Amboy, New Jersey

“ The new capital, Perth Amboy, became in a very few years an important settlement, and both from Scotland and England numerous families had already arrived and settled in various parts of the Province; so that it is probable the increase during the quarter of a century had been more than a hundred-fold, making the total number of souls in East Jersey nearly, if not quite, ten thousand. ”

“ Newark Bay is rather a small lake, communicating by long outlets with the sea. The Bay of Amboy, between Staten Island and Sandy Hook, affords little shelter for vessels. There is a long bay, formed by a beach four or five miles from the shore, extending along the coast from Manasquan river, in Monmouth county, almost to Cape May. Through this beach are a number of inlets, by which the bay communicates with the ocean. Delaware Bay lies between the states of Delaware and New Jersey, formed by the mouth of Delaware river and several other smaller ones. ”

“ The legislature of New Jersey passed a special law, enabling him, as an alien, to own real property, and it is said to have been in reference to this that the state received its nickname “Spain.” Prince Napoleon Lucien Charles Murat, the second son of Joachim Murat, also lived here for many years; and the estate known as “Ironsides” was long the home of Rear-Admiral Charles Stewart. The Camden & Amboy railway, begun in 1831 and completed from Bordentown to South Amboy (34 m.) in 1832, was one of the first railways in the United States ”

“ The other principal towns are Newark, Paterson, Hackensack, Morristown, Newton, Perth Amboy, Belvidere and Elizabethtown. The chief rivers are Second, Hackensack, Passaic and Raritan. Raritan bay is a spacious estuary, on the eastern coast, affording ready access at all seasons to Perth Amboy, the chief seaport town of the state. The population of New Jersey is three hundred and seventy-three thousand three hundred and six.
Pennsylvania is bounded on the north by New York, and the north-west by lake Erie; on the east by the river Delaware which divides it from New York and New Jersey ”

“ Formerly travellers from New York to the south had gone by boat to Amboy, thence by stages to Philadelphia and other [Pg 48] points. Just when the Post route was changed I have been unable to ascertain, but in 1715 commissioners were appointed to lay out a road across the meadows, intersecting the Bergen Point road, with ferries across the Hackensack and Passaic. ”

“ Strangers, particularly Englishmen, will find a great convenience in the five o'clock ordinary, now established there, which is, I am told, excellently conducted and appointed.
[24] The whole of this passage is in fact a succession of small bays, forming a continuation to the grand bay of New York, and dividing Staten Island from the mainland of New Jersey; the Raritan river does not properly begin till Amboy, where it empties itself into a bay of its own name.
[25] I had always heard that the face of nature was gigantic in America ”

“ The justice having known his father very well, entertained him generously, showed him the country, and gave him three guineas at his departure, to help to pay his passage.
From thence he went to Burlington, the first town in West New-Jersey, which contains about two hundred and fifty families, and has an answerable number of acres laid out for plantations. The houses are well built, and almost all of brick. The market affords plenty of all sorts of provisions, which are as good here as any where in America.
p. 119From thence to Perth Amboy, so called in honour of the Duke of Perth. ”

“ Potomac.New Jersey.―For erecting a small beacon-light at South Amboy, and putting down the following buoys, to wit: One on the tail of the Great Beds; one on Billop’s Point shoal, southwest part of Staten island; one on the Middle Ground, near Prince’s bay; one on the Old Orchard shoal; one off the point of the Great Kill shoals, one thousand and fifty dollars.
For the erection of a beacon-light at the Corner Stake so called, between Elizabethtown point, and Shorter’s island; also another small light or lantern on Shorter’s island; also for buoys, &c. ”

“ The waves which came creeping, crawling up the long sandy shore, the tall pine-trees whose tops whispered together as they bent beneath the summer winds and winter storms, the fertile plains and noble forests of oak and chestnut, were unchanged; but the struggling men and women of Old Monmouth were yet to endure the bitter hardships and fierce contests, which the closing days of the Revolution brought to them in greater numbers than to almost any other people of our land. ”

“ The occasional visitor seeking health among its whispering pines, or relaxation in the sultry summer days along its shore, where the roll of the breakers and the boundless sweep of the ocean combine to form one of the most sublime marine views on all the Atlantic seaboard, may admire the fertile farmlands and prosperous villages as much as the man to the manor born, but he never speaks of "Old" Monmouth. ”

“ Redcoat and buffcoat were again to contend within their borders, salt-works and houses were to be burned, gunboats were to anchor off her shore and their crews were to engage in conflicts with the patriots; whigs and tories were not yet reconciled, the pine robbers were not yet subdued. Five long and terrible years of the struggle of the Revolution were yet to come, and the sands of Old Monmouth were again and again to be dyed by the blood of fallen men. ”

“ A railway drawbridge and a traffic bridge across the river connect the city with Perth Amboy. South Amboy is an important point for shipments of coal from the Pennsylvania mines. The Pennsylvania Railroad Company and the Susquehanna Coal Company have coal docks here and the latter has great storage yards. Among the city’s industries are the mining of clay and sand, and the manufacture of terra cotta. South Amboy, originally a part of South Amboy township (incorporated in 1798) , was laid out in 1835, was incorporated as a borough in 1888, and became a city under a general state law in 1908. ”

“ The people, even the farmers, were essentially maritime. The province showed its natural maritime characteristics, produced many sailors, and built innumerable small vessels for the coasting and West India trade—sloops, schooners, yachts, and sailboats, down to the tiniest gunning boat and sneak box. Perth Amboy was the principal port and shipbuilding center for East Jersey as Salem was for West Jersey. But Burlington, Bordentown, Cape May, and Trenton, and innumerable little villages up creeks and channels or mere ditches could not be kept from the prevailing industry. ”

“ You'd think New York people was all wise; but no. They don't get a chance to learn. Everything's too compressed. Even the hayseeds are baled hayseeds. But what else can you expect from a town that's shut off from the world by the ocean on one side and New Jersey on the other? ”

“ For many years the latter settlement, originally called Fort Orange and later Albany, was much more important than the little town of New Amsterdam on Manhattan Island.
Restrictions on land tenure held back colonization, and at no time during the Dutch occupation did its reach extend much beyond the fertile farm lands of the Hudson valley northerly to Fort Orange, though [Pg 103] an outpost to the west was established at Schenectady and scattering settlements had also been made in New Jersey and on Long Island. ”

“ In 1623 the company began to send out settlers. Some went to Albany, or, as they called it, Fort Orange. Others were sent to the South or Delaware River, where a trading post, Fort Nassau, was built on the site of Gloucester in New Jersey. A few went to the Connecticut River; some settled on Long Island; and others on Manhattan Island, where they founded New Amsterdam, now called New York city.
All these little settlements were merely fur-trading posts. Nobody was engaged as yet in farming. ”

“ THE FATE OF SOUTH JERSEY.
The Camden and Atlantic, the Philadelphia and Atlantic City, the New Jersey Southern, and some minor railroads, pass through portions of New Jersey long known as the "Jersey Barrens." They are all new roads, comparatively speaking, but they have wonderfully stimulated the enterprise that has created so many flourishing villages that ten years ago had never been heard of. Vineland, the fairest and most flourishing village in the country, as well as the largest, is only about fifteen years old. Its population is six thousand. ”

“ The new-comer or the stranger may speak of Fair Monmouth, and think he is giving all the honor due to the beautiful region, but his failure to use the proper adjective will at once betray his foreign birth and his ignorance of the position which the county holds in the affections of all true Jerseymen. ”

“ Nor was Fenton's band the only one which had its headquarters in that lonely and unfrequented region known in Old Monmouth as the "Pines." West, Disbrow, Fagan, Davenport, and many others of the lawless men, had engaged in similar occupations, and all had their hiding-places in the same wild spot, and in a measure protected and aided one another.
Up to this time Fagan had been the only one to suffer the well-deserved penalty of his crimes, and in the preceding winter a band of two hundred of the desperate patriots had assembled and driven the famous, or rather infamous, outlaw to bay. ”

“ All the settlements at Westchester and Long Island were laid waste. Scarcely an inhabitant, save the roving Indian, was to be found in those regions. The Dutch were driven out of the whole of New Jersey. The settlers on Staten Island were trembling in hourly expectation of an assault. War's devastating surges of flame and blood swept nearly the whole island of Manhattan. Bold men ventured to remain well armed, upon a few of the farms, or boweries as they were called, in the immediate vicinity of the fort, but they were continually menaced with attack, night and day. ”

“ McMahon is a Democrat, and when he entered public office it was in the capacity, for which his training gave him ample qualifications, of assistant district attorney. He has a large practice, and has won a reputation that is based upon proved ability and professional training equal to the heavy demands that have been made upon it. Mr. McMahon fraternizes with Jersey City Lodge, No. ”

“ Abbott should feel called upon to refute his conclusions. He does this, however, successfully in his Primitive Industry, which is so largely based upon this great collection as to answer satisfactorily as a catalogue for it. In his own words, “the careful and systematic examination of the surface geology of New Jersey, of itself, it is believed, shows as abundant and unmistakable evidence of the transition from a true palæolithic to a neolithic condition as is exhibited in the traces of human handiwork found in the valley of any [359] European river.” ”

“ An interesting feature of the city, and one that is a matter for congratulation, adding, as it does, to the historic interest of the town, and is a connecting link between the city of to-day and the early settlers who founded here the first village in New Jersey, is the fact that there are still in the limits of Jersey City quite a number of old houses built upon the Dutch plan, although there are but few dating beyond the present century. The Gautier house, on New York Bay, for some years the home of the Greenville Yacht Club, was built in 1760 by Captain Brown, and called "Retirement Hall." ”

“ General Washington did not long delay in Old Monmouth after the battle. The British army had gained New York, and so the American commander moved to the Hudson, and on the 20th of July went into camp at White Plains, having left some of the militia to look well to the needs of the country in which the great battle had been fought.
And Monmouth was a great battle. Not only did the men struggle with a determination such as has been seldom displayed, but the results of the engagement itself were also marked and strong. ”

“ Before the white race came to America, the locality now known as Jersey City, was occupied by a branch of the Minsi division of the Lenni Lenape Nation of the Red Men, and was called Sheyichbi. The whole of the present state of New Jersey belonged to the Lenape, and was occupied by bands bearing different names according to the special features of the locality, but all recognizing their unity as one people. ”

“ Perth Amboy, 1722) , born in Pitlochrie, was Attorney-General of the Eastern District (1698) , Chief Secretary and Registrar in 1702, later Speaker of Assembly, and in 1709 Chief Justice and Receiver-General and Treasurer of the province. Alexander Skene, who previously held office in Barbadoes, settled in North Carolina about 1696. In 1717 he was Member of Council and Assistant to the Judge of Admiralty to try a number of pirates. In 1719 he was elected Member of the New House of Assembly and became leader of the movement for the Proprietary Government. ”

“ Fraternally he is affiliated with Union Hill Lodge, No. 1357, Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks; and with Alpha Chapter of the Pi Kappa Upilson. He is also a member of the Union High School Alumni Association; American Legion; and is professionally affiliated with the North Hudson Lawyers' Club, the State Bar Association, and the Hudson County Bar Association. He has always been interested in athletic sports and in out-of-door pastime, and his special hobby is baseball. Mr. Gabriel's religious connection is with the First Armenian Presbyterian Church. He is unmarried. ”