USA > New Jersey > The New Jersey coast in three centuries; history of the New Jersey coast with genealogical and historic-biographical appendix, Vol. II > Part 17
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Sich seem to have been the most serious Indian troubles recorded in the Old Towne Book of Middletown. These lawgivers of the pioneer town recognized the white man as the aggressor and punished him, while so far as the savage was concerned they only defended themselves against the consequences of the wrong done to him by their own townsmen.
By midsummer, 1669, "considering the towne to bee now wholly com- pleated, being full according to their number," the officials ordered that no sojourner could be entertained by any inhabitant beyond ten days with- out giving notice to the town officers or paying a forfeit of twenty shillings a night. The town refused to support non-residents. The out-plantations had not yet been selected or conveyed. Each townsman owned a home lot, a meadow lot at Waakaack and another at Shoal Harbor, and an upland lot in the "poplar ffield"-a timber or woodland lot which was on the hills south of the town. The home lot was in the town and had its little house or cabin. The meadows were for the pasture of cattle and were often enclosed as commons, every townsmen having his registered earmark for his cattle. The upland lots supplied lumber for building, for fuel and for fencing. For a time swine had free range of the town, and their liberties were defended in "hot debate" against the tyranny of the General As-
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sembly. Swine enjoyed the liberties of London, why should they be re- strained in Middletown?
The first marriage recorded in the Old Towne Book of Middletown was that of John Throckmorton and Alice Stout, daughter of Richard Stout and Penelope Van Princis. After legal publication they were "this Day (December 12, 1670) coupled together in marriage by Edward Smith, Constable." In the absence of ordained ministers the civil marriage was a necessity. The Anabaptists, as well as the Quakers, did not consider marriage one of the sacraments, and in their opposition to the church of Rome preferred civil marriages. Jolin Bowne, who for many years preached to the people of Middletown, was not ordained, but as justice of the peace married many of the young people of this time. Blood and marriage ties were the natural factors which grouped together the colonists of certain localities, especially at a time when the movements of men were known only in limited circles. The events of history are recorded, but the close relation by blood and marriage of the leaders and their followers is not made evident except through a close study of the records relating only to family history. The Monmouth patentees were not only related by ties of friendship, sympathy in religion and commerce, but they were in many instances of the nearest "kith and kin." A peculiar illustration of this ap- pears in the story of Benjamin Deuell.
On the second of October, 1650, "John Hazell, Mr. Edward Smith and his wife, Obadiah Holmes, Joseph Tory and his wife, and the wife of James Man, William Deuell and his wife of the town of "Rehoboth," Massachusetts, were presented to "A general Court holden at New Plym- outh" before William Bradford, Governor, and Captain Miles Standish and other assistants, on a charge of "continuing a meeting upon the Lord's day from house to house." These men all went to Rhode Island and set- tied at Newport. Obadiah Holmes' two sons-Obadiah and Jonathan- became townsmen of Middletown, New Jersey, as did Edward Smith, his brother Philip and his brother-in-law, Steven Arnold. Benjamin Deuell, son of William Deuell, was one of the original thirty-six townsmen of Middletown, New Jersey, in 1667. He was a resident of and took part in the formative affairs of the town for eight years. Then he obtained and recorded a letter from his father in Rhode Island, as follows :
"Dere sone I received your letter by Mr. frogmorton wherein I under- stand the charges that you will be at in the Lands that I first purchased for you therefore as you desire mee to cut of the intailment I hereby resin up all my Right and Intrust in that land which I purchased in that country called Middletowne for you to posess and dispose of eithere by sale or other waise," etc.
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Seven years later Benjamin Deuell, now of Rhode Island, "for and in consideration of marriage had and solemnized between the said Benjamin Deuel and phebe his now wife and for the Love which he hath to phobee his wife" sold to Philip Smith, of Rhode Island, "all and singular the Lands and tennaments Lying and being in and about the precincts of Mid- dletowne in the province of New Caesaria or New Jersey," now in the occupation of William Compton," "to have and to hold," etc., during the
"Natural Life of the said pheby." Again, seven years passed, and in the
old "Towne Book" is this record : "Pheby Deuell ended her Natural Life the twelfth day of april one thousand six hundred eighty-nine Benjamin Deuell and Juda Compton were married the Leventh of June one thousand six hundred Eighty and nine." Imagine the gossips of Middletown in distraction ! Poor "Phebe," Phobee" or "Pheby" Deuell was probably a daughter of Philip Smith, while "Juda" or Judith Compton was the daugh- ter of William Compton, also a Rhode Island man. The descendants of all these people moved westward across New Jersey, through Pennsylvania, down the Ohio valley and up the Mississippi, until two centuries had passed, when a descendant of the Deuells married a descendant of Rich- ard Stout in the forests of Minnesota. This is only one of the many ro- mances of Old Monmouth. It was upon such quaint homely records that Sir Walter Scott sometimes built his beautiful stories of the Scottish Border.
During the building of Middletown, one of its chief sources of wealth had not been neglected. February 14, 1678-9, a charter was obtained "for a Whale fishing company consisting of Thomas Huet, Thomas Ingram, Richard Davis, Isaac Bennett, Randall Huet, Thomas Huet, Henry Leon- ard, Samuel Leonard, John Whitlock, John Crafford, (afterward of Cape May) Thomas Applegate and Charles Dennis," all of Middletown and Shrewsbury. Ten years before, "Privileges, Conditions and Limitations for the Whale fishery by John Ogden senior, Caleb Carwithy, Jacob Moleyn, William Johnson and Jeffry Jones, all of Elizabeth Town and twenty-one partners from Barnegate to Sandy Hook," had been granted. On April I4th, 1670, a warrant was issued for the Whaling Company to take posses- sion of a whale cast ashore at the Navesink. Many whalemen from New England settled along the New Jersey coast from Cape May to Sandy Hook before 1700. Along the inlets and beaches the small whaleboats were kept always in readiness to capture the great cetaceans which frequently visited the coast. Three or four generations of seamen, trained in the skillful man- agement of these whaleboats in both surf and creek made their crews at the time of the American Revolution important auxiliaries of the privateersmen and navies of both the Tory and Whig. The story of New Jersey's pri-
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vateersmen is full of heroism and romance. A few years ago sayings and tales of the fo'castle of the whaler could easily be traced in the conversa- tion even of the coast farmer, but they are fast disappearing as their lands become the pleasure grounds for the rich citizens of the great cities on either side of the State.
Twice during the year 1670 George Fox and Burnyeate crossed New Jersey in their journeys from Delaware to Long Island and return. They visited Richard Hartshorne at Waakaack ( Middletown harbor) and on their way to Shrewsbury passed through a place called "Purgatory," be- cause the descent was so steep. Fox says: "We got at length to Shrews- bury in East Jersey, and on First Day had a precious meeting there, to which Friends and other people came far, and the blessed presence of the Lord was with us. The same week we had a men and women's meeting out of most parts of New Jersey. They are building a meeting place in the midst of them, and there is a monthly and a general meeting set up which will be of great service in those parts."
George Fox was a keen observer and shrewd in his dealings with men. He was better educated in his youth than many of his class. The majority of men were without any education. The early letters and public documents written by the first immigrants into New Jersey were as well spelled and written as any such papers at that time. Prosperous merchants and tradesmen educated their children, and it was this class that could afford to emigrate from home, or had sufficient energy and knowledge of the world to wish to experiment, or to succeed in what they had under- taken. As a rule the yeomanry of England were ignorantly conservative, and few emigrated in the seventeenth century. The civilian rich, alert,_ progressive and educated were ready to create a new order of things. Such men George Fox visited in New Jersey. It is a significant fact that in a very short time after his return to England, Lord Berkley, the languid court favorite, disappointed in liis returns from his New Jersey Proprie- taryship, and most probably in debt to many of the clean-lived, thrifty Quaker merchants of London, sold his patent for West New Jersey to John Fenwick and Edward Billinge. Edward Billinge had long been well known in London as a Quaker-a preacher of the doctrines of George Fox.
Fenwick's colonists in the two towns of New Salem and Cohansey . were men of family and influence, or younger members of such families. Those who signed the agreement under which were settled the towns named (June 25, 1676) were John Fenwick, Edward Wade, John Smith, Richard Noble, Samuel Nicholson, John Adams, Hipolite Lefeure, Edward Champneys, Richard Whitacar, William Malster and Robert Wade. Forty-
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two lots of sixteen acres as home lots .formed each of the towns. One lot was permitted to each purchaser. In 1676-9 Benjamin Burden, weaver of Middletown, George Mount, blacksmith of Middletown, and Thomas Apple- gate, weaver of Shrewsbury, received allotments of two hundred and ninety acres each of land at Cohansey. "Anthony Page, late of Middle- town, of Salem, planter," and William Lawrence, of Middletown, each re- ceived one thousand acres at Cohansey. Richard Lippincott's five sons- Frederic, Remembrance, John, Restore and Jacob-all of Shrewsbury, New Jersey, purchased land on the Cohansey River. Jonathan Holmes also) held lands there. Very many of the Monmouth Patentees early became purchasers of lands in the two new towns of the Fenwick Colony. A close intimacy existed for many years between the Anabaptists and Quakers of Middletown and Shrewsbury, and New Salem and Cohansey, and their relatives and friends in Delaware and Pennsylvania. George Fox was most probably the medium for bringing together again the London Quaker merchants of the Fenwick colony and the New England merchants of Gravesend. There were many intermarriages during more than a cen- tury. A notable marriage was that of Captain Fenwick Lyell and Eleanor, daughter of Edward and Mary Taylor, of Middletown, about the middle of the eighteenth century.
One of the most noted townsmen of Cohansey was Joshua Barkstead. His father, John Barkstead, was one of the regicides of Charles I, and Warden of the Tower of London during the Protectorate. At the restora- tion he fled to Holland, where he was found by Sir George Downing, who had been an active Republican. Wishing to ingratiate himself in the favor of Charles II, he betrayed John Barkstead, and had him brought to Lon- don, where he was beheaded in 1662. Sir George Downing was the diplo- mat who negotiated the unjust claims of England with the States-General prior to the surrender of New Netherlands. He was the tool of Charles II and the Duke of York. Edward and Robert Wade of Cohansey ( from London) were probably related to the Mr. Wade who claimed to have seen John Barkstead bury the treasure in the tower, and engaged Samuel Pepys in a futile attempt to find it under, some of the floors of the vaults.
On August 12, 1678, Sir John Werden (Vice-Secretary of State, England), wrote to Major Andros in New Jersey that it was "his Royal Highness' pleasure that he protects and secures in quiet possession to Hip- polite Lafevre and John Pledges his (own) brother-in-law and one ( Will- iam) Malster, divers parcels of land they have bought from John Fen- wick in New Jersey, who hath earned one-tenth of that moiety of New Jer- sey which was heretofore Lord Berkley's.". Hippolite Lafevre was prob- ably descended from the Huguenot family of that name which had been
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driven from France to the Rhine in the early years of the Reformation. He received a large tract of land in West Jersey called "Lafevre's Chase," and the names of himself and his sons often appear in New Jersey records.
Edward Billinge, a wealthy merchant, had obtained nine-tenths of the land of West Jersey, but becoming involved in his business he placed his share in the hands of William Penn, Gawen Laurie and Nicholas Lucas, who were Quakers, as trustees, to 'be disposed of to the advantage of his creditors. In 1676-7 they sold to merchants of London and York -- shire the First and Second London and Yorkshire tenths. They also sold ninetieths and hundredths to companies of merchants of Dublin, Ireland. Many of these merchants were "linnen drapers," weavers, "stuff weavers." "sergemakers," etc., representing the chief wealth-accumulating industries of England, Scotland and Ireland. The linen and wool interests of Great Britain were the foundation of her commerce and wealth. Wool and flax had been raised there, but had been sent to France and the Low Countries to be manufactured into fine cloths. In the early years of the Reformation the persecuted merchants and manufacturers of the continent fled from the Medici and the house of Austria to Protestant England. France never recovered the loss of hier best and most stable social element-the middle classes. Spain squandered in the Low Countries a great part of her wealth taken from Peru and Mexico, only to lose all the vital energy of her em- pire. She, too, has never recovered her losses. But England then gained the wealth and strength which made her the first commercial power of the world. Most carefully and zealously has England guarded her wool interests, even against her colonies, and especially those in America. Among the London and Yorkshire merchants who came to West Jersey from 1677 to 1679 were those whose names indicate a French or Dutch origin. The aristocratic glass makers fled to England from France and estab- lished that most important manufacture in England and Scotland in the sixteenth century. Three glaziers emigrated to West Jersey-John Ash- ton, Benjamin Hoult and John Swift. More than a century. had per- haps Anglicized them and the spelling of their names. Colonial develop- ment and the prosperity of colonial markets had aroused the interest of all commercial centers. The Quakers were at this time beginning to enjoy the patronage of the Duke of York, as a cloak for himself and his Catho- lic subjects who were being terrorized by the rumors of the Popish Plot. The merchant proprietors of West Jersey, aristocratic and loyal, holding large tracts of land, came themselves to the new world, and with their wealth and influence rapidly developed the colony and gave to the Councils and the Proprietary Governors additional strength against the New Eng- land merchant and Quaker patentees of East Jersey.
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Contemporaneous with the commercial settlement of the London and, Yorkshire Tenths (or Burlington) there came into New Jersey a number of merchants and seamen from the West Indies, of the same class, and often friends and relatives. A few of the names of majors and captains of mi- litia in the island of Barbadoes, will show how closely related were the colonists of that time: Bound or Bowne, Holmes, Ely, Morris, Burrows, Salter, Scott, Howell, etc. In 1676 both Colonel Lewis Morris and John Crawford came to Monmouth county. With them came the Leonards, other branches of the Morris family, and many others. In 1666, in the West Indies, on naval duty served Captain John Morris, Captain Will- iam Morris and a second Lewis Morris, son of Thomas, who settled on Passage Point or Narumsunk Neck. Colonel Lewis Morris was the son of Richard Morris, and was an officer of Cromwell's Ironsides. A branch of the Morris family of Monmouthshire, Wales, became one of the prin- cipal families of Ayrshire, Scotland, and from there some of the Morrises of New Jersey are descended. A report among the Colonial State Papers describes Colonel Lewis Morris as "an honest man tho' a Quaker;" it also states that he was diplomatically "unfit to treat with so airy a people" as the French. The thought of his "theeing" and "thouing" them is to the writer very amusing. Colonel Lewis Morris brought to Monmouth wealth for the development of the iron mine at Tinton Falls, and the Leonards came with him as iron workers from the mines of Wales and Cornwall. He also obtained a permit to make tar, pitch and resin in the pines along the Monmouth coast. He called his three thousand and forty acres in Shrewsbury "Tintern Manor." He is said to have given the name of Mon- mouth to the county in remembrance of his home in Monmouthshire, Wales. But he left no descendant to carry his name, and his estates passed to his nephew, Lewis Morris. Although he was so well known in the history of New Jersey, his descendants passed out of the county of Mon- mouth before the middle of the eighteenth century. The name of Morris remains in Monmouth, borne by the descendants of other branches of that great family, especially that of Ayrshire, Scotland.
John Crawford, Gentleman, of Ayrshire, Scotland, purchased a town lot of Richard Gibbons in Middletown in 1678. His son, John Crawford, mariner, also held a lot there. After the "burning of the gaits of Drum- lanrig," the Craufurds of Crawfurdland, Fenwick Parish, Scotland, and their clansmen, had been attained and exiled. At the Restoration the Laird, John Crauford, went to Holland to meet Charles II and was forgiven and restored. He had two daughters who married John Hamilton and John Campbell. He was related by marriage to the Hunters, Hamiltons, Barclays, Scotts, Kers, Maxwells and Campbells. The Craufurds were one
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of the principal and largest families of Ayr. In 1685 John Craufurd was imprisoned on suspicion of being concerned in the rising at Bothwell's Bridge. In the same year John Crawford, of Middletown, Monmouth county, New Jersey, (supposed to be of the Craufurd family before named) recorded a bill of sale to Jeremiah Bennett for "all lands in - Common Soccage as in the Manuer of East Greenwich, within the Kingdom of Eng- land." Charles II held the Manor of East Grenwich. Greenwich Park, London, was the Park of the Royal Manor of East. Greenwich, and was planted by Charles II. "Common. Soccage" meant a freehold tenure for service rendered, and was heritable. Captain William Crawford, of Wap- ping, a commercial section of East London, was commander of the ship "Charles" sent to the Guinea coast in 1662 by the Royal African Trading Company, and reported trouble on that coast with the Hollanders. Cap- tains Morris, Cooper, Dennis, etc., rendered similar service. For such service Captain Crawford may have received a tenure "in Common Soc- cage" in the "Manor of East Greenwich," which was inherited by his son or heir, John Crawford, "gentleman, of Ayrshire, Scotland," and sold through Jeremiah Bennett, a government official in London, at the time of the opening of the Park.
The palace at East Greenwich, in the reign of William and Mary, be- came a naval hospital and museum. John Craufurd, of Craufurdland, had a son, William, a merchant of Glasgow, who had two sons, John and James. Governor Robert Hunter, of Jamaica and New York, was the son of Robert Hunter, of Hunterston, and of Margaret Crawford, a lady of one branch of this family. Elizabeth Cunninghame, wife of John Crau- furd, and mother of John, Craufurd, above mentioned, married a second husband, Sir David Barclay, of Ladyland, a kinsman of Robert Barclay, of Ury. These families are represented by direct descendants in East Jer- sey and their family relations are everywhere traceable.
A typically complicated genealogy of New Jersey is that of the Scott family of Shrewsbury. Richard Scott, of Shrewsbury, Shropshire, Eng- land, was born in 1544 and died in 1628. He was a member of the house of Buccleuch, and was born about the date of the story of the "Lay of the Last Minstrel"-born amid the constant terrors of the great feud between the Scotts and Kerrs.
"Can piety the discord heal Or staunch the death feud's enmity ? * * While Cessford owns the rule of Kerr, While Ettrick boasts the line of Scott, The slaughtered chiefs, the mortal jar, The havoc of the feudal war, Shall never, never be forgot !"
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The feud finally ceased, and Richard Scott crossed the border, becom- ing in Shrewsbury, England, the founder of the family of the Scotts of Betton. His grandson, Benjamin Scott, baptized September 20, 1631, married Susannah Brerewood and went to Barbadoes. He had three sons. Richard and Benjamin married Eliza and Mary Halt, daughters of John Halt, Esquire, of Berks county, England. His daughter, Elizabeth, mar- ried a Mr. Warner, of the Island of Antigua, and afterward returned to Eltham, Kent county, England. The Warners of Antigua and St. Kits were the sons of Sir Thomas Warner, conspicuous in the early settlement of Barbadoes. In 1677 Benjamin Scott, of Barbadoes, was sent as sur- veyor and commissioner, by the Proprietors of the Billinge's Tenths of West Jersey, to quiet troubles with Governor Andros, of New York. April 3d, Benjamin Scott and William Scott, Jr., of Widdington or Win- nington, Essex county, England, received a deed grant for one-third share of West Jersey from John Kinsey, late of Grand Hadham, Hertford county, England, gentleman. An Indian deed to John Kinsey, Thomas Olive, Dan- iel Wills, John Pennford, Benjamin Scott, Joseph Hemsley, Robert Stacy, William Emlay and Thomas Ffolke, between Oldman's Brook and Tim- ber Creek, dated September 27, 1677, located Scott's claim. In 1683 Will- jam Scott was a resident of and paying taxes on his house and lot or garden in Gravesend, Long Island. A few years before he had married Abigail Warner, widow of Ralfe Warner, of West Indies, by whom she had a daughter, Mary, and a son, Ralfe. Abigail Warner was the daughter of Peter Tilton, of Gravesend, one of the original patentees of Monmouth county, New Jersey. William Scott became a large land owner in Shrews- bury. He was a Quaker. His wife's son, Ralfe Warner, died in Shrews- bury on September 29, 1695, intestate, and letters of administration were granted to William Scott. The early deaths of all his sons except William are recorded in the old Quaker records of births, deaths and marriages of the town of Shrewsbury, New Jersey. William Scott, Lewis Morris and other men named Morris owned lands on Swimming River, near the little hamlets called Morrisville and Leedsville. The old name of the latter place was Sandiknowe, the name of one of the old Scottish border towers, and the home of Sir Walter Scott's grandfather, whose father, only a lad, may have been playing about the ruins of the old border tower-a wretched home-while his clansmen on the borders of civilization were building far more comfortable homes in the forests of New Jersey. Hester or Esther Scott, daughter of William Scott, of Shrewsbury, New Jersey, married George, the son of John Crawford, of Middletown, New Jersey, and spent her life at the Crawford homestead near Morrisville and "Sandiknowe.'
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Her oldest son was named Richard, an uncommon name among the Craw- fords, but a family name among the Scotts.
Between 1665 and 1680 New Jersey, from Cape May to Elizabeth Town, had been settled chiefly by English colonists of the merchant and seafaring classes from England, the West Indies and New England. They became husbandmen and yeomen after obtaining their patents and proprietaries in New Jersey. Among the savage inhabitants they had established towns with necessary ordinances for the protection of all. They had instituted measures for the maintenance of their poor. Several important indus- tries were established. They were well organized, self-sustaining and self- governed. The majority came with means of support, and often with what in those days was considered wealth. They were educated beyond the average yeomanry of Great Britain. This is proven by the fact that a majority could sign their own names to the legal documents which they recorded. Scotch and English bordermen of the highest classes signed legal contracts "with their hands to the pen led by the clerk." The men who organized the oldest towns and townships of New Jersey were men of the world of business and affairs, far beyond the average villager or yeo- man of the English or Scotch rural districts. They were men of thought as well as of intelligence. They were exiled not as blind ignorant rioters, but as men who had contemplated the affairs of state, formed their opinion's, held fixed principles, and they were ready in the new world to give them the test of practical application. They were in most instances the clean, hon- est republicans of the "Republic of England" (or of the Commonwealth) who would not sell their love of liberty and their manhood to the degraded policies of the Stuarts after the Restoration.
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