Daniel Van Winkle

“ They looked out from their New Amsterdam, and despite all ample Manhattan Island north of them, the western shore invited prettily. Its river mouths and undulating sea-grass plains and shining sleepy coves reminded them of home. Men who had come so far were not men to sit down and sink root in one little spot. The performances of Captains Hendrick Christæn and Adrien Blok are recommended earnestly to the attention of those who imagine that the Dutchman is a large body that moves slowly. Adrien Blok sailed from Holland in 1614. He arrived at Manhattan Island in 1614. ”

“ Dutch currency was not only scarce and precious, but it was unknown to the Indians, and thus it occurred naturally that the financial system of the new colony established itself on a shell basis instead of a gold basis.
The shells were of a special kind and occurred in two colors, black and white. The Indians prized the black shells at a ratio about double that of the white. To the Dutch traders it seemed immensely like making money by magic to obtain valuable furs for common shells ”

“ All the stage companies in the land spread the glad news. They also told with infinite joy how the foolish and heinously dangerous locomotives showered passengers with flaming wood embers so that they had to protect themselves with hoisted umbrellas which, alas! caught fire themselves. Therefore though optimists went on laying rails, the stage business continued to prosper so healthily that in 1832 at least twenty stage lines were crossing Bergen in all directions. ”

“ Those ancestors of New York and New Jersey, however, had more spacious ideas than are held by their apartment-dwelling descendants. The charter of the Dutch East India Company, which had granted the trading monopoly to its West India Company, designated New Netherland as comprising "the unoccupied region between Virginia and Canada"—a little tract that must forever inspire pained admiration in modern real estate dealers. It was bounded approximately on the south by the South River, as the Dutch called the stream that the English afterward re-christened the Delaware. ”

“ Gradually, to be sure, English people came in. New York was growing into a great town, and it drew merchants and adventurers from all parts, becoming indeed so metropolitan that even the pirates of the seven seas esteemed it as an excellent market for their plunder. But on the western bank of the river the old habits of Holland remained so fixed that we still find characteristic Dutch traits, Dutch architecture, even Dutch customs from the Hudson to the Ramapos.
In 1682, the Province of New Jersey was divided into four Counties—Bergen, Essex, Middlesex and Monmouth ”

“ Therefore we know only that "sometime between 1617 and 1620 settlements were made at Bergen, in the vicinity of the Esopus Indians and at Schenectady." We cannot even be sure that these first settlers in New Jersey were Dutch. "It is believed," says another historian, "that the first European settlement within the limits of New Jersey was made at Bergen about 1618 by a number of Danes and Norwegians who accompanied the Dutch to the New Netherland." ”

“ It was left for the period within our own generation to change the world so colossally that today those Dutch ancestors would indeed imagine themselves to be among sorcery and witchcraft. Automobiles flash where they plodded behind oxen and fat slow horses. ”

“ It was established in 1769 by Cornelius Van Vorst and it was pounded democratically by the hoofs of blooded horses belonging to New York sports and by the larger hoofs of the corpulent steeds belonging to the countryside. There was a noble race in 1771, "round the course at Powles Hook, a match for Thirty Dollars between Booby, Mug and Quicksilver, to run twice around to a heat, to carry catch riders." In the Bergen woods, the gentry had regular fox hunts on horseback in English style.
No greater things excited these peaceful people till the time of the Revolution. ”

“ They saw it as a perfect water highway to the fur country, giving them almost direct access to the fur-trading Indian tribes of Canada, whose offerings passed from hand to hand down to Albany, while all along the banks could be gathered the almost equally rich tribute from the fur lands of Adirondacks and Catskills.
Its beauty, too, was loved by the Dutch. Dutch commercial instinct, Dutch thrift, never made the Dutchmen dull to the good art of living. ”

“ During the past quarter century we have had a growth of commerce that has led us from terms of thousands of dollars to terms of millions, and from terms of millions to terms of many millions until we have learned to contemplate even such gigantic sums as billions. ”

“ Of these, the basement, besides accommodating a part set aside for the mechanical plant that serves the building, contains the fully equipped large safe deposit and storage vaults of the Trust Company of New Jersey.
The banking room of the Main Office of the Trust Company is on the first floor, the entrance to the offices being on Bergen Avenue and the entrance to the bank being on the corner. These premises are designed not only to give customers all modern banking conveniences, but to provide them with surroundings that shall satisfy a high sense of beauty. ”

“ Steam was winning, however, and soon its early demands gave a great impetus to the mechanical hand-crafts that it was destined to destroy. Jersey City, which had only about 300 inhabitants at the time of its incorporation in 1820, is credited in a record of 1845 with having 4000 population at that date. Among its larger industries were the works of the American Pottery Company, the Jersey City Glass Company employing about a hundred men, a famous fireworks establishment, a candle factory and many shops owned by individual mechanics. ”

“ This, the greatest economic catastrophe that the modern human structure has known, immeasurably more calamitous than any other that ever occurred, was borne by the financial system of the United States almost without a tremor. ”

“ Integrity of asset values is the one and only thing which made this extraordinary strength. The shock has been so tremendous that it tested the foundations of everything that man has devised, and only absolute soundness could resist it. ”

“ The title "stage-waggon" became too tame for these fervid rivals, and one of them invented the titleof "machine." Mightily stirred by this poetic imagery, another named his stages "flying machines." From that day so long as a stage survived, every self-respecting stage driver referred to himself as operating a flying machine. The fastest flying machine of 1813 left New York at 1 p. m. and did not fly into Philadelphia till 6 a. m. next day.
In 1820 the disintegration of Bergen Township began with the incorporation of the City of Jersey, re-incorporated in 1829 as Jersey City. ”

“ Where the old windmill on Paulus Hook ground corn less than a hundred years ago, there stand and float implements of commerce whose use they could not comprehend. Their descendants are shot in electric trains under that North River which they ferried with labor and fear. ”

“ Throughout its design and construction there has been a consistently executed plan for combining the most complete modern utility and comfort with the greatest beauty attainable in these tall structures which so admirably lend themselves to splendid effects. ”

“ Soon the "easy money" revenged itself as easy money always has done. Wampum was held to be worth a stiver for three black shells or for six white ones, and as twenty stivers equaled a guilder (about 40 cents) it encouraged many financiers to engage in the business of fishing industriously for the precious shell-fish. ”

“ Whereas with Great Concern we have observed both Now and for a Long Time past the Depreciation and Corruption of the loose seawant, where-by occasion is given for repeated Complaints from the Inhabitants that they can not go with such seawant to the Market, nor yet procure for themselves any Commodity, not even a White Loaf, we ordain that no loose seawant shall be a Legal Tender except the same be strung on one string: that six white or three black shall pass for one stiver ”

“ Located on the southwest corner of Bergen and Sip Avenues, Jersey City, it has a situation that not only gives it the utmost convenience of access from New York and all surrounding suburbs and towns, but that also makes it central to all the business activities of this industrial and commercial New Jersey territory. ”

“ He utilized high flood to bring craft close to his farms for easy loading or unloading. He used the ebb to help him to the bay and so to market at New Amsterdam. He used the flood to help him home again. Indeed, his very land-roads were tidal; for the lower reaches to Paulus Hook and other shores were often under sea in the full-moon tides.
In the center of the village, which was in the form of a square 800 feet long on each side, its founders established a vacant space, recorded as being 160 by 225 feet. In great part this remains as today's Bergen Square. ”

“ But he knew when to fight and when not to fight. Little by little he restored something of the old good relations, until settlers again dared to enter New Jersey. For ten years they planted and traded in peace. Then in 1654 the killing of an Indian girl on Manhattan Island caused another war. The Indians brought it home to New Amsterdam itself. On the New Jersey side they swept the country almost as before. "Not one white person remained in Pavonia." Twenty Boueries were destroyed and three hundred families were collected in the Fort on Manhattan Island. ”

“ The new rulers were more concerned with keeping the Colony than with changing it. They confirmed all the old grants, or most of them.
At first the New Jersey territory was called Nova Cesarea, but the name New Jersey soon became the common one. In a charter granted on September 22, 1668, by Sir Philip Carteret, brother of Sir George and Governor of the new province, he confirmed the original grants to "the Towne and the Freeholders of Bergen and to the Villages and Plantations thereunto belonging." ”

“ Despite the purchase, the concentration orders and the remission of taxes remained in force, and on August 16, 1660, a petition for farming rights was granted to several families on condition that, first, a spot must be selected which could be defended easily; second, each settler to whom land was given free must begin to build his house within six weeks after drawing his lot; third, there must be at least one soldier enlisted from each house, able to bear arms to defend the village. ”

“ Loureno Andriese, Samuel Edsall and Dirk Claesen went to the Fort on behalf of the hamlets and demanded that the Schout and Schepens be ordered once and for all to "leave the petitioners undisturbed about the fence." In the end the Council evidently got impatient, for it issued a decree ordering the hamlets to attend to both the fence and the quota, and to do it at once. The records do not show if they did. Knowing the fine, upstanding firmness of the race, it may be that the cows and the Precentor and the Schoolmaster passed away from old age with the matter still unsettled. ”

“ As traffic increased, rowboats were supplemented, though not driven out, by sailing craft of a type known as periagua—a word presenting such difficulties to the casual spellers of the time that nearly every reference in early print enriches us with a different version from "peraga" to "pettiaugre." ”

“ A Stubborn Competitor of Steam, 1830
a great vessel. There were two hulls braced with the paddle-wheel suspended between, and with a deck over all 30 feet wide. The passengers sat in the open, but there was a hold for refuge in bad weather.
In 1816, the company had succeeded in earning only one dividend (of five per cent) , which explains why Philip Howe who leased the West Hoboken or "Weehawk" ferry in 1821 contented himself with two sailboats and a horse boat. John Stevens also adhered to sail and horse after abandoning his first steam ferry, and did not try steam again till 1822. ”

“ The Licensed Company was taken over by it, and ships were sent to all parts of the coast from Cape Cod to the Delaware. By 1623, there were settlements on Long Island and at Fort Orange, near Albany, while New Amsterdam on Manhattan Island gained rapidly increasing importance as headquarters for the Company and its officers. In 1629, the Company granted the famous charters to men who would undertake to found settlements, and who bore the title of Patroon. ”

“ According to the records, "eighty soldiers on the night of February 27, 1643, under Sergeant Rodolph attacked the sleeping Indians and massacred all." From the Raritan to the Connecticut, red runners carried the news. There came an uprising of tribes so sudden and so terrible that almost over night the whole territory was swept clear of white men, "not a house was left standing and all Boueries were devastated."
The settlers who succeeded in escaping made their miserable way into New Amsterdam with the plaint: "Every place is abandoned. ”

“ They raked the place with grape and killed one horse. On the night of the 17th, the garrison tried to burn the ships which had anchored 3 miles above. They grappled the Renown of 50 guns but failed. She cannonaded us again later. Colonel Duyckinck this morning retired to Bergen leaving Colonel Durkee on the Hook with 300 men." After three days' cannonading by ships, the Americans withdrew and thereafter the British held Paulus Hook. Bergen remained the headquarters of the American forces till it too was evacuated. ”