USA > New Jersey > Somerset County > Within a Jersey circle : tales of the past, grave and gay, as picked up from old Jerseyites > Part 15
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Old crazy British Wabberton Licks little boys for spite ; Because their dads and Washington Licked England out of sight ..
In those days the Revolutionary struggle was not quite so far off as now, and we can easily imagine that young America would be susceptible to strongly indignant feel- ings at being basted by a former wearer of the red coat. The English primer, Dilworthy spelling-books and arith- metic and the Bible were the only books that Mr. War- burton used, and he was wonderfully successful with his pupils. Their writing books were patterns of neatness, every line being fixed by scale and dividers. He made the children proud of themselves and their work. He did not "board around," as was the usual custom with teachers of the old time, but lived in the schoolhouse. Each family supplied him with food for a week. On Sunday morning he would breakfast with the family whose turn it was to supply him for the coming week, and he would then carry away his basket of provisions, He slept in a little garret over the schoolroom.
Later, as he began to lose his hearing poor "Master Warburton" had to give up teaching. He bought a few acres of ground on the Second Mountain, near Somerville,
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and there he built himself a small house and also dug a cave and lived in one or the other as the whim took him. At last he was missed from his daily walks in his garden, and his nearest neighbors, about half a mile away, hav- ing gone to inquire if he was sick and whether they might not do something for him, found the white-haired old schoolmaster sitting in a natural position on an old wood- en settle in his cave, with the Bible open upon his knees. His visitors spoke to him but he made no answer. They thought he was asleep and touched him; but he did not move. The old man was dead.
At Three Bridges the first record of a school is that left as a reminiscence by a pupil who afterward taught school at Readington and later became a widely known and quite distinguished man, the late Judge Joseph Thompson. He said that in 1813, when he first attended the school there, the building was 16x16 feet with eight feet posts.
"The walls," he said, "were lined with boards to the height of four feet, with writing tables fastened to them on three sides. The seats were slabs from the saw mill, supported by legs of hickory, two feet in height. All the seats were destitute of backs. The ceiling was of un- planed oak boards, laid on beams eight inches thick. The teachers of that time were men-generally English, Scotch or Irish, with a few stray Yankees. The former were good penmen and the Irish good arithmeticians. Grammar and geography were not taught except in a few instances and for extra pay. The teacher collected his own bills for tuition, which were from $1 to $1.25 per scholar for a term of thirteen weeks. Every alternate
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Saturday was a holiday. The teachers boarded with their employers pro rata."
The first written record of any kind found bearing on the subject of school in another district, now known as Washington Valley, between First and Second Moun- tains, is a receipt as follows :
"Rece'd, Mar. 15, 1771, from Jeromes Van Nest, by the hands of George Fisher, schoolmaster, the full sum of four pounds, Jersey Light Money, in full for my de- mands from said Jeromes Van Nest.
"£4. os. od. Folkert Tunison."
The minutes of a monthly meeting held in Quaker- town, Franklin Township, Somerset, in 1752, have an entry which seems the first reference to school matters there. It is as folows:
"We have likewise considered the proposal for settling a School, But, being few of us and so remote from each other and Some of us under Low Circumstances, so that it seems unlikely to us that we shall be able to raise suffi- cient salary to Support Such School, otherwise we should be Very free and Heartily join with the Proposal, believ- ing it would in some good degree answer the Good Pur- pose intended."
In an old account book of Dr. Samuel Wilson, of Alex- andria Township, there are two charges set down, one against "William Rennels," and another item to the debit of "Rennels, the schoolmaster," in the year 1752. These are the only documentary evidence that a school existed in Alexandria Township as early as the date named.
The earliest record of a school in Bedminster is given in a description of a road laid out January 6, 1759, "be-
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ginning at the westerly side of the river that divides Bed- minster and Bridgewater Township at the schoolhouse."
From an account of an entertainment and ball given at Pluckemin in the year 1779, as published in the New Jersey Gazette of that year, it appears that pyrotechnics were in vogue a long while ago as well as schools. The report states that "The entertainment and ball were held in the academy of the park;" and with many details it is stated: "After fireworks in the park in the evening the company returned to the schoolhouse and concluded the celebration by a very splendid ball."
Among the teachers at this "academy" was an old stickler for order and discipline named "Master Welsh." He wore a black gown during school hours, and when he deemed it necessary, vigorously wielded the birch.
At Little York in 1809, and at Minchel's Grove about the same date, the first schoolhouses were "roofed with straw"-that is, thatched.
Sixty years ago Rev. Hugh Frazer, minister of a Pres -- byterian church in the Schooley Mountain, feeling ag- grieved at the lack of proper instruction for the many children in the vicinity of his church, decided to start a school himself. He went to New York and raised $300 among his friends, with which he set up a school near his church and himself taught there for many years. Mrs. Davis, of this village, who went to this school says it was well conducted and well attended. She says Mr. Frazer's scholars almost idolized their pastor-teacher, and that many of them, to her knowledge, carried into their subsequent lives a respect and affection for his teaching, preaching an exemplary life that never left them. She
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emphatically believes, she says, that the adoption of Mr. Frazer's method-that of having teacher and preacher combined in one person-would be the true solution of bringing up the children of to-day more like they ought to be brought up.
TALES OF THE PAST.
TOLD BY MRS. ASHER KELLY, AN AGED RESIDENT OF WERTSVILLE VALLEY.
In the Wertsville Valley, at the Hunterdon base of Sourland Mountain, not far from the farm where she was born a little over eighty-one years ago, resides Mrs. Asher Kelly, formerly Jane Quick. Having a wonder- fully retentive memory and a great facility of expression, she has long been looked upon as the local authority par excellence upon all matters of antiquarian and general interest in her pleasant green valley.
Among the earlier things impressed upon Mrs. Kelly's memory is the tremendous snowstorm of 1836, which, she says, was far greater than the later and much more discussed blizzard of 1888. In the storm of 1836 it commenced snowing one Friday at 3 o'clock in the after- noon and continued, she says, without cessation until the following Sunday morning at 9 o'clock. All this time it was impossible for any one to see even a few feet ahead. The snow covered up all the fences entirely, and when afterward it crusted over the people rode their horses and drove wagons across them as if crossing a trackless desert.
At that time Mrs. Kelly lived with her father, Charles Quick. One of their men, John Mitchell, who lived in a cottage up the mountain slope, was rather an elderly man, and on the day the storm began her father gave him a bag of flour and sent him home much earlier than
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usual. But poor John never reached his cot. His wife thought he had been stormbound at the farm, and his master thought the next day, when the man did not turn up, that he had wisely stayed at home. When the truth was known it was useless to search for him. It was only when the snow thawed away in the spring that John's body was found. He had perished quite close to another house, in the opposite direction from his own cottage, and had been buried many feet deep in the snow. It was supposed that he had seen a light in the house that he had almost reached, but that he had been too ex- hausted to cover the last few yards and save his life.
Mrs. Kelly came from a quite distinguished ances- try. John Manners, one of her forefathers, the first of that name to come to this country, belonged to an aris- tocratic and titled family of Yorkshire, England. He was probably a great-uncle of Lord John Manners of that ilk, who was, if I remember rightly, closely associ- ated with Mr. Gladstone in the latter's palmiest days. John Manners came to America in 1679 and first set- tled in Monmouth. In October, 1718, he came to Wertsville, bought an estate, built a fine homestead and married Rebecka Stout, the daughter of David Stout, who was the seventh son of Richard Stout, the pioneer of the Stouts in America, and Penelope Von Princes, his heroic and famous wife. Captain David Manners, son of John Manners and Rebecka Stout, married Mary Schenck, the daughter of that highly distinguished officer and patriot, Colonel John Schenck, of Monmouth and Princeton fame. Adah, the daughter of Captain David Manners, married Charles Quick and had five children,
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two sons, David, only recently deceased, and Horace, and three daughters, Mary, Mrs. James Wyckoff; Ann Eliza, and Jane, Mrs. Asher Kelly, the eldest of the family.
Captain David Manners, who married Miss Schenck, was a surveyor, and being a very devout and highly re- spected man, was often called upon to wind up and set- tle estates. His wife, who came of a rich and proud family, had never been taught to do housework. When she went to live at the Manner's homestead, as the cap- tain's wife, it was deemed necessary that she sould begin to learn household work. She found her very practical mother-in-law, Rebecca (Stout) Manners, aghast at her ignorance and very exacting as her tutor. The young wife would try her hand at turning griddle cakes like the others did, by tossing them up without fingering them, but they inevitably landed among the ashes. When given a tub of clothes to wash, and after she had toiled heroically with them, the mother-in-law would throw them all back and make her wash them again.
When, in the fulness of time, she became mistress of her house, however, she kept many slaves and seldonı went downstairs into her kitchen. In the course of years she had ten children, and as they grew up, she in her turn became "the old lady." All of her boys and girls were given the finest education obtainable at col- lege and seminary. The youngest daughter, Jane (Aunt Jane, as Mrs. Kelly spoke of her), seemed to have been a mischievous miss and, unlike her mother, dearly liked to make visits to the kitchen. One of the colored girls, named Kate, who was about Jane's own age, and who
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lived to be a great age, delighted to the last of her days to tell of the tricks she and "Missy Jane" used to play on the "old lady."
Making candy was a favorite and frequent diversion of theirs, and great diplomacy had to be used by them in se- creting it and drawing from their sweet store in the old Dutch cupboard. Then they would bake a big cake on the sly, and if they heard the mistress approaching would hide it under a chair and sit down, covering the contra- band goods with their dresses.
One day when Jane's father and mother went away, she and her faithful Kate had a grand play at having a party. They killed a chicken, made a cake and put the best linen and silver on the table. They also adorned themselves in their very finest clothes. Then, just as the feast was spread and the two were preparing to sit down to it, they glanced up the road and saw Jane's parents. The latter had returned much sooner than they were expected. Jane and Kate made a lightning-like clearing of the table and escaped the reprimand they feared. Kate used to tell how she hated to scrape and wash the big bell- metal kettle in which the mighty messes of mush were made. Once she hid the kettle in the swill barrel. The humorous old darkey, after every tale about her misbe .. havings, would laugh heartily and ask :
"Now, shouldn't I have been whipped; now shouldn't I?"
There being such a houseful of young people at the house, it was a lively place, and there were continual rounds of parties and entertainments in the old lavish style. The young folk used to go sleigh riding all togeth-
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er in a large sleigh, and nearly always wound up by re- turning by way of Larison's hotel, at Pleasant Corners, about three miles from home, where they frequently danced all night.
Adah, one of these girls, afterward mother of Mrs. Kelly, when fifteen was sent to the Moravian Boarding School, at Bethlehem, Pa. The following letter of hers to her parents, written in a beautiful hand, almost equal to copperplate, Mrs. Kelly has preserved, and was kind enough to allow me to copy :
"My dear Parents,
"Not having heard from you since your return home I take this opportunity to inform you of my health; I have been informed since you left Bethlehem that Mrs. Stronge intends bringing her daughter here to school very soon, and if you can make it convenient please to send me two pair of shoes, my worsted cape and something for pocket handkerchiefs. I have begun drawing, which I am very fond of. I would thank you, my dear Parents, to inform me whether I am to begin embroidery, and how soon. Ann Kershow desires me to give her love to you and all the family ; also give my love to my Brothers, Sisters and all enquiring friends and accept the same yourselves
"from your ever affectionate "and dutiful daughter "Adah Manners."
This was addressed on the back of the double sheet in the same hand, which any one at first sight would think lithograph, "Mr. David Manners, Amwell, Hunterdon County, New Jersey." To compare the writing with that of our day almost makes one think that penmanship must
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be a lost art. The Moravian teachers wore white caps, Mrs. Kelly says, and their pupils had blue caps.
Before Adah was married she had spun and woven all her linen and bed quilts. Many of the latter are still in use. A little slave boy, a cripple, born on the estate-of whom every care was taken up to his death and burial, at the age of thirty-used to creep on his hands and knees to the wagon shed to wind the yarn for Miss Adah.
Mrs. Kelly had her father's and mother's wedding clothes until quite recently. Her mother wore a white crepe dress, white silk stockings, white kid slippers and gloves, white satin and lace shoulder cape and white crepe shawl. Her father wore white broadcloth knee breeches, a blue coat of the high neck and swallow tail cut, with brass buttons, and a long, white, figured vest. His shirt had ruffles down the front and around the wrists and he wore broad silver knee and shoe buckles. The metal of these is still in the family, but in the less ornamental if more useful shape of spoons.
All the Quick family were great dancers. Often Mrs. Kelly's parents would send for an old colored fiddler to come from Ringoes to play at their parties, where dancing was the principal pastime. But they often had the old darky for a dance among themselves. At their gatherings they had also games, of which Mrs. Kelly remembers "hurly-burly," "hunt the button" and another in which it was asked, "How far from here to Barnegat?" This was answered by "Three score miles and ten." Then came the question, "Any big owls on the way?" An imper- sonator of the bird of night would then burst in and chase the company. Those who were caught would have to
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pay fines. Parties and gaiety of all kinds had begun to die out even in my informant's very young days and nothing in that way in her time ever equaled the genera- tion before hers, she says.
' Charles Quick, Mrs. Kelly's father, bought the Ker- show farm in the Wertsville Valley-nearer to the church and store or village than she lives now-in the year 1839. The house was then considered haunted. In it is a dark closet, or room as it might be called, which opens out of a bedroom off the kitchen. This room has never been opened in years. Three generations of the family have lived there, but that room has never been inspected. What it contains no one knows, but are all afraid to open it.
Mrs. Ezekiel Quick, of a younger generation than Mrs. Kelly, who now lives in the house, when asked whether there is such a room in the place, said, pointing to the door of it:
"Yes, that is the room. I have never seen the inside of it; and I never want to!"
One can hardly help thinking that a sealed room of that kind in the house of any daughter of Eve would in- evitably play almost as strongly upon her curiosity as did the one forbidden tree in the midst of Eden. But there the locked and barred room is, intact, as it has been for generations, and there the people are of this generation, on the spot, and ready to answer about it for themselves.
A man named Jerry Van Pelt lived there many years ago with his wife and family. One day a child of theirs was taken sick and they sent for Mrs. Quick, Mrs. Kel- ly's mother, who then lived near by. She responded as promptly as she could, but when she arrived they had the
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child nailed up in a common box and were carrying it out of doors for interment. She asked to be allowed to see the child, but they refused this and hurried away with the box, which they buried in the corner of the upper cornfield, near Higgins's. Mrs. Quick thought there was a nervous haste and mystery about the way they disposed of the child. It sickened her with horrible suspicion that they had knowingly buried the little one alive. She, how- ever, was helpless and nothing was ever done about the matter.
The pretty Wertsville Valley where this happened is even to-day a sequestered scene, far distant from doctors, coroners and other city resources, and hemmed in by the most terrific hills and perhaps the worst roads in all Hunterdon County, where roads are proverbially bad. What, then, must have been the state of isolation of that Vale nearly a hundred years ago, when these things happened ? At all events nothing official was done in the case, although a lot was thought by several others as well as by Mrs. Quick, about the probability that the hasty burial of that child had been a foul business.
Soon after that event it was that the house acquired the reputation of being haunted. At the dead of night, it began to be said, the voice of a sick child was heard, wailing and crying. When at length the mother of the child was on her deathbed, she sent for Captain Man- ners, well and widely known as a kind, fatherly and Christian man, and asked him to pray for her. After this had been done the dying woman said :
"Oh, Mr. Manners, there is a dreadful secret-I want to tell you something before I die-"
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"Now, Becky," harshly interrupted her husband, "you're just gettin' out o' yer head and ram'lin.' Keep thee tongue quiet !"
"No, no, Jerry!" the sick woman wailed; "I am in my right mind. Oh, Mr. Manners, I must, I must tell you before I'm taken away. My time has come to die, and-"
"Hold yer tongue, woman, can't you!" Van Pelt shouted, and he went on talking so loud and at such a rate that the poor wife's expiring words could not be heard. She passed away with her secret untold.
This man, Jerry Van Pelt, seemed to have been an odd character in many ways. It is said, for instance that when the peddlers of fish came in his place, he would call them into the house to have a drink and keep them talking, while one or two of his negroes were sent by him to steal supplies from the wagon.
A man named John Servis once had this farm. Just as a large field of wheat of his became ripe, a hail storm entirely destroyed it. This preyed on his mind, for he depended almost wholly upon the wheat for ways and means of livelihood. The following week his father- in-law, Colonel Bishop, of Ringoes, who held a mort- gage on the farm, died. This meant ruin. Servis took a rope, saying he was going to catch a horse. He was so long gone that a boy was sent to look for him and found him hanging by the neck in the hogpen. The boy fled and gave the alarm, but when help came Servis was found to be dead.
Mrs. Kelly, who, after these events, lived a number of years in this house-that is to say, from her twelfth
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year until she was married and went to live at Penning- ton-says that for her part she was always more afraid to go near the hogpen that she was of the sealed closet in the house.
Charles Quick, Mrs. Kelly's father, long a widower, after his children had all married and left him, got a ten- ant farmer to carry on the place. This man and his family lived in a part of the house, and he and his folk declared often that they heard peculiar and unnatural sounds there.
Like most very old houses, this one was built into the side of a low hill. The kitchen and one or two other rooms were entered from a basement door, while the other or upper rooms had an entrance from the higher ground. The room which was nailed up is one of three such basement rooms. In recent years a new kitchen has been built as an extension to the upper part of the house, the original kitchen being now deserted by the family and used as a kind of workroom by the men, with the adjoining bedroom as a storeroom. Off this store- room is the dark and mysterious closet, which, for more than seventy years, no one has dared to open.
LOVE IN THE MOUNTAINS.
HOW JERSEY SWAINS WENT A-WOOING IN THE LONG AGO. A BOYS' PLOT AND ELOPEMENT.
Garret Dougherty, well known as the Sourland Mountain sleuth, has seen in his time some of the lights as well as many of the shadows of country life. The tragedies necessarily connected with his constableship and his work routing criminals from his native moun- tain were preceded by pleasant youthful experiences that were lit up at times by light comedy and romance.
His mother having died when he was two years old, at Post Town, now known as Planeville, he was taken and brought up by his grandmother, who lived on the mountain. They attended the Mt. Zion Church there. Little Dougherty received his education at the Mt. Zion school, which was near the church. His great-grand- father, who was what long ago was known as a Metho- dist exhorter, came here from Dublin, Ireland, at an early date and settled on the mountain.
At the age of twenty-one, Garret, or "Gat," as he was known from childhood, went to live at Sergeantsville, where he took an active part in all the youthful amuse- ments and gayeties of that neighborhood. These he de- clares were incessant and simply wonderful as compared with anything of the kind in the country in these days. Young fellows thought nothing then of walking four or five or even ten miles to see their girls. Then they would escort them to church and afterward walk with
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them along the shady lanes and green fields. Eventually "Gat" got a horse, the better to keep up with the social engagements, and often on' his rides his girl sat behind him on the saddle. There were parties practically every night at one place or another. Music was furnished by violinists. No pianos were ever seen out there in those days.
One frosty moonlight night a sleighride to the Dun- ker Church was determined upon. But as there were not enough sleighs and horses to go round an enormous home-made sled was rigged up and hitched to a big team of oxen. This was unanimously voted to be the very acme of good, solid, sociability, and all went well and smoothly until the church was reached; then there was trouble. A hymn was being sung with great vigor. The volume of human voices evidently proved something quite novel and startling to the bovine ear, for with heads thrown up, distended nostrils and very staring eyes, the animals approached the building with fear and trembling, until some one opened the church door. This produced a sudden burst of increased sound and cast a flash of light on the road, which quite demoralized the big bullocks. Swinging round with an irresistible rush, ' they made for the woods. Amid general shouting and terrified screams from the girls, some of the riders jump- ing out and others clinging to one another, the cumbrous vehicle crashed into the church railing, reducing a lot of it to matchwood. Then colliding with a tree, it over- turned, flinging its occupants out in a heap on the snow.
Attracted by the alarming sounds, Deacon Hoffman ran out to see what the trouble was. After strongly pro-
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testing at such a disturbance he took down all the sled- riders' names, assessed them in damages and made them pay sweetly for it.
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