USA > New Jersey > Somerset County > Within a Jersey circle : tales of the past, grave and gay, as picked up from old Jerseyites > Part 13
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Many of the world's great minds even at the zenith of their powers, have delighted, in moments of relaxation, to slip their collars, so to speak, and play the boy again and have, at such times, perpetrated jokes and frolicsome tricks, just to recall their happy memories of exploits and fire- side tales of their merry youth. And it may be safely conjectured that some such tales as above mentioned and many others, about the facetious sexton and so forth, re- lated by Tunis Melick's father, must have made a lasting impression upon his son. For multitudinous are the stories told about little playful lapses in such off moments or hours of ease in the mature life of Tunis Melick, the renowned, of Pluckemin.
But talking of voices, as this article commenced, it
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must surely be that time's distance lends some wonderful enchantment to the memory of Peter W.'s voice, when any one can dream of its having eclipsed that of Tunis, his son's, in sonorous power. For he that hath ears to hear, let him hear, if only once, Tunis Melick, when he mounts his chariot, and as a pleasant valedictory, throws out his broad chest and spouts a verse or two, or all of a poem of his, as follows:
Stand up, my boys! Stand up, boys ! Help bear the heavy load ; Toiling along the river side And up the mountain road.
We cannot all have millions ; We cannot all be IT; But courage, boys, and steady ! We all can show our grit.
When something's to be boosted Heave, O boys! heave away! All shout and pull together, Then sure we'll win the day.
Pluck fortune by the forelock, Pluck hard, boys, and we'll win; That'll pluck from all the truth, boys, There's pluck in Pluckemin.
Let any man hear that declamation, as the writer has in part, with a few genuine Melickian oratorical flour-
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ishes, before he makes the rash asseveration that there ever was, or ever will be, another voice, enunciato-perfecto, to compare with that of Tunis Melick.
Whenever a traveler, whose eyes are open, for the first time mounts the good old Peapack stage at Somer- ville and winds pleasantly along by what is called the mountain road to Pluckemin, before the journey is much more than half finished, he is pretty sure to ask :
"Whose house is that over there on our left, so ideally situated ?" and is duly informed by Mr. Layton, the po- lite coach driver-proprietor, that it is the old Duchess homestead, the residence of Tunis Melick, "Mayor of Pluckemin." A prettier pastoral vale it would be hard to find than that which slopes gracefully down to the south from the Duchess, hedged on the east by the Wat- chung Mountains and rolling in pleasant undulations southwestward to meet the Cushetunk and a long border- land of Hunterdon Hills.
As one approaches Pluckemin, Mr. Melick's house is a prominent feature of the landscape, as he is himself of one or two townships, if not of the whole county and even beyond it. The name of Melick, or Moelich, Mel- lick, Meelick, Melegh, Melich or Malick, as it has been variously spelled in this country, has been closely asso- ciated with the early history of
"Peapack on to Pluckemin, Somerville and back ag'in,"
as the old ballad had it; but it was so in the first in- stance through another family, or another branch of the
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same family, which settled in the Peapack glen. De- scendants of that line seem to have either died out or migrated to other regions. The facetious and famous Tunis Melick came here from New Germantown in Hunterdon County. His great-great-grandfather, Jo- hann Peter, came over from Germany early in the eigh- teenth century and settled there, probably at the same time that his uncle or cousin, Johannes Melick, settled in the Peapack Valley and built the old stone house.
The original Melick homestead, at New Germantown, was built by Ralph Smith in 1700. Smith owned at one time nearly all the land around this village, which ham- let he determined should be called Smithville or Smith- field, but in that was disappointed. The old Smith-house, which became the Melick homestead, was sold to Dr. Oliver Barnet, but after the doctor's death and a short occupancy of his nephew, the property again reverted to the Melicks and has remained in the family.
When Dr. Barnet bought the place in 1765, he made it a beautiful residence, which was known as Barnet Hall. After the doctor's death, Dr. Oliver Wayne Ogden, who married Miss Wisner, Dr. Barnet's niece, secured possession of Barnet Hall by litigation, as his lawful inheri- tance. He practised only a short time there and be- came disastrously involved in real estate speculations at Perth Amboy, where he died. After being rented to sev- eral tenants and after standing vacant, eventually the hall came back to the Melicks and Tunis Melick's father, Peter Melick, died there not so many years ago.
Barnet Hall was therefore the birth-place and boy- hood home of Tunis Melick, who was destined to add
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luster to the name of Pluckemin. From the earliest rec- ords of New Germantown, the hall was a noted place and became the repository of immense stores of interest- ing old historic records and relics, most of which have been unfortunately lost in the turmoil of the many changes of ownership and tenancy the property has passed through. One document, picked up from a lot of old papers in the attic, reads as follows :
"Morris Town, May 6th, 1777.
"The General will esteem it a singular favour if you can apprehend a Mulatto Girl servant and slave to Mrs. Washington, who eloped from this place yesterday, with what design cannot be conjectured, though as she may intend to the enemy and pass your way I trouble you with her description ; her name is Charlotte, but in all proba- bility will change it, yet may be discovered by question- ing. She is light complected, about 13 years of age, Pert and amorous, dressed in brown cloth westcoat and pet- ticoat: Your falling upon some method of recovering her should she be near you will accommodate Mrs. Wash- ington and lay her under great obligations to you, being the only female servant she brought from home, and in- tending to be off to-day had she not been missing. A gentle reward will be given to any soldier or other who may take her up.
"I am with Respect, Your most Obedt. Servant. "Richard Everid Meade,
"a. d. c.
"Col. Spencer at Eliz. Town."
When Dr. Barnet came to New Germantown he was
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a poor young man, having nothing in the world but his slender medical skill and a little Maryland pony. Soon after he started practise he had a tilt with Dr. Viesselius, the "red cheeked doctor" of the Old Stone House in East Amwell, at Three Bridges. As the story is told, a man living at Fox Hill had a very painful and much swollen gum. His neighbors told him he had cancer, and that he must consult the "red cheeked doctor," who was very clever and of wide renown. He went to do so, but having been unable to find him, and meeting Dr. Barnet, he showed his gum to him. The young doctor honestly told him it was nothing but a gum-boil, and that it would be all right in a few days.
On returning and telling this to his neighbors, the sufferer was told that Barnet was. only a boy and knew nothing, and that he must hie away back and find the "red cheeked doctor," which he did. Dr. Viesselius was in- formed that people said it was cancer and, looking into his patient's mouth, the doctor shook his head ominously and said it was a bad case, but he thought he could cure it. He prescribed, and at once the man was cured. When he came and delightedly paid his bill he told Dr. Viesselius what Dr. Barnet had said, that it was only a gum-boil, etc.
"Will you be so kind as to call on Dr. Barnet on your way home and tell him that he is a fool?" the physician asked. This the man did, and it so roused the young man to wrath that he declared he would thrash the "red cheeked doctor" for such an impertinence. They hap- pened to meet shortly afterward.
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"Did you send a man to tell me I was a fool?" the young man hotly demanded.
"Yes," Viesselius said, "I did. You told a man he had a gum-boil and got nothing for it. The man told me he had a cancer. I said I could cure his mouth, and did so, and I got a guinea for it. You," said the "red cheeked doctor," laughing, "were a fool because you did not take the man's guinea." Dr. Barnet, who loved money, saw the point and never forgot the lesson.
Ever since Dr. Barnet's death Barnet Hall has been, said to be haunted, and the house, the old mill and the family cemetery, according to tradition, have been the scenes of many supernatural appearances, wonderful sounds and mysterious demonstrations. When the doctor died he was supposed to have left more than $80,000 in gold behind him, and as the money was understood not to have been found by his successors, people got talking about its being buried in the ground somewhere about the premises, and many stories have been told about noc- turnal search parties and how many a deep hole has been dug by them, here, there and everywhere in the vain hunt for the hidden treasure.
The delvings were all or mostly conducted, it is said, under superstitious guidance. A sprig of witch-hazel was borne in a certain way in the hands of one of the company who was versed in divination. Absolute silence of the company was an imperative requisite and as the little twig inclined to left or right the searchers followed ; when it dipped toward the ground that was taken to be the infallible proof of the spot where the treasure was buried. And there, after drawing a fairy circle around
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the place, they began digging. But the utterance of one word would break the charm and the hole, no matter how deep it was, would fill up in a moment.
It is told that one party was so successful that they actually discovered and bared the top of the iron chest containing the gold, when one of the company, happen- ing to look up, saw a little black goblin on the limb of a tree right over their heads sawing away with a red-hot knife at a rope, which suspended an enormous millstone. Next moment the great mass of rock would fall and crush them; the man gasped a warning, when, instantly, out went their lights, the hole filled up and the company was scattered hither and thither in terror, and in total darkness, groping their way, not one having the remotest idea where the spot was that the hole had been.
Whatever practical-minded people of to-day may think about this manner of search, it is unquestionable that as late as the last decade of the nineteenth century it was firmly believed in and put in practise at Barnet Hall, as can be attested by a living witness, who was let into the secret, and was privileged to watch the movements of such a party one night only a few years ago, which expedition, needless to tell the initiated, was barren of any successful result, as, of necessity, it was bound to be in presence of such oversight of unbelievers.
JUDGE AARON ROBERTSON, OF WARREN.
A FAMOUS FIGURE OF OLDEN TIMES, WHO EXERTED A MIGHTY INFLUENCE.
"The evil that men do lives after them, The good is oft' interred with their bones."
It is the lot of few men to leave behind them the record of so useful and altogether benevolent a life as did Judge Aaron Robertson of Warren County, who at the ripe age of eighty died at his Beattystown home about thirty years ago. When it was said that his loss was mourned by all who knew him, it was not a careless, conventional use of the phrase, but the earnest, sorrowful truth. He was a man of unusual stature, standing six feet three inches in his stockings and of proportionate build. He had a strong face and fine athletic figure, both being sufficiently rounded for physical grace. Alto- gether he was a large, erect and handsome man; a fitting tabernacle for the big sympathetic heart and wonderful, master-mind that dwelt in it.
In several ways Judge Robertson was unquestionably a very remarkable man. Though he never systematically studied law nor graduated as others do to become law- yers, he became, as it were, by intuition, such an expert on all nice legal points and intricacies, that, as an oracle or living manual of cut and dry jurisprudence, he was consulted by practically every practising lawyer in the county. It is also a well-known fact that he wrote more
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wills for people than all the county lawyers combined ; and further, though many a time the wills he drew were contested in court, not one with a single flaw, technical or otherwise, was ever found by which it could be broken. Judge Beasley, commenting once upon an action brought for such purpose, said to the assembled counsel :
"Any four of you may just as easily go, one to each corner of this courthouse, put your shoulders to it and move the whole structure a hundred feet from where it now stands, as you can break a will drawn by Aaron Robertson."
His advice was sought and freely given to multitudes, and as a fact whatever construction he put upon a legal point invariably stood in court. He never took a fee, of course, for he neither was nor wanted to be a member of the bar. Yet those who know it declare that as many as a dozen vehicles would frequently be seen waiting at the judge's gate for his coveted advice-advice that gen- erally tended to steer its recipients away from rather than into litigation. It is said that if he had charged even fifty cents apiece to all who consulted him, he could have made a fortune.
Yet, strange and incongruous as it must seem, very often his importunate callers would find him with his sleeves rolled up, out in his yard among his pigs. Hc rarely had fewer than a hundred of them and it was his particular hobby to feed them with his own hands. He had two capacious butter-tubs bound with iron hoops and fitted with strong handles. With one of these in each hand, filled with milk, he delighted to regale his splendid hogs. When the first corn came in from the field in
,
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autumn he would make his men back a whole wagon load of ears into the yard at a feed for them. He also had many cows and churned for his own use; so there was plenty of milk and butter for the house, with oceans of skim and butter milk for the pigs. There were also fat beeves of mighty bulk in stalls, which, with the hogs, went to fill many huge provision barrels in the judge's cellars and joined in a plenteous decoration of his kitchen's ceilings with the toothsome shoulders, flitches and hams of his porkers.
There was nothing small, mean or contemptible about him. He was big and ample-looking himself and every- thing he had in hand shared in the same large and liberal solidarity and breadth of beam, as it were, of his person. All his life he wore an old-fashioned stovepipe hat, in the top of which were always stowed away a fistful of cigars which rested on a bulkhead made of his big bandanna handkerchief. Late in life he gave up cigars and took to a clay pipe, the stem of which he bandaged at the mouth- piece with a piece of linen to save his teeth.
When any one came to buy suckling pigs as "keep- overs," the judge would bring out the New York Tri- bune and look up the price per 100 pounds of live hogs in New York. At the same price per pound he would then weigh out and sell the little bits of pigs, receiving a mere trifle apiece for them; whereas, usually such pigs brought about $5 a pair. He owned a fine stable of horses which he never drove. When he went, as he did frequently, to Hackettstown, three miles distant, he in- variably walked both ways, using a walking stick which was as long above as below his hand.
J
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He got a complete surfeit of driving in an amusing experience he had with a friend's horse-that is to say, amusing to others, but to himself so annoying that he never got over it. Thomas Shields, a friend of his, wanted the judge to try his favorite roadster for a drive to Hackettstown. At last the offer was accepted. All went well on the outward journey, but returning, the horse, being impatient to get home, quickened the pace a little beyond the judge's liking. Following the usual plan he drew the reins to restrain the animal, whereupon it decidedly increased its speed. He pulled harder, but only faster went the horse. He hated to be seen dashing along at such speed, and, getting a good grip, pulled till he feared the reins would break, but to his great disgust the brute, which seemed to have a mouth of iron, put on a sprint faster still, and they came tearing into Beattys- town at a rate that to the judge's mind was utterly dis- graceful and even dangerous. People rubbed their eyes and looking again :
"Was that really and truly the judge?" they asked one another between amazement and doubt, gazing after the flying vehicle. They could hardly credit the evidence of their own eyes.
That was enough. The judge, who was highly in- censed and scandalized, thereupon took a rooted dislike to the whole equine race and vowed he would never drive a horse again in his life; and it is a fact that though he always had good horses, he kept his word.
"After this I'll walk," he said, and he did. Mr. Shields, who had trained this particular horse to do exactly as it had done, forgot, he declared, to mention
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that peculiarity to the judge and expressed his deep re- gret at the occurrence. And no man doubted his sincerity, nor has any one ever harbored the slightest suspicion that he or any other man drawing the breath of life could have been so inhuman as to think of playing off a prac- tical joke on a man so universally beloved and revered as was Judge Robertson. He was so regarded by rich and poor alike and never wearied in helping all and singular, the poor especially, by his counsel and guidance ; and many he saved from expensive and barren lawsuits. So marked was his goodness that a gifted preacher, Rev. Thomas McCauley, drew pointed public attention to it in a pulpit illustration, urging his hearers to bring their spiritual cares to the great Shepherd of Souls.
"You know," he said, "how you all go with your troubles to the good Judge Robertson and how kindly he listens to your tales and helps you out of your temporal difficulties." Then he called upon his hearers, as to those infinitely more important burdens of the soul, to go and do likewise and thus find peace and rest eternal.
The judge, who, as is averred, could any time have been Governor of the State, but would not allow such a thing mentioned in his hearing, was a man of far-reach- ing and supreme influence. When, for instance, the Morris and Essex Railroad first came through Warren County their survey called for a continuation of the line alongside the Musconetcong River from Washington to Hackettstown. This would have brought it close to Judge Robertson's residence, a thing he utterly disap- proved of; for he hated the howling and hurly-burly of railroads with a great hatred. This, coupled, per-
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haps with a little pardonable pique, at the high-handed methods that railroad companies have always displayed in doing about as they please, fired the judge to oppose their plans. That meant abandonment of their chosen route, though at first they did not think it would; nor would the judge's opposition have been so uncompromis- ing, but for their want of tact, possibly.
The result was that the company was defeated and was compelled to lay its track from Washington by way of Rockport. This cut off the Musconetcong River Val- ley, from Washington to Hackettstown, along which there were eleven mills in as many miles, all in active operation, leaving them about two miles distant from the railroad, to which they soon found they had to cart the bulk of their products.
JOHN DAVENPORT.
WORK OF JOHN DAVENPORT IN THE EARLY DAYS OF THE TOWN OF PLUCKEMIN.
With the advance of refined civilization every nation sooner or later develops a strong interest in the incipient stages of its growth in which, standing out in bold relief, are the names and deeds of leading pioneer progenitors of the race. Here in America more and more attention is being devoted to this study, which is gradually asserting itself as a right which every one not only owes to himself and his descendants, but is also demanded as a filial mark of respect to his ancestors.
No country in the world was ever populated as Amer- ica has been; no nation was ever formed of such com- posite elements, and no other country can compare with it-in the interesting revelations to be found as to the ancestry of multitudes of its people. And, although at- tempts have been made to promulgate baseless claims through the mistaken ambition of vain persons to gain prominence through misrepresentation of the importance and station of their progenitors, and although such things will doubtless occur again, yet that should not be al- lowed to stand in the way of people honestly desirous of satisfying themselves as far as may be as to who, what and whence were their forefathers.
One hundred and eight years ago John Davenport came from Manchester, England, where he was born in 1777, and in the year 1800 settled in the thriving little
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village of Pluckemin, a place made famous by General Washington having encamped there in 1777. This John Davenport was the progenitor of probably all the families of that name to be found in Somerset County, if not of all those of that name throughout the State. Unlike a great many other imported names, that of Davenport has never apparently been changed in a single letter. And while it is unwise to be too much elated over such mat- ters, it is unquestionably true that so far as a legitimate pride in an intellectual and practical as well as ancient ancestry is concerned, the descendants of this long and distinguished line have every reason to be satisfied.
The family name of Davenport originated in the coun- ty of Cheshire, in England, where the township, and the little river Dave running through it, have taken their names from the family. The manorial history of the seat of the Davenports presents what is almost unique even in the United Kingdom, an uninterrupted descent in the direct male line for very nearly eight and one-half centuries, or from the year 1066, the first of the reign of William the Conqueror, down to the present day. The family archives contain a complete series of original title documents which prove the possession of its old feudal powers and manorial estates with which they were invested.
In 1086 the crest of the Davenports was conferred by the sovereign and ordered inscribed upon the helmets, shields and regalia of that house as a talismanic warrant against the roving robber bands which then infested the country. The family coat of arms, among the most an- cient in England, is a shield with sable, crossets, crest, a
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falcon's head coupled at the neck, signifying magisterial "sergeantcy." The feudal service exacted was that of ridding the district of all nefarious highwaymen and marauders of every kind, with vested and absolute pow- ers of jurisdiction. In the old manor house of the ancient family seat is still to be seen the long parchment scroll on which is quaintly inscribed the portentous list of names of "master robbers," who were hunted, taken and be- headed under this charter.
Through connections by marriage the Davenports have at times been brought into close relationship with the English crown. Edward Hyde, Lord High Chancellor, married Margaret, daughter of Sir John Davenport, an- cestor of Mary, the wife of James II. and mother of Mary, the consort of William of Orange, who, together, sat on the British throne, and also of Queen Anne, suc- cessive sovereigns of the kingdom.
The Davenports have been constantly represented in the English Church and frequently in the peerage. But as has been said of this, "no boastful claims are put forth as to aristocratic distinction." The family, here at all events, have no higher ambition than that of belonging to the great middle class-that of merchants, artists, artisans and scholars-always loyal to the ruling powers, yet ever stanch advocates and defenders of free and equal human rights.
Close intermarriage relations between the Wedge- woods, of ancient Staffordshire pottery fame, and the Davenports have existed from remote days, the Daven- port works there being, perhaps, still the largest in the world. The firm of Davenport Brothers, of New York
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-fathers and sons-have represented their Staffordsh house here for more than sixty-five years.
The first of the name that came to this country w Rev. John Davenport, the distinguished minister of th celebrated company of Christian heroes who landed New England in 1637, "to whom," says an authori "may be well and truthfully accorded the fame of bei the fathers of the American commonwealth." This er nent divine was born in Warwickshire, England, in 159 of wealthy parentage, graduated at Oxford and occupi the pulpit of St. Stephen's Episcopal Church in Lond His fervent piety, eloquence and profound learning, gether with his fearless advocacy of puritanical doctrin aroused the enmity of Archbishop Laud, of Lond Persecution soon followed. Davenport, with many his adherents, fled to Holland and in that renowned a lum of religious liberty, was met with open arms. Af a brief stay they returned to England, where, after c lecting their scattered band and holding frequent conf ences, they resolved on emigration to America.
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