New Jersey

“ At the time when the American colonists began to be restless under the rule of Great Britain, the people of New Jersey showed as strong a desire for independence as those of any other Colony, and they were by no means backward in submitting to any privations which might be necessary in order to assert their principles. As has been said before, the people were prosperous, and accustomed to good living, and it was not likely that there was any part of America in which a cup of well-flavored tea was better appreciated than in New Jersey. ”

“ The soil of New Jersey is not generally so fertile as that of the states which have been named, being sandy along the sea-coast, and hilly in the interior. Although this state has an extensive sea-coast yet, as there are few very commodious harbors, to vie with that of New York on the one side and of Philadelphia on the other, it has but little commerce:—These cities import almost all the foreign articles and dispose of most of the manufactures and produce of this state. ”

“ This winter life in New Jersey, of men and officers from New England, the Middle States, Virginia, and the South, appears to us now as very interesting, and in many ways a curious life. Into a quiet country neighborhood there came an entirely novel element,—an army which had not come there to fight, but to live.
Washington's first winter in New Jersey was spent in Morristown in 1777. This place was chosen because it was a productive country, and well situated for sudden expeditions against the enemy in that part of the State. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The state of New Jersey shall have the exclusive right of property in and to the land under water lying west of the middle of the bay of New York, and west of the middle of that part of the Hudson river which lies between Manhattan island and New Jersey.' 2. New Jersey is to have exclusive jurisdiction over wharves, docks, and improvements made or to be made on its shore, and over vessels aground or fastened there, subject to the quarantine and passenger laws of New York. ”

“ I cannot but remember the place that New Jersey holds in our early history. In the early Revolutionary struggle few of the States among the old thirteen had more of the battle-fields of the country within their limits than old New Jersey. May I be pardoned if, upon this occasion, I mention that away back in my childhood, the earliest days of my being able to read, I got hold of a small book, such a one as few of the younger members have ever seen,—"Weems's Life of Washington." ”

“ In southern New Jersey there are no rocky eminences or elevations worthy of the name of mountains. Its rounded hills are all earthy, and the results of denudation or erosion; the most elevated—the Navesink highlands—are about 400 feet high.
The southern half of the State is a great plain, sloping gently from its centre towards the Atlantic and the Delaware, and has been eroded in the Drift period. [1] It contains tracts of gravelly loam largely used for market gardens and vineyards. Extensive tidal marshes border the Atlantic and Delaware Bay, to the extent of nearly 300,000 acres. ”

“ From the New England States, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, came hardy pioneers, led on by the glowing accounts they had heard of the new country, and the vicinity of the inland lakes, the borders of the flowing streams, the forest-covered hills became the dwelling places of a rapidly growing band of settlers. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In 1919, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Iowa, Kansas and Washington passed laws of like character. Although each embodies certain distinctive features, yet all assert a belief in the study of American history and government as a preparation for a patriotic citizenship.
The New Jersey law contains concrete requirements. In each high school, courses of study in “Community Civics” and in “Problems in American Democracy” were prescribed through the agency of the Commissioner of Education, with the approval of the State Board of Education. ”

“ On the lower floor was the post-office on the right, filthy with the foot tracks of the Fairbridge children who crowded it in a noisy rabble twice a day, and perpetually red-stained with the shale of New Jersey, brought in upon the boots of New Jersey farmers, who always bore about with them a goodly portion of their native soil. ”

“ But the people of New Jersey prospered well, and the Colony soon became noted as one in which there was comfort and good living; and therefore it is natural that when the people really could afford to apply their time, thought, and money to objects higher than the tillage of farms and the building of houses, they went to work earnestly to give their young people proper opportunities for education, and we find that they were inclined to do this as earnestly and thoroughly as they had been in the habit of doing other things. ”

“ New Jersey is thickly populated, well provided with railway and water transit, and busily engaged in manufactures—e. g. glass, machinery, silk, sugar. Newark (capital) and Jersey City are by far the largest cities ”

“ The rock on which the man stands is at the intersection of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and New York boundaries
New Jersey lies between 73° 55′ and 75° 32′ west longitude and between 38° 56′ and 41° 21′ north latitude. Its northernmost point is marked by a rock on the shore of the Delaware River just south of Port Jervis, New York, known as Tri-States Rock. From this point to Cape May the length of the state is 166 miles. Its narrowest part, between Trenton and Raritan Bay, is 335 miles wide. Its widest part, measured on a line extending northwest from Great Egg Inlet, is 57 miles wide. ”

“ New Jersey is a reasonable and hospitable State, and when an ex-king comes to reside within her borders, he will be as well treated, so long as he behaves himself, as if he were a poor immigrant from Europe, coming with his wife and family to clear away the forest, and make himself a home. ”

“ New Jersey is rich in its facilities for recreation and recuperation. The long sea coast is one long line of attractive summer resorts, which are famous all over the world, while some places are pleasure and health resorts all the year round, and attractions of a different kind are found in abundance among the mountains, woods, lakes, and streams of the northern part of the state. ”

“ We have so long looked upon New Jersey as prominent among what were called the "free States" of the Union, that it now seems strange when we consider, that among the first of the institutions established upon its soil by the early settlers, was the system of slavery. This was the case not only in New Jersey, but in all the American Colonies. The settlers of New England, as well as those of the Southern Colonies, used negro slaves as laborers on their farms; and the trade in native Africans was a very important branch of industry. ”

“ The Duke of York, owner of all the land in the New World which had once belonged to Holland, shortly gave part of it to two of his friends, who called their tracts East and West New Jersey. The owner of West New Jersey did not keep his share long, but sold it to some Quakers, who settled near Bur ́ling-ton. East New Jersey was likewise sold to William Penn and others; but both provinces were given up to the crown in 1702. New Jersey—as they were now called—was under the same rule as New York—until 1738, when it became a separate colony. ”

“ New Jersey (1,444) , one of the 13 original States of the American Union, faces the Atlantic between New York State on the N. and Delaware Bay on the S., with Pennsylvania on its western border; the well-watered and fertile central plains favour a prosperous fruit and agricultural industry, tracts of pine and cedar wood cover the sandy S., while the N., traversed by ranges of the Appalachians, abounds in valuable forests of oak, hickory, chestnut, sassafras, &c.; minerals are plentiful, especially iron ores. ”

“ On the 22d of November, 1855, a small company of us—three gentlemen and two ladies—left New York harbor in the schooner Louisa Dyer, of 150 tons burden, bound to the island of Jamaica. By nightfall we had lost sight of the last faint trace of New Jersey soil. New Jersey is sometimes jocularly said to be out of the Union; but on that day the two of us who were leaving our native land for the first time, entertained no doubt of its solidarity with that country of which it afforded us the last glimpse. ”

“ During three years of the Revolution the American army, under General Washington, wintered in New Jersey. Of course, we understand, that, when an army goes into winter quarters, it does so because the weather prevents operations in the field; and although Washington did not in the least object to fighting in the cold weather if a good opportunity showed itself, as we know from the fact that he fought the battle of Trenton on Christmas Day, still the winters in New Jersey were for the most part periods of inactivity. ”

“ We, the people of the State of New Jersey, grateful to Almighty God for the civil and religious liberty which He hath so long permitted us to enjoy, and looking to Him for a blessing upon our endeavors to secure and transmit the same unimpaired to succeeding generations, do ordain and establish this Constitution. ”

“ Soon after the patent to the duke of York, and before the conquest of New Netherlands, that prince had granted to lord Berkeley, and sir George Carteret, all that tract of land adjacent to New England, to the westward of Long Island, bounded on the east, south, and west, by the river Hudson, the sea, and the Delaware; and, on the north, by forty-one degrees and forty minutes north latitude. This country was denominated New Jersey. ”

“ 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? ”

“ MIXED CONDITIONS IN NEW JERSEY. In New Jersey, situated as it was near the center of the different colonies, the early development of education there was the product of a number of different influences. The Dutch crossed from New Amsterdam, the English came from Connecticut and later from New York, Scotch and Scotch-Irish Presbyterians came from the mother country, Swedish Lutherans settled along the Delaware, and Quakers and German Lutherans came over from Pennsylvania. The educational practice of the colony or land from which each group of settlers came was reproduced in the colony. ”

“ Although New Jersey is forty-fifth in area and ninth in population, this state is sixth in the total value of manufactured goods, first in the manufacture of silk and silk goods, in the smelting and refining of copper, in the manufacture of oil cloth and linoleum and of sewing machines, second in the manufacture of chemicals, rubber goods, pottery, terra cotta, and fine clay products, and of paint and varnish, third in the manufacture of electrical machinery and supplies, and fourth in the manufacture of soap and gold and silver articles. ”

“ He lived in the recollection of those who saw him in New Jersey as a man of strong passions, fond of convivial pleasures, well versed in the ways of the world, and, at one period of his life not a stranger to the gallantries which so frequently marred the character of the man of that age. ”

“ New Jersey was tenth in population, and third in density of population, Rhode Island being first and Massachusetts second. The area of greatest density of population is the northeastern section, including Bergen, Hudson, Passaic, Essex, Union, and Middlesex counties, which with an area of 1018 square miles had a population of 2,112,933, or more than sixty-five per cent, of the total population of the state. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It would appear, from the stories of those early days, that whenever a man or woman acted a good part, and was truly of service to New Jersey, he or she always lived to be very old, and left behind a vast number of descendants. ”