CHAPTER XIV. From an Indian Path to the King's Highway-New Brunswick and Historic Piscataway. The antiquated college town of New Brunswick, which the traveller Philadelphia-ward finds perched on the high rolling banks of the Raritan, is located on the most ancient highway in New Jersey; a road that, before the foot of the first white man had trod the American continent, was centuries older than were its flanking oaks, chestnuts and hickories. In those remote days before the advent of Europeans - a faint path could be traced on nature's carpet of fallen leaves and twigs, running east and west through the thickets and undergrowth of the vast and sombre forest. It was the soft impress of the moccasined feet of the LenniLenape, made while on their frequent way to the LenniWihittuck, or Delaware river. This Indian path started at what is now Elizabethport and plunging into the solitudes of the wilderness extended almost in a direct line to a point on the Raritan opposite where Albany street, in New Brunswick, now terminates. Here the red-men at low water forded the river, or at higher tides paddled across in their birch canoes. Passing up the present line of Albany street, the foot-path traversed the hoary woods with but little deviation till it reached the Delaware, just above where now is the capital of the state. This was the Indian's thoroughfare-their main artery of travel. It was intersected by others, the most important being the one by which the Monseys and more northern tribes found their way to the Commencing on the Delaware in what is now Sussex county, near where three states converge, this trail, known as the Minisink path, ran southeasterly to within five miles of where Carteret founded his capital, Elizabethtown. Turning to sea. INDIAN PATHS ACROSS NEW JERSEY. 183 the right, it stretched across the country to the Raritan, three miles above its mouth. Following the south bank of the river and the shore of the Lower bay, the footpath continued along where now is the village of Middletown, and so onward over the pleasant rises and gentle declivities of Monmouth, till it penetrated the hemlock heights of the Highlands, and descending on their ocean side reached the river which the red-man had named Nauvessing, "the place of good fishing." Another Indian trail branched from the first one at the Raritan ford, and following the river bank extended north and west, by way of the site of Bound Brook, to the forks of the stream, where it divided. It was over this trail that settlers first made their way up into Bedminster. Early in the seventeenth century other than Indian forms were to be seen passing along our ancient highway. Over this path, which had never been pressed by human feet save by those of the soft-stepping, stealthy savage, strode burly Dutchmen wearing hats of generous brim, broad belts and stout leather jerkins; the smoke from their pipes, fragrant with the odors of the best Virginia, mingling with the breath of the woods and exuberant herbage. The Hollanders had settled New Amsterdam; sailing in their high-pooped shallops through the Kill von Koll-the creek of the bay-they landed on the west shores of the Achter Koll-the back bay—and found this Indian trail a most convenient route to their settlement on the Delaware. Later on, when the English had captured New Amsterdam, they, too, discovered that the natives had marked out an excellent line for a road across the Jerseys—and a road it has been from that day to this. A mutual good will soon existed between the Dutch and English and the dusky occupants of the little wigwam villages that were planted in cool and shady glens or by the side of sparkling * When the Dutch first landed on the shores of this part of Monmouth, they wrote down the Indian name for the place as it sounded to them, thus "Nau-vessing." The English converted the word into Nave-sink, from which Neversink is, perhaps, a natural result. The generally-accepted significance of the name— "the place of good fishing"-is not endorsed by all authorities. By some the original word is interpreted as meaning, "high lands between the waters," while others claim its significance to be "pleasant fields," referring to all the country lying between the Highlands and Chingarora, as the vicinity of Keyport was called. rills. The white man had not long used this forest trail before signs of human thrift began to break in upon the wildness of nature. He travelled not only with matchlock and hanger, but with mattock and axe as well. The wild grape-vines and stunted bushes that encumbered the path were cleared away; the decaying tree-trunks, giants that had fallen from mere weight of years, no longer impeded the passer-by. Foot-logs crossed the little streams, and soon the glittering axe hewed out a clearing here and there on the side of the path, from which rose little log cabins, premonitory symptoms and prophecies of populous hamlets and villages soon to follow. In 1665, when Philip Carteret reached the place he called Elizabethtown, it was already a settlement of four log huts. Some of the immigrants who had accompanied him from England made their way along this trail, till reaching a convenient point their brawny arms forced back the forest on either side, and planted the germ of a town which later migrators from New England named Woodbridge. In the following year other pioneers, striding sturdily westward, felled the trees and let the warm sunlight in on a new settlement, soon baptized as Piscataway. A few years later New Brunswick received its first inhabitant. Tradition gives his name as Daniel Cooper. Early in 1681 John Inians and some associate purchased ten thousand acres of land at Ahanderhamock, as this vicinity had been named by the Indians. In November of the same year Inians located for himself on the west bank of the river twelve hundred acres, embracing the present site of New Brunswick. By 1684 a number of Holland people had settled on his land, among whom were the ancestors of such old Jersey families as the Vrooms, Andersons, Probascos, Van Duyns and others. A charter for a ferry was granted in 1697 to John Inians for the term of his or his wife's life, at the yearly rental of five shillings. Soon quite a settlement grew up about Inian's ferry, and travellers by the old Indian path began to be frequent. It lost its early appellation and became known as the Dutch trail; indeed, for many years later it was little better than a trail through the woods, and was used only by pedestrians and horsemen. In 1716, nearly twenty years after the establishment of the ferry, the tariff named only "horse and man and "single person." Within a few years this old Dutch " NEW BRUNSWICK IN 1717. 185 trail began to present some of the characteristics of a road, and we find imposed upon the innkeepers of Elizabethtown, Woodbridge and Piscataway a total annual tax of ten pounds for keeping the highway free from fallen timber. This impost, was laid for the preservation of the "lower road," which, following a branch Indian path, diverged from the main trail a few miles beyond the Raritan, its trend being southwesterly, by way of Cranbury, to Burlington. The necessity for this tax, as the act declares, was because of the unsettled condition of the country the road traversed, whereby it was in danger of falling into "decay to the great inconvenience of travelers who may pass and repass that way unless care be taken to maintain the same until such time as it may be maintained by those who inherit it." The town grew apace, and before 1717 there were people. enough to necessitate the building of a church. A frame structure fifty feet front, containing fifty pews, was erected under the superintendence of Elder Roelef Sebring and Deacons Hendrik Bries and Roelef Lucas. It faced the river on the corner of what is now Burnet and Schureman streets, and for more than fifty years housed the congregation of the First Dutch Reformed church of the town. This was not the earliest house of worship in this vicinity. One had been erected some years before, about one and one-half miles beyond the present New Brunswick city limits, and it is believed it was the first sanctuary built in the county of Somerset. Tradition characterizes it as a rude structure, never entirely completed; the settlement about Inian's ferry growing rapidly, the congregation preferred to transfer itself to a new church in "the town by the river" rather than complete the old one at a point where evidently population would not centre. From this time the tide of settlers rose, and rolled steadily on toward and beyond the Raritan. In 1730 the population of New Brunswick was augmented by the arrival of a number of Dutch families from the upper Hudson, who planted themselves on either side of the road leading up from the ferry, giving it the name of Albany street. Before then it had been known as French street, deriving its appellation from Philip French, the person from whom these new-comers had acquired their lands. He was a large owner in Middlesex county, and was the son of Philip French who had been mayor of the city of New York and speaker of the assembly of that province. In addition to their native thrift the migrators introduced into East Jersey the good old Holland names of Van Dyke, Van Alen, Van Veghten, Van Deursen, Schuyler, Ten Broek, and others. Not only the town by the river benefited by this influx of new-comers; the back country of Middlesex, which had been a county since 1682, lost its aspect of a solitude. The old Dutch trail was rapidly being transformed into the King's highway; clearings multiplied, and what had been clearings were now converted into arable fields and well-tilled farms. Immigrants from Germany landing in New York traversed this road, seeking that Mecca of all pilgrims from the Rhine, the province of Pennsylvania. Finding their route bordered by goodly lands, many of them abandoned their proposed goal, and turning aside made their homes among the Dutch and English settlers. The country in the vicinity of this highway, when much of New Jersey was still a wilderness, had the appearance of being comparatively well cultivated and long occupied. James Alexander, the father of Lord Stirling, in a letter written in 1730, says that "In the year 1715 there were but four or five houses between Inian's ferry and the Delaware river, but that now1730-the country is settled very thick; as they go chiefly on raising of wheat and the making of flour, and as New Brunswick is the nearest landing, it necessarily makes that the storehouse for all the produce that they send to market; which has drawn a considerable number of people to settle there, insomuch that a lot of ground in New Brunswick is grown to be near so great a price as so much ground in the heart of New York." Prof. Kalm, the Swedish botanist and traveller, when journeying in 1748 from Philadelphia to New York, expressed the greatest surprise at finding so cultivated a region, and declared that in all his travels in America he saw no part of the open country so well peopled. At Trentown, which he reached by sloop, his landlord told him that twenty-two years before, when he first settled there, there were hardly any houses, but the increase since that time had been so great that there were now nearly one hundred. Along the road to the Raritan there were great distances of forests, but yet on much of the way he found |