Camden, New Jersey

“ These blackened brooks of the Broad Mountain are the headwaters of the Schuylkill River.
THE NEW JERSEY COAST RESORTS.
The Delaware River divides Pennsylvania from New Jersey, and at Camden, opposite Philadelphia, there has grown another large city from the overflow of its population. Ferries, and at the northern end of Philadelphia harbor an elevated railway bridge, cross over to Camden, while for miles the almost level surface of New Jersey has suburban towns and villas, the homes of thousands whose business 192 is in Philadelphia. ”

“ The New Jersey Turnpike, and now route I-295, a freeway paralleling the turnpike, traverse the municipality near its base, with the main Camden-Philadelphia turnpike interchange at the corner nearest Camden. State route 73 runs at right angles to the turnpike at the interchange and route 38 slices through the northeasterly section. Routes 70 and U.S. 130 are not far away. This highway network gives the township a most strategic location from the standpoint of transport of goods and people by truck and private car. There is no other means of transportation. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In this section there were more than 2000 persons per square mile. Hudson County, the smallest in the state, had the largest population, which was 629,124 or 14,630 per square mile. In Hoboken, with an area of less than two square miles, the population was more than 68,000 or more than 34,000 to the square mile. Other thickly populated sections are those of which Trenton and Camden are centers. Cape May County had the smallest and Ocean County the most scattered population, which was 22,155 or 35 per square mile. ”

“ Included in this district are the cities and towns in Hudson County and in parts of Bergen, Passaic, Essex, Union, and Middlesex counties, with a population of 1,795,590. In the Metropolitan District of Philadelphia, with a population of over 2,000,000, are parts of -xx- Burlington, Camden, and Gloucester counties with a population of 239,740. It is clear, therefore, that the occupations of two thirds of our people, at least, are subject to the direct influence of the commercial and industrial activities of these cities. ”

“ Such is the skilled and educated industry of New England, and such the inventive genius of her people, that there is no limit to her products, except markets and consumers. As New York increases, the swelling tide of the great city will flow over to a vast extent into the adjacent shores of Connecticut and New Jersey, and Hoboken, West Hoboken, Weehawken, Hudson City, Jersey City, and Newark will meet in one vast metropolis. Philadelphia will also flow over in the same way into Camden and adjacent portions of New Jersey, whose farms already greatly exceed in value those of any other State. ”

“ In 282fact, he was obliged to bridge or ford the principal rivers or streams in Northern New Jersey; thus furnishing the best precedent which the Camden and Amboy Railroad engineers have ever had for carrying people across New Jersey soil and waters in a bad temper. ”

“ From Geneva, via Marengo, Clyde, Melvin’s Mills, and Sterling, to the village of Oswego. From Charlotteville, via South Wooster, to Davenport.
New Jersey.In New Jersey.—From Mauricetown to Port Elizabeth. From Philadelphia, by Camden, Woodbury, Mullico Hill, Woodstown, Allowaystown, and Roadstown, to Greenwich. From Hacketstown to Hope, Warren county. From Newtown, by Stillwater, to the store of Smith and Bristol, on the Delaware, near the mouth of Flatbrook, thence to Dingman’s ferry, and by Balesville, to Newton. ”

“ Camden is practically a suburb of Philadelphia, with which it is connected by ferries. It has several pleasant residential sections, and among its public buildings are the city hall, the Camden county court house, the post office, the free public library, the Cooper hospital and the West Jersey homeopathic hospital. The high school has a thoroughly equipped manual training department. The city owns and operates its water-works system, and is an important manufacturing and ship-building centre, among its manufactories being chemical works ”

“ There are many public-school buildings, a private and a public high school, hospitals, churches, etc. Camden has three national banks and all the adjuncts of a modern city. The rapid growth of the city in recent years is shown by the increase of population from 58,813 in 1890 to 75,935 in 1900. ”

“ It is served by the Atlantic Coast Line, the Seaboard Air Line and the Southern railways. Camden is situated about 100 ft. above the river, which is navigable to this point. The town is a winter resort, chiefly for Northerners. Cotton, grain and rice are produced in the vicinity, and there are some manufactories, including cotton mills, a cotton-seed oil mill and planing mills. Camden, first known as Pine Tree Hill, is one of the oldest interior towns of the state, having been settled in 1758; in 1768 the present name was adopted in honour of Lord Chancellor Camden. ”

“ During the siege of Boston, in 1776, the American army encamped here, and vestiges of some of their intrenchments still remain in the neighborhood. Population, eight thousand one hundred and twenty-seven.
Harvard University.
Camden, in Kershaw district, South Carolina, on the Wateree, is the seat of justice for the district. It is chiefly celebrated for the battles fought in its vicinity during the revolutionary war. Population, one thousand. A flourishing town of the same name in Oneida county, New York, has a population of about two thousand. ”

“ He notes under the year 1581, the commencement of his friendship with Brisson, the distinguished French jurist, who, being on an embassy in England, singled out the poor Westminster master, the ‘umbraticus vir et pulvere scholastico obsitus’ (Smith) , for special attention; and still earlier, in 1577, a visit of Abraham Ortelius, the ‘universæ geographiæ vindex et instaurator,’ to England brought the two men together. Camden, urged and encouraged by his new friend, undertook the systematic preparation of the ‘Britannia.’ For this work Camden's labours were enormous. ”

“ The entire sea-coast is rapidly becoming a continuous line of summer resorts, among which may be enumerated Long Branch, Sea Bright, Spring Lake, and Asbury Park in the northern portion, Atlantic City in the centre, and Cape May in the south. ”

“ It has a climate favorable to those who are convalescing from illness or seek to recuperate their health. On this account it is a popular resort during the entire year. It has a superior school system and all the other facilities and institutions which mark the progressive city. Long Branch, farther north, is the oldest resort on the coast. Another resort of many years standing is Cape May City. Other well-known resorts are Ocean City, Point Pleasant, Sea Girt, Manasquan, Spring Lake, Belmar, Ocean Grove, Asbury Park, Sea Bright, and Atlantic Highlands. ”

“ Sometimes we walked with new work as an object. There were articles about Philadelphia for Our Continent. We called it work—learning Romany—when we both walked with my Uncle up Broad Street to Oakdale Park, and through Camden and beyond to the Reservoir, where the Gypsies camped, and made Camden in my eyes, not the refuge of all in doubt, debt, or despair as its traditions have described it, but a rival in romance of Bagdad or Samarcand. ”

“ Hats are also extensively manufactured. South Orange and Summit are most attractive residential places, and are developing rapidly along this line rather than in the line of manufactures. Summit has an important silk industry. Irvington, while long known as a town devoted to residences, is feeling the industrial impulse of Newark, of which it is a suburb, and is rapidly becoming a manufacturing center of great importance. Its industries are varied and include the production of castings, graphite products, tools, cutlery, and gold, silver, and platinum products. ”

“ It has surprised the people of the United States to find New Jersey at the front in enterprises of reform. I, who have lived in New Jersey the greater part of my mature life, know that there is no state in the Union which, so far as the hearts and intelligence of its people are concerned, has more earnestly desired reform than has New Jersey. There are men who have been prominent in the affairs of the State who again and again advocated with all the earnestness that was in them the things that we have at last been able to do. ”

“ Some of these houses have marble steps and white, barn-like shutters, that might withstand a siege. When a funeral takes place in one of these houses, the shutters are tied with strips of mournful, black alpaca for a year and a day. Engineers, dockmen, express-drivers and mechanics largely make up the citizens of Camden. Of course, Camden has its smug corner where prosperous merchants most do congregate: where they play croquet in the front yards, and have window-boxes, and a piano and veranda-chairs and terra-cotta statuary ”

“ On the road again the next morning, over the ferry, into the cars with sliding panels and fixed windows, so that in summer the whole side of the car may be made transparent. New Jersey is, to the apprehension of a traveller, a double-headed suburb rather than a State. Its dull red dust looks like the dried and powdered mud of a battle-field. Peach-trees are common, and champagne-orchards. Canal-boats, drawn by mules, swim by, feeling their way along like blind men led by dogs. ”

“ The tower now seemed traveling faster. Alan could imagine the city—this one vast roof with the rivers flowing beneath it. Staten Island with the space of Turber's hospital, was doubtless under this same roof. And all the upper bay; and the New Jersey shore of the Hudson; and Brooklyn and all this end of Long Island.
Incredible millions of people, living here in this enormous, monstrous beehive—living pallid; some of them perhaps, in the poverty-stricken sections, never having seen the moon save as its light might struggle through their translucent roof ”

“ For the sake of your State—for the sake of her reputation through the world—for your own sakes—for the sake of your children, and their children yet to be—say to the world that New Jersey shares in the spirit of this age,—that New Jersey is not a survival of the Dark Ages,—that New Jersey does not still regard the thumb-screw as an instrument of progress,—that New Jersey needs no dungeon to answer the arguments of a free man, and does not send to the penitentiary men who think, and men who speak. ”

“ 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? ”

“ They are of simple well-proportioned architecture, of a distinctive type, less luxuriant, massive, and exuberant than those across the river in Pennsylvania, although both evidently derived from the Christopher Wren school. The old Jersey homes seem to reflect with great exactness the simple feeling of the people and to be one expression of the spirit of Jersey democracy.
There were no important seats of commerce in this province. Exports of wheat, provisions, and lumber went to Philadelphia or New York, which were near and convenient. ”

“ New Jersey was true to the Union in that great struggle—she has always since been true; and under the favor of Providence she always will be faithful to the Union and its memories, so inseparably connected with the glory and honor of her sons. Other States may have done as much, may have as good a record, may be entitled to equal credit with her. But in all her past history, I can point to her fidelity to the Union and her sister States with no blush of shame upon my brow. Other States might be wanting! New Jersey never! She has always been true to her constitutional obligations ”

“ Surely all the young hands have been filled with the pilgrim's-flower, the epigæa, the trailing arbutus, the beloved May-flower of olden and of modern time.
In the Middle States many plants are found which New England does not furnish. New Jersey is famed for woodland treasures; not only Orange Mountains, but the pine-barrens, show many a charming blossom, and the dweller at the West finds on the flower-tinted prairies a profusion which the Eastern fields can not approach. ”

“ It is curious to observe how the embouchure of the Penobscot is on either shore guarded by two such solitary ranges of mountains as the Camden and Mount Desert groups. They embrace about the same number of individual peaks, and approximate nearly enough in altitude. From Camden we may skirt the shores for a hundred and fifty miles to the west and south before meeting with another eminence; and then it is an isolated hill standing almost upon the line of division between Maine and New Hampshire that is encountered. ”

“ The northern mountainous section, which is not specially profitable for agriculture and other purposes, is particularly useful in furnishing sources of water supply. The many large cities in the northern part of the state draw their water from the upper parts of the Hackensack, Passaic, and Raritan basins. ”

“ Not a drop of our blood have you spilled in battle, not an acre of our land have you taken but by our consent. These facts speak for themselves, and need no comment. They place the character of New Jersey in bold relief,—a bright example to those States within whose territorial limits our brethren still remain. Nothing save benisons can fall upon her from the lips of a Lenni-Lenape."
But the love of their old home did not die out entirely in the hearts of all the Edge-Pillock Indians, who emigrated, first to New York, and then to Michigan. ”