USA > New Jersey > The New Jersey coast in three centuries; history of the New Jersey coast with genealogical and historic-biographical appendix, Vol. I > Part 44
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In Cape May County, until 1863, travel was either by stage or by water. In the summer season, steamers came from New York at inter- vals of two days, and there was usually a daily steamer from Philadelphia. At other seasons of the year, travel by water was uncertain. The stage coaches ran by way of Bridgeton and Tuckahoe to Philadelphia, and these carried the mails as well as passengers .. The fare between Philadelphia and Cape May was $3.50.
Prior to 1857 various railroads had been proposed, but nothing de- finite was accomplished until that year, when the Cape May & Atlantic
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Railroad was projected. Public meetings were held and committees were appointed to confer with the officials of existing companies whose lines could be readily reached. As a result, the council of Cape Island sub- scribed ten thousand dollars to the building fund, and in 1863 a line was opened between Cape May and Millville. In 1879 the road became a part of the West Jersey Railroad, and at a later day it was included in the great Pennsylvania system. As result of the building of this road, Cape May City and numerous villages in its vicinity were rendered more accessible to the pleasure seeking public, and the city entered upon a new era of prosperity.
All the various railways in the State are now controlled by seven large trunk lines, which are operators either as owners or under lease. These trunk line companies, with their mileage in the State, are as follows: The Pennsylvania Railroad Company, 404.53 ; Philadelphia & Reading Rail- road Company, 224.49; the Central Railroad Company of New Jersey, 390; the Morris & Essex Railroad Company, 176.24; the Erie Railroad Company, 141.93; the Lehigh Valley Railroad Company, 109.79; and the New York, Susquehanna & Western Railroad Company, 213.42. These companies operate in the aggregate 1,658.40 miles of road.
A larger portion of the working population of the State is employed on the railroads than in any other single occupation of industry, and the service, notwithstanding its dangers, is more generally sought after than any other form of employment.
The aggregate number of persons employed on the railroads, whose duties are performed within the limits of the State of New Jersey, is 32,405. The average number of days employed per employee for all classes is 305, and the average number or hours worked per day is 10.7.
The aggregate amount paid in wages is $18,064,986; the average wages per day is $1.83, and the average yearly earnings, $557.47.
The casualties among employees while on duty, as reported by five of the companies, were seventy-two killed and 974 injured. The Lehigh Val- ley and the New York, Susquehanna & Western roads did not report the number killed and injured. The trainmen and trackmen are the classes of employees among which the greater majority of casualties have occurred, particularly those having a fatal termination.
. CHAPTER XV.
MANUFACTURES.
The ambition which led the American colonists into other fields of industry than those of producing grain and meats for their own con- sumption, and the attempt of the mother country to throttle that ambition at its birth, was one of the causes underlying the Revolutionary war. The world seemed to be in conspiracy against permitting the people of the colon- ies to be aught else than a community of self-expatriates who should esteem it a privilege to be permitted to merely maintain an animal existence. Even so stanch a friend of America as was William Pitt frowned upon the idea of permitting its people to lessen in any degree their servile dependence upon the mother country, and declared that they had no right to make so much as a horse-shoe nail, but should be compelled to purchase all products of skilled labor in the British markets ; and, to compel acquiescence in such doctrine, taxes were imposed by parliament which were virtually in pro- hibition of American manufactures.
Nevertheless, American manufactures had made their beginnings, and in those beginnings New Jersey was a prime leader. Its first industries were the making of lumber and salt, and the digging of iron ore and the building of furnaces for its working, and in these, for a time, it was the most central and supremely important producing centre in all America. Unwittingly, in the development of these interests, the people of the little and lightly regarded colony were arming themselves for the conflict which was to win for themselves political liberty and afford them acknowledged pre- eminence in manufacturing and commercial affairs. From their forests were builded the vessels which harassed the commerce of an arrogant crown ; in their rude furnaces were cast the guns which thundered at Mon- mouth and at Yorktown, and the cannon balls which swept those glorious fields; in Trenton were welded the swords which flashed in battle and pointed the way to victory, and even the miserable salt from their marshes was a boon to the illy provisioned patriot army. Had the industries of New Jersey been blotted out at the close of the Revolutionary war, even then
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they were worthy an honorable placc in history for sake of their great ac- complishments.
But the arts of peace came before those of war. A saw-mill was set up in Woodbridge in 1682, and by 1798 there were nearly five hundred in the State. In 1683 a town lot in Amboy was given to Miles Foster by the Proprietors as a reward for building the first ship in that place, and this is believed to have been the first built in the Province. In 1678 the Quakers from Yorkshire and London who settled Salem and Burlington intro- duced the manufacture of cloth, serges, druggets and crepes, and plushes and linen goods were made about the same time. In 1664 tanning was in- troduced; in 1698 the first tannery in Newark was established, and the first japanned leather in America was made in that town. In 1728 the second paper mill in the country (the first being in Roxboro, Pennsylvania), was built at Elizabeth Town, and was owned by Samuel Bradford, the govern- ment printer for New Jersey and New York. In 1748 a glass factory was established at Freasburg by German workmen, brought over at considerable expense, but the proprietor was soon ruined by the workmen deserting him to become land-owners. In 1765 "Wistar's Glass Works" were in operation about three miles from Allowaystown, in Salem county. In 1753, sixteen years before Watts in England began his experimentation with steam, Josiah Hornblower, of Belleville, had set up a steam engine, the first in America.
After the ending of the Revolutionary war, New Jersey workmen and students set an example in mechanical ability and inventive genius that provoked the wonder and conquered the admiration of the world.
The Legislature chartered in 1791 a "Society for the Establishment of Useful Manufactures," with a capital of $200,000, divided into shares of $400 each. This company had the exclusive privilege of carrying on all kinds of manufacturing at the falls of the Passaic. It was under the pat- ronage of Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of the Treasury. In 1792 the association founded the town of Paterson, and in the following year the first yarn was spun there. The first factory was completed in 1794, and in that year calico goods were first printed in New Jersey.
John Stevens, at Hoboken, in 1802-4, built the first steamboats pro- pelled by single or double screws, and in 1809 he designed and built the "Phoenix," the first sea-going steamboat. This vessel was sailed from New York to Philadelphia by his son, Robert L .. Stevens, then twenty years of age, who inherited the genius of his sire, and became distinguished for his inventions in vessel and marine engine construction. In 1818 the Vail Works at Speedwell produced the machinery for the "Savannah," the first steamship to cross the Atlantic, and in 1825 the first steam locomotive en-
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gine for passenger purposes was constructed in Hoboken. At Paterson the Rogers Machine Works were established in 1831 for the manufacture of machinery for cotton, woolen and flax factories. Later, in 1838, at Speedwell, Alfred Vail and Samuel F. B. Morse made the first successful experiments with the electro-magnetic telegraph based upon the investi- gations of Professor Henry, of Princeton College.
The iron industry in Monmouth county had its beginning soon after 1666, with James Grover, one of the original Monmouth patentees. He soon learned of the existence of iron ore in his lands, near what is now Tinton Falls, then known as the Falls of Shewsbury, and he brought thither James and Henry Leonard, who had been iron workers in the Plymouth colony, and began the first iron mining in New Jersey, and set up a furnace, and from these mines and this furnace was produced much of the material for iron work in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania during the early colo- nial period. In 1667 these lands and works were purchased by Lewis Morris, who was the proprietor during his active life, and who devised them to his namesake nephew, Lewis Morris, during whose time the iron industry ap- pears to have been abandoned. At the beginning, the early iron industries were of so great public importance that for seven years ( 1676-1683) they were exempted from taxation, "excepting in extraordinary cases, as war or the like," by a vote of the provincial assembly. It is recorded that in 1680 seventy negroes and many white servants were employed by Mr. Morris.
The ore was found in wet nzeadows and swamps, and was known as "bog ore," a chemical product, being a hydrous peroxide of iron contain- ing forty per cent. of metallic iron. Some of the ore was found in large sheets two to six inches in thickness, and some in fine particles known as "shot ore." In quality it was most superior, being free from the slag and stone which characterizes mine ore. Large quantities of these peculiar formations were found in various regions from Monmouth county soutli- ward, and particularly abounded on the western tributaries of Atsion, or Little Egg Harbor River, in Atlantic county, extending from near the sources of those streams southwest to the site of the present Egg Harbor City. In many instances the ore fields were worked by tenants who bar- gained for the use of the land only for the purpose of removing the surface ore, reversion to the grantor being provided for when the mineral should come to be exhausted.
As late as 1830 there were fourteen bog iron furnaces and cupolas and as many forges in active operation in New Jersey. During this period these industries formed the nucleus for thriving settlements, and the pro- duct of the works was highly serviceable in many channels. The narra-
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tive is deeply interesting, and is, withal, somewhat pathetic, when it is extended to the fate which befell these enterprises and the communities based upon them.
The furnaces were of rude construction as viewed from the present day, but were then regarded as the acme of mechanical ingenuity, neces- sity and possibility. The works at Weymouth, on Great Egg Harbor River, six miles above Mays Landing, established in 1800 by Joseph Ball, Charles Shoemaker and their two associates, Ashbridge and Duberson, were presumably a vast improvement upon those of Grover, at Tinton Falls, in Monmouth county, which antedated these one and one-quarter centuries.
The Weymouth furnace, a superior type of those of the day, was built of stone quarried in the vicinity. It was twenty-five to thirty feet square at the base, and rose to a height of twenty-five to thirty feet, slop- ing on all sides, and terminating about fifteen feet square, with a circular orifice about eight feet in diameter. It was lined interiorly with the best obtainable quality of stone, in order to withstand heat. Men used wheel- barrows to convey the materials up an incline to the summit, where two dumpers were kept busy charging the furnace. Every few minutes six large baskets of charcoal, with a quantity of mineral, were thrown in, and when this was sufficiently settled the operation was repeated. The blast was maintained by a great bellows driven by water power which forced the air through pipes of iron and leather into the furnace at a point just above the molten metal. The forge trip-hammers were operated by water power. With two of these, two men were able to produce each week one ton of malleable iron, and by a later process the quantity was increased to one ton per diem.
The product of these works was put into cannon and cannon balls for the war of 1812, and some of the former are yet standing as hitching posts in Philadelphia. In later days stoves and other household articles were made from metal from the same works, and yet later (in 1840) Samuel Richards, proprietor at the time, produced a great quantity of water piping which was marketed in Mobile, Alabama, two years later. The forge was accidentally burned down in 1862, and the foundry was similarly destroyed three years afterward. The New Jersey iron interests were now in decadence, and the works were not re-established. This marked the beginning of the end of Weymouth as a prosperous manufacturing place, and it is now a village of about fifty inhabitants, its 'only evidence of me- chanical industry a paper mill.
Batsto. at the head of navigation of Mullica, or Little Egg Harbor River, and the adjacent village of Pleasant Mills, were once important
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manufacturing points, and even less than a half a century ago they provided employment and homes for a thousand people, now reduced to one-fifth that number.
The first iron furnace in Batsto was put in operation in 1766, by Joseph Ball, a Philadelphia Quaker, who paid $275,000 for lands there and de- veloped the iron interests. Iron cannon, cannon balls and shell for use by the patriot army were cast in the foundry, which became so important to the revolutionists that a British' naval expedition was sent against it, and the battle of Sweetwater resulted. William Richards, who served as a colonel under Washington, after peace was restored came to Batsto as manager for Joseph Ball, who was his nephew. He developed the iron industry to large proportions, and after his death was succeeded by his son Jesse, a man of wonderful energy. The town now boasted glass and pottery works, and a large ship-building and lumber business. In 1848 the iron industry was abandoned, and Jesse Richards died six years later. B. W. Richards preserves as a relic, in his business office in Philadelphia, the old iron plate bearing the inscription, "1766-1786-1829," the dates of the original building of the furnace, and of its two rebuildings. This plate was for years a conspicuous mark on the last stone furnace, and was taken away for preservation when the works were finally dismantled.
The village was destroyed by fire in 1874, and two years later Joseph Wharton, of Philadelphia, purchased the Batsto estate of one hundred square miles. He vastly improved the property, and his great residential mansion is one of the most beautiful and most elaborately appointed in the State.
Pleasant Mills, across the stream from Batsto, was formerly the seat of a great cotton mill, which was destroyed by fire. Since 1861 the paper mills have been the principal industry of the village. Reminiscent of the historic past is the old Aylesford mansion, yet standing, which was the home of Kate Aylesford, the heroine of Charles Peterson's novel founded upon local events during the revolutionary period. She was married in Philadelphia to Major Gordon, who commanded the patriot troops 'at the battle of Sweetwater, and the ceremony was performed in the presence of the great Washington.
On South River, three miles from Mays Landing, was Walker's Forge, a great establishment in its day, where were said to have been cast the first iron water pipes used in Philadelphia, supplanting the log aqueducts previously used.
Other early iron works existed at Aetna and Ingersoll, on the Tucka- hoe river and at May's Landing, Old Gloucester, Atsion, Washington and Martha, in Burlington county. In 1775, Thomas Mayberry manufactured
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sheet iron at Mount Holly, and in the same year Congress ordered from his factory five tons of sheet iron to make camp kettles for the army. In 1797 a nail factory was in operation in Burlington.
For many years after the ending of the Revolutionary war, iron was the basis of one of the chiefest industries of Ocean county. In 1789 a furnace, subsequently known as the Federal Furnace, was set up by Caleb Ivins and David Wright, on the present site of the village of Lakehurst, and shortly afterward another furnace was established there by John W. Godfrey, of Philadelphia, who was succeeded by J. Holmes and G. Jones. In 1809, John Lacey built the Ferrago Forge, and the following year John Lippencott built one at Burrsville, and another, the Stafford Forge, somie- what later. The Burrsville Forge was subsequently purchased by Bar- zillai Burr and John Butcher, and for a time was known as Butcher's Forge. Washington Furnace (now Lakewood) was set up in 1814 by Jesse Richards, with whom was associated William Irwin. This furnace afterward became the property of Joseph W. Brick, and came to be known as the Bergen Iron Works. Other early iron works were the Pemberton Forge, at New Mills, by John Lacey ; the Lisbon Forge, by John Earle; the Mary Ann Forge, by Benjamin Jones ; the Union Forge, by S. Jones and J. Biddle ; the Speedwell Furnace, by Benjamin Randolph, of Philadelphia ; the Martha Furnace, by one Potts; and the Hanover Furnace by Joseph Ridgway.
It is said on good authority that during the early days of the iron industry much of the water pipe used in the city of New York was manu- factured at the Bergen Iron Works and at Burrsville, and it was conveyed by wagon to the coast, and thence by water. After a time the local ore fields were exhausted, and iron ore was brought by vessel to the New Jersey furnaces, where it was worked and from whence it was returned a manufactured product. The development of the northern New Jersey and the Pennsylvania iron mines gradually drove the bog iron furnaces out of existence, and by 1865 they had practically disappeared.
At the coming of the whites, the Indians of the Lenni-Lenape tribe were found wearing ornaments of copper made from metal which they said came from the highlands of the Raritan valley. An act passed by the West Jersey Assembly of 1683, with reference to counterfeiting, affords ground for the suspicion that copper from this region was then used for making imitations of the Spanish and New England base coins then in general cir- culation. There is no authentic record, however, of the use of copper until after 1748. In that year crude ore was plowed up near New Brunswick. The land upon which it was found was leased by Elias Boudinot, who in 1751 sank a shaft and reached a large body of ore. Many tons of the metal
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were exported to England and it was put to many uses for domestic pur- poses.
The copper discovery also led to the founding of mints. May 23, 1786, Walter Mould, Thomas Goadsby and Albion Cox made proposals to the General Assembly for "striking a Copper Coin" for the State of New Jersey, and a committee to whom the project was referred recommended that they should be granted the privilege of coining copper coins to the value of ten thousand pounds or less, money value, the State to receive one-eleventh as seigniorage. Two days later, William Leddle applied for a like privilege, offering a seigniorage of one-ninth, and expressing his willingness to ac- cept paper money of the State in exchange for his issue.
No action was taken upon the proposal of Leddle, and June 1, 1786, the General Assembly passed an act authorizing Mould and his associates to coin copper coins, subject to one-tenth seigniorage, and affording them protection in their enterprise by a provision forbidding coinage by any person without legislative authority.
The justices of the supreme court were charged with the duty of de- signing suitable figures and inscriptions upon the coin. The design which they adopted was evidently modeled somewhat after the coat-of-arms of the State. The obverse bore the head of a horse, and beneath it a plow, with the legend "Nova Caesarea," and the date. Upon the reverse was displayed a shield, and the inscription "E Pluribus Unum." These coins were known as "horse head coppers," and were presumably made in Morristown and Elizabethtown. Their coinage was begun in 1786 and came to an end in 1788, when the federal government established a system of coinage.
The New Brunswick ore fields were exhausted prior to the war of 1812, thus ending a long profitable industry, and one which had been re- garded as a permanent source of wealth.
Copper mines at Menlo Park, on the line between the townships of Raritan and Woodbridge, in Middlesex county, were worked at intervals until about 1827, and again in 1882, during the latter period by Mr. Edison, but without satisfactory results.
Among the earliest industries along and adjacent to the lower part of the New Jersey coast, was salt making, and the manufacture was carried on after the most primitive methods. In some localities, spots were selected on the salt meadows which through their dearth of vegetation indicated an unusual salt impregnation of the soil. Here holes were dug, into which seeped the highly charged saline water, which was dipped out and boiled until only a deposit of salt remained. Another process was that of admit- ting water from the bay into long shallow trenches on the meadows.
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Sluice gates were then closed, and the water was evaporated under the heat of the sun. At the Toms River works operated under the Continental Congress, the water was pumped from the bay into the evaporating vats by windmill power. Five hundred to eight hundred bushels of salt per annum was considered a satisfactory yield.
Various salt works were set in operation about twenty years prior to the Revolutionary war, but they were of little consequence, their inferior product being regarded with contempt in comparison with the article brought from abroad by British vessels. With the beginning of the war period, however, the New Jersey salt fields came to be of prime importance, the salt being needed by the patriot army for food use and for the making of. gunpowder. To meet these wants, salt works were established by the Continental Congress, and by the State of Pennsylvania, on the north bank and at the mouth of Toms River The sum of six thousand pounds, con- tinental money, was expended by Congress in this enterprise, and the Penn- sylvania Council of Safety paid Thomas Savadge the sum of four hundred pounds to aid him in a similar project. There were also numerous private works, among them those of Samuel Brown at Forked River, the Newlin works at Waretown, two or three at Barnegat, those of Garret Rapelya on Upper Barnegat Bay, and others at Little Egg Harbor, on both banks of the Squan, at its mouth, and on Shark River.
These works were so important that the British became intent upon their destruction soon after hostilities began, and the Continental Congress, in conjunction with the authorities of New Jersey and Pennsylvania, were equally determined upon their maintenance, but their defense mainly rested upon the New Jersey militia. In 1777, Colonel John Morris, of the New Jersey Royal Volunteers, a tory organization, led an expedition against the works at Toms River, but his purpose was not effected. About April T, 1778, Captain Robertson, with a force of one hundred and thirty-five men, burned the works built by Congress, and a day or two later destroyed the works at Squan Inlet. The force then landed at Shark River, where they set fire to two salt works, but before the work of destruction was com- pleted they were frightened away by a small force of mounted patriot mili- tia, and in their haste to escape two of their boats were sunk. The govern- inent works and those belonging to Savadge were almost immediately rebuilt and the last namned were sold to John Thompson for fifteen thousand pounds, continental money. During the war period, the works near Town- send Inlet were kept in operation, this being due to their inaccessibility by the British soldiery, notwithstanding the fact that their owner, Dr. Harris, bad incurred the bitter ill-will of the Crown authorities on account of his
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making gunpowder for the patriot army, and that reward was offered for his apprehension and for the destruction of his works.
With the close of the war and the restoration of peace, the salt industry practically disappeared, the imported article being much cheaper than the domestic product, and of greatly superior quality. Works were re-estab- lished, however, at various points, in 1812, when the war with Great Britain closed the ports on the New Jersey coast to foreign salt. One of ยท the most important salt works of this period was that established on Ab- secon Island, by Zadock Bowen. This was destroyed by a stormtide in 1825 and was rebuilt by Hosea Frambes, and was operated with reasonable suc- cess until about 1840, when the industry was finally abandoned.
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