USA > New Jersey > Somerset County > Within a Jersey circle : tales of the past, grave and gay, as picked up from old Jerseyites > Part 10
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"One doctor in the village was twice left a widower and often he was annoyed very seriously by Gussie, who made it a practise to ring his door bell and send him threatening letters. Once she hurled a piece of brick through his window. It smashed the glass to shivers and narrowly missed his head. At length he was driven to apply for police protection. That was a blow to Gussie, for it dispelled her last hope of matrimony in that quarter.
"And then began the breaking up of the family. The mother died. Very soon afterward the son was dis- owned by the father and went West. He wrote for mon- ey, but got no answer. Then a stranger wrote to Mr. Everett informing him that his son was dead and asking if he would not send money enough for his burial. The father sent the sum named. After another year or two he received a second request for money to bury his son. This the father answered by requesting his correspondent to see that young Everett was buried and send him (the father) the bill. No such bill came and that was the last ever heard about the son.
"Then the father died, and from that time not a blind or shutter of the house was ever opened. The sisters kept house as best they could. Louise was the only one who could cook. Matilda and Euphemia did the shopping and
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attended to other outside matters, among which was the marketing of their crops of cherries, quinces, berries, etc., which brought them in many dollars a year. Gussie just roamed about wherever she listed and was a well-known figure in the streets of Bergen for many years. Always with a happy smile and a kindly greeting for everybody, ever hastening to somewhere which never was reached, she made a round of errands that never ended. The two elder sisters seldom left the house.
"Eventually Louise died. Then, as no one else could cook, and the family exchequer was getting low, the home had to be broken up. It was then that the house was of- fered for sale. The sisters went boarding; but they were difficult to please. They would eat nothing cooked on Sunday, even if the gravy was warmed they would refuse their dinner. Not long after the home was vacated, the doors were all found open and on the floor in one of the rooms was the body of a man. The man had evidently been murdered. There were evidences of a fierce struggle. The body had many stab wounds while the head was beaten almost to a pulp. No clue was ever found to the identity of either the murdered man or the murderer.
"Even before this gruesome discovery the house was looked upon as haunted. From that time, however, school children ran past it on the further side of the street, and neighbors declared there were lights and peculiar sounds in it at night.
"One night for long hours a dog seemed to be dying of strangulation in the cellar. The next door neighbor was unable to sleep because of the noise. Procuring the key he went into the cellar, but in it he found no dog. Then
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he searched the rambling empty rooms upstairs with no better result. But he felt his flesh creep several times, for it seemed that an invisible dog ran at his heels. He heard it perfectly trip-tripping after him, but try as he would to throw his light on it he could see nothing. He left everything locked up, yet in the morning every door in the house was open.
"Gussie, who at that time was about fifty years old, went regularly every day to the house and locked the doors, and just as regularly the next morning they were found wide open.
"That," Mrs. S. continued, after a pause, "was the condition of things when I came from a distance, knowing nobody in Bergen and nothing about the house which I hired from an agent. Our family consisted of my hus- band, daughter and myself.
"Before we had lived there many days we found that we might close the doors between the kitchen, dining- room and parlor as tightly as we chose when retiring, but they would be open in the morning. One night my husband, being out later than usual, and my daughter having gone to bed, I sat by the dining-room stove wait- ing Mr. S.'s return. On the parlor door close behind me, which was shut, I heard three distinct knocks, as if made by the knuckles of one finger. Thinking it must be my daughter, I said, 'Come in.' I got up and opened the door. Nobody was there; but from the farther darkened end of the parlor I heard a deep sigh and the rustle of a dress, as if some one passed out into the hall. Taking up the lamp, I followed as quickly as I could, through the parlor into the hall, but I could see no one. Going up-
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stairs to my daughter's room I found her in bed. The bedclothes were pulled over her head and she was all of a tremble. She had heard three taps on her door, ex- actly as I had heard on the door below, and from the silk-like rustle that followed the taps she was certain that some one had entered the room. We made a careful search, but could not find any one.
"Another night, after we had all retired, there were sounds of merriment down stairs in the dining-room. These were followed quickly by a quarrel and a heavy fall. My husband crept down stairs, but found every- thing in order and everything perfectly quiet. But be- neath his feet, in the cellar, a dog was howling, evidently in great pain. The howling ceased as he descended the stairs, but no dog was to be seen anywhere.
"Gussie sometimes called at her old home to see us, but she always seemed ill at ease and nervously watched each door that opened. Pleading haste to finish her imaginary errands, she would soon hurry away. At last she went on another real errand and returned no more; for she found, surely if ever any one did, what she and many a wiser head have vaguely searched for and which this world cannot give, that peace which 'passeth understand- ing.'
"Matilda, Gussie's next older sister, who outlived her and who was the last of the family, boarded and grew old and gray with an aged couple. At last the man's wife died. Then when Matilda was over eighty years of age, she and the venerable widower married and cared for each other to the end."
CALVIN CORLE.
HOW HE PLAYED A PRACTICAL JOKE ON HIS COUSIN IN THE DAYS WHEN THEY WERE YOUNG.
The venerable Calvin Corle, mentioned in my last ar- . ticle as having overstepped by nine good years man's al- lotted days, must by no means be understood as having always been a strait-laced disciple of all work and no play, which, as has been truly said, makes Jack a dull boy. Far from that, he and his cousin, John L., the in- separable "old boys," had their share of youthful fun and frolic.
Though the two were so undivided all their lives, in their young days they were never slow to take advantage of favorable circumstances to play practical jokes on each other. Calvin, especially, was much given to this kind of fun. In those days, though not as large as many youths of his years, he was of a clean-cut, athletic figure, and lithe and supple as a cat. He was also full of sparkling good humor and of nimble wit. His particular chum, on the other hand, had an almost comical gravity of man- ner and great deliberation of speech and movement. Al- though one might suppose that butter wouldn't have melted in his mouth, he was deep and astute and had a keen relish for fun, with a dry way of expressing himself that was the essence of comedy. But he was always so earnest and unsuspicious that Calvin found him an easy victim for many a joke.
One fine moonlight night an opportunity of this kind
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occurred in one of their expeditions to see their sweet- hearts. There were in those days no such things as bug- gies or runabouts, in which a man might take his best girl for an outing. He rode his horse instead, and his lady love, poising herself on the horse-block, if there was one, or in lieu thereof on the rails of some convenient fence, sprang nimbly on the horse's back behind him.
A great degree of satisfaction is said to have inured to the young lords of creation from this arrangement, in- asmuch as the fair one's sidewise seat behind the saddle usually proved sufficiently precarious to produce a certain clinging dependence upon the superior horsemanship of her escort that was highly agreeable to him. It has been claimed, indeed, to have been one of the most favorable of all possible situations for those irresistible little, timid appeals for help and protection on the one side and the gratified vanity and fearless rescue promptly rendered on the other, which always did and always will go, the old folk say, so far toward warming and welding to- gether the hearts of pretty maids and valiant men.
On the night in question the two cousins, having ar- rived at the house where Martha, John's Dulcinea, dwelt with her prosperous parents, they dismounted and were received with the greatest good-will. Having propounded their project, they found it quite agreeable to the family. Their plan was for Martha to accompany John on his horse to the home of Calvin's sweetheart, where all were to spend the evening together. This being settled, Cal- vin suddenly bethinking himself of an errand he had to make for his father to a place about half a mile farther
"Oh! Marty, if you only knew," he was saying,
- -
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on toward their intended destination, excused himself to host and hostess, and moving to the door, called back :
"You and Martha come along, John. I'll trot on ahead as far as Brokaw's and after delivering dad's mess- age I'll meet you at the road end."
Assenting, John and Martha's father began chatting, while she and her mother stepped out on the porch with his cousin. "Don't be long, Mart," John requested as the young woman neared the door, "and put a shawl about you, for it's a bit chilly to-night."
Martha replied that she would so array herself and would be ready in a moment. Then she closed the door. As John sat talking he heard the mother and daughter laughing at something.
"One of Calvin's jokes," John thought. "He does tell such good stories. He makes every one laugh as no one else can."
Then he pursued the thread of his argument and for some little time, it must be confessed, he was oblivious to how really long Martha was in merely donning a shawl. But suddenly the mother rallied him in a way that made him jump almost out of his skin.
"Fie on you, John Corle!" she cried excitedly. "How long will you keep our Martha standing out there on the horse-block awaiting her escort? A cold night like this, too! Upon my word, sir, when Martha's mother was her age I doubt if she'd waited half as long for any man that ever breathed !"
But John didn't wait for the rebuke at full length. It was about the liveliest piece of work he ever did the way he dashed out through the kitchen, jumped on his
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dappled gray and came bounding around the house to the horse-block, where, sure enough, his fair partner for the ride, wearing a shawl and a large bonnet, demurely awaited him. If there was any anger of impatience in the face above the shawl the bonnet hid it, and John began honestly to tell his girl of his heartfelt sorrow for his remissness.
"Well, now, Marty," he began, "it was very stupid of me and I ask your-"
"Oh! for goodness sake, John, don't ask anything of anybody; but let Martha get on the horse!" broke in the mother with considerable asperity. She had followed to the mounting place, evidently quite cross about things, and, as John inwardly remarked, put herself to quite un- necessary trouble about Martha, who, poor girl, seemed so hurt and embarrassed that she said not a word.
"And now, John Corle," continued the matron as a parting word, "you know Martha's my only child. Be very careful, and bring her safe back to us."
With this the two rode away, John not unreasonably indignant at what he felt to be most unusual and uncalled- for excitement and the upbraiding of himself by Martha's mother. He could not understand it.
"And here's Marty, poor thing, crying, I suppose, or she'd never be silent like this," he thought bitterly as he rode on and on, really afraid to break the silence for fear of another rebuff. The longer the silence continued, the harder it seemed to break. At length they were actually drawing near to where the merry Calvin would meet them, both as dumb as if they were chief mourners at a funeral.
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"This is something awful!" John thought desperately. "What villainous fun he'll make of us! I must do some- thing. Oh! how I wish I had only Calvin's ready wit and knack of saying the right thing in the right place!"
Dozens of times he had turned stealthily around and tried to peep under Martha's bonnet, in the hope that she would make some little remark to break the ice for him. But it was all in vain, for she only appeared to cover her face with the one hand that she could use for that pur- pose as if actually weeping. In fact, the devoted and almost distracted young man would have sworn he heard her sniffing and sniveling and that he positively saw a quiver of suppressed emotion the last time he looked. She must be heartbroken! And here he was approaching the trysting place, where Calvin would see his distressful plight and would laugh at him for the next year about it. Something must be done! At last, feeling himself to be the most cruel and utterly heartless man that ever lived, he decided to speak.
"Heigh-ho!" he sighed very audibly, and turning as far as possible around to his partner, in a very timorous, pleading voice he ventured to ask :
"Marty! Marty! W-won't you speak to me?"
Not a word of answer did he get, but there were more sniffs and plainly more spasms of grief. Then, nerving himself for a last heroic appeal for reconciliation, John, almost crying himself, tried to take hold of his sweet- heart's hand.
"Oh! Marty, if you only knew-," he was saying, when, with a screech wild enough to petrify the very heart of the bravest man, his companion sprang down and com-
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menced a wild, high-stepping dance, with such unmaidenly gyrations of limbs as almost paralyzed John's senses to behold.
Just as the horse, which was almost as terrified as its rider, seemed gaining the mastery and was on the point of running away-which in truth John himself was about ready to agree to-the mad dancer, from sheer exhaustion and suppressed laughter, unable to keep it up any longer, fell against a tree for support, and with the unmistakable voice of a man, roared with laughter.
"Oh! oh!" he laughed. "Oh, help! or I'll die!"
And with apparently the last breath left in his body, Calvin, for no other was the dancer, cried :
"Oh, John! John! I fear this will kill me!"
Then did that wicked cousin betake himself swiftly to the woods, whither John could not penetrate with his mount in pursuit. And thus did Calvin save himself from being ridden down to the earth in John's fiery indig- nation.
The next day those two faithful cousins laughed loud and long in unison, as they continued to do for fifty-odd years thereafter over that and many another frolic of the days when they were young together.
The cousins worked as well as played together. Those were the days when the many large grist mills dotting the South Branch River used to gather in the bountiful wheat and corn crops of their farmer customers and afterward hauled the grist products to New Brunswick, which was then the shipping port for a wide stretch of New Jersey, including Somerset and Hunterdon counties. Mr. Corle senior did a large business in this way, and it just suited
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his adventurous son, Calvin and his cousin to do the haul- ing.
Mounted on their immense wagons, loaded high with multitudinous sacks of wheat, bags of flour, bran, mid- dlings, corn, cornmeal, cracked corn, oats, oatmeal, crushed oats, buckwheat, buckwheat flour, etc., etc., all built firm, like bricks in a wall, and covered with tar- paulins, roped around stanch and strong and lashed to the vehicles like the halyards of a ship, Calvin and John, each with two or four horses in front of him, were in their ele- ment. At 4 o'clock in the morning they gathered up their lines and cracked their whips for the start. They liked the work, not because it was easy, for it was not. In the late fall, when the business really began in earnest, the weather, then as now, was often made up of blustering bastings of rain, hail and snow and keen, biting frosts, that made travel anything but child's play for man and beast. But it was full of blood-stirring action and excite- ment that just suited brawny young fellows of spirit.
Outward bound they had to be expert drivers to navi- gate the imperfect roads of those days, and had to guard their valuable loads from free-handed plunderers, many of whom then infested lonely roads. Many stops at road- houses along the way were necessary to breathe their horses, if for nothing else. It was a hearty relief of the long tedium of the journey, to pull up at any hour of day or night, where a big sign invited all and singular to come in out of the rain or biting blast and be warmed and re- freshed. And every man who has tasted the bitters and sweets of such travel will readily admit that a foaming tankard of good nut-brown home-brewed helps amazingly
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to thaw out one's limbs, and sends the blood tingling into his fingers and toes on such occasions.
No hostelry door was kept shut in the face of a weary or shivering traveler at any hour in those days. Were it the posting horseman, in need of a fresh mount and a hasty meal, or one of the roving tin peddlers, or any of the horse traders or cattle dealers then continually moving hither and thither before dawn, at high noon or black midnight, the clatter of horses' hoofs or the rumble of wheels, with a halloo from the driver, always brought prompt answer, a wide-open door, inviting warmth within and a cheery word of welcome.
Thus would young Calvin and John, even before the half-awake crow of the earliest rooster, pull up on the first leg of their voyage at Flagtown and brace up with an eye-opener from the cozy and glittering bar of the hail-fellow-well-met landlord, Will Hall.
The next stop would be at the justly famous Wood's Tavern, a landmark even to this day, but only a milk- and-water-dead-or-alive affair, compared with the all- day, all-night warmth, good cheer and bustle of the place, when the prosperous and jovial old boniface, Isaac Van Fleet, smiled broadly his welcome to his many patrons.
Early risers would be literally "striking a light" from steel and flint into their tinder boxes and lighting there- from there tallow dip candles to dress by the time the cou- sins arrived at Millstone, with the river in front of them to ford, for there was no bridge over the Millstone River at that time. A word as to the state of the ford from mine host, Captain Wilson, was of course, but natural and reasonable. Who knew, as the merry captain did,
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the height and breadth and strength of the current of the Millstone River? No man that ever lived. Nor did any exist that knew as he did its every twist and bend and every creek that fed it, from Kingston and Rocky Hill (places immortalized, he would tell you, by their asso- ciation with the name of the Father of His Country) down to the Raritan and on to New Brunswick. Woe to the misguided teamster, whoever he was, that, in the season of freshets, took other word than that of the stanch old pilot with the rosy nose and foghorn voice, mine host of the Millstone Inn!
Cornelius Williamson, an old friend of Mr. Corle's, once did that. He asked a woman, who stood at her door, if other drivers were able to go through, and, be- ing answered that they were, for she had seen them, he made a dash for it, and just missed losing his team and his life. Had the old captain been asked, he would have warned the questioner of his danger, for in but a few minutes the river had risen more than two feet.
"A trick of hers-quick up, but mighty slow down, is the Millstone River," the captain would sometimes say. "Her twin sister is getting my supper yonder!" he would add with a wink, after a careful look over his shoulder, to make sure that his wife could not hear what he said.
Across on the other bank John Bellis's house of call was visited by the cousins and other drivers, sometimes going and always coming homeward. The next stop was at Middlebush, where Landlord Fisher's sign held out it's welcome. Then came the last stop at Dick De- mont's, about two miles from their destination.
Arriving at New Brunswick, the travelers, thankful
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for their safe journey, put up at the Bull's Head, on Burnett street, which was kept by the genial Henry Smith. This old hostelry still stands, among other an- cient houses, on the same little narrow, winding, old- fashioned street, with sidewalks not much over a foot in width.
COLONEL SANDERSON'S MAIL COACHES.
COMMODORE VANDERBILT'S METHOD OF CRUSHING A COMPETITOR, AND A TRIP TO CONEY ISLAND.
There is nothing, perhaps, short of a journey in one that could conjure up the genuine stage coach of the olden time better than meeting a man who has so traveled -not one who did so for the fun or novelty of it, but a man who paid his fare and rode in earnest, thus using the only means then available for transporting himself from one place to another across the State. I had the pleasure of meeting such a man lately. He is Henry Vanderveer Van Liew, now of Clover Hill.
Leaving, when he was fourteen years of age, the school that he had been attending at Easton, Pa., young Van Liew took the stage from there to Somerville. As he is now seventy-four, that was sixty years ago. He re- members that he was the only passenger in the coach on that long ride. He thus saw a plain evidence of the sure decadence that had already set in for the old mode of travel, and he has lived long enough to see the good old stage a thing of the past and all but forgotten.
The coach Mr. Van Liew sat in and the man who drove it were types of the passing age-an age when men of standing and large means thought it not beneath their dignity to own stage lines, as well as to drive their own horses. Colonel D. Sanderson was the owner and driver of that coach. He was the proprietor of the main stage line then connecting New York and Philadelphia, and
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he owned six subsidiary lines as feeders thereto. The most important stage, that from Elizabeth to Easton, Pa., he drove himself, and long before Mr. Van Liew's ride with him home from school and long after the col- onel was famous for his splendid horses, and also for hav- ing cut down the record in crossing the State to a trifle under two days.
In the earlier and more prosperous part of his coach- ing career, Colonel Sanderson had personally superin- tended the travel over his line of such illustrious men as Lafayette, Jackson, Van Buren, Polk, Taylor, Richard M. Johnson and other notables, as they passed to and fro between the two great cities. In the election of Pres- ident Taylor, Colonel Sanderson took an active part. He voted for Jackson in 1824, and though the latter was then defeated he was elected President four years later.
Besides his stages, the colonel was interested in other enterprises, particularly hotels. The old Union House at Elizabeth belonged to him for over twenty-five years and was justly celebrated at that time as a first-class hos- telry. When New Jersey was crossed only by stages the single trip cost $7. This the colonel reduced to $5. Mr. Van Liew paid $2 for his ride from Easton to Somerville. The stage then carried the mail under government con- tract. It also transported express matter and baggage.
Notwithstanding the fact that many of the earlier Western stage routes had made fortunes for their pro- prietors, Colonel Sanderson eventually lost heavily by his enterprise here in the East. By the time he finished with the business he found himself out of pocket over $25,- 000. In the heydey of his coaching, when his horses
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were the admiration of every one for beauty and speed, he had the distinction of selling a superb pair of bays to the French Emperor for the handsome sum of $4,500. The transaction resulted in all probability through his pleasant and intimate relations with the Marquis de Lafayette.
Colonel Sanderson's was a well-known and genial face, and his figure a commanding one as, seated on his raised "box," with fares to right of him, fares to left of him and more on a second seat behind him, he swung into view on the front of his glistening coach. Added to these passengers would generally be six or eight "insides," and two or three more alongside the conductor, perched up high on the "boot" behind.
Thus came the great chariot, tearing down the street of the town or village, behind magnificent, foaming horses spurred on by the blasts of the bugle. The crash of wheels of the towering equipage-the splendid con- necting link between the two great cities of New York and Philadelphia-was inspiring and electrifying to every- body. And as for the brilliant captain of all this, the prince of good fellows, the fearless, dashing jehu, whose hand was on the reins, the gallant colonel, who hobnob- bed familiarly with great soldiers, statesmen and noble- men, he appeared to the country townsmen-especially to the flourishing tavern keepers, whose houses he filled with distinguished company, as little less than a god.
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