IF a “riot,” by the usual common law definition, requires an unauthorized gathering of more than two people, then behold a Newark riot that wasn’t, until it was.1 The initial upheaval, from a man wielding an axe and with the aid of his employer, happened so quietly and left so slight a wound that few even noticed the deed or the injury. But the news-gathering mechanisms of the day, amplifying the act for many thousands more of ears and eyes, called forth the numbers requisite to a riot, and the assembled mob set about finishing off its victim.
The casualty of this tumult was a temporary highboard fence, erected one day in June 1859 on three sides of Trinity Episcopal Church.2 The barrier was meant to shield the site as carpenters and masons worked to extend the church at its chancel end. It was also intended to protect the adjacent, undeveloped ground during construction: land belonging to “the Military Park,” in which Trinity’s sanctuary had stood for more than a hundred years.3
An account of the first, inconsiderable assault, given that night to a Newark telegraph operator by a person or persons unknown, was copied into the morning papers of New York under the headline “A Riot in Newark.” This dispatch traversed the country with lightning speed, appearing in papers from Maine to New Orleans:
Newark, June 15. – A squad of police was called out about 8 o’clock this evening, to quell a small riot. … The police did not arrive until after the fence had been demolished and those engaged in its removal had dispersed. A more serious time is anticipated to-morrow night, as the churchmen will probably guard the place.4
Editors at the Newark Daily Advertiser read the metropolitan journals with dismay. The New York newspapers had had a “bogus riot report” foisted on them, and swallowed it whole. The truth was that John R. Pierson, a homeowner opposed to the extension of the church, had gone out with his hired man, chopped down a few feet of fence, and “retired quietly.” The account of Pierson’s act, swollen “to such absurdly formidable proportions” in the press, was surely more hurtful to Newark’s reputation as “a peace-loving and orderly community” than a few axe-blows had been to a temporary wooden barrier.5
The telegraphed premonition of “more serious trouble,” however, spelled doom for the rest of the fence. By evening, said the Advertiser, a crowd of several hundred had gathered, “none of them apparently having any definite object, beyond the gratification of a natural curiosity….” But out of that gathering developed “some approach toward the riot which had been anticipated–and which was probably the object of the dispatch published in the morning.”6
Newspapers, seen as having been duped into instigating the violence, overflowed with recriminations. A correspondent of the Newark Daily Mercury judged that “The man who sent that message or procured it to be sent meant to have a riot, and he has been gratified.” Consequently, “What was false yesterday is true this morning.”7 The New York Times, seemingly untroubled by its own agency in the affair, blamed the Newark author of the “atrociously false telegram” for inflating a petty, private act into mob violence: “The result of this hoax was that the crowd which had assembled to see the predicted riot, itself fulfilled the mischievous prophecy.”8
Some Newarkers ascribed the utter destruction of the fence to the failure of their city government. The mayor, chief of police and two or three policemen who turned up at the park had allowed the mayhem to proceed. There were no arrests, and apparently no sustained efforts to intervene. “Under such circumstances, have the city any right to impose taxes upon the people,” asked one outraged reader of the Advertiser, “for the protection of property which they will not or cannot protect?”9 Another called for an inquiry into the conduct of the police, as some of them were understood to be sympathetic to the violence.10
The officers of the church took offense, naturally, but they had anticipated opposition. Long before these events there were discussions about how much ground the church could legally claim as its own. In an effort to remove any difficulties, they had furnished Newark’s Common Council with a written account of the planned expansion, its motives, and the substance of their claim to the land on which it would be built. While they didn’t feel they required the city’s permission, they did by this “memorial” seek a precise definition of the boundaries of their property, and the Council’s “formal assent” to their plans.11
The project would extend the rear of the church east about twenty-five feet, and surround the entire building with a “substantial” iron fence. The additional space would “give accommodation to an increased and increasing congregation,” while the fence would “protect the church from the filthy desecration to which it is now subject.”
(After the “riot,” the Advertiser was flooded with lengthy letters, “sufficient to fill a volume,” it said, and too numerous to print in a timely fashion. One of these, speaking of the fence as a safeguard to worshippers’ “health and comfort … in warm weather, when the windows have to be opened,” makes plain in what the “filthy desecration” largely consisted.)12
To substantiate Trinity’s property claims required a review of “some of the facts, now through the lapse of time partially obscure, upon which their right rests.” This led the authors of the memorial to turn back the clock to the 1660s, when the town was first settled and organized.
In the “New England Way” to which Newark’s founders subscribed, ecclesiastical and civil government were tightly intertwined. The founding agreements stipulated that only members of the town’s solitary church–at that time Congregationalist–could vote or hold public office, although landholders were guaranteed “all other Civil Liberties and Privileges,” regardless of religious affiliation.13 Very soon, the settlers set out public “highways,” and laid out their home lots along these roads. In the process, certain undivided “commons” were left for the use of all. Named for their functions, these common tracts included a “Market Place,” a “Watering Place for cattle,” a “Training Place” for military exercises, and a “Burying Place” to receive the dead.14
In the first half of the eighteenth century, Newark saw its original meeting house replaced by a new church, a satellite congregation emerge to the west in the form of the Mountain Society, and a nearby, rival group of worshippers embrace the laws of the Church of England. The first church also departed from its Congregationalist origins in favor of a Presbyterian form of government. The new Anglican parish of Trinity had always to distinguish itself from its elder sibling. But in 1859, more than a century into its existence, Trinity looked to the first church for precedents with which to defend its own liberties.
In their statement to the Common Council, the authors recalled that the first church had stood originally on the Burying Place, one of those common tracts where “Any settler of Newark had the right of enjoyment, whatever his religious notions might be or become.” Trinity, they argued, had the very same right to common land that the first church had, and could claim the site of their original and present sanctuaries on a part of the Training Place, now Military Park, as duly appropriated to them by the town.
There existed no record of that appropriation, only a tradition that it had been acceded to “at town-meeting by solemn vote.” So Trinity secured a royal charter, confirming its possession of the church and the ground on which it stood, “containing in the whole one half acre of land.” With this grant, Trinity claimed a “documentary title” to its one-half acre that even the first church couldn’t claim. The royal charter alone might not convey ownership, but it proved more than one hundred years’ possession, which, by an old New Jersey statute, constituted clear title to the land.15
If it were objected that Trinity had been slow to fence off its property, “Fences around churches,” the memorial observed, “were in those days not only unknown but incumbrances. The population was a farming one, and came to church in wagons, which, during divine service, stood around it.”
As further corroboration, the memorial noted that in 1810, “without hesitation or disturbance,” Trinity replaced its old building with the present one, “twice as large as the first.” There had been no questioning its right to do so. The same necessity dictated, in 1859, another expansion, allowed by the same prerogative now as then. On the first of April the Common Council, whether or not completely won over to Trinity’s case, voted to “interpose no objection” to its plans, although it did so “without entering on the question of legal rights….”16
In the second half of June, as the scandal over the riot and the roles of the press and police started to cool, the assertions in Trinity’s memorial garnered more attention. So, too, did the arguments and motives of the man whose antagonism toward the church expansion had led to the destruction of its fence.
John R. Pierson was an unlikely champion of the commons. A prosperous manufacturing jeweler, living across from Trinity in the former residence of its rector, Pierson didn’t conceal his personal stake in the dispute. He objected to the extension, in light of the handsome price and higher taxes he paid to own property facing a public park, his view of which, he said, was about to be completely cut off.17
While openly jealous of his own property rights, Pierson also saw the church as an illegitimate occupier and would-be usurper of public land. Trinity’s claim to its site could be shown to be “unfounded and absolutely groundless,” and the timing of its attempts to solidify that claim betrayed a calculated intent to subvert the rights of the town.18 Such action would open the door to still further encroachments on the commons, and Pierson felt compelled to stop it in its tracks. Two days before erection of the temporary fence, he had lodged a formal protest against any attempt to extend the church: “you will do so at your peril,” he warned.19 In a position to back up his words with actions, Pierson pledged $2000 to a fund to compensate the church for an eventual removal from its time-honored location.
The memorial to the Common Council named its authors only as “the Rector, Wardens and Vestrymen of Trinity Church, Newark.” But in light of its recourse to events and records of a distant past, it’s a reasonable assumption that input was sought and received from the Trinity communicant most familiar with its antiquities.
William A. Whitehead’s ties to Trinity extended to the time before he was born. His father had become a member on moving to Newark in 1804, and had subscribed both to the building fund for the new church in 1809 and to the printing of the consecration sermon the next year.20 The younger Whitehead made his own family “attendants upon the service in old Trinity Church” once he returned to reside in Newark in 1843.21 He was a sometime vestryman, as well as a faithful congregant and contributor. The year before the controversy erupted over plans to extend the church, Whitehead had “examined and arranged” for the vestry a series of “old Church Papers.”22 Any question about Trinity’s land tenure, any threat to its ancient rights would have concerned him deeply.
Whitehead’s earliest known intervention in the dispute of 1859 followed immediately the demolition of the board fence. He wrote to the Daily Mercury to address certain false reports and errors “to which rumor, with her thousand tongues, may give currency in a community,” although the falsehoods he had in mind were of a historical character, not those of recent vintage that could travel far and fast along telegraph wires.23
These historical misconceptions included the idea that a different religious denomination from that of the “old settlers” could not inherit patented lands; if this were true, noted Whitehead, it would exclude Presbyterian claimants as much as Episcopal ones. He also tackled the assertion that Trinity’s right to occupy its site was not supported by any known record: it was true he had found none, but neither had he found any record that such occupation was ever contested, until now. Not when the first Trinity church was built, not when it obtained its charter, not when the original church was “nearly doubled” in extent had the question come up.
But the challenge to the church was now a serious one: as the result of Pierson’s opposition, occupancy of common lands came under such scrutiny that some leading citizens declared themselves opposed to this new expansion, and even prepared to accept Trinity’s removal from the park.24 The Common Council ordered the street commission to look into the “expediency” of adding to the Military Common the quantity of land claimed by Trinity, a move that might effectively uproot the church from its site. Appeals and petitions circulated for and against removal.25
Whitehead could not allow his pen to rest. In the space of a week, he gave the Advertiser three lengthy treatises, drawing on the historical record to reinforce and expand points that the Trinity memorial had already made. That the campaign was partly a personal one, he didn’t deny: Trinity was very much a home to him, like the “family mansion … from which to part is painful, and which we would fain protect against the corroding influence of time, or the assaults of enemies….” If presence on the commons constituted an encroachment, it was wholly in keeping with established custom “that Trinity church was located where it now is.” Other churches and entire blocks of the city would “share the fate of old Trinity,” he warned, if their titles were subjected to the same doubts.26
As for Trinity’s delay in enclosing its lands with a fence, that was not at all surprising, Whitehead maintained, as the whole Training Place remained unfenced for more than a century. The church had exercised its “rights of ownership” instead by planting trees, renting out portions of its lands, and in other ways.
When, for the laying of the new church’s foundation stone in 1809, “a large concourse of people” assembled, it was “not with the aims and purposes of the mob” that had lately gathered “to the scandal of the city.” When, the following year, the new Trinity was consecrated, “there was no echo of dissatisfaction….” Nor was a single dissenting voice heard in 1774, the year that saw an acre and a half of the upper common allotted for Newark Academy. If the Academy’s building had not been destroyed soon thereafter in a British raid, “it might have stood to the present time, and been pointed at as another intrusion upon the town’s rights.”27
A further, more protracted episode in Newark’s history provided what Whitehead believed was conclusive proof of his church’s legitimate claim to its site. Trinity’s memorial to Common Council had alluded to it, briefly, as the “action taken respecting the outlands.” This was the division, after much wrangling among the Mountain Society, Trinity and the First Church, of 200 acres of “parsonage lands,” which the Presbyterian congregation had argued belonged to it alone: “if at any time flaws in titles were likely to be elicited,” Whitehead reasoned, “it was during that period.” Trinity’s claim to its share of the parsonage lands, and by implication to its place on the Military Commons, had been settled then for good.28
In a controversy about which little is known beyond what survives on the printed page, it’s impossible to measure the influence of any single participant. No doubt more was said and done than could have ever found its way into the newspapers, and from what the papers have preserved we can conclude that some of it was less than civil.29
We look in vain for any rejoinder to Whitehead’s writings on Trinity’s behalf, although they did elicit a number of long, discursive and idiosyncratic columns from his antiquarian colleague Samuel H. Congar.30 No hint is to be found of the role Whitehead may have had in the eventual settlement of the dispute. We know only that it was settled, when in August the Common Council voted 14-5 not to rescind the authorization to expand given Trinity Church in April.31
But just as the Council had endorsed Trinity’s plans “without entering on the question of legal rights,” so William Whitehead admitted that, in laying out the historical basis for the church’s claim, he touched as little as possible on “legal points.”32 The doctrine cited confidently by the Trinity memorialists, that long possession creates a clear title, is notably absent from his own writings.
The controversy was eighty-six years in the past when a Newark attorney revisited the argument that, by New Jersey law, long occupancy of its site had given title to Trinity. In a letter to the dean of what was now Trinity Cathedral, the lawyer observed that there remained “considerable doubt whether adverse possession could run against public property.” It seemed to him that a cloud of uncertainty still hovered over the resolution of 1859, that ceding legal ownership of common land to a private entity may not have been within Newark’s right. Still, there was peace, if at a price: “the present situation is entirely satisfactory,” he wrote in conclusion, “and maybe it is just as well that we do not discuss the question further too openly.”33
Copyright © 2023-2025 Gregory J. Guderian
[1] At least one newspaper account at the time made reference to the traditional definition: “No ‘riot’ took place, for but two persons assisted in the demolition of the fence, whereas the law requires the presence of three.” “The Newark riot–a ridiculous hoax,” The New-York (N.Y.) times 17 June 1859 4:4. By the terms of New Jersey’s present criminal code, not even three would suffice: see N.J. Rev. Stat. §2C:33-1 (2022).
[2] A brief notice of the fence going up appeared in Newark (N.J.) daily advertiser 15 June 1859 2:6.
[3] That the fence was meant to safeguard the park is mentioned in “The Trinity Church matter,” Newark (N.J.) daily Mercury 17 June 1859 (hereafter “The Trinity Church matter”) 2:3, “The destruction of the fence around Trinity Church by a mob,” Newark (N.J.) evening journal 17 June 1859 (hereafter “The destruction of the fence”) 2:2, and “Resolutions of Trinity Church,” Newark daily advertiser 22 June 1859 2:4.
[4] The evening post (New York, N.Y.) 16 June 1859 1:6; New-York (N.Y.) tribune 16 June 1859 4:6; The New York (N.Y.) herald 16 June 1859 7:3. The dispatch was paraphrased (“more serious trouble is anticipated to-day”), and untitled, in The New-York (N.Y.) times 16 June 1859 4:1. Papers in other cities, with a bit more reserve, entitled the report “Threatened Riot at Newark, N.J.”; see, for example, The sun (Baltimore, Md.) 17 June 1859 1:2; The press (Philadelphia, Pa.) 18 June 1859 1:8; Richmond (Va.) enquirer 21 June 1859 1:7. Only a handful of journals printed retractions, on learning of the trivial nature of the incident.
[5] “A tempest in a teapot,” Newark daily advertiser 16 June 1859 2:2 (hereafter “A tempest in a teapot”). The Newark Daily Mercury borrowed some of this language for its reporting the following day: “The Trinity Church matter” 2:3. Cf. “The proposed enlargement of Trinity Church,” Newark evening journal 16 June 1859 2:3 (hereafter “The proposed enlargement”).
[6] The Advertiser continued, giving a rather full account of how the “riot” grew out of an aimless assembly: “There was evidently no malice in the crowd at the outset, but as the discussion became more general as to the right of the church to occupy the enclosed ground, suggestions were thrown out that the rough fence that had been thrown around the church, for the purpose of confining the materials intended for the extension, ought to be taken up; some of the more irresponsible portion of the assembly caught the hint, and fell upon the fence with cheers, tearing off the boards and lifting the posts: it was the work of a few moments, and the party marched off down Broad street with fragments of the wreck upon their shoulders. Some stones were thrown by the boys by which a few lights of glass in the church were broken, but no other disposition was shown to injure the edifice.” “The excitement at Trinity Church,” Newark daily advertiser 17 June 1859 2:2 (hereafter “The excitement at Trinity Church”). The Newark Evening Journal described the crowd as “including representatives from all classes of the community, the youthful element, as is usual on such occasions, decidedly predominating.” As demolition began, “The chief actors in the movement appeared to be boys and young men.” “The destruction of the fence” 2:1.
[7] P., “The riot last night,” Newark daily Mercury 17 June 1859 2:3 (hereafter “The riot last night”). The correspondent added that, once the excitement was over, “a procession of boys appeared, who formed in ranks, and carrying pieces of the fence for trophies, marched down town to get lager, they said.” The same writer also warned of worse trouble ahead: “Throughout this crowd ran the threat–‘all things must have a beginning; this won’t be all’–and it will not be all. If the spirit of riot is to reign, it will not be long before a Protestant church will be served in Newark as a Catholic church was in Philadelphia.” More recent than Philadelphia’s 1844 anti-Catholic riots was one in Newark, memories of which probably hadn’t wholly dissipated: see Augustine J. Curley, O.S.B., “The 1854 attack on Saint Mary’s Church, Newark: a typical Know-Nothing incident,” American Benedictine review 61:4 (December 2010) 387-406. From the description of a “procession … formed in ranks” purportedly marching off “to get lager,” it’s not unreasonable to think that ethnic and sectarian animosity could have inflamed some in the mob, if it did not also inform the perspective of the Mercury correspondent.
[8] The Times continued: “With the shameful imbecility of the Newark authorities, or with the merits of the quarrel itself, we have at present nothing to do. But we have a right to complain that the agency of the Associated Press should have been made the means of accomplishing the objects of private recklessness or malice. If this case were a solitary instance of abuse of the telegraph it would be bad enough; but the same sort of thing is constantly happening, and it is time that a stop should be put to it.” “The Newark riot and the telegraph,” The New-York times 18 June 1859 4:5.
[9] The Advertiser’s report implicitly approved of this inaction: “Mr. Whitney, the Chief of Police, expressed his willingness to interfere, with the aid of the two or three policemen who were present, if the Mayor advised him to do so; but the latter, probably seeing that the men of the star and cudgel were in so hopeless a minority that their movement would result in an increase of the excitement, and perhaps an aggravation of the damage, did not so advise.–The Chief was furthermore advised by ‘responsible citizens’ not to interfere unless the church was attacked, and the difficulty therefore ended with the valorous exploit of prostrating the helpless fence, and breaking two panes of glass–value ninepence each.” “The excitement at Trinity Church.” The Evening Journal’s editor was more forthright in his endorsement: “The quiet and peaceable retirement of the crowd, it appears to us, is a better justification of the Mayor’s action than could be found in a list of killed and wounded….” “The destruction of the fence” 2:1-2.
[10] A tax payer, “Have we a police force?” Newark daily advertiser 17 June 1859 2:2-3; Jersey, “The late riot and the police,” Newark daily advertiser 22 June 1859 2:4.
[11] “Considerable opposition to this movement has been manifested by a number of citizens,” reported one local paper, “particularly those residing at the upper end of Park Place, in that vicinity, who regard the proposed extension of the church as illegal.” John R. Pierson was known to be “the most active opponent of the project….” “The proposed enlargement of Trinity Church.” In its memorial, the church corporation mentions it had sought “eminent legal counsel,” aware that there were doubts as to its right to expand. The text was printed as “Petition of Trinity Church,” Newark daily advertiser 16 June 1859 2:8, and in “The Trinity Church matter” 2:5.
[12] Newark daily advertiser 27 June 1859 2:5; “Trinity Church Extension” (letter from “Order”), Newark daily advertiser 30 June 1859 2:3; cf. Common Sense, “Trinity Church Extension,” Newark daily advertiser 7 July 1859 2:3; “Trinity Church” (letter from John R. Pierson), Newark daily advertiser 21 July 1859 2:3-4. Neighbor Joseph Hornblower observed that this problem had long persisted: “for many years past, and down to the present time, the grounds immediately adjoining the side walls and east end of the church, especially the latter, have been used for purposes, by day and by night, that have been and are extremely offensive not only to the worshippers in the church, but to passers by….” Jos. C. Hornblower, “Trinity Church–A Proposition for Peace,” Newark daily advertiser 13 July 1859 2:2-3. Another correspondent noted that the area also served as a popular venue for games of chance: “’sweat board’ and ‘stake pennies,’ which nuisance has occurred for many years past, and which I understand the church officers have vainly endeavored to abate.” “Trinity Church Extension” (letter from “Equity”), Newark daily advertiser 30 June 1859 2:3. The volume of letters sent to the Advertiser on the Trinity controversy doubtless grew with other newspapers’ unwillingness to devote to it more paper and ink; the Journal refrained from printing the communications it received, believing “the subject has been sufficiently ventilated in our columns for the present….” Newark evening journal 20 June 1859 2:2.
[13] Records of the Town of Newark, New Jersey, from its settlement in 1666, to its incorporation as a city in 1836 (Collections of the New Jersey Historical Society, 6. Newark 1864. Hereafter “Records of the Town”) 2.
[14] A survey of “So much Land as shall be Convenient for Landing places … for a School House, for a Town house, a Meeting house, a Market Place or Market places,” as well as 200 acres for a parsonage, was called for in a warrant of 1676. Some of these reservations, plus the Burying Place, Training Place, Watering Place and streets were recognized in the 1696 patent executed for Newark by the Proprietors of East New Jersey. The texts of both are printed in Records of the Town 281-283, 286.
[15] “An Act for the limitation of suits respecting titles to land,” passed 5 June 1787, states that sixty years’ uninterrupted possession vests “a full and complete Right and Title in every actual Possessor or Occupier of such Lands,” as does thirty years’ possession by a proprietary grant duly recorded in the office of the Surveyor General. Acts of the eleventh General Assembly of the State of New-Jersey. At a session begun at Trenton on the 24th day of October, 1786, and continued by adjournments. Being the second sitting (Trenton, N.J. 1787) 410-411.
[16] “Proceedings of Common Council,” Newark daily advertiser 2 April 1859 2:6; “A tempest in a teapot.”
[17] “My residence, which I now own, is by a title derived directly from the church corporation, and when they conveyed that property they did so with the representation that it fronted directly upon a public park, and received a consideration accordingly.” John R. Pierson, “Statement of J. R. Pierson,” Newark daily advertiser 17 June 1859 2:2 (hereafter “Pierson, ‘Statement’”). Cf. “Proceedings of Common Council,” Newark daily advertiser 4 June 1859 2:5; John R. Pierson, “Petition against Trinity Church Enlargement,” Newark daily advertiser 7 June 1859 2:8; Common Sense, “Trinity Church extension,” Newark daily advertiser 7 July 1859 2:3. Trinity’s “new parsonage” stood to the east of its former rectory, sharing a wall with it. The church sold the “old parsonage” in 1850 to Richard Jones for $8,000, who sold it to Pierson for $13,000 in 1852. Essex County (N.J.) Register of Deeds Liber F7 366-368 and Liber C8 161-164. The property at 2 Park Place (1 Park Place before the 1868 renumbering) is known as the Symington House from later owners.
[18] Pierson alleged that Trinity sent its memorial to the Common Council just after the state legislature adjourned without confirming a new chancellor, the court of chancery being “the only court which has the power to enjoin the church from encroaching and trespassing upon the public grounds.” The Council’s resolution, “previously prepared by an alderman, who is also one of the vestry, [was] sprung upon the Council and passed through–the whole transaction in the board of aldermen not occupying five minutes’ time.” Pierson, “Statement.” Daniel Dodd, the alderman and vestryman in question, denied Pierson’s allegation that the church had timed its improvements to coincide with the court vacancy. “Proceedings of Common Council,” Newark daily advertiser 16 July 1859 2:7.
[19] “The Trinity Church matter” 2:3; “The destruction of the fence” 2:2. The original of Pierson’s protest is preserved at the New Jersey Historical Society: Trinity Cathedral in Newark, Papers, 1743-1973, Manuscript Group 882 (hereafter “Trinity Papers”), Box 5/8.
[20] “Subscription for the Erection of a new Episcopal Church in the town of New Ark where the present one now Stands, by Shares,” and “Subscription Book for Newark 1809,” both in Trinity Papers, Box 5/2.
[21] “Childhood and youth of W. A. Whitehead 1810-1830,” of which transcriptions are held by the Florida Keys History Center, Monroe County Public Library, Key West, and by the P. K. Yonge Library of Florida, George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida; page 52 contains the reference.
[22] W. A. Whitehead, Newark 11 May 1858, to Samuel Meeker, in Trinity Papers, Box 5/8. These may have included papers he elsewhere described as recently “rescued from the rubbish of a garret.” William A. Whitehead, ed. An analytical index to the colonial documents of New Jersey, in the state paper offices of England, compiled by Henry Stevens (Collections of the New Jersey Historical Society, 5. New York 1858) 502.
[23] G. P., “Trinity Church,” Newark daily Mercury 17 June 1859 2:4-5.
[24] “The Trinity Church matter” (letter from S.) 2:3-4; O. S. Halsted, Jr., “The original deed of our public grounds,” Newark daily advertiser 22 June 1859 2:5. One of Whitehead’s scrapbooks identifies “S.” as his boyhood friend Samuel Hayes Pennington, a medical doctor and the first president of the Newark board of education. “Miscellanies Historical and Biographical relating to New Jersey,” Scrapbook Collection, Manuscript Group 1494, SB 94, New Jersey Historical Society.
[25] Newark daily advertiser 18 June 1859 2:4, 2:7. “I procured petitions to be printed in favor of the removal, and put in circulation,” Pierson wrote. John R. Pierson, “The remonstrance against the removal of Trinity Church,” Newark daily advertiser 15 July 1859 2:4. A fellow Park Place resident was asked to sign a petition against removal. Jos. C. Hornblower, “Trinity Church–a proposition for peace,” Newark daily advertiser 13 July 1859 2:2 (hereafter “Hornblower, ‘Trinity Church’”). Cf. Newark daily advertiser 25 June 1859 2:4, 30 June 1859 2:6; Newark evening journal 1 July 1859 2:5; “Remonstrance against the proposed removal of Trinity Church,” Newark evening journal 2 July 1859 2:5.
[26] G. P., “Trinity Church,” Newark daily advertiser 22 June 1859 2:3.
[27] G. P., “Trinity Church No. 2,” Newark daily advertiser 25 June 1859 2:3.
[28] G. P., “Trinity Church–No. III,” Newark daily advertiser 27 June 1859 2:4.
[29] A venerable former chief justice of the state supreme court, whose home like John R. Pierson’s faced Military Park, sensed that much had been said and published on the Trinity Church matter that “it would have been as well, and perhaps better, not to have said or published at all.” Hornblower, “Trinity Church.”
[30] C., “The public ground question,” Newark daily advertiser 28 June 1859 2:3; C., “The public ground question–No. 2,” Newark daily advertiser 29 June 1859 2:3; C., “The public ground question–No. 3,” Newark daily advertiser 18 July 1859 2:4. Congar’s seeming intent to drive a wedge between the first meeting house and the Burying Place on which it stood prompted a wry response from Whitehead: G. P., “Trinity Church No. IV,” Newark daily advertiser 8 July 1859 2:3-4.
[31] “Meeting of Common Council,” Newark daily advertiser 6 August 1859 2:2; “Common Council proceedings,” Newark evening journal 6 August 1859 2:2.
[32] G. P., “Trinity Church,” Newark daily advertiser 22 June 1859 2:3. In his first article on the controversy, Whitehead said that he avoided discussing “the abstract legal rights of the church,” his sole object being “the enlightenment of some who were in error….” G. P., “Trinity Church,” Newark daily Mercury 17 June 1859 2:5.
[33] John R. Hardin, Jr., Newark 27 October 1945, to Arthur C. Lichtenberger, in Trinity Papers, Box 1/8.
An attractive presence 