WHEN cannon fire and musket shots rang through the streets of Perth Amboy, few civilians were present to hear them. The town’s commanding position, overlooking the Raritan River and Bay, made it a garrison for British and American forces in turn.1 And when Continental commanders learned the King’s army had control of Staten Island, just … More Tides of war
“LIFE to him seemed hollow, and existence but a burden.” So heavy was the gloom that descended upon poor Tom Sawyer, before his inborn cleverness got other boys believing that to whitewash thirty yards of fence was anything but drudgery. Facing a similar task, William A. Whitehead seems to have found nothing about life burdensome. … More Whitewash
POETS of old, and not only poets, looked back with longing to a supposed Golden Age, a remote past in which peace and prosperity reigned supreme. Yet, in the life and times of William A. Whitehead, it was hard for some to imagine things could have ever been better. In one corner of New Jersey’s … More 102–The house of Parker
NOT until the end of its second century could New Jersey’s oldest permanent English settlement and first seat of government begin to call itself, officially, the City of Elizabeth. Through a referendum and an act of the state legislature in the 1850s, the Township and Borough of Elizabeth came together at last under a unified … More 089–If so many
THE night sky gives us great cause for wonder: the more so, if we consider the vastness of the universe, an infinitesimal part of which is visible to our eyes. Those of us who scan the heavens for clues to the cosmos grapple with even deeper truths about space and time: by earthly measures, the … More 088–Dark matter
IT could be said that, somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, Richard Nicolls lost New Jersey. At the behest of his royal master, James the Duke of York and of Albany, Colonel Nicolls went to assert England’s claim on a part of America then ruled by the rival Dutch. In August 1664, his … More 086–Seeds of dissension
NEAR a bend in the Raritan River now crossed by hundreds of thousands of motorists every day, there was once little to disturb the routine movements of birds, beasts and tides except an occasional transit by raft or canoe. Here the river was met by what, in the imagination of William A. Whitehead, served as … More 079–Travelling facilities
WHERE the surest token of wealth and worth, present and future, is the land that one owns, possession of an unsullied title and clear delineation of boundaries are somewhat akin to godliness. Landholding has been construed, historically, as compliance with the injunction in the book of Genesis to “be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the … More 076–The saints of old
NO human lives were lost when fire destroyed Edward Stewart’s United States Hotel. But upon the plight of hundreds already dead, the 1844 blaze cast a lurid glow.1 Stewart’s hotel stood upon ground that the first settlers of Newark had early reserved for common use. Thirty years after their arrival, the dimensions and limits of … More 075–Old Mortality
THERE’S no second chance to make a first impression, and this had all the makings of an audacious debut. Notices of a new historical society for New Jersey, emanating from the busy pen of its corresponding secretary, had barely reached the meeting rooms of other learned associations around the country. Now they, and the wider … More 053–Scot’s Model
An attractive presence 