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 PATERS ON HISTORY 
 
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 SHRINER 
 
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 NO. 23233 
 
 *" 144P4 SSe" ""''"""y Library 
 
Cornell University 
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Four Chapters of Paterson 
 History 
 
 I. The War for Independence 
 
 II. The Early White Settlers 
 
 III. Struggle for Indu^rial Supremacy 
 
 lY. Municipal Admini^ation 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES A. SHRINER 
 
 Author of 
 
 "Wit, Wisdom ahd Foibles of the Great." 
 
 1919 : 
 
 Lent & Orerkawp Pub. Co. 
 
 Printers 
 
 Paterson, N. J. 
 
Copyright, 1919, 
 Charles A. Shriner. 
 
 -) 
 
 .2 ^ 
 
 x5 
 
 3c5^/->/-'"^' 
 
Introductory 
 
 This book would not have been written had it not been 
 for the liberality of a publishing house. The Lewis His- 
 torical Publishing Company is about to issv,e in three 
 volumes William Nelson's History of Paterson. All who 
 were acquainted with Mr. Nelson knew him to be inde^ 
 fatigable in his historical researches. His History of 
 Paterson was his life's work; at the time of his death he 
 had written over a million words of his History. All this 
 vast material, together with a great deal more obtained 
 from equally reliable sources, has been placed at the disposal 
 of the author of these Four Chapters of Paterson History. 
 This book is intended for use in the school room and for the 
 perusal of such persons as take an interest in the early days 
 of Paterson and in the growth of the city from its beginning 
 to the eminence it has attained as a place for industry and 
 residence. 
 
 C. A. S. 
 
 Paterson, N. J., August 15, 1919. ' 
 
The War for Independence 
 
The War for Independence 
 
 The people of New Jersey took an active part in the 
 quarrel between this country and Great Britain over the 
 question of taxation. They were willing contributors, both 
 in men and money, to the wars waged by England against 
 the French, the Indians and other enemies in this country, 
 but they wanted to have something to say about how the 
 money was to be collected for the benefit of the mother 
 country. The subject was one that afforded numerous dis- 
 cussions in the assembly and other lawmaking bodies. 
 
 GROUNDS FOR LOCAL COMPLAINT. 
 
 But the people living in this part of New Jersey had 
 two additional grievances. The English government passed 
 a law making it a crime to cut down any white pine trees 
 on lands not enclosed by fences; English men of money 
 owned millions of acres of forests, especially south of New 
 Jersey, and they were making fortunes out of cutting down 
 the white trees and using them for masts; they did not want 
 any interference with the profit they were making and so 
 they had enacted the law which made it a crime to cut 
 down any pine trees on unenclosed lands, as most of the 
 lands in New Jersey were. 
 
 The second grievance arose from the extensive mining 
 operations carried on in the northern part of what is now 
 Passaic county; there was no reason in those days why 
 articles of iron should not have been made in this country: 
 there was plenty of iron in the earth ; there were men to dig 
 it and there were men who knew how to work the iron after 
 
8 FOUR CHAPTERS OP PATERSON HISTORY 
 
 the ore had been reduced: England then passed a law 
 making it a crime for any person in this country to make 
 any article of iron. The law was passed in the interest of 
 the iron manufacturers of England. All that the people in 
 this country could do was to ship the iron, after it had 
 been reduced from the ore, to England, where men would 
 make it into various articles and sell these back to the 
 people in this country at a high rate of profit. Nevertheless 
 the mines at Charlotteburg and Ringwood continued to be 
 worked; the iron was taken by wagon through Paterson to 
 the river at Passaic where it was loaded on vessels and taken 
 to England. 
 
 STILL LOYAL TO ENGLAND. 
 
 The population in this country at that time was divided 
 into two parties: those who thought England was wrong 
 and those who thought England was right. Among the 
 former was Henry Garritse, who lived along the river road, 
 near where a cross road leads to Clifton, and Theunis Dey, 
 who lived in Preakness. Both attended a meeting held in 
 Newark in July, 1774, where arrangements were begun for 
 the formation of a congress of the colonies. Both were 
 members of the state legislature which met at Perth Amboy 
 in January, 1775, and both voted for a petition sent to 
 England asking relief from some of the laws to which this 
 country objected. The only answer came from Parliament 
 in April in the form of more laws hampering industry in 
 this country. 
 
 At a meeting held at Passaic Bridge in May, 1775, a 
 committee of twenty-three was appointed to assist in carry- 
 ing out the plan adopted in Newark. Of this committee six 
 lived in what are now the boundaries of the city of Paterson: 
 Michael Vreeland, Francis Post, Abraham Godwm, Cor- 
 nelius Van Winkle, Henry Post and Stephen Ryder; the 
 
THE WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE 9 
 
 last-named subsequently deserted the American cause and 
 went over to the English. At the time the committee of 
 twenty-three was appointed there was little thought of 
 independence and all were still loyal to England. The Pro- 
 vincial Congress met in Trenton on May 23, 1775, and 
 made arrangements to enroll aU males between sixteen and 
 fifty years of age in the militia, but there was little thought 
 at the time that the soldiers thus called together might 
 shoulder arms against England; even in November, 1775, 
 the assembly of which Henry Garritse and Theunis Dey 
 were members, passed a resolution of loyalty to England. 
 
 A HISTORIC BRIDGE. 
 
 One of the first bridges thrown across the Passaic river 
 stood, where a bridge at the present day spans the stream, 
 in the lower part of Passaic, below the old church on the 
 hill so plainly visible to passengers on the Erie passing 
 through Passaic. Unlike the present bridge, it was a rude 
 structure, built of wood, but it was of more importance to 
 the country than has been any bridge erected there since. 
 In warfare a point of the greatest consideration is the move- 
 ment of troops; the bridge at Passaic was the only bridge 
 on which troops could cross the river and consequently it 
 was of vast importance when, in November, 1776, General 
 William Howe had formed a plan of entering New Jersey 
 from the North and attacking the American forces. The 
 English were far stronger in numbers than were the Ameri- 
 cans and it required a great deal of good generalship on the 
 part of Washington to prevent the destruction of his army. 
 The Americans stiU had possession of Fort Washington, in 
 the upper part of what is now New York city, but they 
 were being harassed by the British and their mercenaries. 
 General Greene was encamped at Fort Lee and here he was 
 Joined on November 10 by General Mercer, who came up 
 
10 FOUR CHAPTERS OF PATBRSON HISTORY 
 
 from the southern part of New Jersey; these were the first 
 troops that passed through Paterson and crossed the river 
 at Passaic. Lord Stirling, an American General, was with 
 his forces some distance up the Hudson river; he crossed 
 the Hudson at Haverstraw and marched to Fort Lee, and 
 thence to Passaic, where he arrived on the 14th; with his 
 eight regiments he proceeded to his destination, New Bruns- 
 wick, leaving three regiments at Rahway. 
 
 A RACE ACROSS BERGEN COUNTY. 
 
 Washington had seen through the plans of the British 
 generals and as early as November 7 had sent word to Pas- 
 saic, warning the people there of the treatment they might 
 expect at the hands of the enemy. He reached Fort Lee 
 from Peekskill on November 3 and on the 15th was at 
 Hackensack. Then he hurried back to Fort Lee, for the 
 British had demanded the surrender of Fort Washington. 
 The British, however, were too strong for the Americans 
 and it was with sadness that he heard of the surrender of 
 the fort with all its garrison and nearly all its stores; when 
 it was evident that the fort would be compelled to surrender 
 an attempt was made to move men and stores across the 
 river, but the British appeared in overwhelming forces 
 before this could be accomplished. 
 
 The surrender of the fort opened the way for the British 
 to carry out their plan of marching into New Jersey and on 
 the 19th Lord Cornwallis crossed the river and landed at 
 Closter, about five mUes above Fort Lee. Greene at once 
 abandoned Fort Lee and started for Hackensack and he was 
 as expeditious about it as possible, for it was a question 
 whether he or the British could first reach the bridge called 
 even at the present day New Bridge. Fortunately the 
 British did not march as quickly as had been feared and the 
 American army crossed in safety. From November 15 to 20 
 
THE WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE 11 
 
 Washington and his army were at Hackensack preparing for 
 the toilsome march to New Brunswick where they hoped to 
 join Lord Stirling. They left Hackensack on the 20th and, 
 passing through where Lodi and Garfield are now situated, 
 reached Passaic in two days. On the same day on which 
 they crossed the bridge some British troops appeared on the 
 other side, but it was too late, for the American forces were 
 busily engaged in tearing down the bridge, succeeding in 
 accomplishing this before the British could begin an attack. 
 Among those who assisted in this work of destruction were 
 men from the immediate neighborhood, notably John H. 
 Post, a farmer and carpenter, who was bom where Passaic 
 now stands, and who in after years frequently told of the 
 work of destruction done on the 22d of November. The 
 American armies now lay on one side of the river and the 
 British on the other. Washington gave his forces a rest 
 and on the 28th started the march to New Brunswick, much 
 to the chagrin of the British who could see the preparations 
 for the retreat without being able to do anything to interfere 
 with it. 
 
 WHY THE BRITISH WERE SO SLOW. 
 
 When the British found themselves safe on the New 
 Jersey side of the Hudson they took time to develop their 
 plans. A detachment was at once sent forward to find out 
 where the Americans were and it was this detachment that 
 arrived too late at New Bridge and subsequently at Passaic. 
 After a consultation between Howe and Cornwallis the main 
 body started into motion on the 24th and two days later 
 reached the Passaic river, where they found out what had 
 taken place. In order to reach the American army it was 
 necessary to cross the Passaic and this the British de- 
 termined to do. There was a ford in the river, just below 
 where Dundee dam now stands, but the river was swollen 
 
12 FOUR OHAPTEES OP PATBRSON HISTORY 
 
 and huge cakes of ice were coming down the stream. Yet 
 the ford offered the only opportunity of reaching the Ameri- 
 cans and so the British determined to try it. In order to 
 find the shallow parts of the ford and avoid the deep holra 
 the British compelled Adrian Post, the son of a miller 
 nearby, to go ahead. Post had no choice in the matter and 
 did as he was told, contracting a pulmonary trouble, from 
 which he died twelve years later. The British crossed the 
 river at the ford, marched along the Passaic to Second river 
 and thence to Newark, reaching the latter city just as the 
 Americans were marching out of it on the other side. 
 
 This pursuit of the American forces gave rise to an 
 animated discussion in the British Parliament some time 
 after. It was pointed out that it had taken the British two 
 days to cover eight miles; it was pleaded in their behalf 
 that the weather was very bad, there being a great deal of 
 rain and cold, but the opinion that most of the British 
 people arrived at was expressed by one of their statesmen, 
 who said: "If our generals had not been so fond of their 
 beds and bellies the revolution would have ended in British 
 success in 1776 in New Jersey." This may have been true, 
 although the generalship of Washington might have pre- 
 vented a defeat; the fondness charged to the British was 
 fuUy corroborated by investigations in later years. When 
 the British forces had effected the crossing of the Passaic 
 river, they abandoned themselves to pillage. Some of them 
 strayed as far as where the Market street bridge now stands 
 and they took possession of everything they could lay their 
 hands on; a great deal of what they could not carry away 
 they destroyed, a proceeding the soldiers indulged in all 
 along their line of march. Every house they came to was 
 stripped of its furniture and every bam of its contents. 
 Hundreds of horses, cows, sheep, hogs and chickens, and 
 thousands of dollars in coin, jewelry, clothing and produce 
 
THE WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE 13 
 
 followed in the wake of Washington's retreating army but 
 in the possession of British soldiers. 
 
 ComwaUis and Howe followed Washington to New 
 Brunswick; here ComwaUis was anxious to begin an attack 
 but was restrained by Howe, who thought it better to wait. 
 The British forces did wait and thus they made possible the 
 battles of Trenton and Princeton. 
 
 On November 28 another body of British troops, princi- 
 pally Hessian mercenaries, left New York, and followed 
 Howe and ComwaUis, plundering as they went. In Sep- 
 tember, 1777, a marauding party from Sir Henry Clinton's 
 army visited Passaic and went up the river as far as Market 
 street, Paterson. 
 
 In May of that same year General Nathaniel Heard, of 
 the New Jersey militia, threw up some fortifications at 
 Pompton and in the following month was ordered back to 
 the same place by General Philemon Dickinson, at the 
 request of General Washington. One of the objects of 
 General Heard's presence at Pompton was the protection of 
 the CannonbaU road, by which cannon baUs, made at Ring- 
 wood, were taken to the American forces. This road was 
 formerly a goal of sightseers from Paterson; what was left 
 of it some years ago was discernible a short distance north 
 of the Pompton Lakes station on the New York, Susque- 
 hanna & Western railroad, and from there it could be easily 
 traced to Rotten pond; it was finally abandoned by the 
 authorities. 
 
 After the battle of Monmouth in 1778, Washington 
 returned to the Hudson river, passing through Passaic on 
 July 9. In October Lord Stirling had his headquarters at 
 Passaic, the object being to put a stop to the doings of 
 marauding parties of British soldiery. 
 
14 FOUR CHAPTERS OF PATEBSON HISTORY 
 
 In May, 1779, Captain Ferguson headed a marauding 
 party which penetrated through Bergen county and came 
 to Paterson by way of Paramus. At Vreeland avenue they 
 took two horses from Abraham C. Vreeland and at Twen- 
 tieth avenue five horses from Michael Vreeland. They con- 
 tinued on down the river road for some distance, pillaging 
 as they went. 
 
 On May 29, 1779, Washington broke camp at Middle- 
 brook for the purpose of checking a British advance in the 
 direction of West Point, the American army passing through 
 Pompton and Ringwood. They went over the same route 
 later in the year on the way to winter quarters at Morris- 
 town, where Lafayette joined Washington. 
 
 WASHINGTON AT TOTOWA. 
 
 Washington with his army was encamped between the 
 Falls of the Passaic and Preakness on July 4, 1780, remain- 
 ing there until the 29th of the month, when the army 
 marched to Paramus, being encamped there and at Tappan. 
 Washington had been informed that the British contem- 
 plated an attack on Rhode Island and in order to check this 
 the American forces were marched towards the Hudson 
 river as if intending to attack the British in New York. 
 Washington's threatening attitude induced the British to 
 give up their idea of marching towards Rhode Island and, 
 this having been accomplished, the American forces returned 
 to New Jersey. On October 7, Washington wrote from 
 Paramus : 
 
 "We have had a cold, wet, and tedious march, on account of Che 
 feeble state of our cattle. My intention is to proceed with them to the 
 neighhorhood of the Passaic Falls." 
 
 The army returned to its former camp at Totowa and 
 Preakness and remained there until November 27, when 
 
THE WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE 15 
 
 Washington went into winter quarters at Morristown, leav- 
 ing the New Jersey Brigade at Pompton and the Clove. 
 
 Washington's headquarters, while his army {was in 
 camp at Totowa and Preakness, were at the Dey house, a 
 building which can be reached at the present day by going 
 about two and a half miles along the road running westerly 
 from the river at Lincoln Bridge. When Washington was at 
 the Dey house that building was one of the most preten- 
 tious in this part of the country. Just when it was built is 
 a matter of uncertainty, the likelihood being that it was 
 erected about a quarter of a century before the Revolution 
 by Theunis Dey, a man whose name figures prominently in 
 the Revolutionary annals of the time. He was the son of 
 Dirck Dey and according to some traditions it was Dirck 
 Dey who erected the building before the birth of Theunis. 
 The house, two stories with a double pitch roof, has a 
 frontage of fifty-two feet and is thirty feet in depth. The 
 house is of brick, the doors and windows being handsomely 
 framed with polished brown sandstone. The side and rear 
 are of rubble work. The timbers on the inside are of 
 massive oak, fastened together with pins of wood, after the 
 fashion of building houses in those days. A centre hall, 
 twelve feet wide, has two rooms on each side. The house 
 stands today as it stood during Washington's occupancy, 
 with the exception of the two dormer windows in the roof, 
 these having been added many years later. 
 
 The location of the various divisions of the American 
 army, while Washington was at Preakness, is indicated on 
 the accompanying map. 
 
 A VISIT TO Washington's camp. 
 
 The Marquis de Chastellux, a French nobleman, visited 
 Washington at Preakness and tells of it as follows: 
 
THE WAB FOR INDEPENDENCE 17 
 
 I found myself in a small plain, where I saw a handsome farm ; a 
 small camp which seemed to cover it, a large tent extended in the 
 court, and several wagons round it, convinced me that this was his 
 Excellency's quarter; for it is thus Mr. Washington is called in the 
 army, and throughout America. M. de la Fayette was in conversation 
 with a tall man, five foot nine inches high, (about five foot ten inches 
 and a half English,) of a noble and mild countenance. It was the 
 general himself. I was soon off horseback, and near him. The compli- 
 ments were short ; the sentiments with which I was animated, and the 
 good wishes he testified for me were not equivocal. He conducted me 
 to his house, where I found the company still at table, although the 
 dinner had been long over. He presented me to the Generals Knox, 
 Wayne, Howe, &c. and to his family, then composed of Colonels Hamil- 
 ton and Tilgman, his secretaries and his aids-de-camp, and of Major 
 Gibbs, commander of his guards ; for in England and America, the aids- 
 de-camp, adjutants and other officers attached to the general, form 
 what is called his family. A fresh dinner was prepared for me and 
 mine; and the present was prolonged to keep me company. A few 
 glasses of claret and madeira accelerated the acquaintances I had to 
 make, and I soon felt myself at my ease near the greatest and the 
 best of men. The goodness and benevolence which characterise him, 
 are evident from every thing about him ; but the confidence he gives 
 birth to, never occasions Improper familiarity; for the sentiment he 
 inspires has the same origin in every individual, a profound esteem for 
 his virtues, and a high opinion of his talents. About nine o'clock the 
 general ofBcers withdrew to their quarters, which were all at a consider- 
 able distance; but as the general wished me to stay in his own house, 
 I remained some time with him, after which he conducted me to the 
 chamber prepared for my aids-de-camp and me. This chamber occupied 
 the fourth part of his lodgings ; he apologized to me for the little room 
 he had in his disx>osal, but always with a noble politeness, which was 
 . neither complimentary nor troublesome. 
 
 At nine the next morning they informed me that his excellency 
 was come down into the parlor. This room served at once as audience 
 chamber and dining-room. I immediately went to wait on him, and 
 found breakfast prepared. 
 
 Whilst we were at breakfast, horses were brought, and General 
 Washington gave orders for the army to get under arms at the head 
 of the camp. The weather was very bad, and it had already begun 
 raining; we waited half an hour; but the General seeing that it was 
 more likely to increase than to diminish, determined to get on horse- 
 back. Two horses were brought him, which were a present from the 
 state of Virginia ; he mounted one himself, and gave me the other. 
 Mr. Lynch and Mr. de Montesquieu, had each of them, also, a very 
 handsome blood horse, such as we could not find at Newport for any 
 money. We repaired to the artillery camp, where General Knox 
 received us: the artillery was numerous, and the gunners, in very fine 
 order, were formed in parade, in the foreign manner, that is, each gunner 
 at his battery, and ready to fire. The General was so good as to 
 apologize to me for the cannon not firing to salute me; be said, that 
 
18 FOUR OHAPTEBS OF PATERSON HISTORY 
 
 having put all the troops on the other side of the river in motion, and 
 apprized them that he might himself march along the right bank, he 
 was afraid of giving the alarm, and of deceiving the detadiments that 
 were out. We gained at length, the right of the army, where we saw 
 the Pennsylvania line; it was composed of two brigades, each forming 
 three battalions, without reckoning the light infantry, which were de- 
 tached with the Marquis de la Fayette. General Wayne, who com- 
 manded It, was on horseback, as well as the Brigadiers and Colonels. 
 They were all well mounted : the ofiBcers also had a very military air ; 
 they were well ranged, and saluted very gracefully. Each brigade had 
 a band of music; the march they were then playing was the Huron. 
 I knew that this line, though in want of many things, was the best 
 clothed in the army ; so that his excellency asking me whether I would 
 proceed, and see the whole army, or go by the shortest road to the camp 
 of the Marquis, I accepted the latter proposal. The troops ought to 
 thank me for it, for the rain was falling with redoubled force; they 
 were dismissed, therefore, and we arrived heartily wet at the Marquis 
 de la Fayette's quarters, where I warmed myself with great pleasure, 
 partaking, from time to time, of a large bowl of grog, which is station- 
 ary on his table, and is presented to every officer who enters. The rain 
 appearing to cease, or inclined to cease for a moment, we availed our- 
 selves of the opportunity to follow his excellency to the camp of the 
 Marquis : we found all his troops in order of battle on the heights to 
 the left, and himself at their head; expressing by his air and counten- 
 ance, that he was happier in receiving me there, than at his estate in 
 Auvergne. The confidence and attachment of the trooi)s, are for him 
 invaluable possessions, well acquired riches, of whicfh nobody can de- 
 prive him ; but what, in my opinion, is still more flattering for a young 
 man of his age, is the influence and consideration he has acquired 
 among the political, as well as the military order : I do not fear contra- 
 diction when I say, that private letters from him have frequently pro- 
 duced more effect on some states than the strongest exhortations of the 
 Congress. On seeing him, one is at a loss which most to admire, that 
 so young a man as he should have given such eminent proofs of talents, 
 or that a man so tried, should give hopes of so long a career of glory. 
 Fortunate his country, if she knows how to avail herself of them ; more 
 fortunate still should she stand in no need of oalliug them into exer- 
 tion! 
 
 The rain spared us no more at the camp of the Marquis, than at 
 that of the main army; so that our review being finished, I saw with 
 pleasure General Washington set off in a gallop to regain his quarters. 
 We reached them as soon as the badness of the roads would i)ermit us. 
 At our return we found a good dinner ready, and about twenty guests, 
 among whom were Generals Howe and Sinclair. The repast was in 
 the English fashion, consisting of eight or ten large dishes of butcher's 
 meat, and poultry, with vegetables of several sorts, followed by a second 
 course of pastry, comprized under the two denominations of pies and 
 puddings. After this the cloth was taken ofC, and apples and a great 
 quantity of nuts were served, which General Washington usually con- 
 tinues eating for two hours, toasting and conversing all the time. These 
 
THE WAR rOE INDEPENDENCE 19 
 
 nuts are small and dry, and have so hard a shell, (hickory nuts) that 
 they can only Ije* broken by the hammer; they are served half open, 
 and the company are never done picking and eating them. The conver- 
 sation was calm and agreeable; his Excellency was pleased to enter 
 with me into the particulars of some of the principal operations of the 
 war, but always with a modesty and conciseness, which proved that it 
 was from pure complaisance he mentioned it. About half past seven we 
 rose from table, and immediately the servants came to Shorten it, and 
 convert it into a round one; for at dinner it was placed diagonally to 
 give more room. I was surprised at this manoeuvre, and asked the 
 reason of It ; I was told they were going to lay the cloth for supper. 
 In half an hour I retired to my chamber, fearing lest the General 
 might have business, and that he remained in company only on my 
 account ; but at the end of another half hour, I was informed that his 
 Excellency expected me at supper. I returned to the dining-room, 
 protesting against this supper; but the General told me he was accus- 
 tomed to take something in the evening; that if I would be seated, I 
 should only eat some fruit, and assist in the conversation, I desired 
 nothing better, for there were then no strangers, and nobody remained 
 but the General's family. The supper was composed of three or four 
 light dishes, some fruit, and above all, a great abundance of nuts, which 
 were as well received in the evening as at dinner. 
 
 The weather was so bad on the 25th, that it was impossible for me 
 to stir, even to wait on the Generals, to whom M. de la Fayette was 
 to conduct me. I easily consoled myself for this, finding it a great 
 ■luxury to pass a whole day with General Washington, as if he were 
 at his house in the country, and had nothing to do. The Generals 
 Olover, Huntington, and some others, dined with us, and the Colonels 
 Stewart and Butler, two officers distinguished in the army. 
 
 The weather being fair, on the 2eth, I got on horseback, after 
 breakfasting with the general. He was so attentive as to give me 
 the horse he rode on, the day of my arrival, which I had greatly 
 commended: I found him as good as he is handsome; but above all, 
 perfectly well broke, and well trained, having a good mouth, easy in 
 band, and stopping short in a gallop without bearing the bit. I men- 
 tion these minute particulars, because it is the general himself who 
 breaks all his own horses ; and he is a very excellent and bold horse- 
 man, leaping the highest fences, and going extremely quick, without 
 standing upon his stirrups, bearing on the bridle, or letting his horse 
 run wild ; circumstances which our yoimg men look upon as so essential 
 a part of English horsemanship, that they would rather break a leg or 
 an arm than renounce them. 
 
 My first visit was to General Wayne, where Mr. de la Fayette 
 was waiting to conduct me to the other general officers of the line. 
 We were received by General Huntington, who appeared rather young 
 for the rank of Brigadier-General, whicfh he has held two years: his 
 carriage is cold and reserved, but one is not long in perceiving him to 
 •be a man of sense and information ; by General Glover, about five and 
 forty, a little man, but active and a good soldier ; by (Jeneral Howe, who 
 is one of the oldest Major-Generals, and who enjoys the consideration 
 
20 FOUR CHAPTERS OF PATERSON HISTORY 
 
 due to bis rank, though, from unfavourable circumstances, be has not 
 ■been fortunate in war, particularly in Georgia, where be commanded 
 with a very small force, at the time General Provost took possession 
 of it : be is fond of music, the arts, and pleasure, and has a cultivated 
 mind. I remained a considerable time with bim, and saw a very 
 curious lusus natura, but as hideous as possible. It was a young man 
 of a Dutch family, whose bead was become so enormous, that it took 
 the whole nourishment from bis body ; and his hands and arms were so 
 weak that be was unable to make use ot them. He lies constantly in 
 bed, with his monstrous head supported by a piUow; and as be has 
 long been accustomed to lie on bis right side, bis right arm is in a 
 state of atrophy: be is not quite an idiot, but be could never learn 
 any thing, and has no more reason than a child of five or six years 
 old, though be is seven and twenty. This extraordinary derangement 
 of the anunal economy proceeds from a dropsy, with which be was 
 attacked in bis infancy, and which displaced the bones that form the 
 cranium. We know that these 'bones are joined together by sutures, 
 which are soft in the first period of life, and harden and ossify with 
 age. Such an exuberance, so great an afElux of humour in that, which 
 of all the viscera seems to require the most exact proportion, as well 
 to what relates to the life as to the understanding of man, afford 
 stronger proof of the necessity of an equilibrium between the solids and 
 the fluids, than the existence of the final causes. 
 
 The big-headed man, referred to by the Marquis, was 
 Pieter Van Winkle, who was bom in 1754, and died at the 
 age of thirty-one years. Samuel Dewees, who was a fifer 
 in a Pennsylvania regiment, described him as follows: 
 
 His body was cbunkey and about the size of a healthy boy of ten 
 or twelve years old and he laid in a kind of cradle, but bis head 
 (although shaped like to a human bead), was like a flour barrel in 
 size, and it was common for one soldier to describe it to others by 
 comparing it to a flour barrel. It bad to be lifted about (the body 
 could not support it) whenever and wherever it had to be moved to. 
 His senses appeared to 'be good, and it was usual for us to say, "be can 
 talk like a lawyer." He would talk to every person that visited bim. 
 ■All the soldiers that visited bim and that had any money, would always 
 give him something. It was said that General Washington when be 
 jwent to see bim gave bis father the sum of four or five hundred dollars 
 as a present to aid in bis support. Although I have here attempted a 
 description of bis person and appearance, it beggared every description 
 I can give, as no person can conceive truly his appearance, but those 
 that seen him. 
 
 Among the visitors to Pieter Van Winkle was General 
 LaFayette, who, on his return visit to Totowa, in 1824, in- 
 quired after the health of this prodigy. 
 
THE WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE 21 
 
 ANECDOTES ABOUT WASHINGTON. 
 
 Numerous anecdotes are told of Washington while he 
 was in the neighborhood, anecdotes trite in themselves, but 
 interesting because of their connection with Washington. 
 Thus, Lena Van Houten, who lived with her parents on the 
 bank of the Passaic river near Lincoln bridge, was returning 
 to her home with a pail of water from the river; she was a 
 young girl and as she trudged along merrily she was singing. 
 She noticed that she was being followed at a respectful 
 distance by a man who was evidently deriving pleasure from 
 her singing. She entered the house and was followed by the 
 man, who with stately courtesy asked her to repeat the song. 
 She looked up and saw the well known face and figure of 
 George Washington. She was so overcome that she left the 
 room as hurriedly as possible. 
 
 Simeon Hopper was bom in 1780 and he was only a few 
 hours old when Washington fondled him; holding him up 
 in his broad hands, he exclaimed, "In eighteen years I shall 
 have another soldier." 
 
 Washington occasionally went out hunting and at times 
 was accompanied by Comehus Doremus, then fifteen years 
 of age. Doremus frequently told that it was Washington's 
 custom at nine o'clock in the evening, to place a Bible upon 
 a stand, read a chapter and then offer prayer. When Wash- 
 ington was about to leave, he took Cornelius by the hand 
 and said, "Cornelius, you are a good boy. Always mind your 
 father, and speak the truth." 
 
 TRML OF Arnold's accomplice. 
 
 Benedict Arnold visited Washington at Preakness on 
 July 28, 1780, probably for the purpose of obtaining all the 
 information possible, for he was already in communication 
 with the British, to whom he had offered to surrender West 
 Point. When Major John Andre was arrested, Joshua Hett 
 
22 FOUB CHAPTERS OF PATBRSON HISTORY 
 
 Smith was also taken into custody, for he had accompanied 
 Andre to the place where the treason was arranged. Smith 
 was taken along when the army moved from Tappan to 
 Totowa and he was there tried for treason. While the case 
 was pending he was quartered at the Passaic Hotel, corner 
 of River and Bank streets, Paterson, concerning which he 
 wrote subsequently that the landlady refused him admit- 
 tance when she discovered who he was. This was certainly 
 not at all surprising, for the landlady was Mrs. Abraham 
 Godwin, whose husband had given up his life in the cause 
 of freedom; two of her sons were in the American army and 
 a third was in a British prison ship in New York harbor. 
 The court rendered a peculiar verdict: it was to the effect 
 that Smith was guilty of all the acts charged against him, 
 but, as he had no guilty knowledge of the intentions of 
 Andre, he was acquitted. In anticipation of a possible 
 failure of justice another warrant had been issued for his 
 arrest and he was hurried off to Goshen for another trial. 
 Here he made his escape at night and found his way through 
 Ringwood and Pompton, back to Totowa. He spent the day- 
 concealed in the woods and at night found a smaU canoe in 
 which he crossed the Passaic. He gained the top of Garret 
 mountain and finally reached Jersey City, from which escape 
 to the British in New York was a matter of ease. 
 
 A COURT MARTIAL AT POMPTON. 
 
 The story of the revolt of some New Jersey soldiers 
 while in camp at Pompton does not make very pleasant 
 reading, but there are more dark pages in history than such 
 as give pleasure. The trouble began on January 1, 1781, 
 when the Pennsylvania line mutinied. It may be said in 
 extenuation of the gravity of their offence, that the soldiers 
 were ill-clad and half-starved and that they were suffering 
 all other privations which a lack of funds and a rigorous. 
 
THE WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE 23 
 
 climate could bring. There was also a question whether the 
 men were not right in demanding that they should have the 
 privilege of returning to their homes. They had enlisted 
 "for three years or during the war." What did this mean? 
 Were the men to serve during the war if it did not last more 
 than three years, or were they to serve during the whole war 
 no matter how long it lasted? The Pennsylvania Line took 
 up their march to Philadelphia with a view to compelling 
 Congress to redress their grievances. Congress appointed 
 a commission; the difficulty was smoothed over and the men 
 returned to their camps. The mutineers had been at least 
 partially successful and this had a bad effect on the New 
 Jersey soldiers. Foreseeing that there would be trouble, 
 most of the New Jersey soldiers were sent to Chatham. One 
 hundred and sixty of them remained at Pompton. One of 
 the demands these made was that they should receive all 
 the pay due them and they stipulated that they would take 
 seventy-five dollars in paper money for every dollar due. 
 The legislature of New Jersey promptly acceded to this 
 demand, emptying the state treasury in doing so. There 
 stiU remained other grievances, including the question of the 
 term of their enlistment. They were told that the matter 
 should be looked into and replied that their own oaths were 
 better evidence than any official records. Unfortunately 
 they had made the worst possible use, especially under the 
 circumstances, of the money they had received, for most of 
 it found its way into the till at the tavern. Tired of waiting 
 for relief, they placed themselves under the command of 
 Sergeant-Major George Grant on January 20 and rose in 
 open rebellion. Grant was an intelligent soldier and writer, 
 for he had been with General Sullivan in a campaign 
 against the Indians in 1779 and had written a history of the 
 expedition. It was with reluctance that he accepted the new 
 honor thrust upon him, A few of the mutineers went sa 
 
24 FOUR CHAPTERS OF PATERSON HISTORY 
 
 far as to talk of deserting to the enemy, but this was not the 
 prevailing spirit. Sir Henry Clinton, the British comman- 
 der at New York, however, had heard some of the whispers 
 of treason and he was anxious to take the full benefit of 
 them. He appointed commissioners to treat with the in- 
 surgents and sent an armed force to support them. When 
 the insurgents heard of this they passed a resolution that 
 they would at once put to death any person who suggested 
 desertion to the British and, furthermore, that they would 
 hang any British emissary who made any overtures to that 
 effect. A delegation from the New Jersey legislature arrived, 
 willing to make any promises that could be kept. The 
 soldiers went back to their tents and huts but they did so 
 reluctantly and it was evident that they were doing what 
 they were not willing to do. 
 
 Word of what had taken place reached Washington and 
 he at once resolved upon drastic measures. There had been 
 too much insubordination and it was time, if the army was 
 to be kept together, that energetic steps should be taken to 
 make it plain that treason would not be tolerated under any 
 circumstances. Washington despatched General Robert 
 Howe with one thousand men ; in his letter of instructions to 
 General Howe he said: 
 
 "The object of your detachment is to compel the mutineers to 
 unconditional submission ; and I am to desire, that you will grant no 
 terms while they are with arms in their hands in a state of resistance. 
 If you succeed in compelling the revolted troops to a surrender, you 
 will instantly execute a few of the most active and incendiary leaders." 
 
 General Howe at once proceeded to execute the com- 
 mission. He had serious misgivings, for he was leading men 
 against their fellow soldiers, and his thousand men had the 
 same grievances which had driven the insurgents to extreme 
 measures. He tested the loyalty of his troops in various 
 ways and was satisfied that they would obey orders. He left 
 New Windsor with his troops on one of the coldest days of 
 
THE WAR FOB INDEPENDENCE 25 
 
 the year and arrived at Ringwood on Friday, January 26. 
 During the night he posted his men close to the camp of the 
 insurgents and every road leading from it was carefully 
 guarded. The demand for surrender came shortly after the 
 break of day and it was a rude awakening for the disaffected 
 soldiers. They were ordered to march unarmed into an ad- 
 joining field. Some of them made attempts to escape but 
 they found all avenues cut off. Finally they yielded and 
 immediately afterwards they told the story of their doings 
 to a court martial, "standing in the snow," as the record 
 reads. Sergeant-Major Grant, Sergeant David GUhnore 
 and Private John Tuttle were convicted of having been the 
 ringleaders in the rebellion and sentenced to death. Grant 
 was pardoned, because it was shown that he had unwillingly 
 assumed the command; the other two were at once shot, the 
 bullets which ended their existence speeding from rifles in 
 the hands of some of their fellow conspirators. Two mounds 
 of stones mark the graves of the fallen; these mounds may 
 still be seen on an elevation in the mountains overlooking 
 the railroad station at Pompton Lakes. A guard sufficient 
 to protect the stores at Ringwood and Pompton was left 
 behind; the rest of the army, including the men who had 
 rebelled, marched south on their way to Yorktown. 
 
 CHANGES OF SCENE AT POMPTON. 
 
 There was a wholly different scene of military activity 
 at Pompton during the latter days of August of that same 
 year. The French general, the Count de Rochambeau, had 
 crossed the Hudson at Stony Point and reached Pompton 
 on the 25th. Instead of half-starved and rag-clad soldiers 
 the natives beheld the flower of the French army officered 
 by some of the greatest noblemen of France. Fully equipped 
 and with an abundance of ammunition they passed through 
 Pompton and thence to Whippany on their way south to 
 be present at the surrender at Yorktown. 
 
26 FOUR CHAPTERS OF PATBRSON HISTORY 
 
 Another and a still different scene was presented at 
 Pompton in December. It was a part of the same army 
 returning victorious from Yorktown; the soldiers were a 
 little bedraggled and their uniforms a little the worse for 
 wear, but the spirit of victory accomplished had taken the 
 place of the grim determination of soldiers about going to 
 battle. The commander of the regiment that passed through 
 Pompton was de Chastellux, who had risen to the dignity of 
 Major-General. 
 
 On July 12, 1782, Washington passed through Pompton 
 with a part of his army on his way from the Hudson to 
 Philadelphia, to meet Rochambeau. But Washington had 
 not yet seen the last of what is now the territory of Passaic 
 county, for he rode from Newburg to Ringwood in April, 
 1783, for the purpose of meeting the Secretary of War to 
 make arrangements for the release of prisoners. On August 
 18, 1783, Washington, accompanied by Mrs. Washington, 
 left his headquarters at Newburg for Rocky Hill, N. J., 
 where he issued his farewell address to his army on Novem- 
 ber 2, and the probability is that he passed through Pomp- 
 ton. 
 
 Just how many men from Paterson fought in the Revo- 
 lutionary army cannot be ascertained, for in those days the 
 records were not kept with the particularity of the present 
 day. There were many of them, and many were heroes 
 whose deeds of valor and of suffering have never been told 
 or have been long since forgotten. But there were some 
 whose prominence in those days of great opportunities at- 
 tracted more than passing attention. The most prominent, 
 so far as Paterson is concerned, were the patriotic Godwins. 
 
 A FAMILY OF HEROES. 
 
 Abraham Godwin, whose father came to this country 
 from England in 1720, was born in New York city on No- 
 
THE WAB FOR INDEPENDENCE 27 
 
 vember 23, 1724, and there, on May 9, 1747, he married 
 Phebe Cool, whose father had come to this country from 
 Holland in 1722. He was employed as a carpenter in New 
 York but some eight years after his marriage determined to 
 leave and establish a home for himself in what was at that 
 time a wilderness. Among the places he visited was one 
 called Totowa by the Indians; the latter were very friendly 
 and, in fact, seemed anxious to have Godwin come and live 
 among them. He returned to New York and made known 
 his intention of going to New Jersey to live. He was at 
 that time employed by the Dey family and they were re- 
 luctant to part with so good a carpenter. So they offered to 
 give him the south side of Dey street, from Broadway to 
 the Hudson river, if he would work for them to the extent 
 of six hundred pounds. But Godwin had seen New Jersey 
 and, like so many others since, liked it better than New 
 York. He erected a house for himself on what is now the 
 southeast comer of River and Bank streets and he removed 
 thither with his family. The Ringwood company had begun 
 operations in the upper part of the covmty and they were 
 compelled to cart their product, iron, over bad roads to a 
 place on the river near Passaic; their men found Godwin's 
 house a very convenient place to stop at; in this way 
 Godwin became acquainted with the managers of the com- 
 pany and he was soon appointed their agent to purchase 
 goods for them in New York and bring these goods to Pater- 
 son, from whence they could be carted to Ringwood. That 
 he kept on good terms with the Indians is evident from the 
 fact that the Indians were in the habit of sending some of 
 their warriors to his house to look after the safety of the 
 occupants while Grodwin was away on his trips to New 
 York. After the Indians had gone Godwin changed his 
 house into a tavern and for some years did a thriving busi- 
 ness, for the population of the neighborhood was ever in- 
 
28 FOUR CHAPTERS OF PATBRSON HISTORY 
 
 creasing and there were many sightseers from New York 
 attracted by the Falls. But he was not permitted to retain 
 the monopoly, for in 1774 James Leslie opened a tavern at 
 what is now the southwest corner of Redwoods and Totowa 
 avenues. This induced Mr. Godwin to erect a more pre- 
 tentious building for his tavern, a building, subsequently 
 enlarged, which was known for many years as the Passaic 
 Hotel. In the New York Gazette, September 5, 1774, he 
 Announced: 
 
 "The subscriber has built a new and very commodious house for 
 tavernkeeping, about two hundred yards from his late dwelling house, 
 at the foot of the bridge, on the King's highway to Newark, and intends 
 "God willing, to leave all business as sbopkeeping and farming, and 
 Apply himself solely to tavernkeeping, and to keep as good a house as 
 the country will afford, viz.. Eating, drinking and lodging, with the best 
 accommodation for horses. All gentlemen and ladies who will please 
 favor him with their company, may depend upon the best and genteelest 
 treatment. Should it appear too great a distance from his house to the 
 Falls, any gentlemen or ladies who chuse to go there shall be suppUed 
 ■with horses gratis. A convenient room for dancing, and a fiddler, will 
 always be ready for the service of ladles & gentlemen who may require 
 it. Also a guide to attend any strangers, who shall show them all the 
 natural curiosities at the Falls." 
 
 Godwin built a number of houses, principally along 
 Broadway, as high up as CarroU street, and was in a fair way 
 to become a man of wealth when the shadows of the Revo- 
 lution began to appear. He a,lso erected a building on the 
 opposite side of the river, which he used for some years as 
 a store house and subsequently as a tavern. He was one of 
 the first to espouse the cause of liberty. He had a com- 
 mission from the king of England as a captain of a company 
 of horse; as he did not approve of the conduct of George III. 
 towards the American colonies he resigned his commission 
 and disbanded the company. This was a signal for a begin- 
 ning of bitter enmity on the part of those who remained 
 loyal to Great Britain. These did all they possibly could 
 vto annoy and injure Godwin and he soon found himself 
 
.THE WAB FOB INDEPENDENCE 29 
 
 compelled to sell a great deal of his real estate at prices much 
 lower than he considered its true value. 
 
 He was one of the first to enlist and he soon rose to the 
 rank of captain of marines on board the Lady Washington 
 in the harbor of New York. He was wounded, slightly it was 
 at first supposed, in an engagement at the Highlands of New 
 Jersey, but he returned to his ship. Here he received pain- 
 ful news from home. Marauding bands of English and 
 Hessians had taken possession of his house, destroyed his 
 furniture and put his family in sore straits. He begged his 
 commanding officer for a hundred men with the intention 
 of punishing the marauders, but this was refused. His 
 wound began to give more trouble and, with worried spirit 
 and intense physical suffering, he expired on February 9, 
 1777. His remains were interred with all military honors 
 at Fishkill, N. Y. 
 
 Henry Godwin, oldest son of Abraham Godwin, was 
 born February 25, 1751. He left Paterson early in life and 
 was practicing law near Fishkill, N. Y., in 1775, when he 
 enlisted in the Revolutionary army. He rose to be captain 
 of the Fifth New York regiment, which was captured by the 
 British at the surrender of Fort Montgomery, October 6, 
 1777. For three years he was kept prisoner aboard a ship 
 and then for six months was on parole on Long Island, after 
 which he was exchanged. He returned to his home in New 
 York where he died shortly after, his death being caused 
 by privations endured while he was a prisoner. His remains 
 were interred next to those of his father. 
 
 Abraham Godwin, bom July 16, 1763, was a little more 
 than thirteen years old, when he joined his brother's com- 
 pany in the Fifth New York regiment as fife major. With 
 him came another brother, David, bom March 5, 1766, 
 who was the regimental drummer. The two boys served 
 throughout the war. Abraham returned to Paterson and 
 
30 FOUR CHAPTERS OF PATERSON HISTORY 
 
 soon after sold the property he had obtained in the state 
 of New York for his services in the army, using the money 
 thus obtained in repurchasing his father's tavern which had 
 been sold by creditors during the days of the war. David 
 was employed as a carpenter for a number of years in Pat- 
 erson, after which he removed to Rhinebeck, N. Y., where 
 he died. 
 
 THE ROMANCE OF THE RINGWOOD MINES. 
 
 Robert Erskine was sent to this country by the London 
 Company to look after their mining interests in what is now 
 the upper part of Passaic county. Iron had been found in 
 the mountains there many years before and iron was what 
 was wanted not only in this country but in Europe. Iron 
 miners came from afar and near, bought lands from the 
 Indians and began digging for ore. But it was not until 
 1740 that this work was done on a large scale, for in that 
 year the Ringwood Company was formed. The company 
 worked the mines for nearly a quarter of a century and then 
 sold out to the London Company, an organization with a 
 peculiar history. Peter Hasenclever was bom in Germany, 
 but he had lived for many years in Portugal. He was in- 
 terested in the doings in this country and he thought he 
 saw a way in which he could make a great deal of money. 
 There was iron in America, and Portugal wanted iron; 
 Portugal made beads, toys and other such things as the 
 Indians in the West Indies would like to have; there was 
 a great deal of fine fruit in the West Indies, just the kind 
 the people in New York would be willing to give money 
 for. So a number of vessels might sail from Portugal to the 
 West Indies and from there to New York and make money 
 in each place, toys from Portugal, fruits from the West 
 Indies and iron from New York. But Hasenclever could not 
 make the Portuguese see things that way and so he went 
 
THE WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE 31 
 
 to London where he found people willing enough to risk 
 their money with him. But he could not find miners willing 
 to take their chances in the new country. So he went back 
 to where he had been born and there he had no trouble in 
 inducing a number of miners to go with him. With the cash 
 he had received in London he bought out the Ringwood 
 Company. But Hasenclever found that he could not make 
 any money out of his scheme and so the English, whose 
 money he was spending, brought him back and put John 
 Jacob Faesch in his place. Faesch did not do much better 
 and his place was taken by Erskine. He had about six 
 hundred men working for him, nearly all in the mines, and 
 he was making money for those who employed him, when 
 the Revolutionary war broke out. He at once espoused 
 the cause of this country and organized the workmen in his 
 employ into a company, the services of which he offered to 
 Washington, making a stipulation, however, that the men 
 should not be drafted into other regiments; he wanted to 
 keep his men together, so that in the event of a cessation 
 of hostilities, they could all return to Ringwood. He became 
 an intimate friend of Washington and was commissioned 
 Geographer and Surveyor-General of the American forces. 
 On the road leading from the Hewitt residence to the com- 
 pany's store there may be seen today two tombs, mounds 
 built of brick, on which rest two slabs. One of these slabs 
 indicates that beneath lie buried the remains of "Robert 
 Erskine, F. R. S., Geographer and Surveyor-General to the 
 Army of the United States, Son of Ralph Erskine, late 
 minister at Dunfermline, in Scotland. Bom September 7th, 
 1735. Died October 2d, 1780. Aged 45 Years and 25 
 Days." The inscription on the other slab reads: "In Mem- 
 ory of Robert Monteith, Clark to Robert Erskine, Esq. 
 Born at Dunblaine in Scotland. Died December 2, 1778, 
 Aged 33 Years." 
 
32 FOUK CHAPTERS OF PATERSON HISTORY 
 
 THE CAPTAIN OF THE GUARD. 
 
 One of the most picturesque figures on the streets of 
 early Paterson, a man who was always in demand when 
 there was any activity in military affairs, was that of Briga- 
 dier-General William Colfax, a resident for many years of 
 Pompton, but a frequent visitor in Paterson. He was bom 
 in New London, Conn., July 3, 1756, and took part in the 
 famous battle of Bunker Hill. He was subsequently trans- 
 ferred to a Connecticut regiment. He was at Valley Forge 
 when Washington, on March 17, 1778, issued an order that 
 "one hundred men are to be annexed to the Guard of the 
 Commander-in-Chief, for the purpose of forming a corps, 
 to be instructed in the maneuvres necessary to be intro- 
 duced into the army, and to serve as a model for the execu- 
 tion of them." Birth in this country was a requisite for 
 enlistment in this Guard and the motto selected was "Con- 
 quer or Die." According to the order the guards were to be 
 from five feet eight inches to five feet ten inches in height, 
 between twenty and thirty years of age, of "robust consti- 
 tution, well-limbed, formed for activity, and men of estab- 
 lished character for sobriety and fidelity." In this guard 
 Colfax was lieutenant and subsequently captain comman- 
 dant, succeeding Captain Caleb Gibbs, of Rhode Island. 
 
 Captain Colfax was wounded three times. On the first 
 occasion, as he was about to give a word of command, a 
 bullet struck his uplifted sword and, glancing down the 
 blade, injured his hand. Shortly after a buUet passed 
 through his right forearm, between the bones, but doing no 
 injiuy to them. On the third occasion the captain was on 
 horseback when a bullet went through his body, between the 
 abdomen and the hip. In the excitement of the battle he 
 paid no attention to the wound until some soldiers saw 
 blood issuing from his boot. He rode to the field hospital, 
 where the wound "\vas found to be more serious than had 
 
THE WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE 33 
 
 been at first apprehended. He lay sick for some time in the 
 hospital, but when General Washington offered him a fur- 
 lough, that he might go home until fully recovered, he de- 
 clined it, preferring to remain with the army. Some time 
 afterwards, while the army was in winter quarters at Mor- 
 ristown, he accepted the furlough and rode on horseback all 
 the way to his home in Connecticut. He returned very 
 much improved in health and remained with the army until 
 the close of the war. 
 
 At the surrender of Cornwallis Captain Colfax occu- 
 pied a prominent position near Washington and Rocham- 
 beau, having been placed there by the orders of Washing- 
 ton. It is but natural that in after years he should have 
 been fond of detailing that momentous scene. He said that 
 the surrender took place while the band was playing "Yan- 
 kee Doodle." Cornwallis kept away on the plea of not 
 feeling well, and sent General O'Hara to tender the sword 
 of surrender. The American and French armies were drawn 
 up, facing each other, Washington at the head of one and 
 Rochambeau at the head of the other. General O'Hara did 
 not fancy the task assigned to him; he hesitated between 
 tendering the sword to the general commanding the rebel- 
 lious subjects of his king or tendering it to the general of a 
 nation with which England had had so many bloody wars. 
 But he apparently concluded that it would be less difficult 
 to surrender to a Frenchman. So he seized the sword by 
 the blade and presented the hilt to the French general, 
 when the latter exclaimed, "Me no Washington; me Roch- 
 ambeau," just as if that bit of information were at all 
 necessary. O'Hara then turned to Washington and com- 
 pleted the surrender. 
 
 That Captain Colfax was a favorite of General Wash- 
 ington and also of Mrs. Washington is evident from two 
 keepsakes still in possession of the Colfax family. One of 
 
34 FOUR CHAPTERS OF PATBRSON HISTORY 
 
 them is an old flint-lock pistol, presented by Washington to 
 Colfax; there were two of them when the presentation was 
 made, but one was lost some years ago. The pistol is ten 
 inches long, the stock ornamented with silver filagree work, 
 and apparently made in Holland, judging from the inscrip- 
 tion, "Thone, Amsterdam." The other keepsake is a net, 
 used to confine the hair when men wore their hair in cues; 
 it was worn for many years by the Captain of the Com- 
 mander's Guard. It is made of linen and was knitted by 
 the hands of Mrs. Washington and by her presented to 
 Colfax. 
 
 Many people who have not passed far beyond the 
 meridian of life still remember the old house, with the roof 
 sloping almost to the ground in the rear, which stood on the 
 road above Pompton, about a quarter of a mile from where 
 the road to Wanaque and Greenwood Lake branches from 
 the main road. In Revolutionary days this house was the 
 scene of many social festivities, in which Washington and 
 his soldiers took part. It was occupied by the family of 
 Jasper Schuyler, a most attractive member of which evi- 
 dently was the daughter, Hester. Although she was kind 
 and pleasant to all the military men who sought hospitality 
 and entertainment beneath her father's roof, she showed 
 a marked preference to the gallant soldier who commanded 
 the Guard of the Commander-in-Chief. That this friend- 
 ship developed into a sentiment stronger than mere liking 
 is evident from the fact that immediately after the war 
 Captain Colfax repaired to Pompton and there, on August 
 27, 1783, he married Hester Schuyler. 
 
 Fifty-five years and a little over after this date the 
 remains of William Colfax, dressed in his uniform as Briga- 
 dier-General, were laid in the family burial plot and there 
 may be seen today the shaft which marks his last resting- 
 place. Those fifty-five years were filled with toil, ease and 
 
THE WAE FOR INDEPENDENCE K 
 
 honor for the most prominent Revolutionary character of 
 what is now Passaic county — toil being his share as a farmer, 
 ease his share when he had accumulated enough of this 
 world's goods to render him independent, and honor his 
 share as justice of the peace, judge of the Court of Common 
 Pleas, assemblyman and Brigadier-General of the Second 
 Division of Infantry of Bergen county. Only once were the 
 peaceful pursuits interrupted during all these years; in 1812 
 there was another war with England and Brigadier-General 
 Colfax had a command at Sandy Hook. He remained in 
 the service of his country until peace was again declared and 
 then returned to Pompton and his family. In 1824 he was 
 among those who took part in the welcome to Lafayette 
 on that general's return visit to this country; he led the 
 local military in the great parade in Newark and accompa- 
 nied the French general to Hackensack, then along the 
 Goffle towards Paterson and he saw the agitation of the 
 visitor there when he noticed the rude memorial, only a 
 plain board with a suitable inscription, placed there by 
 some of his former soldiers, which indicated the spot where - 
 Lafayette's tent had stood during the dark days of the 
 Revolution ; he led the march through the streets of Pater- 
 son and partook of the banquet tendered to the French 
 general by the grateful and patriotic citizens of Paterson. 
 
 Brigadier-General Colfax died September 9, 1838, aged 
 eighty-two years and two months. His body was escorted 
 to the grave by the military of Paterson; the old Dutch 
 Reformed church at Pompton never held a larger sorrowing 
 multitude than listened to the funeral oration dehvered by 
 the Rev. Isaac S. Demarest. 
 
 A HEEO FROM PASSAIC PARK. 
 
 There was still another resident of Passaic county who 
 attained eminence during the Revolution. His name was 
 
36 FOUR CHAPTERS OF PATERSON HISTORY 
 
 Daniel Niel and in early life he was a merchant in New 
 York city. He removed to Acquackanonk about 1773 and 
 kept a store where the park is now located at Passajc Bridge. 
 At the outbreak of the war those of his neighbors who still 
 remained loyal to England made hfe as unpleasant for him 
 as possible and he sustained severe pecuniary losses. He 
 joined an Essex coimty regiment in July, 1775, and became 
 adjutant; he was transferred to the artillery and as captain- 
 lieutenant of such, at the head of his corps, he was killed, 
 January 3, 1777, at the battle of Princeton. 
 
 REMAINED LOYAL TO ENGLAND. 
 
 But all the people who lived hereabouts in 1775 were 
 not anxious to see this a free country; there were some who 
 preferred loyalty to the home country to freedom in their 
 new homes, but it is pleasant to record that there were not 
 many of them. Two, who were the most prominent, were 
 Robert Drummond and Joseph Ryerson. Drummond was 
 a wealthy merchant and ship-owner at Acquakanonk Land- 
 ing. When trouble between this country and England first 
 became apparent, his thoughts and counsel were with the 
 American cause; he was a member of the Provincial Con- 
 gress and its speaker for two terms, but when war broke out 
 he tendered his services to his king and organized the 
 Second Battalion of New Jersey Volunteers and was com- 
 missioned its major. He enlisted about two hundred men, 
 principally from the Bergen county side of the river. He 
 saw service in the South, where most of his men fell victims 
 to disease consequent upon the climate. After the war he 
 removed to England, where he died in 1789. As a reward 
 for his services he received a pension, and also a farm in 
 Nova Scotia; his brother, David, espoused the cause of this 
 country and his reward was a farm in New York state. 
 
 Joseph Ryerson was born at Pequannock, February 28, 
 1761. He entered the army as a cadet when he was only 
 
THE WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE 37 
 
 fifteen years of age and rose to the lieutenancy in the Prince 
 of Wales's regiment; as such he distinguished himself at 
 Charleston. His reward was a tract of land in Ontario. He 
 and his three sons saw service in the war of 1812, after 
 which he returned to Ontario, where he died August 9, 
 1854. 
 
The Early White Settlers. 
 
The Early White Settlers 
 
 The land at present occupied by the city of Paterson, 
 and a great deal of land on all sides of it, belonged to the 
 Indians until March 28, 1679, for on that date the following 
 deed was given : 
 
 Know all men by these Presents that I Captahem Indian Sachem 
 and Chief, Owner of a certain tract of Land Lying and toeing upon 
 Pisawyck Kiver knowne by the name of Haquequenunck, Have for my 
 Selle my Heires and Assignes, in the Presence and by the aprobation 
 and consent of Memlserean, Mindawas, Ghonnajea, Indians and Sachems 
 of the said Contry, for an In Consideration of a certain Prcel of goods, 
 Blankets, kettles powder and other Goods to my Content and Satisfac- 
 tion In hand paid, by Hans Dederick, Gerret Garretson, Walling 
 Jacobs and Hendrick George, The Receipt whereof I do hereby acknowl- 
 edge to have received to my Content and Satisfaction given, alienated 
 bargained and sold unto the said Hans Dedericks, Gerrit Gerritsen, 
 Walling Jacobs, Hendrick George and their Associates all and singular 
 the abovementioned tract of land and the meadows adjoining beginning 
 from the northernmost bounds of the Towne of Newark from the Lower- 
 most part thereof to the uppermost as fare as the steep Rocks or 
 Moimtaines, and from thence to the Run all along the said 
 
 Pisawick River to the White Oak Tree standing neere the said River 
 on the north side of a small brook, and from thence up to 
 
 the steep Rocks or Mountains, Which said tree was marked by the said 
 Captaham In the prsence of La Prairie Surveyor-General. 
 
 This deed was given by the Lenni Lenape, a tribe of 
 aborigines who roamed all over New Jersey, and the deed 
 was good enough as far as it went, but Indian deeds never 
 went very far, as the purchasers mentioned in the deed 
 soon ascertained to be the case in this particular instance. 
 King Charles II. of England had made a present in 1664 to 
 his brother, James, Duke of York, afterwards King James 
 II., of all the land now comprised in New England, New 
 York and New Jersey, and the Duke of York had given title 
 
42 FOUE CHAPTERS OF PATBRSON HISTORY 
 
 to New Jersey to two of his friends and from these the Lords 
 Proprietors, there were twenty-four of them, obtained the 
 whole of New Jersey. So the men who had bought the 
 lands from the Indians associated themselves with several 
 others, and on March 16, 1684, the land passed from the 
 Lords Proprietors into the possession of "Hans Didericke, 
 Garrett Garretson, Walling Jacobs, Elias Machielson, Hart- 
 man Machielson, Johannes Machielson, Cornelius Machiel- 
 son, Adrian Post, Uriah Tomason, Cornelius Rowlafson, 
 Symon Jacobs, John Hendrick Speare, Cornelius Lubbers, 
 and Abraham Bookey," for fifty pounds cash down, fourteen 
 pounds a year and one half of all the gold and silver that 
 might be mined on the property. The sale of this land is 
 generally referred to as the Acquakanonk patent. The deed 
 conveyed about 4,000 of the 5,357 acres in Paterson, all of 
 the city, excepting the First and Second wards and a portion 
 of the Seventh ward. 
 
 DIVIDING THE TRACT. 
 
 If the fourteen owners of the newly-acquired property 
 had divided it up into equal shares, every one of them 
 would have had more real estate than he would have known 
 what to do with ; accordingly each took a hundred acre lot, 
 the rest being held in common, until the increase in popula- 
 tion called for another division. After the second parcel of 
 fourteen lots had been distributed, the owners laid out four- 
 teen lots along the river and called these lots Goutum, after 
 a village in North Holland, a name subsequently corrupted 
 into Gotham. The next parcelling, about 1701, divided up 
 the property running along the river from near where the 
 New York, Susquehanna & Western railroad crosses the 
 river near Dundee Lake to Garret Mountain above the 
 Falls. 
 
 A division made in 1714, however, is of more interest 
 to the people of Paterson. The owners of the property 
 
THE EARLY WHITE SETTLERS 43 
 
 drew a straight line on a piece of paper, the beginning of 
 a map made with pen and ink; the straight line is now East 
 Eighteenth street, although for many years it was called 
 York avenue. Then they divided up the property lying 
 on both sides of this line, thirteen plots on one side and 
 fifteen on the other. This map is reproduced on the next 
 page. In order that the lettering may be understood by 
 people of the present day, accustomed to a different kind of 
 writing, the following explanation will be of assistance: 
 
 On the east side of the dividing line Lot No. 1 belonged 
 to Frans (Francis) Post, being south of People's Park, 
 No. 2 to Hessel Pieterse, No, 3 to Abram Van Riper, No. 4 
 to Elias Vreeland, No. 5 to Arie (Adrian) Post, No. 6 to 
 John Van Blarcom, his northerly line being the present 
 Park avenue, No. 7 to Simeon Van Winkle, extending to 
 Thirteenth avenue on the north and the river on the east. 
 No. 8 to Magiel (Michael) Vreeland, No. 9 to Simeon Van 
 Winkle, between Twelfth avenue and the river. No. 10 to 
 Abram Van Riper, No. 11 to Henderic (Henry) Spier, No. 
 12 to Michael Vreeland, No. 13 to John Bradberry, No. 14 
 to Henderic Garretse (Henry Garrison), at Riverside, No. 15 
 to Michael Vreeland. On the west side of the dividing line 
 No. 1, near the Passaic Rolling Mill, belonged to Michael 
 Vreeland, No. 2 to Elias Vreeland, No. 3 to Henry Post, No. 
 4 to Jacobus Post, No. 5 to Hessel Pieterse and Gerrit Van 
 Wagenen, No. 6 to John Van Blarcom, No. 7 to Abram 
 Thomasse, No. 8 to Henderic Spier, Nos. 9 and 10 to Derrick 
 (Richard) Van Houten, Nos. 11 and 12 to Adrian Post and 
 No. 13 to Cornelis Garritse (Cornelius Garrison). 
 
 When it came to dividing up what is now known as the 
 over-the-river section of Paterson the early settlers again 
 had recourse to paper and ink and a crude attempt at mak- 
 ing a map. Property including Garret mountain and the 
 territory lying along the river as far up as the Peckamin 
 
FIRST MAP OF PATERSON. 
 
 S. of rjd Arc 
 
 Set. 7th and 
 8lb Ave^ 
 
 Ncarjd Ave, 
 
46 POUR CHAPTERS OF PATERSON HISTORY 
 
 river was purchased because it was feared that timber would 
 soon be scarce in Paterson. The property belonged to Peter 
 Sonmans, a son of one of the East Jersey Proprietors, and 
 he sold it, November 27, 1711, to Frans Post, Harmanus 
 Gerritse, Thomas Juriantse, Christopher Steenmetz, Cornelis 
 Doremus, Peter Poulusse and Hessel Pieterse, for six hun- 
 dred and sixty pounds. It was customary in those days for 
 purchasers of property to pay an annual rent in addition 
 to the purchase price; in this case the price paid was con- 
 sidered so large that the annual quit-rent was made as 
 small as possible and so it was fixed at one peppercorn a 
 year. 
 
 BUYING LAND FROM THE INDIANS. 
 
 The early settlers, especially in the northern part of 
 New Jersey, were honest in their dealings with the Indians. 
 The right of the red man to the soil was recognized, despite 
 deeds given by the Lords Proprietors and this right con- 
 tinued to be recognized long after the Revolution. Little by 
 little the Indians sold their lands to the white settlers and 
 went to the western country, many from New Jersey going 
 to Green Bay, Wisconsin. The few Indians that were left 
 were anxious to join their people in the West and so in 
 1822 the state of New Jersey made a bargain with the Indi- 
 ans by which the latter received $3,551.23 in return for the 
 last piece of land not then owned by the white settlers. 
 The Indians used this money in going West and in buying 
 land there. Ten years later they remembered that they 
 still had the right to hunt and fish in New Jersey, for when- 
 ever they had sold land it was agreed that they should be 
 permitted to continue hunting and fishing. There were 
 only forty New Jersey Indians left at Green Bay and these 
 thought New Jersey ought to pay them two thousand dollars 
 and they would call everything square. Two thousand dol- 
 lars looked like a big sum to these Indians but they received 
 
THE EARLY WHITE SETTLERS 47 
 
 it promptly, thus ending the last claim they had to land and 
 rights in New Jersey. They wrote a letter of thanks to 
 New Jersey, in which they said: 
 
 Not a drop of our blood have you spilled In battle — not an acre 
 of land have you taken but with our consent. These are the facts 
 and we need say no more. We wish that other states where Indians 
 still live would do as New Jersey has done. Nothing but blessings can 
 fall upon her from the lips of a liCnni Lenape. 
 
 NAMES THE INDIANS LEFT US. 
 
 A number of places near Paterson still have the names 
 given to them by the Lenni Lenape. Among these are the 
 following: 
 
 Acquackanonk. This word is made up the Indian ach- 
 quoa-ni-can, meaning a brush net; hanne, a rapid stream; 
 onk, a place, and so it means a place in a rapid stream where 
 fish are taken with a brush net. As in numerous other 
 places in the Passaic river the Indians had built a V-shaped 
 dam; at the sharp point they placed a lot of brush; the 
 fish in coming down the stream became entangled in this 
 brush and the Indians secured them by suddenly pulling the 
 brush out of the water. Many of the Dutch settlers called 
 the place Slooterdam, which means a dam with a gate in it. 
 Others tried to pronounce it the way the Indians did. Now, 
 the Indian was not very plain pronouncing his words; in 
 fact, his speech sounded as if his tongue were thicker than 
 ours or as if he always had several pieces of chewing gum 
 in his mouth. So the early settlers had an easy time of it 
 spelling Acquackanonk,. for they could spell it any way and 
 none could say they were wrong. Glancing over the early 
 records conveys the impression that the early settlers tried 
 to spell the name in a different way each time they were 
 called upon to write it. Here are some of the different 
 spellings found in official records: 1678 — Aquickenuncke, 
 Haquicqueenock; 1679 — Haquequenunck, Aquegnonke; 
 1680 — ^Hockquekanung; 1682 — Acqueyquinunke; 1683 — 
 
48 FOUR OHAPTEKS OF PATERSON HISTORY 
 
 Aquaninoncke, Hockquecanung ; 1684 — Aquaquanuncke ; 
 1685 — Aquickanuncke, Haquequenunck ; 1692 — Acquica- 
 nunck; 1693 — Acquiggenonck ; Hockquickanon; 1694 — 
 Hackquickanon ; 1696 — Aqueckanonge; Achquickenoungh, 
 Acquachanongue, Achquickanunk, Hackquickenunk; 1689 
 — Aqueckkonunque, Aquoechononque, Achquikanuncque, 
 Achquickenonk; 1706 — Acquikanong; 1707 — Hockquacka- 
 nong, Hockquackanonk; 1714 — Achquegenonck ; 1736 — 
 Haghquagenonck; 1737 — Acquagkanonk. In later years, 
 when people were too busy to bother with so many letters, 
 the place was called Quacknick. 
 
 Campgaw, or Camp-Gaw, as it is frequently spelled. 
 Indian, kaaka, wild goose, and gam, a hedgehog, perhaps 
 the names of two Indians combined into one. 
 
 Communipaw. Indian, gamunk, on the other side of 
 the river, and pe-auke, water-land, meaning the big landing- 
 place from the other side of the river. 
 
 Goffle. At this place two roads forked, one leading to 
 Hackensack and the other to Pompton. The Indians called 
 the place lalchauwiechen, which means the fork of a road. 
 The Dutch translated the word "fork" (into their own 
 language, gaffle; from gaffle to goffle is easy enough. 
 
 Hackensack. Indian haki, place ; gischi, now ; achgook, 
 snake; a place with plenty of snakes. 
 
 Hoboken. Indian, hopoacan, a pipe. 
 
 Hohokus. Indian, ho, a shout; hokes, bark of a tree. 
 According to the Indians the cold was so intense at this 
 place that the bark of the trees cracked with a loud noise. 
 
 Mahwah. Indian for field. 
 
 Macopin. Indian, macopanaackhan, place where 
 pumpkins grow. 
 
 Moonachie. Indian, munhacke, a badger. 
 
 Pamrapo. Indian, pemapuchk, a big rock. 
 
 Paramus. Indian, a place for wild turkeys. 
 
THE EARLY WHITE SETTLEBS 49 
 
 Pascack. Indian, where the roads divide. 
 
 Passaic. Indian, pack, to split; ic, where. Perhaps 
 indicating the division of the land into a valley, or the 
 place where the river splits the rocks at the Falls. There 
 have been a number of changes in the spelling of this word. 
 It started out with Passaic in 1666, but changed the same 
 year into Passaick; in 1676 it was Pasayak, in 1679 Passa- 
 wack, Pisawick, Pissaick; in 1682 Pasawicke, Passaiack; in 
 1686 Pissaik; in 1695 Passaya, in 1713 Passaiack. 
 
 Peckman. A small river, near Little Falls, the proper 
 spelling being Peckamin. Indian, pakihm, cranberries. 
 
 Pequannock, with all its different spellings. Indian, 
 pauqu-un-auke, land cleared for ploughing. 
 
 Preakness. Indian, per-ukunces, a young buck. 
 
 Sicomac. Indian, kitchi, great, and kanik, enclosed 
 land. 
 
 Singack. Indian, schinghacki, a flat country, or schiri' 
 gask, a marshy meadow. 
 
 Slank. Indian, sihillen, where the river subsides, and 
 hannek, a flowing river, the backwater from a freshet. 
 
 Succasunna. Indian, suken, black, and achsun, stone, 
 black iron ore. 
 
 Totowa. Indian, tetauwi, between, that is, land be- 
 tween the river and the mountain. Or, perhaps the Lennie 
 Lenape borrowed this word from the Oee totawew, mean- 
 ing great strength, as shown by the river at the Falls. 
 
 Wanaque or Wynockie. Indian, winak, sassafras, and 
 aki, place. 
 
 Wagaraw. Indian, woakeu, crooked, and aki, place, 
 that is, where the land is crooked, due to the bend in the 
 river. 
 
 Watchung. Indian, wachtschu; a hill, or wadchu, a 
 mountain. 
 
 Watsessing. Indian, wadchu, mountain, and achsun, 
 stone, a stony mountain. 
 
Struggle for Industrial Supremacy. 
 
Struggle for Industrial Supremacy. 
 
 Benjamin Franklin wrote in 1760 that it would take 
 "some centuries" to populate this country as far as the 
 Mississippi river, and that "our present colonies will not, 
 during the period we have mentioned, find themselves in a 
 condition to manufacture, even for their own inhabitants, 
 to any considerable degree, much less for those who are 
 settling behind them." In 1768 he wrote that manufactures 
 were not desirable excepting for the purpose of making use 
 of the time of the children and servants of farmers. John 
 Adams wrote in 1780: "America will not make manufac- 
 tures! enough for her own consumption these thousand 
 years." George Washington said that manufactures were 
 well enough for "women and children, without taking the 
 really necessary hand from tilling the earth." All of which 
 tends to show that even men with great brains make mis- 
 takes, especially when they try to look into the future. 
 
 ALEXANDER HAMIim)N'S IDEAS. 
 
 Alexander Hamilton did not agree with these three 
 great men; he believed in manufacturing in this country 
 and, from what he did and from what he said in his letters, 
 it appears that he was willing to do it all. In 1790 he was 
 Secretary of the Treasury and the men who had been 
 elected in the various states to make laws asked him to tell 
 them what could be done towards manufacturing in this 
 coimtry; the men who asked this question, like most of the 
 other people here at that time, believed that America was 
 good only to raise crops of grain and fruit, and so Hamilton 
 
W FOUR CHAPTERS OF PATERSON HISTORT 
 
 was asked to answer the question put to him on the supposi- 
 tion that America might have to do some manufacturing on 
 account of possible wars in the future. Hamilton set to 
 work and wrote a long report, which he sent to the law- 
 makers on December 5, 1791. In this he said that there 
 were a great many articles which America could make and 
 that he knew of some men who had met and who were 
 ready to put up a great deal of money to start factories. 
 But he did not say that he was on© of these men, which, 
 however, was the fact. At that time all cotton brought into 
 this country had to pay a tax to the government; Hamilton 
 thought this tax ought to be done away with; he went 
 further and said that men making cotton here ought to re- 
 ceive money from the government to help them along and 
 then added that this money should not be paid to all per- 
 sons, but only to such as had formed a company to weave 
 cotton. Hamilton did his best to take care of the company 
 he was about to form. Some time later he let it be known 
 that this company was ready to receive men who were 
 ready to join it, that is, men who had money. Hamilton 
 was a great man and people believed what he said and so it 
 was not long before men with money were heard from, all 
 anxious to be partners of Hamilton. Even some of the 
 Dutch bankers in Amsterdam, in Holland, wrote letters and 
 sent money in order to become partners. Newspapers in 
 New York, Philadelphia and Boston printed long articles, 
 telling wonderful stories about the money that would be 
 sure to be made by the "New National Manufactory," as 
 it was called. There is good reason to believe that Hamil- 
 ton wrote some of these articles. People were next told 
 that the big factory was to be built in New York, New 
 Jersey or Pennsylvania and this brought more money from 
 New York and Philadelphia. In this way altogether over a 
 hundred thousand dollars was promised. According to Ham- 
 ilton's letters he never had any idea of building the factory 
 
STKUUGLE FOB INDUSTRIAL SUPREMACY 65 
 
 anywhere else than at the falls of the Passaic, in the state 
 of New Jersey, at a place then called Acquackanonk. But 
 Hamilton did not make public this idea of his at the time, 
 for fear that some of the men who did not Kve near the 
 Passaic Falls might not contribute the money he expected 
 from them. 
 
 THE BIRTH OF THE SOCIETY. 
 
 Feeling certain that there would be plenty of money 
 for the factory, Hamilton next wrote a proposed law accord- 
 ing to which the name of the new company was to be the 
 Society for Establishing Useful Manufactures; this society 
 was to be given the right to build factories and also to start 
 a town and the name of this town was to be Paterson. Why 
 Paterson? Because Paterson was the name of the governor 
 of New Jersey and Hamilton wanted the lawmakers of New 
 Jersey to make the law he wanted and he thought it would 
 help him if he were to caU the new town after the governor. 
 When the New Jersey lawmakers took the matter up they 
 were glad to obUge the great Secretary of the Treasury of 
 the United States and the governor of the state of New 
 Jersey and so Hamilton got all he wanted. 
 
 Before the law was passed there was a great deal of 
 talk among the lawmakers. It was settled that the new 
 town of Paterson with its big factories and its own govern- 
 ment was to be placed somewhere in New Jersey, but just 
 where the law did not say. Every member of the legisla- 
 ture wanted it in his own county. Lawmakers who saw 
 that chances of getting the town in the county they repre- 
 sented were poor made a fight against it. The people in 
 Middlesex county saw that their chances were poor and so 
 they did not want any other county to win. They thought 
 that a million dollars was too much money for any company 
 to have, and the law provided that the Society might have 
 
56 FOUR CHAPTERS OF PATBRSON HISTORY 
 
 just that much. But the funniest objection came from a 
 man who thought that it was wrong to give the Society the 
 right to build canals; he said that some lunatic might 
 think it would be fine if a canal were built from the Dela- 
 ware river to Raritan bay and that, if that were done, 
 many farms would be cut into two pieces so that farmers 
 could not get from one part to the other; it would kill all 
 the fruit trees and make everybody poor along the line of 
 the canal. Forty years afterwards that very canal was 
 built, not by the Society, but by other men, but none of the 
 horrible things happened which the man from Middlesex 
 county had seen in the future. After a great deal of talk 
 the lawmakers voted and the result was that Hamilton won 
 and the law, or charter, was passed, on November 22, 1791. 
 
 NAMING THE TOWN. 
 
 Who was William Paterson, after whom Paterson was 
 named? He was an Irishman, who arrived in this country 
 in 1745, when he was two years old. His parents took him 
 to Trenton, where they lived for some time; afterwards 
 they moved to Princeton and then to Somerville. He went 
 to coUege at Princeton and then studied law in the office 
 of Richard Stockton, one of the men who signed the Decla- 
 ration of Independence. In 1775, when this country had 
 begun its war for freedom, he was elected to the Provincial 
 Congress, the body of men who made laws for the young 
 republic, and he was chosen secretary. He was made at- 
 torney-general of New Jersey and in 1790 elected governor 
 of the state. Afterwards Washington made him one of the 
 judges of the Supreme Court of the United States. So 
 Paterson has no reason to be ashamed of the name it was 
 given. Paterson died in Albany, New York, September 9, 
 1806. 
 
STRUGGLE FOB INDUSTRIAL SUPREMACY 57 
 
 THE state's unprofitable INVESTMENT. 
 
 A few days after the lawmakers of New Jersey had 
 made the law creating the Society for Establishing Useful 
 Manufactures they made another law by which $10,000 
 was taken from the state treasury and invested in the stock 
 of the Society. (The state probably never made a poorer 
 investment. It subsequently sold this stock to the So- 
 ciety, taking in exchange some acres of what even in those 
 days was called Sandy Hill. In later days, when the popula- 
 tion of Paterson had increased a great deal, the Sandy Hill 
 property was still considered about as poor as could be 
 found in the whole city. In order to get rid of it the state 
 sold it to various churches for burying grounds, the uniform 
 price paid being fifty dollars an acre. This was the origin 
 of the Sandy Hill cemeteries; it is only a few years ago 
 since the remains of the dead were removed from these 
 burying grounds and the property bought by the city.) 
 
 THE society's FIRST OPERATIONS. 
 
 Yet with everything that had been done for the Society 
 the total amount of money promised was only $243,000 in- 
 stead of the million dollars Hamilton and his friends had 
 looked for. Of the money promised $15,000 was never 
 paid. 
 
 The members of the Society met in New Brunswick on 
 the last Monday in November, 1791, and on the 9th of the 
 following month elected officers at a meeting also held in 
 New Brunswick. William Duer, a New York merchant, 
 was elected governor and John Bayard deputy governor. 
 Duer was related to Hamilton by marriage and it was Ham- 
 ilton who made him governor. At this same meeting a 
 letter was received from Hamilton in which he told about 
 engaging a number of men as superintendents of the factory 
 
58 FOUR CHAPTEES OF PATERSON HISTORT 
 
 and, as these men had all worked in cotton mills, it was 
 plain that the Society was to make cotton goods. The di- 
 rectors approved of everything Hamilton had done. On 
 the following day the directors agreed to put advertisements 
 in newspapers asking men to answer who had lots for sale 
 on which factories might be built. On January 19 the di- 
 rectors agreed to bring men from England, forty or fifty at 
 least, men who knew how to weave and print cotton goods, 
 and they paid Hamilton and the governor fifty thousand 
 dollars to get these men to this country. 
 
 It will be seen that Hamilton and his friends were 
 getting along very nicely, but all they had done was only on 
 paper. They had a charter, but the charter was like the 
 man who was "all dressed up and nowhere to go." The 
 place where Paterson with its big factory was to be put had 
 not been selected. So, on January 20 the directors decided 
 that Paterson and its factory should be located on one of 
 three rivers, the Delaware, the Raritan or the Passaic, and 
 a committee was appointed to decide which. 
 
 At a meeting on the following day the directors con- 
 cluded that they had better get a little more money. The 
 charter of the Society gave them the right to make a hun- 
 dred thousand dollars by running a lottery and so the di- 
 rectors decided to have a lottery. Tickets were to be sold 
 at a few dollars each and each ticket wa;s to be numbered ; 
 then some day a lot of numbers were to be placed in a 
 wheel and the first number taken out by chance would give 
 the man who had that number on his ticket a big cash 
 prize. There were a number of smaller prizes and the whole 
 thing was fixed up in a way which was all right in those 
 days but for which men would be sent to jail if they tried 
 it at the present day. On April 20 the directors gave up 
 the idea of having a lottery, as nobody seemed anxious to 
 buy tickets. 
 
STRUGGLE FOR INDUSTRIAL SUPREMACY 59 
 
 FIRST MEETING IN PATERSON. 
 
 Hamilton was present at three meetings of the directors 
 held in Newark on May 16, 17 and 18. It was then decided 
 that the town of Paterson should be located on the Passaic 
 river, between the residence of "Mr. Isaac Gouvemeur near 
 the town of Newark and Chatham Bridge." That was a 
 poor way of saying "at the Passaic Falls," but the directors 
 knew what they meant. So, on July 4, 1792, the directors 
 came to where Paterson is located today; they brought 
 with them the book in which they had written down all 
 they had done; this same book, in which is written the 
 advice of Alexander Hamilton as this advice fell from his 
 lips, is still used at the present day to record the doings of 
 the Society; there are only a few leaves left to write on, 
 but as the directors of the Society meet very seldom, it may 
 last some years yet; it is kept in the vaults of the water 
 company on Ellison street and it is from this book that the 
 writer has received a great deal of the information con- 
 tained in this chapter. 
 
 When the directors of the Society came to the place 
 they had agreed to call Paterson, they found very few houses 
 here. They met General Schuyler at the house of Abraham 
 Godwin and the general and Mr. Godwin took them around 
 and showed them the country. They put their heads to- 
 gether and agreed to dig two canals from above the Falls to 
 make use of the water to turn the wheels of the factory. 
 One of these canals was to empty into the river near Pas- 
 saic and the other near Newark and it was at the latter 
 place that Governor Duer said the factory ought to be built. 
 Hamilton wanted to know where the money was coming 
 from to dig all these miles of canals and when he insisted 
 that the factory should be built a great deal nearer the 
 Falls they all agreed with him. They then bought about 
 seven hundred acres above and below the Falls, paying 
 
60 FOUR CHAPTERS OF PATBRSON HISTORY 
 
 therefor the sum of three thousand, two hundred and nine- 
 ty-three pounds, eight shillings and three pence. On July 5 
 the directors resolved to build at once: a mill for spinning 
 cotton; a print works for cotton goods, calicoes; another 
 mill for spinning and also for weaving, and a number of 
 houses for the people who were to work in these mills. On 
 the following day they decided that the number of houses 
 for the workmen should be fifty, that each house should be 
 twenty-four by eighteen feet in size, with cellar and garret, 
 and that these houses, together with a quarter of an acre of 
 land each, should be rented for $12.60 a year each or sold for 
 $250 to any workmen who would agree to pay that sum 
 within twenty years. Bargains just as good for more ex- 
 pensive houses were offered to the superintendents. The 
 directors also agreed to put up a saw mill at once. 
 
 BIG IDEAS BUT LITTLE MONET. 
 
 To do all this work it was necessary to have an en- 
 gineer and so the Society engaged the services of Major 
 Charles Pierre L'Enfant, a Frenchman who had come to this 
 country in Lafayette's army. The major was a friend of 
 Hamilton and of Wa^ington and he had just laid out the 
 city of Washington. He had some big ideas and when he 
 had looked the ground over and told what he was going to 
 do the newspapers stated that Paterson would be a city 
 that would "far surpass anything yet seen in this country." 
 He intended to lay out Paterson as he had Washington, the 
 central point here being a small elevation between what are 
 now Main, Grand and Ward streets and sloping down almost 
 to where the Erie tracks now are. The hill was afterwards 
 known as Colt's Hill. From this hill were to be laid out a 
 large number of avenues running to distant points of the 
 future city. 
 
 The newspapers of the day spoke in high terms of the 
 future of the "National Manufactory," and the big city that 
 
STKUCKJLE FOR INDUSTRIAL SUPREMACY 61 
 
 was to be attached to it. One article, wiiich took up about 
 three columns, was published in several newspapers; it was 
 probably written by Hamilton. The following are some of 
 the articles that were to be made: cotton, woolens, paper 
 for books and for walls, hats of straw and felt, shoes and 
 leather goods generally, carriages,, pottery of all kinds, 
 bricks, iron pots, steel buttons. The land in and about 
 Paterson became very valuable. 
 
 All this sounds very big, even in the present day of big 
 doings, but the dreams of Hamilton and his friends were 
 not always very pleasant. A great deal of success was ex- 
 pected to come on account of the wealth and influence of 
 William Duer, the governor of the Society, but there had 
 been trouble in the markets of New York and Duer found 
 himself in jail because he could not pay his debts. Of 
 course, Hamilton did not like this, for Duer was his friend 
 and a jail is not a good place in which to direct the putting 
 up of buildings fifteen miles away. Of all the money that 
 had been promised the Society had received only $60,000 
 and so the Society was short of cash. The banks in New York 
 did not want to lend the Society any money; at last $5,000 
 was received as a loan from the Bank of New York, but 
 only after Hamilton had given his written security as he 
 did when he wrote to the president of the bank: "To you, 
 my dear sir, I will not scruple to say, in confidence, that the 
 bank of New York shall suffer no diminution of its pecuni- 
 ary facilities from any accommodation it may afford to the 
 Society in question." 
 
 THE FIRST MILL IN PATERSON. 
 
 In the mean time Major L'Enfant had been making 
 more plans; he wanted to build a big raceway, running from 
 above the Falls to where Passaic now stands; this raceway 
 was to be built of solid masonry, high up in the air, and 
 
62 FOUR CHAPTERS OF PATERSON HISTORY 
 
 there were to be mills and factories along both sides. So 
 the Society employied the major to build a tavern and then 
 got rid of him. In his place came Peter Colt, a man with no 
 big ideas but with a great deal of common sense. He got 
 together a number of men with picks and shovels and built 
 a raceway just about the way people built them in those 
 days, with no masonry or fancy trimmings. But the direc- 
 tors of the Society were anxious to begin spinning cotton, 
 for the men were here for that purpose, and the directors 
 would not wait until the water was let into the raceway to 
 turn the Wheels of the big factory yet to be built. Peter 
 Colt therefore put up a small frame mUl, in which the power 
 needed to turn the wheels was furnished by an ox; and so it 
 happened that the first mill ever built in Paterson to spin 
 cotton was named the Bull Mill. Then work was begun 
 on the big mill; a street was laid out in front of where it was 
 to be built and this street was named Mill street and it has 
 that name to the present day. The mill was built of stone 
 and wood and was four stories high; on top of it was a 
 cupola and in this hung a bell which called the men to work. 
 A building, where printing and bleaching calico was to be 
 done, was erected on what is now Bridge street. A great 
 deal of the machinery was brought from Europe, for there 
 were few machine shops in this country. Some small fittings 
 of brass and iron were brought from Wilmington, Delaware, 
 the nearest place to Paterson where such things were made. 
 A man was given fifty thousand dollars, with which to bring 
 men and machinery from Europe; just as if Hamilton and 
 his friends did not have trouble enough, the man disap- 
 peared with the money. The big mill did not begin work 
 until 1794. 
 
 ALL MANtJFACTUKING ABANDONED. 
 
 In the meantime the Society was trying to raise more 
 money and, as it was badly needed, the directors fell back 
 
STRUGGLE FOB INDUSTRIAL SUPREMACY 63 
 
 on the lottery scheme. They offered to pay people for selling 
 tickets, but very few persons wanted the tickets. When an 
 attempt was made to sell them in Boston and New York, 
 it was found that laws had been passed there forbidding lot- 
 teries; the Society asked the lawmakers of New York to 
 change the law in the interest of the big "National Manu- 
 factory," but the lawmakers would not do as requested. 
 Finally the whole lottery scheme was thrown aside and the 
 Society, instead of making money out of it, lost a large part 
 of the little that was left. 
 
 Then came what was probably the first strike in Pater- 
 son: the hands employed in the bleaching and printing 
 wanted more wages; the Society settled the strike very 
 promptly by closing the works on Bridge street and dis- 
 continuing bleaching and printing. As a final effort to raise 
 money the Society reduced the prices of its houses and lots, 
 but times were hard and nobody wanted to buy, and so, in 
 January, 1796, the directors closed up the big mill and went 
 out of the business of manufacturing and never resumed it 
 afterwards. Fire destroyed the mill in 1807. 
 
 THE FAMOUS COLT FAMILY. 
 
 Peter Colt was born in Lyme, Conn. At the breaking 
 out of the Revolution he enlisted in the American army 
 and had a command under Aaron Burr in the attack on 
 Canada. He was subsequently aid to General Worcester in 
 the regiments from Connecticut. He spoke French fluently 
 and Washington made use of this in his intercourse with the 
 French army. He was with the French army at the sur- 
 render of Cornwallis at Yorktown. After peace had been 
 declared he returned to Connecticut and, while treasurer of 
 that state, was induced to com© to Paterson at the solicita- 
 tion of Dr. Elias Boudinot, whom he had met some years 
 previous at Boonton. He had two sons, John and Roswell 
 
64 FOUR CHAPTERS OF PATERSON HISTORY 
 
 L., the latter frequently referred to as "the greatest of all 
 the Colts." John was active in various manufacturing en- 
 terprises in early Paterson ; his son, E. Boudinot, carried on 
 the manufacture of duck until 1865, occupying the Duck 
 mill on Van Houten street and the Essex mill on Mill 
 street. 
 
 Samuel Colt, a distant relative, was the inventor of 
 the celebrated Colt's revolver. He made his first pistol, of 
 wood, in 1829 ; in 1835 he organized the Patent Arms com- 
 pany, which had possession of the building even now known 
 as the Gun mill. He subsequently removed to Connecti- 
 cut. 
 
 ROSWELL L. COLT. 
 
 "The greatest of all the Colts" had made a great deal 
 of money in the shipping business and had married a woman 
 who had a great deal more than he had ; she was the daugh- 
 ter of Robert Oliver, a shipping merchant of Baltimore, con- 
 sidered at that time one of the wealthiest men in the 
 country. RosweU L. was attracted to Paterson and made 
 up his mind that he would buy the whole place. In order 
 to do this he got $150,000 from his father-in-law and he 
 soon owned about all there was of Paterson. He had been 
 married a good many years when he determined to live in 
 Pater^n. He looked about for a place on which to erect a 
 mansion and selected the small hill on what is now Main 
 street, opposite the county jail, the same small hill which 
 Major L'Enfant had intended to make the centre of Pater- 
 son. He told his wife about it, but she would have none of 
 it; the idea of erecting a residence on a small sandhill when 
 there was such a fine site as Garret mountain nearby did 
 not appeal to her. She insisted on living on Garret moun- 
 tain and she would live nowhere else, unless it were in 
 Europe. As the two could not agree on this question they 
 
STRUGGLE FOE INDUSTRIAL SUPREMACY 65 
 
 determined to separate and this they did. When it came 
 to dividing the children — there were ten of them — they did 
 not do so according to the number to be divided, but in 
 accordance with the wealth of the parents. It was finally 
 agreed that Mrs. Colt should^ take six and have the first 
 pick. She selected the six oldest and took them to Europe 
 with her, where she died some years later. 
 
 Work was at once begun at the erection of Colt's Hill. 
 Hundreds of men were employed at carting soil and big 
 trees and shrubbery to the small sandhill and in the course 
 of time that small sandhUl assumed majestic proportions: on 
 the very top was built a mansion which has become historic, 
 for it was there that Roswell L. Colt entertained Daniel 
 Webster and other great men of his day. He had a large 
 retinue of servants and lived in princely style. The picture 
 of Colt's Hill, which appears on an adjoining page, was 
 taken from the roof of St. John's Catholic church when that 
 building was in the course of erection. There were two 
 roads leading to the mansion, one from what is now De- 
 Grasse street and the other from the comer of Main and 
 Ward streets; the old lodge stiU stands on that corner. The 
 small building showing in the picture was the dwelling of 
 the gatekeeper; the long building represents the hothouses. 
 For many years Roswell L. Colt, -with his four children, 
 Thomas, Roswell, Jr., Morgan G. and Julia, later the wife 
 of DeGrasse B. Fowler, lived in this mansion. 
 
 TAM O'SHANTER AND SOUTEB JOHNNIE. 
 
 In the picture wiU be observed two statues standing at 
 the entrance of the mansion as it faces Grand street. There 
 is an interesting history connected with these two statues. 
 James Thom was bom, April 19, 1802, in Scotland, near a 
 place where Robert Burns had lived for some years. He was 
 a poor lad and was set to work in a factory where he showed 
 
66 FOUR CHAPTERS OF PATEESON HISTORY 
 
 a disposition to carving things out of wood. Some friends 
 helped him along and he began cutting out of stone two 
 statues representing Burns's principal characters, Tam Q' 
 Shanter and Souter Johnnie. The statues were at once 
 pronounced works of art and Thom became famous. The 
 first two he made were exhibited throughout the British 
 isles and netted the sum of two thousand pounds, which was 
 divided equally between Thom and the committee having 
 charge of the erection of the Bums monument at Alloway. 
 Thom tried his hand at other statues but these did not in- 
 crease his fame and, as he had received orders from men of 
 wealth for no less than sixteen replicas of his Tam O'Shanter 
 and Souter Johnnie, he devoted himself to chiseling out 
 Tams and Johnnies. He made considerable money exhibit- 
 ing his statues, when one day he found out that an agent he 
 had trusted had decamped to America, taking with him a 
 considerable sum of money belonging to Thom. Thom at 
 once chased to America after him, but when he had recov- 
 ered what was his due he concluded that America was a good 
 country to live in, and so determined to stay. His fame had 
 preceded him and he obtained the contract for furnishing 
 the ornamental stonework on the present Trinity church in 
 New York. He looked about the neighborhood for suitable 
 stone and decided on the red sandstone at Little Falls. He 
 subsequently removed to Ramapo where he lived the life of 
 a gentleman farmer until the day of his death, April 17, 
 1850. 
 
 While he was working at his contract with the Trinity 
 church people he made another pair of Tam O'Shanter and 
 Souter Johnnie, his intention being to exhibit them in this 
 country. RosweU L. Colt saw them and at once bought 
 them, for he wanted something as an ornament for his 
 piazza. Thom made another pair and these started on an 
 exhibition tour throughout the country; while being ferried 
 across Chesapeake Bay the boat sprang a leak in a storm 
 
STRUGGLE FOR INDUSTRIAL SUPREMACY 67 
 
 and went down, Tam and Johnnie and all. This left Roswell 
 L. Colt as the only possessor of a Tam O'Shanter and Souter 
 Johnnie in this country and added to the fame of his man- 
 sion. The two statues have been reproduced on numerous 
 occasions in bronze and other metals. 
 
 A woman called one day at the Colt mansion to see the 
 owner. She went to the kitchen entrance and inquired 
 when Mr. Colt would be at leisure. She was told that Mr. 
 Colt was not at home, but she declared that he was, for she 
 had just seen him talking to one of his friends on the piazza 
 and she was near enough to him to recognize him. This 
 may afford the reader some idea as to what Roswell L. Colt 
 looked like. 
 
 In 1889 Morgan G. Colt and Mrs. DeGrasse B. Fowler, 
 the two surviving children of Roswell L. Colt, determined 
 to cut down Colt's Hill in order that the property might be 
 put in the market. (The hill was removed two years later.) 
 The mansion had long been abandoned as a residence, Tam 
 O'Shanter and Souter Johnnie standing guard in solitary 
 grandeur. So the owners of the precious pair made a present 
 of them to the trustees of the Public Library and they were 
 transferred to the entrance of the old library buUding on the 
 corner of Market and Church streets, and here they ended 
 their existence in the great fire in February, 1902. 
 
 NAMING THE STREETS OF PATERSON. 
 
 Roswell L. Colt did a great deal for the city of Pater- 
 son: his attempts at re-establishing manufacturing did not 
 prove successful, but he will ever live in grateful remem- 
 brance on account of his numerous gifts to churches and 
 other institutions in Paterson. He had a greait deal to do 
 with shaping the destiny of the city. 
 
 Peter Colt had begun laying out streets and naming 
 them and Roswell continued in his father's footsteps. Be- 
 
68 FOUR CHAPTERS OF PATERSON HISTORY 
 
 tween the two and a few others streets in Paterson were 
 named as follows: , 
 
 Boudinot street, named after Elias Boudinot, is the 
 present Van Houten street, between Main street and the 
 raceways. Van Houten street, named after Abraham Van 
 Houten, who assisted Peter Colt in the laying out of the 
 street, originally began about where Washington street 
 crosses it at the present day and extended easterly. When 
 the hill between Washington and Main streets was cut down 
 Van Houten street was extended through to Main street; 
 as it came out directly opposite Boudinot street, both streets 
 were thenceforth called Van Houten. 
 
 There was a somewhat similar state of affairs as far as 
 Ellison street is concerned. It was Ellison street from 
 Washington eastwardly and John street from Washington 
 street to Mill. In the course of time the two streets were 
 called Ellison. Dr. Ellison, after whom the street is named, 
 was one of the earUest practicing physicians in the city; 
 John Clarke, after whom John street was named, was among 
 the early manufacturers. 
 
 Abraham Willis, while he was laying out streets, named 
 one after himself, a name changed to Park avenue when the 
 city acquired the Eastside Park. 
 
 Oliver was the maiden name of Mrs. Roswell L. Colt. 
 
 Mill street was named because on it was built the first 
 mill of any size in Paterson. 
 
 Cross street derived its name because it crossed from 
 Market to Oliver. 
 
 The history of Market street is somewhat similar to 
 that of Van Houten and Ellison streets. The thoroughfare 
 running from where the city hall is now located westerly 
 to Spruce street was named Congress by Judge Boudinot. 
 From the present city hall westerly it was named Market; 
 its width to where the Erie tracks are now located was made 
 ninety feet, for it was the intention at the time to construct 
 
STRUCtGIiB FOR INDUSTRIAL SUPREMACT 69 
 
 a market building through the middle of the street, a long 
 frame shed for the accommodation of farmers, butchers and 
 others who had goods for sale. Subsequently the name Con- 
 gress was abandoned for the westerly part of the street and it 
 was all called Market. 
 
 Godwin street was named in honor of the patriotic 
 Godwin family. 
 
 Bank street was named in 1824 because the Peoples 
 Bank did business on the corner of that street and Ryerson 
 street. 
 
 Vreeland avenue was originally named Buttermilk 
 lane; its name was changed in honor of the Vreelands who 
 lived there during the Revolutionary war and the Vreelands 
 — Michael Hartman and Cornelius — who ran a tannery and 
 saw mill on the stream which formerly emptied into the 
 river at the foot of Twentieth avenue. 
 
 The triangular plot bounded by Park avenue, Market 
 street and Straight street was known as the Bowery and is 
 thus referred to in many old deeds. About half a mile east 
 of the Bowery stood a tavern named Peace and Plenty and 
 this gave that name to the neighborhood. 
 
 GARRET ROCK AND GARRET MOUNTAIN. 
 
 There is a vague tradition that a man named Garret 
 one day lost his way on the mountain and tumbled down 
 the precipice now known as Garret Rock and that in this 
 way the mountain and rock obtained their name. There is 
 no foundation whatever for the story, for the mountain and 
 rock received their name in an altogether different way. In 
 old records the mountain is called Wesel; the rock seems to 
 have got along without any specific name. Occasionally 
 reference is found to te Gebergte or te Gebarrack, "at the 
 mountain." The name Garret does not appear until 1811. 
 About that time there were in Paterson a number of men 
 
70 FOUK CHAPTERS OF PATERSON HISTORY 
 
 of a jolly disposition who formed a society called the Garret 
 Society, because their meetings were held in a garret. The 
 motto of the society was "Keep Dark." The object of the 
 society was to have a good time when none but members 
 were looking on, and to indulge in all sorts of pranks. The 
 leader of the society was John Crawford, a carpenter who 
 had come from Newark to work at the erection of the resi- 
 dence for Peter Colt, afterwards the city hall of Paterson. 
 One evening the society agreed to celebrate the Fourth of 
 July by discharging a big cannon from the top of the Wesel 
 mountain. The question was how to get the cannon up 
 there and the job was undertaken by Crawford, who had a 
 great deal of well-developed muscle. So on the evening of 
 the 3d John shouldered the cannon and hied himself moun- 
 tainward. Just as the first rays of the sun on the fourth 
 were peeping above the Palisades John fired the cannon 
 and, as quickly as he could reload it, he fired it again and 
 again in rapid succession. The people of Paterson were 
 naturally very much surprised at this rude awakening from 
 their peaceful slumbers, but after a moment's reflection they 
 did, as they had done for some time whenever anything out 
 of the usual happened : they said, "That's the Garret crowd 
 again." They had concluded that the Garret society had 
 changed its place of meeting from the customary garret to 
 the top of the mountain and ever after the mountain was 
 referred to as Garret mountain and the rock as Garret rock. 
 
 THE S. TJ. M. OF TODAY. 
 
 After the failure of the Society for Establishing Useful 
 Manufactures in the field of manufacturing, its directors 
 held few meetings, for there was little or nothing for them 
 to do. They pursued the policy known at the present day 
 as "watchful waiting." They did not have to wait long, for 
 power to run machinery was worth money and there was a 
 
STRUGGLE FOR INDUSTRIAL SUPREMACY 71 
 
 lot of it running to waste down the Falls. All the early 
 manufacturers who came to Paterson obtained their power 
 from the Society, for the Society owned the Falls. Contrary 
 to a widespread impression the charter of the Society does 
 not give it any peculiar rights in the Passaic river; it has 
 the same rights which every owner of property along a river 
 has, the right to the undiminished flow of the water. A man 
 living along a stream has the right to use the water for 
 ordinary domestic purposes, but he cannot divert the water 
 so as to injure people who own property below him. The 
 Society's most valuable possession is the Falls and it paid 
 cash for that property; it has the right to make all the 
 money possible out of it, just as a man can do with an oil 
 well or a gold mine on his property. This right of the So- 
 ciety was disputed in the case of the Morris -canal; the peo- 
 ple owning the canal took water out of the river, but the 
 ^courts soon put a stop to that, for the Society was entitled 
 to the full flow of the river; water taken out of the river 
 above Paterson could not turn machinery in Paterson. -^ ■* 
 
 The Society accordingly increased its raceways; mills 
 and factories were erected along these raceways and all paid 
 money to the Society for the use of the water for power. 
 The charge for the use of the water depended upon the size 
 of the pipe or conduit supplying the mill or factory, the 
 basis being a charge of $400 per year for one square foot, 
 this being equal to fifteen horse power. About 1865 the 
 demand for water power was so great that the Society in- 
 creased the size of the dam above the Falls and then charged 
 for the surplus water thus obtained ; manufacturers leasing 
 power paid $400 p)er square foot under their contract and 
 then $900 per square foot for the surplus water. The So- 
 ciety's income in this way was increased to about $70,000 
 per year. At the present day the Society receives $1,200 
 per square foot from such manufacturers as do not require 
 
72 FOUE CHAPTERS OF PATERSON HISTORY 
 
 a great deal of water; from this figure the price goes down 
 to $800 per square foot for larger quantities. 
 
 A MATTER OF WATER SUPPLY. 
 
 When in 1854 a number of prominent men in Paterson 
 undertook to secure a water supply for this city they found 
 it necessary to consult the Society. No understanding being 
 arrived at, because the Society wanted every drop of water 
 above the Falls to turn into its raceways, the first supply 
 for Paterson was taken out of the river below the Falls; it 
 was from there pumped to a reservoir above the Falls and 
 from there flowed by gravity into the pipes which supplied 
 the people of Paterson. Subsequently an arrangement was 
 made by which the water was taken from above the Falls 
 and pumped into the reservoir by means of a wheel placed 
 in the Falls. Then a suggestion was made that the city 
 ought to buy the water works, but the voters said No, be- 
 cause the water company did not have rights which were 
 worth the price asked. A few years ago the voters said Yes 
 to the same question, but nothing was done, as the proposi- 
 tion was too great and complicated. 
 
 Even the state shrank from the proposition when there 
 was talk about the state taking charge of the water supply 
 in northern New Jersey, but what the state would not do 
 some men with plenty of money were willing to try. The 
 first man to undertake the task was John R. Bartlett and 
 the first step he took was to buy out the Society, so that he 
 could do with the Passaic river water what he liked. Mr. 
 Bartlett had a notion in his head which may seem funny at 
 this day. He wanted to take the water of the Passaic river 
 and lead it to New York. In order to do this he would have 
 to build a tunnel under the Hudson. Some men before this 
 time had begun work on such a tunnel, but not in order to 
 carry water but for foot passengers. These men did not 
 
STRUaGLB FOB INDUSTRIAL SUPREMACY 73 
 
 have enough money to finish the tunnel and so Mr. Bartlett 
 bought what there was of it. The tunnel had been started 
 at Hoboken and the New York end was to be at Washing- 
 ton square. Mr. Bartlett spent a good deal of money on 
 this tunnel before he gave it up, having come to the con- 
 clusion that the water in northern New Jersey could be 
 more readily sold to the people in northern New Jersey. 
 Mr. Bartlett sold his tunnel and it was completed many 
 years later and now connects Hoboken with Christopher 
 street, New York. 
 
 The river water below Paterson was growing worse until 
 at last the Newark people said that they could stand it no 
 longer; they must have clean water and Paterson must stop 
 emptying its sewers into the river. Paterson was ready with 
 its answer. A man had been employed who had gone to 
 Newark and dropped some marked sticks into the river right 
 in the middle where the river flows through Newark; he 
 watched those sticks and saw that the tide carried them up 
 the river, higher and higher, until at last he saw them at 
 BeUeville and it was at Belleville that Newark had its pumps 
 to take the water out of the river for itself and also for 
 Jersey City. What sticks would do sewage would do and it 
 was plain that Newark and Jersey City were drinking not 
 only Paterson's sewage, but Newark's as well. Newark 
 ceased scolding Paterson for polluting the river and turned 
 to Mr. Bartlett and the men who were his partners. And 
 this is just what they were waiting for. They knew that 
 Newark would have to come, for Newark could do nothing 
 without the Society and they owned the Society. So the 
 men who had put so much money into the water scheme and 
 the authorities of Newark got together and the result was 
 that a bargain was struck by which Newark was to have a 
 water supply of fifty million gallons a day and was to pay 
 therefor six million doUars. Building water works for a city 
 under such circumstances was something entirely new but 
 
74 FOUR CHAPTERS OF PATERSON HISTORY 
 
 the engineer who had been employed to look after the work 
 was sure that it could be done at a profit of over a million 
 dollars. So work was begun to make the Pequannock river 
 yield a regular water supply to the city of Newark. Two 
 reservoirs, Clinton and Oak Ridge, were built. The water 
 from these reservoirs runs down the Pequannock river to 
 Macopin, where a large basin, or intake, was built, and from 
 this Newark was to be supplied by means of a steel pipe 
 forty-eight inches in diameter. According to the figures of 
 the engineer fifty million gallons a day will pass through 
 a forty-eight inch pipe. But water from natural sources 
 carries with it the seeds of a moss and these seeds quickly 
 take root along the inside of any kind of pipe. That is just 
 what happened in this case and the result was that Newark 
 was not getting fifty million gallons of water a day, for the 
 moss had reduced the carrying capacity of the pipe. There 
 was nothing to be done but to lay another pipe and this 
 cost a great deal of money. Then Newark measured the 
 two reservoirs and found that they would not hold enough 
 water to supply Newark in a dry season. Canistear reser- 
 voir was built and, as even this was not quit© sufficient to 
 hold the water needed, Macopin lake, or Echo lake, as it 
 is frequently called, was turned over to Newark. The men 
 who had taken this big job figured up how they stood and 
 found that they had spent seven and a half million dollars 
 and that instead of making a million and a half they were 
 just about that much out of pocket. 
 
 About this time the people of Jersey City set up a cry 
 for clean water and a man named Patrick H. Fljmn agreed 
 to give them a supply for seven and a half million dollars. 
 He bought the rights owned by the Society for Establishing 
 Useful Manufactures in the Rockaway river and began work. 
 But he did not have enough money to carry it through and 
 the men who had supplied Newark with water took the job 
 off his hands, this time making a good profit. But these 
 
STRUGGLE FOR INDUSTRIAL SUPREMACY 75 
 
 same men had been making money in other contracts of the 
 same kind. In 1894 they organized the New Jersey General 
 Security Company and into the treasury of this company 
 went everything in the way of water rights and contracts. 
 This company now supplies Paterson, Passaic, Clifton, Glen 
 Ridge, Montclair, Orange, West Orange, Bloomfield, Nutley, 
 Bayonne, Little Falls, Kearney, Harrison and East Newark 
 with water. It owns the Society for Establishing Useful 
 Manufactures and the Dundee Water Power & Land Com- 
 pany; this latter company owns the dam in the Passaic 
 river just below Paterson and supplies many factories in 
 Passaic with power. 
 
 Taking so much water out of the river, which might 
 have run down to Paterson, made trouble for the Society, 
 for the Society had promised to keep a number of factories 
 and mills supplied with water to turn the wheels which 
 make the machinery go. In some cases the Society had sold 
 factories with a promise that the water would never be cut 
 off from those factories. The Society could not keep its 
 promises on account of the water taken out for Newark, 
 Jersey City and other places. In order to get out of this 
 trouble, and also to sell more water, the Society a few years 
 ago put up the buildings which may be seen in the basin 
 below the Falls. Electric power is now made by the water 
 which comes down the river and this power is sent to the 
 factories and mills the Society has promised to supply with 
 power. But the Society has more power than it needs and 
 it sells this to the Edison company which uses it to run street 
 cars; in turn, the Society buys power from the Edison com- 
 pany when there is not enough water coming down the river 
 to make the amount of power wanted by the Society. 
 
 The question will now be asked : How about Paterson's 
 water supply? It is a question easily answered. Some days 
 a great deal of water runs down the river; some days very 
 little and none at all for a few days nearly every year. Men 
 
76 FOUR CHAPTERS OP PATERSON HISTORY 
 
 have been employed for a great many years to keep an ac- 
 count of this flow of water; their figures show that if the 
 whole amount of water that flowed down the river in twenty 
 years was divided by the whole number of days in twenty 
 years 1282 cubic feet of water would flow down the river 
 every second. Newark takes about seventy cubic feet per 
 second; Jersey City takes about seventy-five and the water 
 companies supplied by the New Jersey General Security 
 Company take about seventy-two. In the latter figure are 
 included the thirteen cubic feet used by Paterson. It is 
 consequently not a question of the supply of water, but of 
 storage during dry seasons. 
 
 Four rivers empty their waters into the Passaic: The 
 Pequannock, Rockaway, Ramapo and Wanaque. Newark 
 owns the Pequannock, Jersey City the Rockaway. The 
 points where the water is taken are high enough so that no 
 pumping is necessary. But pumping would be necessary if 
 the Ramapo were taken for a water supply, for it lies low. 
 So for the present at least the Ramapo is out of the ques- 
 tion. There remains the Wanaque, a river which gets its 
 water from mountains and springs; it lies high and could 
 supply Patesrson and Newark without any pumping. As 
 Newark will soon need an additional water supply, Newark 
 has applied to the state authorities for permission to take 
 the Wanaque, for the state has recently done what the state 
 should have done half a century ago, taken hold of the 
 matter of water supply. Newark has obtained the desired 
 permission with the understanding that Paterson is to share 
 in it at any time Paterson may want to do so. In the mean 
 time Paterson will continue taking its water as it is pumped 
 from the river near Little Falls. 
 
 Sometimes the quantity of water in the Passaic river is 
 too much for the comfort of some people living in Paterson. 
 During the past forty years Paterson has had four floods 
 which did considerable damage. The quantity of water 
 
STRUGGLE FOR INDUSTRIAL SUPREMACY 77 
 
 flowing down the river was enormous on those occasions. A 
 cubic foot of water is equal to 7.4805 gallons; on December 
 12, 1878, 16,000 cubic feet of water passed down the river 
 every second ; on September 25, 1882, 18,200 ; on March 2, 
 1902, 21,300; on October 10, 1903, 28,000. 
 
 AN ANCIENT GBIST MILL. 
 
 In 1810 there was a freshet in the river and it washed 
 away a grist mill which stood along the river just above 
 where the West street bridge now stands. That grist mill 
 had stood there a good many years; few people knew when 
 it had been built and it was only in later years that papers 
 were found which showed that it was built as early as 1737. 
 Hendrick Spier owned the property as far back as 1714 but 
 his land ran only to the river. John Joralemon bought the 
 property in 1737 and in the same year Adrian A. Post and 
 Juriaen Thomasse bought it from an Indian named Tahtho- 
 chear, but neither of these deeds went as far as the bank 
 of the river, being only for the island and the bottom of the 
 river on both sides of it. The Indian deed was decided not 
 to be worth anything as far as the Spier property was con- 
 cerned and the result was that Joralemon had the water and 
 Spier the place where a grist mill could be erected. The 
 two went into partnership and built the first grist mill in 
 what are now the limits of the city of Paterson. 
 
 METAL, PAPER AND BOBBINS. 
 
 When Alexander Hamilton and his friends said that 
 Paterson was to be the place for the one big factory in the 
 new world, people began to come to Paterson in order to 
 get a share of all the good things that were promised. Some 
 of these people received floor space in the Society's mill and 
 others set up shops and mills in other places. 
 
 John Clarke was making articles of brass and tin in 
 1794 and in the following year he moved to the Society's 
 
78 FOUR CHAPTERS OF PATERSON HISTORY 
 
 mill and remained there until the mill burned down. For 
 some time he worked at his trade in the old grist mill at the 
 foot of Mulberry street; then he moved to lower Broadway. 
 In 1825 his successor, Horatio Moses, had his shop on Van 
 Houten street, south side, below Main. Either Clark or 
 Moses hung out as a sign a big brass dog, carrying a kettle 
 in its mouth ; the sign was not taken down until a few years 
 ago. 
 
 Before 1802 paper was all made in sheets; it was first 
 made in a roll in 1802 in Paterson by Charles Kinsey, who 
 had a paper mill on Van Houten street, below where the 
 Edison works stand today. The name of the firm was Kin- 
 sey, Crane & Fairchild; Kinsey had the brains and Crane 
 and Fairchild the money. When people thought that a great 
 deal of money was to be made by manufacturing cotton 
 goods. Crane and Fairchild did not want to bother any 
 longer with making paper and so they turned the paper mill 
 into a cotton mill. 
 
 Thomas Van Houten made bobbins at Cedar Grove for 
 use in the Society's miU; h© cut down trees and with a buck 
 saw cut the wood into small pieces; then with a chisel and 
 brace he made the bobbins. In 1805 he took his brother 
 Dirck into partnership and they moved their workshop to 
 the Peckamin river, between Paterson and Little Falls. In 
 1827 the brothers came to Paterson and put up a frame mill 
 along the river where Clinton street now ends and they 
 remained there for seven years, when Thomas died. The 
 industry has changed hands frequently since that time; at 
 the present it is the Van Riper Manufacturing Company on 
 lower Van Houten street. 
 
 AN" EARLY ADVERTISER. 
 
 John Park© was one of the early citizens of Paterson 
 who made people know he was here. He was making candle- 
 
STRUGGL-H FOR INDUSTRIAL SUPREMACY 79 
 
 wicks in the Society's mill when that building was burned 
 down in 1807; he then built a miU for cotton spinning on 
 Van Houten street; this mill is today a part of the Phoenix 
 silk mills. In addition to making cotton h© kept a store in 
 Paterson. He found that it paid to advertise his store and 
 so he thought it would pay him to advertise his cotton 
 business and Paterson at the same time. In those days 
 goods were shipped from Paterson by being taken in wagons 
 to the river below Passaic; here they were loaded into 
 schooners and in that way taken to Philadelphia, which 
 seems to have been the place where most of the goods made 
 in Paterson were sold. Parke changed aU this. He bought 
 some large wagons, painted them all sorts of gaudy colors 
 and then hitched either four or six horses to each for the 
 trip to Philadelphia. In that way people living between 
 Paterson and Philadelphia learned that there was such a 
 place as Paterson and that John Parke made calico and kept 
 a store there. Parke kept this up for some years but in 
 1812 could make no more calico; the United States was at 
 war with England and no cotton came from the South; 
 there were no railroads in those days and cotton was brought 
 to the North in sailing vessels and these would probably 
 have fallen into the hands of the English if they had left the 
 ports in the South. So Parke had to close up his factory 
 and a short time after he found that he did not have enough 
 to pay his debts. Afterwards he was postmaster of Pater- 
 son and one of the judges of the county courts. 
 
 QUARREL ABOUT A DAM. 
 
 Standing on the Main street bridge and looking down 
 the river, or standing on the Arch street bridge and looking 
 up the river, the principal object seen nowadays is a dam. 
 That dam was built in 1838 by William Stagg in order to 
 give power to turn the wheels of his grist mill, which stood 
 
80 FOUR CHAPTERS OF PATBRSON HISTORY 
 
 on the north side of the river near the foot of Clinton street, 
 where the Pope naill now stands. Stagg had trouble before 
 he was ready for business. The True Reformed Dutch 
 church had property near where Stagg wanted to build his 
 mill and the people of the church did not like the idea of 
 having a grist mill so near to their church. So they went 
 to court about it and three men were appointed to settle the 
 matter. These three men decided in favor of Stagg, as all 
 persons may read in their report, in which they say "that 
 the church people must not mislest or prevent Stagg from 
 erecting his mill and dam on said sight without any truble 
 or Damage of expence from them or their suckcessors." 
 
 THE SILK INDUSTRY. 
 
 Everybody in Paterson knows that there are a great 
 many silk mills in Paterson but everybody does not know 
 who started this industry. In 1839 one of the big silk mills 
 in Macclesfield, England, was owned by two brothers, Reu- 
 ben and WiUiam Ryle. Another brother, John, was working 
 for them as superintendent. Reuben and William thought 
 that perhaps they might do some business in this country if 
 they had somebody to look after selling their silks here. So 
 they asked John to take the job. This suited John very 
 well, for he had long had a desire to come to this country. 
 He went looking around when he got here and at one time 
 held the position of superintendent of a small silk mill in 
 Northampton, Mass.; here he became acquainted with 
 George W.' Murray, who had been interested in the silk 
 business in England. Reuben and William wrote to their 
 brother, saying that he had been sent to this country to look 
 after their business and that it was about time he opened 
 a store here where they could sell their silks. So John went 
 to New York where he opened a store on the comer of 
 William street an^l Maiden lane. Here Mr. Murray came 
 
STRUGGLE FOR INDUSTRIAL SUPREMACY 81 
 
 to see him and talked him into going to Paterson to see what 
 chance there was for a silk mill here. Mr. Ryle came to 
 Paterson where he met Christopher Colt, a man who had 
 tried making silk in the old Gun mill in the Valley of the 
 Rocks; three months of silk had been all that Mr. Colt 
 wanted and he had quit. Mr. Ryle reported to Mr. Murray 
 and then the two came out here and the result was that Mr. 
 Murray bought the Gun mill, filled it up with silk machinery 
 and placed Mr. Ryle in charge. What was made was sew- 
 ing silk and that silk in those days was sold in skeins, for 
 spools had not been thought of. About this time Elias 
 Howe had begun his invention of sewing machines; the 
 main trouble he had was to feed the silk to the needle; he 
 found it hard to do this when the thread came only in 
 skeins. So he spoke to Mr. Ryle and the result was that 
 Mr. Ryle found a way of putting silk on spools; the first 
 silk thread used on sewing machines came from Paterson. 
 This was very good for both the maker of sewing machines 
 and the maker of the silk thread. Mr. Murray took Mr. 
 Ryle into partnership and the firm of Murray & Ryle made 
 money; in 1846 Mr. Ryle bought out Mr. Murray's interest 
 in the business and continued it alone. He built a new mill, 
 which he named Murray after his former partner; this mill 
 was burned down, but Mr. Ryle at once began work on the 
 Murray mill where silk is still made at the present day. 
 
 Such was the beginning of the silk industry in America, 
 for before Mr. Ryle took hold of the matter, the silk made 
 in this country was not worth talking about. To the people 
 of Paterson the silk industry has been a great help. When 
 there were "hard times," and the locomotive works were 
 closed for several years, the silk mills kept on working ; the 
 wages were not as high as in the locomotive works, but 
 people learned that even low wages were better than no 
 wages at all. 
 
S2 FOUR CHAPTERS OF PATERSON HISTORY 
 
 In Paterson is to be found every branch of the silk 
 industry with the exception of taking the silk thread from 
 the cocoon, where it was spun by the worm, and putting it 
 up in skeins. This work is done in countries where people 
 are satisfied with wages of a few cents a day. Some attempts 
 at growing silk have been made in Paterson and in several 
 places in the city mulberry trees may still be seen. The 
 leaves of these trees are what silk worms are fond of and 
 so these trees were brought here to feed the silk worms. 
 The silk worms did their part and some people even took 
 the silk threads from the cocoons and it was worked up into 
 articles; this was amusement and curiosity but not work 
 that paid. An attempt at raising silk in Georgia some years 
 ago had a similar result. 
 
 In the early days of the industry all the raw silk came 
 from Italy, France, China and Turkey, and it cost between 
 three and four dollars a pound. Then the Japanese wanted 
 to know if they could not send some of their silk this way 
 and were told to do so and be welcome, especially as they 
 offered it for two dollars a pound. The Japanese had always 
 been known as making the finest kind of silk goods and the 
 Paterson silk men felt happy because they would be able to 
 make the same kind and then make ever so much more 
 money on account of the low price they would pay the 
 Japanese for the raw material. Just there is where they 
 made a mistake. When the Japanese silk arrived it was 
 found to be so fine that only the thinnest kind of goods 
 could be made out of it, goods that looked like fine veils. 
 Paterson silk workers called it "everlasting," because it took 
 so long to weave a yard. It was not liked for weaving in 
 Paterson and nobody wanted to buy the goods, because they 
 were so thin. But it was all used, for the Paterson silk 
 weavers twisted four threads of it together and then they 
 had a thread just as thick as any silk that had ever been 
 used in the Paterson silk mills. But the Japanese also 
 
STRUGGLE FOR INDUSTRIAL SUPREMAOT 83 
 
 found out that they could get more money for the silk and 
 so they quickly sent the price up until their silk cost just 
 as much as other silk. Raw silk went up in price to ten 
 dollars a pound during the civil war; then it went back to 
 three or four dollars a pound; during the great world's war 
 it went back to ten dollars a pound, but after fighting had 
 stopped it went down again. 
 
 Bury a spool of silk thread, a spool of woollen thread 
 and a spool of cotton thread into the ground; dig there some 
 years later and it will be found that the spools, the wool and 
 the cotton have gone; they have all rotted and all that is 
 left is the silk and that is just as good as it was when it was 
 buried. Silk is therefore the most lasting of all stuffs 
 that dresses, ribbons and thread can be made of; it does not 
 rot and it is hard to wear it out. When silk dresses were 
 made of pure silk a woman would wear a silk dress all her 
 life, then give it to her daughter and this daughter would 
 give it to her daughter and the dress would still be good. 
 But raw silk costs several dollars a pound and so men tried 
 to find something they could add to the silk and make 
 cheaper goods. They tried adding a little in the way of 
 cotton and woollen threads, but this did not work, as the 
 goods did not look as fine and the wool and cotton would 
 wear out or rot so quickly that the whole dress would be 
 gone in a short time. Then some man found out that he 
 could add a little sugar to the dye stuffs used for silks of 
 light color and a little nut galls to black silks. In this way 
 he could add two or three ounces to every pound of sUk 
 woven in his mill, and of course he made money, for sugar 
 and nut galls cost only a few cents a pound. This worked 
 very well, but the silk manufacturers went too far, especially 
 when they found that a salt of tin could be added and a 
 great deal more than of either sugar or nut galls. Fashions 
 kept changing and this meant cutting up a silk dress from 
 one pattern to another; so people wanted cheaper silks and 
 
84 FOUR CHAPTERS OF PATBRSON HISTORY 
 
 they got what they wanted, but the stuff they bought was 
 more tin than silk; in fact, sometimes there would be four 
 times more tin than silk. Dresses made of this material do 
 not last long; in fact, some of the stuff dresses were to be 
 made of would rot on the shelves before a dressmaker got 
 hold of it. So of late years less tin has been used and good 
 silks have little of it. 
 
 When the worm makes its cocoon it spins a thin silk 
 thread and in doing so uses some gum, sometimes more and 
 sometimes less. This gum cannot be used in weaving silk 
 and must be boiled off. Of course the less gum there is in 
 raw silk the more is the silk worth. So when a bale of silk 
 arrives at the store of a man selling raw silk, it is examined 
 to find out how much gum the worms used in making the 
 silk. This is called "conditioning," and this fixes the real or 
 market value of the silk. 
 
 THE LOCOMOTIVE INDUSTRY. 
 
 One of the principal industries in Paterson in past 
 years was, and to some extent still is, the making of loco- 
 motives. How did the men in early Paterson come to make 
 locomotives? There is an interesting story in the answer to 
 this question. Up to 1832 all locomotives were made in 
 England. The railroad, which had been built a short time 
 before between Paterson and Jersey City, wanted a locomo- 
 tive and so bought one in England. It was put into boxes in 
 England and sent to this country and the railroad people 
 sent it to a shop along the raceway in Paterson; Thomas 
 Rogers was one of the partners who owned this machine 
 shop. Rogers was to put the locomotive together so that it 
 could be used; he did so, but he first made a pattern of every 
 piece of it. In less than a year he had a locomotive just like 
 the one that had been sent here from England. On October 
 6, 1837, he and some of his friends used the locomotive for 
 
STBUGGLB FOR INDUSTRIAL SUPREMACY 85 
 
 an excursion to New Brunswick, by way of Jersey City. 
 The engine worked just as well as had the one that came 
 from England and Mr. Rogers saw that he could make a 
 great deal of money out of making locomotives. He cer- 
 tainly did so and left a great deal of money to his son, 
 Jacob S. Rogers, and this son in turn made more money by 
 making more locomotives. 
 
 But Rogers could not have this industry all to himself. 
 Other men began to build locomotives and in a few years 
 the Grant Locomotive works and the Danforth Locomotive 
 & Machine Company, afterwards the Cooke Locomotive 
 Works, were making locomotives, the three shops together 
 sometimes turning out as many as thirty locomotives in a 
 month. The Grant works failed and the machinery was 
 moved to Chicago. The Cooke works were moved from 
 lower Market street down towards Lake View, along the 
 tracks of the Erie railroad. It was then that the American 
 Locomotive company bought all the locomotive works in 
 the country, and even some in Canada, excepting one in 
 Philadelphia and the Rogers works in Paterson. Mr. Rogers, 
 Jacob S., would not sell; but he was getting old and had 
 plenty of money and did not want to bother making more; 
 so in 1900 he concluded that he would shut up his works and 
 he did so. They were bought by some men in New York 
 Tvho in turn sold them to the American Locomotive Com- 
 pany and this company moved the machinery to the Cooke 
 works, which they had bought some time before. So Pater- 
 son today has only one locomotive works instead of three. 
 
 Jacob S. Rogers died worth a great deal of money. In 
 his will he left a little of it to some relatives — ^he was never 
 married — but nearly all of it, five million dollars, went to 
 the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Central Park, New 
 York. So the money Mr. Rogers and his men made in Pat- 
 terson was lost to Paterson forever. 
 
86 FOUR CHAPTEORS OF PATERSON HISTORY 
 
 There is an interesting story connected with the success 
 the Rogers, father and son, had in making locomotives. 
 Jacob S. Rogers one day told this story as follows: "In Eng- 
 land, in fact all over Europe, they make locomotives as stiff 
 and solid as if they had been cast out of one solid piece of 
 metal. When a locomotive is put on a road and it is found 
 that the locomotive cannot go around a curve because the 
 locomotive is too long and stiff, they take up the road and 
 straighten out the curve. I build locomotives just the other 
 way. Instead of building the road to suit the locomotive, I 
 build the locomotive to suit the road. The English say that 
 my locomotives are wobbly and they call them basket work^ 
 but that is just the kind of locomotives I want to build.. 
 Show me the road and I will build an engine to suit it. 
 Instead of fastening big wheels to a stiff and heavy body, I 
 put the body loosely on the wheels, so that the body can 
 move around a little when the engine goes around a curve. 
 The result is that a road can be built a great deal cheaper 
 for my engines than for English engines. It costs me a 
 tariff of forty cents for every dollar's worth of steel and iron 
 I get from England, and I b3^e got to go to England for my 
 steel and iron, but I am selling engines to Englishmen in 
 Canada and Australia and other British possessions. The 
 English in England would not have any of my engines, for 
 they are used to their own and their railroads are built for 
 their engines, but I can sell engines all over the rest of the 
 world. The English do not like to be taught by an Ameri- 
 can ; some day they will find out that I am right, but when 
 that time comes I shall not want to build any more locomo- 
 tives." 
 
 OTHER WORKERS IN IRON. 
 
 Some years ago there were two large iron manufactur- 
 ing establishments, one on each side of the Erie tracks near 
 
STRUGGLE FOR INDUSTRIAL SUPREMACS 87 
 
 Lake View, the Paterson Iron Company and the Passaic 
 Rolling Mill. Franklin C. Beckwith made a success of the 
 Paterson Iron Company, for in his day there was no rolling 
 mill with big steam hammers in this part of the country. 
 When the shaft of a large steamer broke and it was necessary 
 to get another, this had to be done in a hurry in order that 
 the steamer might get to sea again as quickly as possible. 
 To send far out West for a new shaft meant a great deal of 
 delay and was unsatisfactory because the men who owned 
 the steamer could not see to it themselves that the shaft 
 was made just as they wanted it. So Mr. Beckwith made 
 these shafts and he got for them almost any price he asked. 
 What was true of the broken shaft of a steamer was true 
 also of many other broken large pieces of iron and Mr. 
 Beckwith's establishment was kept busy most of the time^ 
 But when railroads ran faster trains out West and whem 
 other rolling mills with big steam hammers started intO' 
 business in this part of the country, the business of the Pat- 
 erson Iron Company fell off and it was closed in 1897. The 
 place it occupied is now used by the Erie railroad for se. 
 yard. 
 
 Watts Cooke founded the Passaic Rolling Mill. He 
 had been a superintendent on the Delaware, Lackawanna 
 & Western railroad and he thought he could make money 
 by building bridges for railroads. He was right, for he built 
 a great many bridges and he did so according to a plan 
 which was new at that time. When men wanted a bridge 
 built the work was done by a number of laborers and black- 
 smiths at the place where the bridge was to be erected. 
 After the piers of the bridge were up came a long job with 
 iron. The iron had to be forged and put into shape and then 
 put together. Watts Cooke went to work in a different way. 
 The piers had to be built at the stream, because they could 
 not "be built anywhere else and then moved to the stream, 
 but the bridge itself was built in Paterson. A little bridge,^ 
 
88 FOUR CHAPTERS OF PATERSON HISTORX 
 
 like a toy bridge, was made of small pieces of wood, each 
 piece fitting just where it belonged. Then the real bridge, 
 of heavy iron, was made after the little model and it is easy 
 to see that this could be done a great deal cheaper and better 
 in works where they had big furnaces and forges and steam 
 riveting machines than on the banks of a distant stream. 
 The bridge was put together in the yard of the works, with- 
 out being fastened together; then it was taken down and 
 shipped to where the bridge was to stand; the subsequent 
 work of putting it together amounted to very little com- 
 pared to what had to be done under the old plan. The 
 Passaic Rolling Mill built a large part of the elevated rail- 
 roads in New York, the Seventh Regiment armory, the 
 Washington bridge over the Harlem river and many of the 
 bridges in Passaic county and other parts of the country. 
 At the death of Watts Cooke in 1908 the works passed into 
 other hands. 
 
 MAKING LINEN THREAD. 
 
 The history of the Barbour flax spinning works in Pat- 
 erson is not as interesting as is the history of other industries 
 in this city, for it was only a matter of putting money 
 where more could be made. Four of the Barbour brothers 
 had been making linen thread in Lisburn, Ireland. They 
 sold a great deal of their thread in this country, but the 
 price was high on account of the tariff they had to pay to 
 get the thread into the country. So two of the brothers, 
 Thomas and Robert, came to this country in 1864, and 
 began making thread in Paterson. They bought a mill in 
 which John Colt had made calico, but this soon proved too 
 small for them. In 1877 they built a mill on Grand street; 
 the next year they doubled it and so they kept on adding to 
 it until the mill grew to be as big as it is now. Thomas 
 and Robert are both dead. Thomas left a son, William, who 
 
STRUGGLE FOR INDUSTRIAL SUPREMACY 89 
 
 succeeded his father; he lived most of the time in New 
 York, but he was always a good friend to Paterson, where 
 he spent a great deal of his money, a large part going to the 
 hospitals and other charitable institutions. His sons now 
 run the works, for William Barbour died March 1, 1917. 
 Robert Barbour left a son, J. Edwards Barbour, who for 
 many years managed the Paterson mills. In 1909 he began 
 to manufacture for himself and he now has a mill at Lake 
 View and another in AUentown, Pa. 
 
Municipal Administration 
 
Municipal Administration 
 
 In the early days of this part of New Jersey all the 
 ground now covered by the city of Paterson was in the 
 township of Acquackanonk and this township was in Essex 
 county. Paterson was first put on the map as a township 
 in 1831 as a part of Essex county. On February 7, 1837, 
 the lawmakers of New Jersey passed a law which created 
 the county of Passaic by taking the township of Acquacka- 
 nonk from Essex county and a large part of the township 
 of Saddle River from Bergen county. 
 
 THE CITY OF PATERSON. 
 
 When Paterson became a township the people here were 
 very poor and money was so scarce that even a rich man 
 of those days would be considered poor today. Some idea 
 of what money was worth in those days may be gained from 
 the fact that the counsel of the township, Daniel Barkalow, 
 one of the most prominent lawyers Passaic county produced, 
 was satisfied with a salary of ten dollars for a whole year's 
 work. The voters every year decided how much money 
 should be spent for the various branches of the government, 
 until in 1849 when they decided not to spend another dollar 
 for any purpose. There was no money for the poor, for the 
 streets, for the schools or for anything else. The poormaster 
 had paid ten dollars a year rent for the poor house and had 
 received one dollar a week for the board of each of the 
 poor; the authorities sold the poor house. The township 
 owned what was known as the "town lot," over four and 
 seven-tenths acres at what is now Broadway and East Eigh- 
 
94 FOUR CHAPTERS OF PATERSON HISTOBX 
 
 teenth street; this was sold for eight hundred dollars. At 
 the regular election in 1850 the voters again decided in 
 favor of no taxes; a special election was held and the result 
 was the same; everything seemed at a standstill when 
 another election was caUed and the voters agreed to spend 
 fifty dollars for the support of the poor for one year and 
 they would not agree to give a dollar for any other purpose. 
 What little money was used for the government came from 
 the pockets of men who were willing to loan it to the town- 
 ship and trust to the honor of the people to pay it back 
 some time in the future. 
 
 But there came a change, for there was more work, the 
 factories being busy. Th people decided in 1851 by a vote 
 of 772 to 330 to change the township into a city and the 
 government passed into the hands of a council, the president 
 of which was pretty much what the mayor became in after 
 years. There were three wards and their boundaries were 
 very simple. All of Paterson lying east of Main street and 
 north of Market was the East ward ; all west of Main street 
 and north of Market was the West ward and the rest of the 
 city was the South ward. In 1854 the city reached out and 
 added what is now the First and Second wards of the city, 
 excepting the land lying north of Totowa avenue and west 
 of the Oldham brook; this strip was added the following 
 year and the whole made into the North ward. The Fifth 
 ward was made the same year by taking from the South 
 ward all east of Cross and Marshall streets. The title of the 
 government was changed to "The Mayor and Aldermen of 
 the City of Paterson," and large leatlier badges were pro- 
 vided for the aldermen; these badges indicated the ward 
 the bearer represented and were in use for a number of 
 years. In 1869 the city took enough real estate from the 
 township of Acquackanonk to make the city's southerly 
 line Crooks avenue and the westerly line West Twenty- 
 Seventh street. 
 
Paterson's First City Hall 
 
MUNICIPAL ADMINISTRATION 95 
 
 THE FIRST CITY HALL. 
 
 In 1869 the aldermen thought it would be very nice for 
 the Paterson of the future if the city had a park in its 
 centre and a city hall in the centre of the park. So they 
 appointed a commission to buy the property bounded by 
 Market, Ellison^ Colt and Church streets. Some of the tax- 
 payers thought this was going too far and they went to 
 coUrt about it; the court decided that the aldermen had no 
 right to give to others the powers which the legislature had 
 given only to the aldermen ; the aldermen might buy prop- 
 erty for the city but they could not get others to attend to 
 that matter for them. As so many taxpayers had shown 
 that they objected to having a park in the centre of the 
 city, the aldermen satisfied themselves by buying a building 
 for a city hall. The building they bought had been erected 
 by Peter Colt in 1814 as a residence for himself; he had 
 used in its construction the brown stone taken from the 
 walls of the large mill owned by the Society but which had 
 burned down. The Colt residence was two stories high and 
 stood where the police station stands now. From its front 
 entrance a large lawn reached down to Main street. The 
 aldermen cut down the hill in front of the building and the 
 street thus made is now called Washington. This left the 
 building high up in the air and so the aldermen buUt another 
 story under it. In the picture of the building the former 
 entrance can be easily distinguished over the entrance built 
 afterwards. The building was used by the city officers until 
 the present city hall was erected. It was destroyed in the 
 great fire in 1902. 
 
 THE PRESENT CITY HALL. 
 
 In 1891 the city celebrated the centennial of its found- 
 ing. A part of this celebration was the beginning of the 
 erection of the present city hall. Where that building now 
 
96 FOUR CHAPTERS OF PATERSON HISTORY 
 
 stands stood formerly St. Paul's Episcopal church ; this had 
 a little city block all to itself, Colt street separating it on 
 the north from an old hotel, the Hamilton House, and a 
 row of offices. The church, hotel and offices were removed 
 to make room for the present city hall. The fire in 1902 
 burned out the inside of the new building, but did not 
 destroy the walls. Until the interior of the city hall could 
 be repaired and fitted up the city offices were scattered about 
 in many different places, the court house, post office, Entre 
 Nous lyceum, the lecture room of the First Presbyterian 
 church and other places. 
 
 THE PUBLIC LIBRARY. 
 
 In 1884 the people of Paterson voted in favor of a public 
 library. Five citizens were appointed by the mayor and 
 they began work by renting a building on Church street, 
 between Market and Ellison streets. Then came the offer 
 of a site. Mrs. Mary E. Ryle, the daughter of Charles Dan- 
 forth, one of the prominent locomotive builders of Paterson, 
 and widow of William Ryle, a wealthy silk importer, wanted 
 to do something in memory of her father. The residence 
 occupied by the Danforth family for many years stood on 
 the northeast corner of Market and Church streets. This 
 Mrs. Ryle offered to give to the library trustees and of 
 course her offer was gratefully accepted. The only condi- 
 tion Mrs. Ryle made was that the library should be named 
 after her father and to this day it is known as the Danforth 
 Free Public Library. Mrs. Ryle, however, was not satisfied 
 with what she had done and so she paid all the expenses 
 incurred in making her former home a convenient place for 
 a library. When the building and its contents were de- 
 stroyed in the fire of 1902, and the trustees decided to put 
 up a new building on Broadway, Auburn and Van Houten 
 streets, Mrs. Ryle contributed one hundred thousand dollars 
 towards paying the expenses. 
 

 ■4 -^l /'t^ V-iLt>;;4 
 
 Paterson's First Public Library Building 
 
MUNICIPAL ADMINISTKATION 97 
 
 PURCHASE OF PARKS. 
 
 The Board of Aldermen in 1888 purchased the Eastside 
 and Westside parks and then passed them into the custody 
 of a board appointed for that purpose by the mayor. A 
 number of smaller parks have since been added in various 
 parts of the city, the largest being the former Pennington 
 homestead lying opposite Westside park. 
 
 CHANGES IN THE CITY GOVERNMENT. 
 
 The legislature of 1907 provided that the mayor of 
 Paterson should appoint Commissioners of Finance, of 
 Public Works and of Police and Fire. The Board of Finance 
 divides up the money received from the taxpayers among 
 the various branches of the city government and looks after 
 the money interests of the city; without the approval of the 
 Board of Finance no bills, excepting those of the Board of 
 Education, can be paid. The Board of Public Works looks 
 after the public buildings, the streets and such matters. The 
 title of the board is enough to show the work looked after 
 by the Board of Police and Fire Commissioners. 
 
 THE FIRE DEPARTMENT. 
 
 There is an interesting incident connected with the in- 
 troduction of the first steam fire engine in Paterson. For 
 many years the firemen of the city received no pay for the 
 work they did and each company tried to do better than any 
 of the others. Their principal means of putting out fires 
 were hand engines. In 1860 Washington Engine Company 
 No. 3, located on Prospect street, near Ellison, asked the 
 aldermen to buy a steam engine for it, agreeing to contribute 
 a thousand dollars out of the company's treasury towards 
 the cost. Steam engines were something new and none of 
 the aldermen had ever seen any. Engine Company No. 3 
 was not satisfied with the inaction of the aldermen and, in 
 
98 FOUR OHAPTBKS OF PATBRSON HISTORY 
 
 order to show the pveople of Paterson the kind of work a 
 steam engme could do, they had one brought from New 
 York. There was a big crowd present when the engine was 
 set to work pumping at one of the raceways in the lower 
 part of the city. All were surprised and many were ready 
 to help buy the machine, so that $1,400 was subscribed on 
 the spot. Had it not been for the war Engine Company 
 No. 3 would have obtained that engine, but when the Union 
 needed men so many of the fire fighters enlisted that little 
 attention was paid to the fire department. After the war 
 was over the members of Passaic Engine Company No. 1, 
 whose house was on Van Houten street, nearly opposite to 
 where fire headquarters are today, thought they would get 
 ahead of No. 3 and so they circulated a petition among 
 prominent men asking the aldermen to buy a steam fire 
 engine for Engine Company No. 1. Those who had charge 
 of the petition and those who signed it were made to promise 
 not to tell anybody what was being done, for the men of 
 No. 1 were afraid that the men of No. 3 might spoil their 
 plans, for it was known that No. 3 also wanted an engine. 
 One of the men of No. 1 told the secret to his wife and she 
 blabbed it the next morning to her next door neighbor, who 
 was the wife of a member of No. 3. The rest of the story 
 need hardly be told. The petition from No. 3, hurriedly 
 prepared, was granted by the aldermen while the men of 
 No. 1 were still looking for signatures to their petition. And 
 so it came to pass that Engine Company No. 3 was the first 
 company of the old volunteer department to have a steam 
 fire engine. 
 
 The change from the volunteer department to the paid 
 department was gradual. First the aldermen gave a few 
 hundred dollars to each fire company every year; then the 
 captain and engineer were paid and then followed the ap- 
 pointment of paid call men, the latter being members of the 
 department who worked at their usual occupations until a 
 
MUNICIPAL ADMINISTKATION 99 
 
 fire alarm was sounded when they dropped everything and 
 hurried to the scene of the fire. Finally came the present 
 department with its large force of men and the best of fire 
 fighting machines. 
 
 THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 
 
 It is not at all certain that Guiliaem Bertholf taught 
 school in 1693 in what is now Paterson, but it is likely that 
 he did. In one of his letters he refers to himself as "the 
 pastor of the churches of Hackensack and Acquackanonk, 
 the resident schoolmaster and consoler of the sick." As 
 Paterson, before it was called Paterson, was a part of Ac- 
 quackanonk, the chances are that the school teachers of 
 Paterson today are the successors of Rev. Mr. Bertholf. The 
 Acquackanonk church records tell of a man named James 
 Billington, who was a schoolmaster, and who was married 
 in 1742, the name of his bride being Anna America. Perhaps 
 Mr. Billington taught school somewhere in what is now 
 Paterson. There was a school in 1768 at Pompton and in 
 1775 at Singac; in 1802 there was a log school house near 
 what is now Athenia — schools aU about Paterson but none 
 in Paterson. ■■■•• ''■■ -^ ^.^ 
 
 Just when the first school was built in Paterson is not 
 known but records tell of school being taught before 1820 
 in a building which stood near where the Market street 
 bridge now crosses into Bergen county. There were several 
 school teachers there, one after another, and some of the 
 pupils were ferried across the river from Bergen county, for 
 there was no bridge there at that time. The teacher and 
 his family lived in the same building in which he taught 
 school; there were several classes and each was taught for 
 three hours in the forenoon and three hours in the after- 
 noon ; there was a half holiday every Saturday and later on 
 a whole holiday on Saturday, but there were no vacations. 
 
100 FOUR CHAPTERS OF PATERSON HISTORY 
 
 But before this time the Society for Establishing Useful 
 Manufactures had done something towards education. In 
 1794 the superintendent of the Society reported to the 
 directors that a number of children would be taken out of 
 the Society's factory by their parents unless something was 
 done in the way of teaching these children. So the directors 
 told the superintendent to employ a schoolmaster to teach 
 these children on Sundays. This was probably done, for two 
 years later the Society gave John Wright, schoolmaster, 
 the use of a house in which to teach school. But before 
 John Wright began to teach, Miss Sarah Colt had started 
 a Sunday school and she carried it on for a number of years; 
 she was the daughter of the Society's supyerintendent and 
 was only twelve years of age when she began to teach. It 
 may seem curious in these days that reading, writing and 
 arithmetic should be taught in Sunday schools, but the 
 teaching of these branches of education was the main object 
 of Sunday schools in the early days of Paterson. Even as 
 late as 1822 the Paterson Union Sunday School Society de- 
 clared that its object was teaching "the rudiments of the 
 English language, religion and morality." 
 
 In 1814 the Society gave a lot on the southeast comer 
 of Market and Union streets for the purpose of education 
 and the building there was occupied by the Paterson Acad- 
 emy, which had been started some three years previous. It 
 was in this building that the first free school, that is, a school 
 at the expense of the public, was begun in 1827, the lower 
 floor of the building being rented for $2.60 per month, but 
 it was understood that the school was only for the benefit 
 of the children of the poor. The cost of education in Pat- 
 erson in 1831 was only $300 and in 1835 the school trustees 
 got along with $200, this sum including all expenses. These 
 schools were called "free schools for the poor" and it was 
 not until 1847 that the words "for the poor" were dropped 
 from the title. Even then it required a permit from the 
 
MUNICIPAL ADMINISTRATION 101 
 
 school trustees before a child could enter school and no 
 family could send more than one child without paying a 
 tuition fee. Children were required to furnish their own 
 books and stationery. 
 
 In 1837 the school trustees rented the basement of the 
 Cross street Methodist church and in this same basement 
 the first session of the Passaic county courts was held. 
 While court was in session the children played. School was 
 next held in the basement of a Baptist church in Broadway, 
 afterwards the German Presbyterian church. The school 
 was then moved to the corner of Union and Smith streets; 
 this building was burned down in 1846 and the school went 
 back to the basement of the Cross street church. In 1848 
 the trustees bought a lot on the south side of Ellison street, 
 between Main and Prospect streets; there was already a 
 building on the lot, but another was erected in the rear; the 
 lower floor of this was used as a private school ; the public 
 school was held upstairs and among the pupils who attended 
 was the late William J. Rogers, who was subsequently super- 
 intendent of the schools in Paterson for a number of years. 
 The records do not tell what the school hours were but they 
 do say that these hours began at six o'clock in the morning. 
 
 Progress in building schools — and also in attending 
 them — now became rapid until there was established our 
 present large and efficient system. Under the city charter 
 of 1871 the members of the Board of Education were elected 
 annually by voters, two from each ward; this was done away 
 with by the legislature in 1902, since which time the mem- 
 bers of the board have been appointed by the mayor of the 
 city.