engage in trade, on Sir Edmund Ployden, it was, to say the least, ex- and were also to establish churches in gospel order traordinary. He was constituted county palatine, and purity. with the title of Earl Palatine of Alhion or of the province of New Albion in America, and invested with, in some respects, almost regal authority. He was empowered to ordain laws under certain eircum- ·tanees, and to create barons, baronets, and knights of his palatinate. It was also provided that all per- : sons, goods, wares, or merchandise intended for the settlement of the palatinate should be shipped with- ont tax or duty, with only a license from the king's treasurer, and that all goods and merchandise ex- ported from the province might, for the space of ten . years, be sold in any part of the kingdom without the payment of any tax or duty whatever. It was also provided that no tax or custom should thereafter be imposed on any of the inhabitants, lands, goods, chattels, merchandise, etc., within the province.
It does not appear that the rights derived from this patent were exercised during the reign of James or the first Charles, but that they were during the Rev- olution. It was said in the patent that the region had already been " amply and copiously peopled with five hundred persons ;" but this is doubtful. An as- sociation of "lords, baronets, knights, merchants, and planters, forty-four in number, was formed, and they engaged to send for settlement in the province three thousand able-trained men."
Mulford says,1 " In the year 1641 the earl made an attempt to carry out the projected plan, and for
"The company, consisting of near fifty families, sailed in a vessel belonging to one Lamberton, a merchant of New Haven, and Robert Cogswell was commander. They touched at Fort Amsterdam on their voyage, and the authorities at that place be- came thus apprized of the nature of the object they had in view. Governor Kieft was too much alive to the movements of the English to look with indiffer- ence upon the present attempt, and he at once pro- tested against it. The English commander replied that it was not their intention to settle under any government, if any other place could be found, but that should they settle within the limits of the States- General they would become subject to the govern- ment. The company then proceeded. They finally reached a place which they selected for a settlement not far from the Delaware on a small stream called Varcken's Kill. 2
" Whether these settlers were at all aware of the rights and claims of the Earl Palatine of Albion at the time they entered the province is unknown, but finding him in the country, as the holder of a grant from the English crown, they were ready to submit to his rule, and hence, upon being visited by persons commissioned by the Earl, they swore fealty to him as the Palatine of Albion.
"But the company had not long been settled in their new situation before they found themselves in
1 History of New Jersey, p. 69, et seq.
1 Otherwise called Hog Creek, now Salem Creek.
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HISTORY OF GLOUCESTER, SALEM, AND CUMBERLAND COUNTIES.
need of the aid and protection which their present worth*# a tun, and yet here and there is built at 1/ tun wages, which is Gs. a day's work, having the Ti:
ruler was in no condition to give.
"Their settlement had been observed by Jan Jans- I ber without money.
"3. Here in 14 days they make a thousand of Pi. staves, worth here foure pound, and at the Chner twenty pound a thousand, and so get six shilling. day's work.
"4. Here in making iron they save 5l. a ton in t. price of wood. and 37. more in digging the Iron mir. and saving land carriage of it, and of the CHARCOA: for mine is taken on the Sea beach, and wood fioa: down the Rivers, and so each man earos 58. 10d. a da Iron valued at 127. per tun.
"5. Here the con-tant trade of 350 ships, and 70 "The Swedes who were established upon the Dela- . men a fishing beginne leave cold Newfoundland sm ware gave aid and assistance to the Duteh in this , fish, and late taken, when this is before theirs to attack upon the English colony.
" After a period an attempt was made from another direction for the purpose of establishing a colony , year, there but only in the four warm months, and ist. within the province of New Albion.
nine weeks' work each man above his diet, passag- "The storm of political agitation was now arising and returne, gets twenty pound, and twelve pound in England, and its violence had already become : man, and herein dried Base, in Sturgeon, in dres .: such as to shake the State and the throne. The Mackrell, Herrings, and Pilchers, is got as well as . minds of men were ill at ease, and such as were dis- posed to seek tranquillity and peace rather than to , turns ready French and Spanish coin. share in the danger, the glory, and the guilt of the coming strife, were anxious to find an asylum in some . distant land. A number of ' knights and gentlemen' who were thus disposed associated together and chose one of their company to visit the English plantations in America and seleet a place for a settlement. The individual thus chosen was Beauchamp Plantagenet.
Cod-fish, sixe shil. and eight shil. a day, and this r- = 1
"6. Here the glorious ripening sunne as warm . Italy or Spain, will bring rare fruits, wines, and su store of Aniseseed and Licoras, as well as Bay-s: made withont boyling, only in pans with the sur that each labourer may mak 6 bushels a day, wor in these three 123. a day, and this maiden soyl, - comforted with the suns glittering beams, and bei ... He proceeded at once upon his errand, and after ex- . digged, and set with the Indian Wheat, and the Beans and Pease, with 408. charge in 41 days' wor with seed, yields 10 quarters an acre, the same Whe: to the Lord Governor, then in the country, and ob- ' being ten times as big and weighty as ours, besid- tained, under the seal of the province, a grant of ten Potatoes, Wood, Madder, Roots, and many Piant- and Tobacco, will yield half a ton of flax, and a tu. of Hemp, worth 12/. an acre, and 6s. a day's work. thousand acres of land. This tract was called the Manor of Belvill. Some time afterwards Plantagenet returned in order to attend the removal of his com- "7. Here as in Province in France, Walnut Milk ( panions, and nearly at the same time the Earl Pala. | Oyle ground and pressed, will yield the gatherer te tine also departed from the province, being obliged to gallons, and 10s. a day's work. return to England for aid and supplies. Upon their arrival in Europe the Earl Palatine and Plantagenet
1 tensive travel in the several colonies finally fixed on the province of New Albion. He made application
"S. Here the Land lieth covered seven monet! with Beech, and Oke Mast, walnuts, chestnuts, at. -
again met, and they then exerted themselves to revive , three moneths with groundnuts, Seg and other root. the energies of the New Albion Company. For this ' and wild Pease, and fetches yearly, so as forty Ho. for one, and Ninety Turkeys, Partridges, Heathpoult- and some Poultry, eating their fill, for ONCE ordina! inereased.
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