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Historical Sketch 
 
 CAMDEN, N. J. 
 
 BY 
 
 HOWARD M. COOPER 
 
 A revision and amplification of a paper read before the 
 Camden County Historical Society, June 13, 1899 
 
 With an Introduction by 
 
 Hon. CHARLES VAN DYKE JOUNE 
 
 Camden, N. J-: 
 
 HORACE B. KETLER 
 
 1909 
 
t^CTi 
 
 Copyrighted 1908 and 1909 
 by 
 Horace B. Keti.er 
 
 Printed by 
 
 SiNNiCKEON Chew & Sons Co., 
 
 Camden, N. J. 
 
 Illustrations by 
 
 Spencer G. Easton, 
 
 Camden, N. J. 
 
3^ntrotiuction 
 
 If one were to seek the genesis of Camden 
 he would not find it in the visit of the sturdy- 
 Dutchman, DeVries, nor of any explorer who 
 followed, nor in the voyages of those in search 
 of a land where they might increase their 
 wordly possessions, but rather would he find 
 it in souls devoted to principle, and primed 
 with courage never to yield; in a quiet contest 
 for right and equality, which knew no sub- 
 mission. 
 
 In one of his stories Robert Louis Stevenson 
 tells of a rider issuing from a forest upon the 
 high road and gazing upon it as it runs down 
 hill before him, joining road after road, skirt- 
 ing the sea and passing through city after city 
 to the farthest end of Europe. May we not 
 picture some such person, some one denied 
 that which he conceived to be right and de- 
 termined to seek a refuge elsewhere, looking 
 out upon the high road, and meditating upon 
 where it will lead him. As it reaches from 
 him it skirts the seashore, and suddenly melts 
 away and is lost to sight, for it has taken its 
 course across the ''deep, dark, blue ocean" 
 leading to a spot upon the banks of the Dela- 
 
4 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 ware, and there ending in the founding of a 
 home in another dime and upon alien soil. 
 
 Thus it was that William Cooper, leaving 
 his native land and tarrying for nearly a year 
 at Burlington, came to Camden about 1680, 
 where he built a home at Pyne Poynte. 
 
 Ruskin asserts that "all the pure and noble 
 arts of peace are founded on war," and that 
 *'it is the foundation of all the high virtues and 
 faculties of man." This may or may not be 
 true, but it may fairly be said that all great 
 results proceed from contest and struggle and 
 it may as fairly be said that to contest and 
 struggle, not of deeds of arms, but for the 
 maintenance of rights, may we trace the begin- 
 ning of our city. Though this be true, still its 
 inception was as peaceful as is the bosom of the 
 river which flows past its door. 
 
 At this point I am tempted, in a few bold 
 strokes, to tell of the evolution of the wilder- 
 ness into a city, of the felling of the primeval 
 forest, of the growth of roads and streets from 
 little pathways, of the founding of new homes, 
 the advent of new faces, and of the innumer- 
 able things which gradually but surely alter 
 the face of the land, but were I to attempt it 
 I fear that the good people who have the 
 courage to read this introduction would accuse 
 me of theft of the idea from Hawthorne's 
 
INTRODUCTION. 5 
 
 charming story "Main Street," of the facts 
 from Mr. Cooper's delightful and instructive 
 sketch. 
 
 A descendant of the William Cooper above 
 referred to, Mr. Howard M. Cooper, has given 
 to the citizens of Camden a work of great 
 value, for in it he has recorded many facts 
 known to few besides himself and it susreests 
 the following thought: We now have daily 
 papers giving the current life of our city, but 
 there is much that rests alone in the memory of 
 our citizens that should be saved for the future 
 historian. In Holland there are public archives 
 where historic facts may be preserved. It 
 surely would be of value for such a depository 
 to be established in one of our public libraries. 
 Encouragement should then be given to our 
 citizens to reduce to writing their recollections 
 of past and present events, and, being safely 
 kept where access could be had to them at all 
 times, who can tell but that they might be an 
 inspiration to some one in the future to con- 
 tinue the labor of love and affection so admir- 
 ably begun by Mr. Cooper. 
 
 January 22, 1909. 
 
 Chari.es Van Dyke Joi^ine. 
 
LORD CAMDEN 
 
In 1618 Lord De La Warr, sailing along 
 the Atlantic coast on his return to Virginia 
 from England, died at sea opposite the mouth 
 of '*a goodly and noble river," which, as a 
 perpetual monument to his memory, forever 
 indicating the place of his death, was thence 
 called the Delaware/ Sailing up this wide river 
 in 1 63 1, noting the creeks and estuaries empty- 
 ing into it, the Dutch commander, De Vries, 
 discovered about one hundred miles from 
 its mouth, on the eastern shore, a large 
 thickly wooded island, which he called Jacques 
 Eylandt. The Swedes, coming some seven or 
 eight years after, observing the same isle, with 
 much better taste called it by its Indian name, 
 Aquikanasra, an island destined to be, a 
 century and a half later, the site of the town 
 of Camden. By the concurrent testimony of 
 the early Dutch and Swedish writers it was 
 bounded on the west and north by the Dela- 
 w^are; on the east by what the Indians called 
 the Asoroches river, the Dutch the Timmerkill, 
 the Swedes the Hiorte-Kilen — our Cooper's 
 creek ; and on the south by the Quinquorenning 
 of the Indians, the Graef Ernest of the Dutch 
 — our Newton creek/ 
 
 Whether these early historians were abso- 
 lutely correct in their geography or not, it will 
 not seem impossible that the waters of Cooper's 
 Creek once had an outlet into Newton Creek 
 
 1 Barker's Sketches, 14; Smith's Hist. Va., 148. 
 
 2 Ivindbtrom's Map, Vol. 9, p. ig, N. J. Hist. Soc. 
 
8 HISTORICAI, SKETCH 
 
 to any one who will carefully observe the 
 topography of the land along the Haddon- 
 field turnpike about where the White Horse 
 road branches off, and note on the one hand the 
 ravine across Harleigh Cemetery, that, even 
 now, when its upper end has been filled for a 
 roadway, puts up almost to the turnpike, and 
 a little beyond, on the other hand, winding 
 through the low land skirting the road, the 
 small rivulet that is the head of the north 
 branch of Newton. Creek, with only the narrow 
 water-shed along which the Haddonfield turn- 
 pike runs, dividing them. Seeing this, and 
 recollecting how universally the cutting off the 
 forests lessens the rainfall and diminishes the 
 streams, the observer will hesitate before accus- 
 ing the early Dutch and Swedish discoverers 
 of anticipating Munchausen. 
 
 Though they explored, neither the Dutch 
 nor the Swedes settled here where the 
 Maeroahkong tribe of the Delaware Indians 
 lived, as their fathers had before them, undis- 
 turbed by the fact that across the great water 
 an humble shepherd, aroused by the light within 
 him to God's call, was preaching the absolute 
 equality of man, and the entire peaceableness 
 of God's Kingdom, and was drav/ing down 
 upon himself and upon those whose consciences, 
 awakened by his calls, were in numbers joining 
 him, the oppression and the ire of those who 
 profited by caste and lived by the sword. Until 
 persecution in England drove the Friends to 
 West Jersey for asylum, these Indians, under 
 Arasapha, their king, v/ith their village at 
 
O^ CAMDl^N^ NEW jKRSEiY. 9 
 
 Cooper's Point, were the only inhabitants 
 within our Hmits. 
 
 Who first of the EngHsh emigrants made 
 the future Camden his home is uncertain, but 
 it was probably Richard Arnold or William 
 Cooper. Few traces remain of Richard Arnold, 
 who seems to have left no descendants in these 
 parts. William Cooper, ancestor of many 
 families that still cluster about his choice of a 
 home, came from England in 1679 and stopped 
 for about a year at Burlington, before he chose 
 his permanent residence. Passing up and down 
 the Delaware, the bold bluff, heavily wooded 
 with pine timber at the point where the river, 
 sharply curving, receives the stream called by 
 the Swedes the Hiorte-Kilen, or Deer Creek, 
 from the many deer seen along its banks, and 
 along which grew "peach trees and the sweet 
 smelling sassafras tree," striking his fancy, he 
 fixed upon it as his future abode, and called it 
 "Pyne Poynte." His name, however, soon 
 attached itself permanently to both point and 
 creek. He located at Cooper's Point in the 
 spring of 1681, building his house well out on 
 the river's edge, just below the mouth of the 
 creek, a site long years ago washed away by 
 the encroaching tide. 
 
 Recognizing the brotherhood of the Indians 
 and their right to the soil that they and their 
 fathers hunted over and possessed undisputed, 
 the commissioners sent over by the proprietors 
 of West Jersey bought of them their right from 
 Oldman's Creek to Assunpink, securing their 
 title by three deeds, the earliest of which, dated 
 
lO HISTORICAIv SKE:TCH 
 
 September loth, 1677, covered Camden's terri- 
 tory, and extended from Timber to Rancocas 
 Creek/ William Cooper, further to satisfy the 
 tribe at Cooper's Point, paid them for the right 
 they still claimed, and received from them a 
 deed executed by Tallacca, their chief, and 
 witnessed by several of their tribe. Returning 
 the red man's trust and f riendlessness with hon- 
 esty and fair dealing, Camden's early settlers 
 found them always friends, and no tales of 
 Indian massacre blot her history. 
 
 Thus was commenced, at the very outset, 
 that never-varying policy of justness in all her 
 dealings with the Indians that has given to our 
 fair State such enviable and exceptional fame, 
 enabling Samuel L. Southard eloquently to 
 say : "It is a proud fact in the history of New 
 Jersey, that every part of her soil has been 
 obtained from the Indians by fair and volun- 
 tary purchase and transfer, a fact that no other 
 State in the Union, not even the land which 
 bears the name of Penn, can boast of." 
 
 Before the settlement of our overshadowing 
 neighbor of Brotherly Love, a few other scat- 
 tering Friends, following William Cooper, 
 began to locate in the neighborhood of his 
 home; and as they had braved the perils of 
 the ocean and of the wilderness, and tore them- 
 selves away from all ties of home, kindred and 
 early associations, for the boon of worshipping 
 God uninterruptedly in the way that to them 
 seemed right, they immediately, though but two 
 or three gathered in His name, opened a meet- 
 
 I Howe's Hist. Coll'n, pp. 21, 220. 
 
Q-^ camde:n, n£:w jerse:y. H 
 
 ing for His worship, the first record of which 
 is this minute of the Monthly Meeting held at 
 Thomas Gardiner's house, Burlington, Seventh 
 month (September) 5th, 1681 : ''Ordered that 
 Friends of Pyne Poynte have a meeting on 
 every Fourth day, and to begin at the second 
 hour, at Richard Arnold's house." Arnold's 
 house stood, as shown on Thomas Sharp's map 
 of A. D. 1700, a short distance above the mouth 
 of Newton Creek, and thus, within its log 
 walls, at the very beginning of the settlement, 
 was the first of Camden's ever widening circle 
 of churches established. It was the only 
 "meeting" between Salem and Burlington, and 
 the third in priority in West Jersey, and has 
 been kept up by Friends without a lapse from 
 that time to the present. 
 
 Shortly afterward the meeting was held at 
 Pyne Poynte, at the house of William Cooper, 
 a minister, and continued there until the arrival 
 of the ''Irish Friends," who settled at Newton 
 in the spring of 1682, when, as Thomas Sharp, 
 their historian, quaintly says, "Immediately 
 there was a meeting sett up and kept at the 
 house of Mark Newbie, and in a short time 
 it grew and increased, unto which William 
 Cooper and family, that live at the Poynte, re- 
 sorted, and sometimes the meeting was kept at 
 his house, who had been settled sometime 
 before." 
 
 But as the Newton Friends were much more 
 numerous than the few scattered families about 
 the Poynte, it was more convenient to most of 
 the members for the place of worship to be 
 
12 HISTORICAI. SKETCH 
 
 located at their settlement; and in 1684 the 
 first building devoted to religious meetings in 
 Gloucester county was built on the middle 
 branch of Newton Creek, at what is now West 
 Collingswood Station, on the Reading Rail- 
 road to Atlantic City. It, and the graveyard 
 by its side, were placed on the bank of the 
 stream, the only available highway in those 
 days of roadless forests, when the water bore 
 alike the halcyon voyages of youth, the grave 
 worshippers and the solemn funeral train. 
 
 By 1686 quite a number of emigrants had 
 arrived in this part of West Jersey and settled 
 about Red Bank, Woodbury, Arwames or 
 Gloucester, Newton and the Poynte, and felt 
 strongly the inconvenience of having to go all 
 the way to Salem or Burlington to transact 
 their public business. Accordingly, on the 26th 
 of May, 1686, the proprietors, freeholders and 
 inhabitants of the "Third and Fourth Tenths," 
 that is, the territory between Pensauken and 
 Oldman's Creek, acting in the spirit of pure 
 democracv, met at Arwames and formed that 
 quaintly curious frame of county government, 
 having only ten short paragraphs, that is still 
 preserved in the original book of minutes, in 
 the Clerk's office of Gloucester county, at 
 Woodbury. 
 
 ''This was the origin of Old Gloucester, the 
 only county in New Jersey that can deduce its 
 existence from a direct and positive compact 
 between her inhabitants.'" 
 
 I Mickle's Reminiscences, p. 35. 
 
O]? CAAIDEN, NEW JERSEY. 1 3 
 
 The action of the people in thus forming 
 their county organization, without any author- 
 ity of the Legislature, was, after having been 
 indirectly recognized in one or two other laws, 
 directly sanctioned, in 1694, by an act of the 
 Legislature, establishing the boundaries that 
 they had themselves chosen, and adopting their 
 title of the County of Gloucester. 
 
 The courts of the county so organized met 
 for ten years in taverns or in private houses, 
 sometimes at Red Bank and sometimes at 
 Arwames. At the latter place, on December 
 2d, 1689, they ordered "d. goale or logg house 
 for the securing of prisoners,"^ to be built. 
 And on June ist, 1696, they ordered "a prison 
 twenty foot long and sixteen wide, of a suffi- 
 sient heighth and strength made of loggs to 
 be erected and builded at Gloucester — with a 
 Court House over ye same of convenient 
 heighth and largeness." The first of the series 
 of court houses that has culminated in Cam- 
 den's noble one of to-day. 
 
 A vivid reminder that the barbarous criminal 
 punishments of England of the seventeenth 
 century were not left behind them by the emi- 
 grants to New Jersey is found in the minute 
 of that Court, of March ist, 1691, that a man 
 was found guilty of perjury and sentenced by 
 the jury "to pay twenty pounds fine or stand 
 in ye pillory one hour. To which ye bench 
 assents, and ye prisoner chusing to stand in ye 
 pillory they award and order the same to be 
 in Gloucester on ye twelfth day of April next, 
 
 I Mickle, p. 37. 
 
14 HISTORICAIv SKETCH 
 
 between ye hours of ten in ye morning and 
 four in ye afternoon." Equally striking is the 
 minute of a little later date that, "It is agreed 
 by this meeting that a payor of substantial 
 stocks be erected near the prison with a post 
 at each end, well fixed and fastened with a 
 hand cuff iron att one of them for a whipping 
 post." 
 
 The necessity of a regular ferry to Philadel- 
 phia being very soon felt by the new settlers, 
 they applied to their new Court, at Gloucester, 
 to license one, which on the first day of First 
 month, (March) 1687, it did, as appears by 
 this minute: "It is proposed to ye Bench y-t 
 a fferry is very needfull and much wanted from 
 Jersey to Philadelphia, and y-t William Roy- 
 den's house is look-t upon as a place con- 
 venient, and the said William Royden, a per- 
 son suitable for that imploy, and therefore an 
 order desired from ye Bench that a fiferry may 
 be there fixed, &c., to which ye Bench assents 
 and refer to ye grand jury to methodize ye 
 same and fix ye rates thereof." This they pro- 
 ceeded to do in a very leisurely manner, for not 
 until one year afterwards, on the first day of 
 the First month, 1688, did they issue their 
 license to William Royden and his assigns, 
 permitting and appointing "that a common 
 passage or ferry for man and beast be pro- 
 vided, fixed and settled in some convenient and 
 proper place between ye mouths or entrances of 
 Cooper's Creek and Newton Creek," within 
 which limits "all other persons are desired and 
 requested to keep no other common or public 
 
OF CAMDKN, NEW JERSEY. 1 5 
 
 passage or ferry." The license also fixed the 
 ferriage at not more than 6d. per head, for each 
 person, and I2d. for man and horse or other 
 beast, except swine, calves and sheep, "which 
 shall pay only six pence per head and no 
 more." 
 
 Thus was established the original of our 
 present ample ferry facilities. It was located 
 near the foot of Cooper street, its boats being 
 open fiat-boats propelled by oars or sails. A 
 few years afterwards it was purchased by 
 William Cooper, and for more than one hun- 
 dred years thereafter Camden was everywhere 
 known as Cooper's Ferries. To-day our Roy- 
 den street perpetuates the memory of Camden's 
 first ferryman. 
 
 Cooper's Creek was much too great a river 
 to ford, so that Samuel Spicer, who lived on 
 its east side, near its mouth, established a ferry 
 across it, at what is now Federal street, that 
 was maintained until the year 1747, when the 
 first bridge was erected. Thus, with ferries 
 across the western and eastern boundaries of 
 the island of Aquikanasra, its inhabitants 
 were in full touch with their neighbors. From 
 that island to-day, five steam ferries cross the 
 Delaware to Philadelphia and four bridges 
 span Cooper's Creek. Who can say that the 
 much-talked-of tunnel under the Delaware may 
 not soon more closely unite the twin cities on 
 its shores? 
 
 The establishment of the county only sup- 
 plied a part of the necessary political ma- 
 chinery, and so on the first day of June, 1695, 
 
l6 HISTORICAL SKETCH 
 
 the Grand Jury, with the assent of the Bench, 
 and in accordance with an act of the then last 
 Assembly, ^ constituted the constablewick or 
 township of Newton to extend from ''the 
 lowermost branch of Cooper's Creek to ye 
 southerly branch of Newton Creek bounding 
 Gloucester," but fixing no bounds on the east. 
 With their local government thus completed, 
 the people in these parts remained content for 
 one hundred and thirty-three years. Thus was 
 created old Newton township, which, after 
 having its fairest portion cut off in the creation 
 of Haddon township, was finally, after a life 
 of one hundred and seventy-six years, swal- 
 lowed up by its own progeny and obliterated 
 from the map in 1871, when Camden's revised 
 charter was obtained. 
 
 Robert Turner, an Irish Friend, residing in 
 Philadelphia, owned large estates in Pennsyl- 
 vania and in East and West Jersey, among 
 which were some large tracts of land within 
 the present limits of Camden. In 1696 he 
 sold to John Kaighin four hundred and fifty- 
 five acres, and the next year five hundred and 
 ten acres, lower down the river, to Archibald 
 Mickle. John Kaighin came originally from 
 the Isle of Man and Archibald Mickle from 
 Ireland. Both settled for a short time in Phil- 
 adelphia, but each moved to Jersey on making 
 these purchases. John Kaighin chose for the 
 site of his house the Point that bears his name 
 to this day, and shortly afterwards built, with 
 bricks brought from England, a substantial 
 house, modeled after an English farm house 
 
O^ CAMDEN, NtW JERSEY. 1/ 
 
 which, standing at the southeast corner of 
 Second and Sycamore streets, but so greatly 
 enlarged and changed as to have lost all its 
 original appearance, and now numbered 1128 
 and 1 1 30 South Second street, is probably the 
 oldest house in Camden. Its site on the river 
 bank, its front yard extending to the water's 
 edge, was a beautiful one, with its un- 
 obstructed view at the Point up and down the 
 broad Delaware. Elizabeth Haddon, a good 
 friend of John Kaighin, about the year 1704, 
 on her return from one of her visits to her 
 old English home, brought with her some box 
 and yew trees and gave two of each to him, 
 who planted them in front of his house, where 
 they lived and grew for nearly two hundred 
 years, landmarks of Kaighn's Point. The last 
 of the box trees was blown over during a great 
 storm, on February 2, 1876. The yew trees 
 lived until the winter of 1898-99 when they 
 died, but one of them yet stands at the corner 
 of the two streets. At Haddonfield, in the 
 yard of Samuel Wood, near his dwelling, 
 which stands on the site of Elizabeth Haddon's 
 home, yet live yew and box trees which she 
 brought to America with those she gave to 
 John Kaighin. 
 
 William Cooper, John Kaighin and Archi- 
 bald Mickle soon became prominent men, and 
 their descendants gradually increased their pos- 
 sessions until they owned all the land within 
 the limits of our city before its absorption of 
 the town of Stockton. The Coopers' land, 
 extending southward to Line street, so-called 
 
iS HISTORICAI, SKI:TCH 
 
 because it marked the line between them 
 and the Kaighins; the Kaighins' land extend- 
 ing southward from Line street to Little New- 
 ton Creek, popularly known as the Line Ditch, 
 because it was the boundary between them 
 and the Mickles; and the Mickles' land ex- 
 tending southward from Line Ditch to Newton 
 Creek, and every title in Camden to-day, be- 
 tween Cooper's Creek and the Delaware, can 
 be traced back to a Mickle, a Kaighin or a 
 Cooper. 
 
 At the opening of the Eighteenth century 
 the smoke curling from less than a dozen clear- 
 ings by the water's edge pointed out the fore- 
 runners more than two centuries ago of our 
 present expanding town. A score of years of 
 hard work had passed since they landed ; they 
 had gathered about them some few of the com- 
 forts they had left behind across the seas ; they 
 had ''sett upp" the meeting for the free worship 
 of God that caused them to leave friends and 
 relations and ''transport themselves and fam- 
 ilys into this wilderness part of America"; 
 they had established ferry communication with 
 their friends across Delaware river and 
 Cooper's creek; they had settled their free 
 form of local civil government, and, having 
 recognized the right of the aborigines to the 
 soil and treated them as its owners, they were 
 living in most harmonious relations with them, 
 and, gradually increasing their clearings, they 
 were quietly prospering. Their growth was 
 only the steady increase of an industrious pop- 
 ulation. For, after the arrival and settlement 
 
OF CAMDEN, NEW JERSEY. I9 
 
 of the Irish Friends at Newton, there was no 
 great influx of emigrants to this part of West 
 Jersey, Philadelphia attracting the greater part 
 of the new-comers. Occasionally a family 
 would move across the river, but down to the 
 time of the Revolution the population was 
 mainly the descendants of those who were 
 swept over here on that swell of migration 
 caused by religious persecution in England in 
 the Seventeenth century, so that when the 
 Declaration of Independence had been made, 
 while Philadelphia had become the first town 
 in the colonies, our territory was yet largely 
 woodland, dotted by a few farm houses and 
 intersected by but one or two roads. 
 
 However, in 1773, Jacob Cooper, a merchant 
 living in Philadelphia, and a lineal descendant 
 of the first William Cooper, foreseeing the 
 future town, employed Thompson, a Philadel- 
 phia surveyor, to lay out forty acres into a 
 town plot. A Whig, sympathizing with his 
 fellow Whigs in their struggles to obtain from 
 their mother country that representation 
 which they claimed should ever accompany 
 taxation, and venerating those Englishmen 
 who, believing in the justness of this demand 
 of the colonies, had the courage to openly avow 
 their belief, Jacob Cooper named his new town 
 Camden, in honor of that great English judge, 
 that wise English statesman, that powerful 
 champion of constitutional liberty and firm ad- 
 vocate of fair dealing with the colonies, who 
 has been called the right arm of Lord Chatham, 
 Charles Pratt, first Earl of Camden, who so 
 
20 HISTORICAL SKETCH 
 
 endeared himself to our countrymen that twen- 
 ty-one towns in the United States to-day bear 
 his name. In the infant town thus christened 
 only six streets ran north and south — King, 
 Queen, Whitehall, Cherry, Cedar and Pine, in- 
 tersected at right angles at the Delaware side 
 by Cooper and Market streets only, but on the 
 eastern side by Plum street also. 
 
 With that same admixture of loyalty and 
 defiance so marked in almost all the earlier 
 steps taken by our Revolutionary forefathers, 
 while naming his town after one of the fore- 
 most champions of the American cause in Eng- 
 land, Jacob Cooper honored his King and 
 Queen in the naming of his streets, and 
 through all the bitter feeling engendered by 
 our two struggles with the mother country 
 his nomenclature remained unchanged. It was 
 not until May 24th, 1832, that adopting a new 
 system, by ordinance of Council, King, Queen, 
 Whitehall, Cherry, Cedar and Pine became 
 Front, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth and Sixth 
 streets. But it was left until the days of pre- 
 tentious change that, in the very mockery of 
 old associations, on Camden's one hundredth 
 anniversary, time-honored Plum was dropped 
 for meaningless Arch. 
 
 Almost immediately after Camden was 
 planned the Revolution broke out and the 
 struggle for independence and existence as a 
 free people absorbing all other energies, scarce- 
 ly a thing was done to promote the growth of 
 the little town whose birth was so unheralded. 
 
01^ CAMDKN, NEW JERSEY. 21 
 
 During the whole of the occupation of Phila- 
 delphia by the British, Cooper's Point was held 
 by them as an outpost, General Abercrombie 
 having his headquarters in the old gambrel- 
 roofed farm house, still standing at the head 
 of Point street, with the stone in which is cut 
 the date of its erection, 1734, still in place in 
 its gable end, while an English and several 
 Scotch and Hessian regiments were quartered 
 at the old ferry house, at the foot of Cooper 
 street, torn down in 1882. The British lines 
 extended along the river front from Cooper's 
 Point down nearly to Market street ; thence up 
 to Sixth street ; thence diagonally about north- 
 east to Cooper's creek, portions of their re- 
 doubts remaining for many years afterwards. 
 
 The Hessians, under Count Donop, two 
 thousand five hundred strong, crossed at 
 Cooper's Point late in the afternoon of the 21st 
 of October, 1777, on their way to the battle 
 of Red Bank, and the straggling survivors, 
 after their defeat, returned to Philadelphia the 
 same way. Marching to the battle by way of 
 Haddonfield and Clement's bridge, in order to 
 cross the creeks, the Americans having de- 
 stroyed the bridges lower down the stream to 
 obstruct such an attack, the Hessians, thirsty, 
 stopped to get drink at the brick farm house 
 of Joseph Mickle, that stood, until torn down 
 in April, 1908, on Mickle hill, east of Mount 
 Ephraim avenue, between Everett and Thur- 
 man streets, near the stand-pipe. Unable to 
 pump water they vented their displeasure in 
 unintelligible Dutch, until Joseph Mickle's wife 
 came to the pump and by the simple, familiar 
 
22 HISTORICAI^ SKETCH 
 
 device of pouring water down it caused its 
 buckets to draw water. Their thirst quenched, 
 the Hessians, without damage to Joseph 
 Mickle's premises, marched on to their crush- 
 ing defeat. 
 
 Lying directly opposite Philadelphia, Cam- 
 den's territory was constantly overrun, and its 
 farming population harassed and alarmed by 
 detached parties of British soldiery skirmishing 
 and foraging, taking what they wished. When 
 the British fleet arrived at Philadelphia, their 
 men-of-war anchored on the Pennsylvania side, 
 while their convoys and tenders, numbering 
 about one hundred, filled the Jersey channel, 
 and cannon balls from their guns are preserved 
 to-day, as valued relics, by the descendants 
 of those along our shores, whom the wanton 
 firing greatly alarmed if it did not much dam- 
 age. 
 
 Although Camden is not distinguished as 
 one of the battlefields of the Revolution, yet 
 the ground on which the non-resisting follow- 
 ers of Fox have placed their humble meeting- 
 house was twice the scene of warlike manoeu- 
 vers. In the early part of 1778, Gen. Anthony 
 Wayne, being sent with a body of soldiers 
 into the lower counties of our State to collect 
 horses and cattle for the American army, with 
 his usual fierce and bold aggressiveness soon 
 made the enemy everywhere dread his on- 
 slaught; and Colonel Stirling, with a regiment 
 of the Queen's Rangers, one of the best in the 
 service, was sent to Haddonfield to watch him. 
 Hearing that he had left Mount Holly to at- 
 
O^ CAMDKN, NEW JERSEY. - 27, 
 
 tack them, the British, fully believing discre- 
 tion to be the better part of valor when '*Mad 
 Anthony" was about, hastily retreated, never 
 stopping until they reached, late at night, the 
 shelter of their earthworks at Cooper's Point, 
 although "the night was uncommonly severe 
 and a cold sleet fell the whole way from Had- 
 donfield to the ferry." Wayne pursued them 
 with his usual impetuosity. The next morn- 
 ing, March ist, 1778, the enemy sent out fifty 
 picked men for some remaining forage three 
 or four miles up the Haddonfield road, who 
 were met by Wayne's advancing cavalry and 
 forced to retreat. The Americans dashed on 
 to the very lines of the British, drawn up be- 
 tween Sixth and Market streets and Cooper's 
 Creek bridge. A sharp and spirited skir- 
 mish ensued, heavy firing being kept up by the 
 British, from about where the Friends' meet- 
 ing-house now stands, on the main body of 
 the Americans, stationed in the woods along 
 the Haddonfield road, which then intersected 
 Market street at Broadway, where the Catholic 
 church now is. The British, outnumbering 
 the Americans ten to one, compelled them to 
 retire to the woods, but without the loss of a 
 man, although the British had several wounded 
 and one sergeant of grenadiers killed. As the 
 patriots retired, an of^cer reined up his steed 
 and, ''facing the Rangers as they dashed on, 
 slowly waved his sword for his attendants to 
 retreat. The English Light Infantry came 
 within fifty yards of him, when one of them 
 called out, 'You are a brave fellow^ but you 
 
24 HISTORICAIv SKETCH 
 
 must go away.' The undaunted officer, paying 
 no attention to the warning, one McGill, after- 
 wards a quartermaster, was ordered to fire at 
 him. He did so, and wounded the horse, but 
 the rider was unscathed, and soon joined his 
 comrades in the woods a Httle way off.'" This 
 daring officer was the Count Pulaski. 
 
 Soon afterwards, in the same month, Pu- 
 laski, whilst reconnoitering with a body of 
 horsemen, almost under the fortifications of 
 the British, was only saved from an ambush, 
 arranged by Colonel Shaw on both sides of 
 old Cooper street, near the Friends' meeting- 
 house, by William West, a patriot, apprised 
 of the danger, who, seeing him riding down 
 the road some distance ahead of his men, lead- 
 ing them into the trap, waved to him to re- 
 treat. Taking the hint, Pulaski at once wheel- 
 ed his men and the ambuscade failed. Not so 
 fortunate, however, was a party of militia that 
 the British surprised about this time, at Coop- 
 er's Creek bridge, many, after a sharp fight, be- 
 ing killed and the rest taken prisoners. Soon 
 afterwards the enemy evacuated Philadelphia, 
 the scene of hostilities shifted, and our imme- 
 diate neighborhood had little further annoy- 
 ance from the Red-coats. 
 
 In June, 1777, the Trustees of Princeton 
 College met at Cooper's Ferry, where they 
 formally admitted the graduating class of 1776 
 to their Bachellor's degree, as of the Com- 
 mencement in September of that year, a 
 quorum of the Board not having been then 
 
 1 Mickle, p. 51. 
 
O^ CAMDEN, NEW JERSEY. 25 
 
 present. The announcement of their meeting 
 in Camden, said to have been the only one held 
 outside of Princeton under the stress of war, 
 was made by President Witherspoon in the 
 New Jersey Gazette of September i6th, 1778. 
 Nassau Hall was occupied by the British as a 
 barrack prior to January 3d, 1777, when 
 Washington won the battle of Princeton, and 
 afterwards was used as a hospital and a bar- 
 rack by the Americans, which may account 
 for the meeting of the College Trustees at 
 Cooper's ferry.^ 
 
 Long before the Revolution, Franklin spent 
 a night within our present Camden, of which 
 he tells in his famous autobiography. In Oc- 
 tober, 1723, being a boy of but seventeen, and 
 on his way to Philadelphia to seek employment 
 as a printer, he came across a boat at Burling- 
 ton in the evening going to Philadelphia and 
 went aboard of it. There being no wind, all, 
 Franklin included, were forced to row the 
 whole way. About midnight, fearing that they 
 had passed the unlighted town, they put ashore, 
 and, building a fire of fence rails, staid until 
 morning, when they found they were in the 
 mouth of Cooper's Creek, ''a little above Phila- 
 phia," where they arrived ''about eight or nine 
 o'clock on the Sunday morning and landed at 
 the Market street wharf." Up which street, 
 having bought ''three great puffy rolls," he 
 walked in his working clothes, "with a roll un- 
 der each arm and eating the other," passing 
 his future wife standing in the doorway of her 
 
 I N. J. Archives, 2d Series, Vol. 2, p. 436. 
 
26 HISTORICAIv SKETCH 
 
 father's house, who thought that he made "a 
 most awkward, ridiculous appearance," which, 
 he says, "I certainly did." 
 
 Washington, while President, at times cross- 
 ed the Delaware to ride out the road from 
 Cooper's Ferry. He last did so early in 1797, 
 when he nearly frightened out of his wits a 
 Dutchman, a Hessian deserter at the battle of 
 Trenton, who said to him, ''I tink I has seen 
 your face before; vat ish your name?" The 
 President, reining in his horse and bowing, 
 said, ''My name is George Washington." The 
 Dutchman, thunderstruck, cried out, ''Oh, 
 mine Gott, I vish I vos unter te ice. I vish I 
 was unter te ice. Oh, mine Gott." Washing- 
 ton reassured him and smilingly rode on. 
 
 Had Camden the choice of four great Revo- 
 lutionary names to be associated with her his- 
 tory she could hardly have done better than 
 Washington, Franklin, Wayne and Pulaski. 
 
 During the British occupancy of Philadel- 
 phia one of their cannon balls pierced the brick 
 wall of the chimney of Joseph Kaighin's farm 
 house, which stood at the southeast corner of 
 Front street and Kaighn avenue, and rolled 
 out on the hearth of the open fireplace. As 
 a relic connecting Camden's history with the 
 sterling men and stirring events of the Revo- 
 lution it was exhibited at the great Sanitary 
 Fair, held in Logan Square in Philadelphia, in 
 1864, which realized over $1,000,000, in aid 
 of the sick and v/ounded United States soldiers 
 of the War of the Rebellion. 
 
01^ camdi:n^ new je:rse:y. 27 
 
 Paul Jones' famous warship, Alliance, 
 launched just before the making of the treaty 
 by which France became our ally in the Revo- 
 lutionary War and named in honor of that 
 event, was laid up shortly after the close of 
 that war, on the east side of Petty's Island, 
 near its southern end, where her remains yet 
 were when Isaac Mickle published, in 1845, 
 his valuable ''Reminiscences of Old Glouces- 
 ter." Barber and Howe, in their New Jersey 
 Historical Collections, tell the following anec- 
 dote in the career of the Alliance: ''In an en- 
 counter with a British vessel, a shot entered 
 the corner of the Alliance's counter, and made 
 its way into a locker, where all the china be- 
 longing to the captain was kept. An African 
 servant of Commodore Barry, a great favorite, 
 ran up to the quarter deck, and called out, 
 'Massa dat — Ingresse man broke all de chana !' 
 'You rascal,' said the Commodore, 'why did 
 you not stop the ball?' 'Sha, massa, cannon- 
 ball must hab a room.' " 
 
 "How they brought the good news from 
 Ghent to Aix," the lovers of Robert Brown- 
 ing know. How they brought the good news 
 from Ghent to America, of the signing at that 
 town, on December 24th, 1814, of the treaty 
 of peace, ending the war of 1812', the Ameri- 
 cans first knew when the British sloop-of-war. 
 Favorite, on February nth, 1815, cast an- 
 chor in New York harbor, the glad tidings 
 being confirmed two weeks later, when the 
 schooner Transit brought the copy of the 
 treaty. Afterwards the Transit, her sea-going 
 
2S HISTORICAI. SKETCH 
 
 days over, was laid up on the northern end 
 of the now removed Windmill Island, opposite 
 Chestnut street, Philadelphia, with her stern 
 toward the river, and on it painted the name 
 "Messenger of Peace," remaining there as a 
 pleasure house, Mickle says, until within a few 
 years of his publication of his "Reminiscences 
 of Old Gloucester." 
 
 Evidence of the growth of a pine forest 
 over much of Camden's territory, later, by 
 over a century, than the name Pyne Poynte, 
 is furnished by Hill's "Map of Ten Miles 
 Around Philadelphia," published in 1809, 
 whereon all the territory between Broadway 
 and Cooper's Creek and Federal and Line 
 streets is marked "R. M. Cooper's Pine Field, 
 300 acres." Near the centre of that field in 
 early days was a lake much frequented by 
 wild geese and ducks, which, surrounded by 
 the pine forest, is shown in an oil painting of 
 it by a Philadelphia artist, as a picturesque 
 body of water. So late as 1845, there were, 
 according to Mickle, those who remembered 
 when it contained several feet of water 
 throughout the year. The cutting down of the 
 trees surrounding the lake and the general 
 clearing of the land along Cooper's Creek and 
 Delav/are River lowered their waters, causing 
 that in the lake to be drained. 
 
 Of the oak forest that thickly covered the 
 ground between IMarket and Main and Sixth 
 and Eighth streets, quite a number of trees yet 
 remain. They owe their preservation largely 
 to the fact that in them was established and 
 
01^ camde:n^ new jersey. 29 
 
 kept for many years Diamond Cottage Garden, 
 the last of the numerous public pleasure gar- 
 dens that formerly were scattered over Cam- 
 den. The Cottage, with its diamond-paned 
 windows, stood partly across the south side- 
 walk of Penn street below Seventh street and 
 Vv^as torn down in 1891. Several years before 
 that the grounds had been abandoned as a 
 public garden, but the trees were allowed to 
 stand and their cool shade was freely enjoyed 
 by the public and the place was popularly 
 known as Diamond Cottage Park. The New 
 Jersey State Agricultural Society held its fair 
 in that woods in 1855, the only year its fair 
 has been held in Camden. 
 
 The large elm tree standing in Cooper 
 Park, just north of the Public Library, has a 
 history. Richard M. Cooper, who lived in 
 that house, had in his household a child's nurse 
 whose family lived in Kensington, Philadel- 
 phia, near the Treaty Elm. Once on her re- 
 turn from a visit to them she brought with her 
 3, young sucker from that tree and planted it 
 in his yard. It grew and flourished, and is the 
 fine specimen adorning the Park to-day. A 
 sucker from it is growing on the sidewalk on 
 the north side of Penn street, just below 
 Seventh street. So, Camden has living to-day 
 both a child and a grandchild of the Penn 
 Treaty elm. 
 
 For many years after the Revolution, Cam- 
 den was a town only in name, and that only 
 on paper, being called Cooper's Ferries, or 
 simply The Ferries, until after the beginning 
 
30 HISTORICAIv SKE:TCH 
 
 of this century. A few sales of lots had been 
 made and a few houses began to cluster about 
 the ferries, and a road or two more had been 
 opened, but all else was farm or woodland. 
 
 When the Nineteenth century opened not a 
 house of worship stood within the present 
 limits of Camden. In 1801, however, the 
 Friends, having decided to move their place 
 of meeting from their old house on Newton 
 Creek to a more central locality, built the brick 
 meeting-house that stands at the corner of 
 Mount Ephraim avenue and Mount Vernon 
 street, the forerunner of Camden's present 
 ninety churches; and next, in 18 10, the Metho- 
 dists dedicated their first church at the north- 
 west corner of Fourth and Federal streets, 
 long since converted into stores, followed, in 
 1818, by the First Baptist Church, on Fourth 
 street, and thereafter the churches kept pace 
 with Camden's growth. 
 
 The mode of ferriage across the Delaware 
 in open boats, established as we have seen so 
 early in our history, remained without change 
 or improvement until 1809 or 18 10, when a 
 small steamboat, carrying passengers only, 
 was placed on the river. She was named 
 Camden and ran from the foot of Cooper street 
 to the lower side of Market street, Philadel- 
 phia. In 1809 the ferry at Kaighn's Point 
 was established by Joseph Kaighn (who drop- 
 ped the last i in the name Kaighin because it 
 had ceased to be pronounced) and soon a 
 small steamboat, also carrying passengers only, 
 and also, it is believed, called Camden, was 
 
OF camde:n, new JKRSI^Y. 31 
 
 placed on the line. Which of the two was the 
 first steamboat is doubtful. After them came 
 one called ^'The Twins/' because she had two 
 hulls clamped together with the wheel pro- 
 pelling her in the centre between them, a type 
 used many 3-ears afterwards in the small 
 steamboat, John Smith, which plied for a time 
 between Arch street, Philadelphia, and the 
 northern end of Windmill Island. After The 
 Twins came the steamboat Rebecca, built in 
 3, popularly known as ''Aunt Becky, 
 
 i^i 
 
 which ran from Cooper's Point to Arch street, 
 and whose peculiarities were that she had a 
 single propelling wheel astern, causing her to 
 be further nicknamed "The Wheelbarrow," 
 and had a wooden boiler, hooped like a cask, 
 but, nevertheless, an effective one, since she 
 frequently made her run in five minutes. 
 Crude as were those early steamboats they 
 were marvelous advances over the primitive 
 wherries, open row boats built with double 
 keels to enable them, when the river was part- 
 ly frozen, to be drawn from the water and 
 upon and along the ice until open water was 
 again reached. But the passenger trafiic 
 across the river was too inconsiderable to keep 
 up such a stride, and, after a few years, the 
 ferrymen, taking in sail, adopted in summer 
 the team boats, propelled by horses walking 
 round a circle on a tread wheel, and stopping 
 entirely for an hour at noon-time to feed the 
 horses; and in the winter, when the ice in the 
 river was not frozen solid, they fell back upon 
 the old v/herries. It was not until 1835 that 
 
32 HISTORICAI. SKETCH 
 
 the Steam ferryboat, regularly making its trips 
 winter and summer alike, became firmly estab- 
 lished as a fixture on the Delaware highway. 
 When it was proposed to build a steamboat 
 powerful enough to break through ice, "many 
 declared it as impossible as it would be to 
 propel a boat up Market street hill." But the 
 old State Rights, with her eighty horse-power, 
 and the ever larger, more powerful boats fol- 
 lowing her, culminating in those of to-day, 
 carrying yearly some twelve millions of passen- 
 gers to and fro across the Delaware without 
 stoppage by the ice, prove the force of Kos- 
 suth's motto, ''Nothing is impossible to him 
 that wills." 
 
 In 1812 the village of Camden had become 
 sufficiently important and known throughout 
 the State to be named by the Legislature, in the 
 act of January 12th of that year, establishing 
 State banks, as one of the six towns authorized 
 to do so. Under that act Camden's first bank 
 was incorporated on June i6th, 18 12, as "The 
 President, Directors and Company of the State 
 Bank at Camden." An unwieldy name which 
 was quickly shortened in common parlance to 
 The State Bank at Camden, and so retained 
 until its conversion to a National bank on 
 June 2d, 1865. After which its present name. 
 The National State Bank of Camden, gradually 
 attached itself. Not until sixty-one years after 
 its start had Camden a trust company. The 
 Camden Safe Deposit and Trust Company was 
 incorporated on April 4th, 1873, and began 
 business in July following. Camden's size. 
 
OF CAMDEN, NEW JERSEY. 33 
 
 and its importance as the financial centre of 
 South Jersey has grown until now, 1909, three 
 National banks and five trust companies find 
 in it a good field for wise financial manage- 
 ment, profitable to them and beneficial to its 
 citizens, and to those of a widely surrounding 
 circle. 
 
34 HISTORICAIv SKETCH 
 
 Though Camden's early growth was very 
 slow, and half a century after its birth it was 
 but a small town, yet it had a vigor of self- 
 assertion that compelled its recognition by the 
 people of the county. The annual town meet- 
 ings of Newton township had been held alter- 
 nately here and at Haddonfield until 1827, 
 when the Haddonfield people, conscious of 
 their greater voting strength, at the town meet- 
 ing, held regularly in turn at their place, re- 
 solved to shove Camden to the wall and there- 
 after to meet only at Haddonfield. Their 
 superior number carried the question. But he 
 laughs best who laughs last, and they uncon- 
 sciously aroused the young giant that ever 
 afterv\^ard whipped them in many a hard 
 fought battle. The Camdenians left the town 
 meeting very indignant, and Jeremiah Sloan, 
 then a talented young lawyer of great promise, 
 said to the Haddonfielders, 'T'll fix you ; I will 
 have Camden incorporated next winter." He 
 executed his threat, and at the next session of 
 the Legislature the act was passed incorporat- 
 ing the city of Camden. 
 
 Thus it was that Camden, wnth a population 
 of but 1,143, attained her legal majority with 
 the right to manage her own affairs as she 
 saw fit, free from the tutelage of country town 
 meetings. 
 
 This first charter was passed February 13th, 
 1828, and is entitled "An act to incorporate a 
 
O-^ CAMDEN, NEW JERSEY. 35 
 
 part of the township of Newton, in the county 
 of Gloucester." It has only eighteen sections, 
 and, though but eighty-one years have passed, 
 many of its provisions already sound cjuaint. 
 It calls Broadway ''the public road leading to 
 Woodbury from the Camden Academy," and 
 Newton avenue ''the road leading from 
 Kaighinton to Cooper's Creek bridge," and 
 Petty's Island "Pethey's Island." It provides, 
 in section i, that the new city shall be called 
 "The City of Camden," and then, in section 2, 
 that the corporate name of the city shall be 
 "The Mayor, Aldermen and Common Council 
 of the City of Camden." The city officials were 
 a Mayor, a Recorder, four Aldermen , five 
 Common Councilmen and a Town Clerk. The 
 Mayor, Recorder, Aldermen and Common 
 Council, or a majority of them, of whom the 
 Mayor or Recorder must be one, were author- 
 ized to hold a Common Council and to make 
 ordinances and regulations for the well order- 
 ing and governing of the city. The Common 
 Council were to be chosen at the annual town 
 meetings on the second Monday in March and 
 within six days thereafter- they were to elect 
 the Mayor. 
 
 The Recorder and Aldermen, as semi-judi- 
 cial officers, were to be appointed by the Legis- 
 lature "in joint meeting" in the same manner 
 as justices of the peace were appointed and to 
 continue in office for the same time (i. e. five 
 years). The charter further provided that 
 "one of the Aldermen and one of the Com- 
 mon Council shall always be a resident of 
 
36 HISTORICAIv SKETCH 
 
 Kaighinton, and one of each of said officers 
 shall always be a resident of the village com- 
 monly called 'William Cooper's Ferry.' " And 
 that the Mayor, Recorder and Aldermen shall 
 constitute a court to be styled "the Court of 
 General Quarter Sessions of the Peace of the 
 City of Camden," having within the city all 
 the powers that the county courts of Quarter 
 Sessions had or might have, excepting the 
 granting of tavern licenses, and hearing ap- 
 peals in pauper cases — a court abolished by the 
 act of February 29th, 1856. 
 
 The new city was bounded by the Delaware 
 River from the mouth of Cooper's Creek to 
 the mouth of Little Newton Creek (by every 
 one called Line Ditch), by it to the east side 
 of Broadway, by it to the east side of New- 
 ton avenue, by it to the south side of Federal 
 street, by it to the middle of Cooper's Creek 
 and by it to the Delaware River. 
 
 At the first election for city officers, held 
 March loth, 1828, in town meeting at the 
 Academy, which stood at Sixth and Market 
 streets, where the George Genge public school 
 now is, the following Common Councilmen 
 were chosen: James Duer, from Cooper^s 
 Ferry; John Lawrence, Ebenezer Toole and 
 Richard Fetters, from Camden, and Joseph 
 Kaighn, from Kaighnton. James Duer and 
 Joseph Kaighn declining to serve, at a special 
 election held on the fifth of the following April, 
 Edward Dougherty and Richard B. Champion 
 were chosen in their place. The new Council 
 held its first meeting on March 13th, 1828, and 
 

 i^'^t 
 
 Pt- 
 
 FIRST COURT HOUSE AND CITY HALL 
 
O^ CAMDEN, NEW JERSEY. 37 
 
 elected Samuel Lanning first Mayor of Cam- 
 den. 
 
 The new municipality, however, had but lit- 
 tle of the appearance of a city. The three vil- 
 lages of which it was composed — Camden 
 proper, Cooper's Point and Kaighn's Point — 
 remained separated by cultivated farms and by 
 woods and retained their peculiar characteris- 
 tics for many years. Extending but a short 
 distance from the river, all the territory east 
 of them to Cooper's Creek was as much coun- 
 try as any other part of the county, and where 
 used for purposes of husbandry only, was, by 
 the charter, exempted from taxation for the 
 support of the city. 
 
 I cannot better contrast then and now than 
 by bringing to light from the musty first min- 
 utes of Council two transactions. On April 
 23d, 1828, ''The Council rented oi Richard 
 Fetters for one year the room over his store 
 for the purpose of a temporary Council and 
 Court hall, for the sum of twenty-five dollars 
 per annum or six dollars per quarter." And 
 on June 5th, 1829, the committee appointed to 
 make ''a fair expose of the receipts and ex- 
 penditures of the corporation up to this date," 
 reported to Council that there had come into 
 vSamuel Lanning's hands $3,456.23, and paid 
 out by him $3,512.49, leaving a balance due 
 him of $56.26. 
 
 The Common Council quickly acted to pro- 
 vide a permanent town hall by passing, on 
 June 1 2th, 1828, an ordinance appointing Sam- 
 uel Lanning, John K. Cowperthwaite and Rich- 
 
38 HISTORICAI. SKETCH 
 
 ard Fetters commissioners to buy a lot and 
 build a jail and court house ''in the said city, 
 agreeably to their best skill and understanding, 
 and which may be the most judicious plan 
 for our city," and authorizing them "to borrow 
 from Jacob Evaul" (a farmer living a short 
 distance outside of Camden) "$2,500 at six 
 per cent, interest" for that purpose. They pur- 
 chased a lot on the south side of Federal street, 
 below Fifth street, and built thereon a small, 
 baldly plain, unpretentious stone and brick 
 building, having on the ground floor "a jail 
 or lock up" and on the second floor a court 
 room, used also as a council chamber, reached 
 by a wooden stairway on the outside of its 
 Federal street front. As the only public hall 
 in the city for over a quarter of a century, 
 its court room was used for nearly every meet- 
 ing of a public nature then held in Camden. 
 On the building of our present City Hall, on 
 Haddon avenue, the old hall was torn down in 
 1878, and in its place was built a large brick 
 market house, which, in turn, was torn down 
 in 1900 that the present fine ofl^ice building of 
 the Public Service Corporation might be built 
 on its site. 
 
 The town having reached the dignity of a 
 municipality, the name of its post-oflice, which 
 from 1803 had been Cooper's Ferry, was 
 changed on June 22d, 1829, to Camden. 
 
 About this time the desire for a more speedy 
 conveyance than the old stage coach was crop- 
 ping out in many places throughout the coun- 
 try, and very general inquiry was being made 
 
01^ CAMDEN, NEW JERSEY. 39 
 
 into the feasibility of railroads to meet the 
 want. During 1827 the project of a railway 
 to connect Philadelphia and New York began 
 to be talked of in earnest. Meetings were 
 held in the Camden Academy of those favor- 
 ing the enterprise, preliminary surveys made, 
 and such general interest excited as finally re- 
 sulted in the Legislature granting, on Febru- 
 ary 4th, 1830, the charter for ''The Camden 
 and Amboy Railroad and Transportation Com- 
 pany." The company was soon organized and 
 the road begun, and in January, 1834, the first 
 train ran into Camden. This was a very 
 marked event for the young city. The railroad 
 was the longest then built in this country and 
 its completion a matter of great rejoicing. 
 People kept watch to see the trains arrive, even 
 those as far off as Kaighn's Point, no houses 
 then intervening, going to the tops of their 
 houses to view the novel sight. 
 
 Hardly four years had passed after the in- 
 corporation of Camden, when some of her 
 prominent citizens, on March 16, 1832, pro- 
 cured a charter for the incorporation of "The 
 Camden Fire Insurance Company," a stock 
 company, the preamble of which stated that 
 sundry inhabitants of Camden City and its 
 vicinity had represented to the Legislature that 
 insurance on property in this State is frequent- 
 ly and to a large amount made in Philadelphia, 
 and that an insurance company in Camden 
 "would tend to the great convenience of the in- 
 habitants and would confine at home a source 
 of wealth which is yearly carried into another 
 
40 HISTORICAI^ SKETCH 
 
 State." The company continued in business 
 for some years, but not proving so successful 
 in confining at home the wealth its promoters 
 hoped, an act of the Legislature was pass- 
 ed in 1849 creating Abraham Browning, 
 Thomas H. Dudley and Isaiah Toy trustees to 
 wind up its affairs. In 1841, The Camden 
 Mutual Insurance Association was incorpo- 
 rated, and as the stock company into which it 
 was converted in 1870 under an act of the 
 Legislature, and under the name of The Cam- 
 den Fire Insurance Association, which it adopt- 
 ed by certificate filed on February 3d, 1881, 
 continues to-day, after The National State 
 Bank, the oldest business corporation existent 
 in Camden. 
 
 Jacob Cooper, in laying out Camden, planned 
 the open square at the intersection of Third and 
 Market streets for a market place similar to 
 those in many towns in England. It was 
 never so used and Camden never so fully 
 adopted the system of open market sheds in 
 the streets as did Philadelphia. In 1837 City 
 Council caused a small one to be built on Third 
 street immediately south of Market street, and 
 in 1856 a second one to be erected in the center 
 of Third street from Arch to Federal street. 
 The last was removed in 1876 and the first 
 shortly before it, to the great improvement of 
 the street. 
 
 Not satisfied with being a city, Camden ere 
 long began to think that there should be a new 
 county created, with it as the shire-town, and 
 actively pushed the project. This excited 
 
OF CAMDEN, NEW JERSEY. 4 1 
 
 great opposition throughout the county. In- 
 dignation meetings were held at Woodbury 
 and other places. The Camden people had to 
 fight almost unaided their uphill battle. They 
 claimed it as a necessary measure "to accom- 
 modate the fast swelling population of the 
 north and northwestern townships, and partly 
 to secure to West Jersey her just share of in- 
 fluence in the State Government." At last, 
 after a hard fight under the lead of Captain 
 John W. Mickle, an uncompromising Demo- 
 crat, they won and got the Legislature, which 
 was Democratic, to pass, on March 13, 1844, 
 under the plea that the new county would be 
 Demiocratic, the act setting it off from Old 
 Gloucester, and had it named after their own 
 city, which was to be the seat of justice for one 
 year and until an election could be had. But 
 the people throughout the county were so in- 
 censed at the city's again foiling them that at 
 the first election they voted, irrespective of 
 party, against the Democratic nominees, recog- 
 nizing no other issue than Camden and Anti- 
 Camden, and for fifteen years the Democrats 
 never carried the county. For many years 
 afterwards, whenever Captain Mickle went to 
 Trenton, he was taunted about his Democratic 
 county ; and to this day Camden county is poli- 
 tically anti-Democratic. 
 
 The same antagonism again cropped out at 
 the permanent fixing of the county seat. The 
 act creating Camden county required that its 
 courts should be held at the Court House in 
 Camden for one year, when, at an election to 
 
42 HISTORICAL SKETCH 
 
 be fixed by the Freeholders, the location of 
 the county seat was to be determined by a 
 majority vote. Camden, of course, nominated 
 herself and supported her nomination with 
 great unanimity. The rest of the county was 
 divided in its choice. At the election held on 
 August 1 2th, 1845, to determine the question, 
 Camden received 1,062, Gloucester 822, Had- 
 donfield 422, and Mount Ephraim 33 votes. 
 No place receiving a majority, a statute was 
 approved April ist, 1846, providing for two 
 elections. At the first a majority of votes 
 was necessary to a choice. If no place re- 
 ceived a majority then a second election was 
 to be had at which a plurality would decide 
 the question. No place having received a 
 majority at the first election held under that 
 Act, a second one was had, when the county 
 united on Long-a-Coming (Berlin) and gave 
 it 1,498 votes while Camden received but 
 1,434 votes. But the Camdenians would not 
 stay down, and in 1848, aided largely by the 
 able pugnacity of the late Abraham Brown- 
 ing, of honored memory, after continued de- 
 feats in the courts had a statute passed, direct- 
 ing a new election. The fourth fight was 
 fourfold bitter. Again it was the whole of the 
 country against the city. But Camden had 
 well encased herself in armor against the 
 shafts of her opponents in her unaided tilt 
 against the field, and came out victorious with 
 a vote of 2,444 against 795 for Haddonfield 
 and 705 for Long-a-Coming. This last elec- 
 tion definitely settled the contest, the country 
 
01^ CAMDEN, NEW JERSEY. 43 
 
 people submitted to the inevitable, and to- 
 day admit that, however unfairly it may have 
 been made, the choice was a wise one. 
 
 Immediately after the settlement of this 
 question a strong rivalry sprang up over the 
 location of the court house between John W. 
 Mickle, president of the Federal Street Ferry 
 Company, and Abraham Browning, heavily 
 interested with his brothers in the Market 
 Street Ferry, founded by their father, Abra- 
 ham Browning, each striving to have it placed 
 on the street leading to the ferry in which he 
 was interested, in the hope of turning to that 
 ferry the trend of travel. The struggle was 
 finally settled by putting the Court House 
 equi-distant from each ferry. And that is 
 the reason it was built where it was, on the 
 lot nearest to the ferries that extended from 
 Federal to Market street, and placed exactly 
 midway between the two streets. 
 
 The beneficent effect of building and loan 
 associations, the first of which is said to have 
 been created in 181 5 by the canny Scotch 
 and the system to have been introduced into 
 our country about the year 1840, was early 
 grasped by the thrifty, intelligent business and 
 working men of Camden. The New Jersey 
 statute authorizing the incorporation of them 
 was approved February 28th, 1849, ^^^^ ^^o 
 months had hardly passed, when on May 5th, 
 1849, 'I'he Camden Building Association was 
 incorporated under it, followed on March 2d, 
 185 1, by The South Ward Building and Loan 
 Association. And thereafter the associations 
 
44 HISTORICAI. SKI:TCH 
 
 grew continually until to-day some thirty odd 
 of them in our city flourishingly demonstrate 
 their value in aiding their members to acquire 
 homes, to invest with profit their savings, and 
 to educate themselves in determining the 
 values of real estate, and in safely investing 
 money therein. 
 
 Of the two public utilities, water and gas, 
 water was first furnished to Camden by a 
 private corporation. The Camden Water 
 Works Company supplied from its pipes on 
 November ist, 1846, the first public water to 
 the city, continuing to do so until the city 
 purchased its plant and took possession 
 thereof on July i, 1870. Somewhat more 
 than six years followed the introduction of 
 public water before gas for lighting was fur- 
 nished, which has always been supplied by a 
 private corporation. The Camden Gas Light 
 Company lighted the city in that way for the 
 first time on Christmas night, 1852, a year 
 noted also for the completion on Market 
 street and on Federal street of the first paving 
 of the roadway of any of the city streets, 
 cobble stones being used for the purpose. 
 
 In 1850 Camden obtained a new charter 
 with enlarged powers but no increase of ter- 
 ritory, divided, however, into three wards, 
 North, Middle and South, and began to grow 
 with considerable energy, until the horrible 
 burning of the ferryboat New Jersey, on the 
 night of March iStli, 1856, with its holocaust 
 of sixty-one lives, at once checked migrations 
 from Philadelphia, while the panic of 1857 fol- 
 
Olf CAMDEN, NEW JERSEY. 45 
 
 lowing, completed the blow to its prosperity. 
 Then the doubt and uncertainty of the im- 
 pending rebellion, and the exhaustion of the 
 struggle when entered upon, protracted the 
 stagnation, and our city lay in a torpor until 
 late after the collapse of the war the prosper- 
 ous times thawed it into new life, that, burst- 
 mg the chrysalis of the boundaries of its origi- 
 nal incorporation of 1828, reached out and 
 grasped, under its revised charter of 1871, 
 new territory, increasing its size three fold. 
 So that it covered all the territory between the 
 Delaware River and Cooper's Creek on the 
 river front, as far south as the mouth of New- 
 ton Creek, up which the boundary ran east- 
 ward to its north branch, and up it to the 
 Mount Ephraim road, thence up to Ferry 
 avenue, along which and the continuation 
 thereof in a right line it extended to Cooper's 
 Creek; very nearly the boundaries of the 
 island Aquikanasra as noted and mapped by 
 both the Dutch and the Swedes in their early 
 surveys of the Delaware. 
 
 To tell the whole story of the tried loyalty 
 of Camden's citizens in the struggle of 1861- 
 65 for the maintenance of the Union would 
 take many pages, but that history must not 
 pass unnoted. The thrill of indignant patriot- 
 ism that instantaneously ran through the 
 North, when rebellion fired its first shot on 
 Fort Sumter, fusing all citizens alike into the 
 Union Party for the sustaining of the Govern- 
 ment, caused 116 of Camden's citizens, headed 
 by Dr. Isaac S. Mulford, a Friend, to send 
 
46 HISTORICAIv SKi:TCH 
 
 to President Lincoln on April i6th, 1861, four 
 days after that first shot was fired, a stirring 
 address in which they ^'declare our unalterable 
 determination to sustain the government in 
 Its efforts to maintain the honor, the integrity 
 and the existence of our National Union and 
 the perpetuity of the popular government, and 
 to redress the wrongs long enough endured, 
 no differences of political opinion, no badge 
 of diversity upon points of party distinction, 
 shall restrain or withhold us in the devotion 
 of all we have or can command to the vindica- 
 tion of the Constitution, the maintenance of 
 the laws and the defence of the Flag of our 
 Country." 
 
 Two days afterwards, on April i8th, a great 
 Union meeting was held at the Court House, 
 presided over by John W. Mickle, whose Dem- 
 ocracy was only exceeded by his patriotism, 
 and who closed his short opening speech by 
 saying ''That flag has got to go up." Just one 
 week later, on April 25th, four companies of 
 volunteers went to Trenton to report to Gov- 
 ernor Olden. They were the Washington 
 Grays, Captain E. Price Hunt; the Camden 
 Light Artillery, Captain Isaac W. Mickle; the 
 Stockton Cadets, Captain Edmund G. Jackson, 
 and the Camden Zouaves, Captain John R. 
 Cunningham. 
 
 Camden, having by the census of i860 a 
 pouplation of 14,368, followed that first enthu- 
 siastic rally by sending, during the war, over 
 2,500 men to the Union army and navy, a con- 
 tribution of very nearly one-fifth of its entire 
 population to the struggle for a united country. 
 
0^ CAMDEN, NEW JERSEY. 47 
 
 The superiority of a well organized paid 
 service for the extinguishment of fires over an 
 unorganized volunteer one, composed of many 
 independent separate fire companies with their 
 turbulent jealousies and rivalries, so impressed 
 itself on City Council that, by ordinance pass- 
 ed on September 2d, 1869, it organized Cam- 
 den's well managed fire department. 
 
 In the year 1871, when the Camden Horse 
 Railroad Company started its passenger cars, 
 came what all had been hoping for, public con- 
 veyances enabling everyone to ride from one 
 end of the city to the other, so evidently sup- 
 plying a public want that the West Jersey 
 Press was enabled thus exultantly to describe 
 the opening of the lines to public travel : "Fed- 
 eral street had a huge load of excitement to 
 stagger under on Saturday last, and the street 
 was crowded with spectators from early morn 
 to dewy eve, while the curbstone corners in 
 particular were the resorts of shouting boys 
 and wondering men. A long wished for event 
 came to pass, and a new era in the growth of 
 the city's conveniences was successfully in- 
 augurated. In a word the new horse cars be- 
 gan to run. Let us mark the date, November 
 25th, 1 87 1. Such occurrences as these are 
 mile posts in the history of our city's progress, 
 and should be recorded as worthy of special 
 eclat." 
 
 The effort for the establishment of a library 
 in Camden began almost with the incorpora- 
 tion of the city. The Worthington Library 
 
48 HISTORICAI. SKETCH 
 
 Company organized as early as February, 
 1838; the Camden Literary and Library As- 
 sociation organized January 23d, 1852; the 
 Camden Library Company, incorporated 
 March 19th, 1878, and the various church 
 hbraries, attest to efforts made to fill the need 
 felt by many Camdenians for the instruction, 
 the stimulus and the pleasure of books. But, 
 none of these library associations were per- 
 manent, and their books disappeared when they 
 did. It was not until the voluntary free pub- 
 lic library, opened on November 28th, 1898, 
 in the old family mansion in Cooper Park, 
 and, with aid from the city, carried on there 
 for four years, so educated the people to the 
 value to be gained from free libraries, that 
 they adopted, at the election held in November, 
 1902', the provisions of New Jersey's free 
 library law, taxing themselves one-third of a 
 mill on every dollar of their assessable prop- 
 erty for the support of a library. Thus the 
 free library became a permanent feature of 
 Camden, allowing her to take her position in 
 line with the other advanced cities and towns 
 of New Jersey that had adopted that statute. 
 Then, with Andrew Carnegie's gift of $120,- 
 000 for proper library buildings^ was built the 
 Main Library at Broadway and Line street, 
 opened on June 27th, 1905, and the East 
 Branch, opened on June i8th, 1906, and also 
 was remodelled and enlarged the Cooper 
 Branch, reopened on September loth, 1907; 
 each building an ornament to its locality. 
 
01^ CAMDDN^ ne:w Jersey. 49 
 
 From a desire for political or territorial 
 aggrandizement, towns at times seek con- 
 tiguous smaller ones that, having acquired a 
 distinctive life of their own, which they prize, 
 surrender it only under compulsion. But, that 
 charge cannot be brought against Camden in 
 its next increase of territory. At the request 
 of the inhabitants of the town of Stockton, 
 conscious that their prosperity and happiness 
 would be enhanced thereby, was passed the 
 act of March 24th, 1899, annexing that town 
 to the city of Camden, enlarging its boundary 
 one-third and its population one-sixth. And 
 so fitting and complete was the amalgamation 
 that that addition is to-day as blended a part 
 of the life of the city as is any other section 
 of its territory. So much so that on the locat- 
 ing of the free library buildings one was placed 
 in that new territory without dissent. 
 
 Grown metropolitan in size and importance, 
 the time had come in the judgment of City 
 Council for Camden to be no longer without 
 a coat of arms, and it invited the Camden 
 County Historical Society to suggest one. 
 The Society did so with the motto ''Virtus et 
 Industria." Council adopted both suggestions 
 on February 28th, 1907. The design is a 
 shield, the dexter half containing the arms of 
 Lord Camden, the sinister half an antique ship 
 in the stocks ready for launching, indicative of 
 Camden's shipbuilding industries ; supporters 
 personifying industry and knowledge; the old 
 locomotive that first ran into Camden, emble- 
 matic of the city of to-day, the great railroad 
 
50 HISTORICAI, SKE:TCH 
 
 centre of West Jersey; Lord Camden's crest, 
 and the pine tree springing from it, typifying 
 the primeval forest that covered so much of 
 Camden's territory and recalHng the origin of 
 its first name, P3me Poynte. 
 
 T 1 
 
OJ? CAMDEN, NEW JERSEY. 5 1 
 
 Ci^apter 3 
 
 Of incidents historic and biographic in Cam- 
 den's hfe the setting down of a few may make 
 more vivid its retrospect. 
 
 The estabhshment of the first bank of issue 
 in New Jersey, if not in America, ahnost at 
 Camden's door, is closely enough connected 
 with her first settlers to be named as the 
 earliest of such incidents. Mark Newbie, who 
 lived, Mickle says, on the farm afterwards 
 owned by Joseph B. Cooper, where is now the 
 Borough of Wood-Lynne,' and Judge Clement 
 says, on the Champion road just west of the 
 West CoUingswood railroad station, brought 
 with him from London a large number of cop- 
 per coins, made in Ireland by the Roman 
 Catholics after the massacre there in 1641 and 
 known as Patrick's half-pence. The New Jer- 
 sey Assembly in May, 1682, by statute au- 
 thorized their circulation by Newbie as cur- 
 rency and made them a legal tender to the 
 amount of five shillings, provided he, Mark, 
 should give security for their redemption on 
 demand, which he did by mortgaging for 
 that purpose 300 acres of his land. And so 
 the much needed currency was for several 
 years supplied to Camden's pioneers and to 
 their neighbors. Those coins are now very 
 rare and not to be found except in a few numis- 
 matic collections. 
 
 The honor of being the first place in the 
 United States to form a Republican Club is 
 
$2 HISTORICAI, SKEJTCH 
 
 claimed for Camden with force. At the Re- 
 publican National Convention, held in Phila- 
 delphia in 1856, that priority was awarded to 
 Michigan, it being shown that such a club was 
 formed in that State in May, 1854. Framing- 
 ton, Massachussetts, also claims to have 
 formed one in the same month. But, the Jef- 
 ferson Republican Club of Camden was or- 
 ganized April 6th, 1854, at the old Camden 
 City Court House, by the election of Joseph M. 
 Cooper, as president; Edward N. Dougherty, 
 as secretary, and Dr. Sylvester Birdsall as 
 treasurer. It really had its start in the old 
 South Ward (now the Fifth and Sixth 
 Wards), in the summer of 1852, when a num- 
 ber of Whigs declared themselves for Hale 
 and Julian, the candidates for President and 
 Vice President of the Free Soil Party. At the 
 election in November following. South Ward 
 cast 18 votes for that ticket, while Middle and 
 North Wards each cast but one vote for it. 
 So belongs to Camden the first Republican 
 club of our country and to old South Ward 
 the impetus from which it sprang. 
 
 Not alone in that priority in matters of State 
 and of National public interest has Camden 
 rested content. If with none others of such 
 broad import, with those of local consequence, 
 in leading her own life, she has led her great 
 sister Philadelphia. She established her first 
 building and loan association more than a year 
 before Philadelphia grasped the value of the 
 system. Philadelphia, with market sheds yet 
 in her streets, clings to what Camden deemed, 
 
Q-^ CAMDE:N, new JERSEY. 53 
 
 more than thirty years ago, unsightly and un- 
 clean. For a year after Camden adopted and 
 inaugurated her paid fire department Philadel- 
 phia remained content with the antiquated 
 volunteer fire companies. The trolley system 
 for street cars developed on Market street, 
 Camden, its superiority over horse cars for 
 that public service some time before Philadel- 
 phia awakened to the importance of Camden's 
 demonstration. In the fall of the year 1897 
 the supplying of pure water to Camden from 
 its plant of artesian wells at Delair was in- 
 augurated, giving a quality of water unsur- 
 passed, if equalled, by any city, cool enough 
 when direct from the hydrant to be pleasantly 
 potable in the hottest weather and so pure as 
 to have driven typhoid fever practically from 
 the city. Its fame has spread to the Orient, 
 and so impressed the United States Minister 
 at Bangkok ("City of wild fruit trees"), 
 Capital of Siam, a city he estimates of 1,000,- 
 000 inhabitants, that on January 4th, 1909, he 
 wrote to the Camden Water Department for 
 copies of its report for the year 1908. No 
 part of Philadelphia had filtered water in the 
 year 1897, nor for several years afterward, 
 and sections of it struggled with the factory 
 refuse, coal dust and sewage-laden Schuylkill 
 and Delaware River waters until the spring 
 of 1909, when filtered water was finally sup- 
 plied to all its parts. 
 
 In citizens of broad charity and public spirit 
 Camden has not lacked from its start. Within 
 three years of his planning the town, Jacob 
 
54 HISTORICAI. SKE:TCH 
 
 Cooper, on April 22d, 1776, for the nominal 
 consideration of five shillings, conveyed to 
 Charles Lyons and others, trustees ''for build- 
 ing a place of public worship and a burying 
 ground," lot 127 at the northwest corner of 
 Fifth and Arch streets, now occupied by fire 
 houses, and lots 158 and 159 at the northwest 
 corner of Sixth and Arch streets. And, on 
 June 23, 1804, his grandchildren supplemented 
 his gift of the latter lots by deeding the ad- 
 joining lots 156 and 157, at the southwest 
 corner of Sixth and Market streets to Edward 
 Smith and William Flintham, of Philadelphia, 
 and George Genge and Thomas Ackley, of 
 Camden, in trust ''to build thereon and main- 
 tain a school house, and a dwelling house for 
 a teacher." The lot at Fifth and Arch streets 
 was used as a "burying ground" for many 
 years, but there had been no burials there for 
 a long time prior to the building of the first 
 fire house thereon. No "place of public wor- 
 ship" was built on the lots at the corner of 
 Sixth and Arch streets. The Academy, how- 
 ever, was built by subscription on the lots at 
 the corner of Sixth and Market streets, and 
 stood there for nearly sixty years, accommo- 
 dating schools and public gatherings. The 
 "dwelling house for a teacher" was never 
 built. George Genge, one of the trustees for 
 the Academy lot, by his will, dated September 
 28th, 1828, bequeathed to the trustees of Cam- 
 den Academy an annuity of eighty dollars "to 
 the only and exclusive use of paying the edu- 
 cation of poor children in the Academy, or 
 
O^ CAMDEN, NEW JERSEY. 55 
 
 other school house erected on either of the two 
 lots, 156 and 157." By an act of the Legis- 
 lature, approved March 2d, 1854, that annuity 
 was authoried to be extinguished by the pay- 
 ment to those trustees of the sum of $1,333.34, 
 the principal producing it at six per centum 
 interest per annum. By a subsequent act, ap- 
 proved March 15th, 1854, the trustees were 
 authorized to convey the Academy lot and 
 premises to the Board of Education of the 
 City of Camden, to be by it held "so long as 
 the same are used by the said board exclusively 
 for the purpose of education," and were di- 
 rected to pay to it prior to the delivery of 
 such deed all the moneys held by them as 
 such trustees to be by it used for public school 
 purposes. The public school being free to all 
 children the charitable object of George Genge 
 was thus faithfully perpetuated. Because of 
 that bequest the present school house on that 
 lot, built in 1863, was fittingly named George 
 Genge School. 
 
 Joseph Kaighn, one of Camden's principal 
 citizens, who started in 1809 the first ferry to 
 Philadelphia from Kaighn's Point, who was 
 president of the original Federal street ferry 
 from its start in 1836 until his death in 1841 ; 
 who, for several years, was in the Legislature 
 as a representative and as a Senator ; and who 
 took an active part in all things concerning 
 Camden's best movements, gave the valuable 
 lot of ground on which the Kaighn school 
 now stands. He greatly aided, without pay, 
 his cousin, Sarah Kaic^hn, in her business 
 
56 HISTORICAL SKETCH 
 
 affairs, who to compensate him offered to 
 convey to him that lot. He asked her to con- 
 vey it instead to the pubHc for school pur- 
 poses. She did so, by deed to him and others 
 m trust, dated March 8th, 1821. The deed 
 was hers but the gift was his. 
 
 Richard M. Cooper, president of The State 
 Bank at Camden from 181 3 until 1842, when 
 he declined a re-election, died March loth, 
 1844, leaving a large landed estate in the 
 upper part of Camden, Avhich his bachelor 
 twin sons. Dr. Richard M. Cooper and 
 Lawyer William D. Cooper so successfully 
 managed that, when they died, respectively, 
 in the year 1874 and in the year 1875, the 
 estate had grown to be a very valuable one. 
 Dr. Cooper was one of Camden's leading 
 physicians, whose professional knowledge and 
 experience taught him the importance of a 
 good hospital and its aid to the community. 
 His brother, William, agreed with him in the 
 value of a hospital, and together they hoped 
 that the estate they inherited, and which had 
 so increased under their charge, might be 
 devoted to the establishment and maintenance 
 of one in Camden. They died before their 
 accomplishment of that hope. But their 
 maiden sisters, Sarah W. Cooper and Eliza- 
 beth B. Cooper, their devisees, knowing their 
 wish, carried it into effect by procuring from 
 the Legislature the charter for "The Camden 
 Hospital," approved March 24th, 1875, ^^^ 
 the giving to it of $200,000 in money and the 
 conveying to it, by them and their brother 
 
SECOND CITY HALL 
 
01^ CAMDEN, NEW JERSEY. 5/ 
 
 Alexander Cooper, of the very valuable lot of 
 land now occupied by the hospital. 
 
 In 1877 the main building of the hospital 
 was completed; in 1903 the nurses' home was 
 built and in 1907 the north wing to the main 
 building was added. The Cooper sisters con- 
 sented to the urgent request of the hospital 
 trustees, that they might apply to the Legis- 
 laure for an act changing the corporate name 
 to ''The Cooper Hospital," the name by which 
 it had become popularly known, and on 
 March 6th, 1877, the act making such change 
 was approved. That its endowment might be 
 increased by the addition of the income 
 thereof to the principal, its opening was de- 
 layed until August nth, 1887. Since then its 
 beneficent work, aided by the liberal gifts of 
 $100,000 by John W. Wright, nephew of the 
 founders; of $50,000 by William B. Cooper, 
 of $10,000 by Judge John Clement and of 
 $21,000 by Jane B. Chambers, in the name 
 of her father, Joseph Bedlam, and the gifts of 
 generous endowers of beds has gone on to the 
 great good of all South Jersey. 
 
 Jesse W. Starr, one of Camden's leading 
 manufacturers, who with his brother, ex-Con- 
 gressman John F. Starr, established and most 
 successfully carried on for many years the 
 Camden Iron Works, whose residence was 
 near the centre of beautifully laid-out grounds 
 bounded by Newton avenue, Haddon avenue 
 and Line street, gave to Camden, by deed 
 dated July loth, 1871, the land on which the 
 City Hall stands, upon condition that such a 
 
58 HISTORICAI, SKETCH 
 
 hall should be begun thereon within three 
 years and be completed within five years, and 
 that that ground should always be used for a 
 City Hall and public park, and if it should 
 cease to be so used it should revert to him and 
 his heirs. There were then no houses in that 
 neighborhood east of the west side of Broad- 
 way, nor between Newton avenue and the 
 Camden and Amboy Railroad, and the site 
 seemed so in the open country that Council 
 delayed the acceptance of the gift until 1874, 
 just before the expiration of the time limited 
 for the commencement of the building of a 
 hall, when against the strongly-expressed 
 wishes of man}^ citizens it built the present 
 one. On July 2d, 1874, Mr. Starr gave to the 
 city, by deed, the land on which the Soldiers' 
 Monument stands, and upon the same condi- 
 tion. Wishing to own the land free of the 
 condition, Camden, on December 20th, 1883, 
 paid to Mr. Starr $10,831.89 for an absolute 
 conveyance of all the land bounded by Had- 
 don avenue, Washington street and Seventh 
 street. 
 
 Other instances of public spirit on the part 
 of her people might well be cited to show that 
 Camden has never lacked citizens who felt 
 their duty to their fellow-men and whose 
 loyalty thereto made them glad to contribute 
 what they could to aid her public weal. 
 
 From the efTort of the North Ward Bounty 
 Association, formed, near the close of the 
 War of the Rebellion, to raise money to pay 
 bounties to volunteers to serve in the place 
 
O^ CAMDEN, N£:w JKRSE:y. 59 
 
 of its members who might be drafted for the 
 army, The Camden City Dispensary had its 
 origin. At Lee's surrender, in 1865, that 
 Association had in its treasury a balance 
 which it resolved should be used for charity. 
 Col. Thomas McKeen, its treasurer, strongly 
 urged that the money be given for the estab- 
 lishment of a dispensary, and after consulta- 
 tion with members of The Camden County 
 Medical Society that was decided to be done. 
 A committee of the Association, aided by one 
 of the Medical Society, purchased the Perse- 
 verance Hose House, then standing on the 
 east side of Third street, below Market street. 
 The Camden City Dispensary was incorpo- 
 rated February 5th, 1867. It received from 
 that draft fund $3,776.94 and carried on its 
 good work in the old hose house until that 
 was sold in 1890, when the Dispensary was 
 moved to its present building, No. 725 Fed- 
 eral street, which it built in 1891 and where, 
 aided by bequests, and an annual appropria- 
 tion from City Council, it freely administers 
 to all needing its aid. 
 
 The Camden Home for Friendless Children 
 was incorporated April 6th, 1865, and was 
 formally opened on May 30th, 1865. The first 
 child was admitted May 8th, 1865. The West 
 Jersey Orphanage for Destitute Colored Chil- 
 dren was incorporated February 17th, 1874, 
 and opened January 20th, 1875. Each of 
 those charities since its opening has unostenta- 
 tiously carried on its good work. 
 
6o HISTORICAL SKETCH 
 
 Several dwelling houses in Camden are over 
 one hundred years old. The old yellow house 
 at Point and Erie streets, built in 1734, as the 
 stone in its gable end mutely testifies, was the 
 headquarters of the British General Aber- 
 crombie while Philadelphia was occupied by 
 the British during the Revolutionary War. 
 The one-and-a-half-story stone house occupied 
 by the Pyne Poynt Library is probably older 
 than that old yellow house, but there is no rec- 
 ord of the date of its erection. The old Kaighin 
 homestead, at the southeast comer of Second 
 and Sycamore streets, originally two stories 
 high in its centre with a one-story wing at each 
 end, with its length parallel with the river, was 
 built between 1700 and 17 10 of bricks brought 
 from England. Much older than a century is 
 the old stone farm house on the river bank 
 just below Jasper street, the birthplace of Isaac 
 Mickle, whose "Reminiscences of Old Glouces- 
 ter" has been truly said have been written 
 "With a wealth of erudition and classic allusion 
 that makes the book to this day one of the 
 most readable contributions to our local his- 
 tory."' 
 
 An interesting memento of a long past is the 
 hexagonal mile stone in front of St. John's 
 Protestant Episcopal Church, at the curbstone 
 on Broadway, just above Royden street. Good 
 taste has kept and it is to be hoped long will 
 keep it, where it was first set, then on the 
 "Woodbury road" in front of a farm field. 
 
 I William Nelson's address before N. J. Historical Society, May 
 16, 1895. 
 
OLD MILE STONE 
 
01^ CAMDEN, NEW JERSEY. 6l 
 
 The inscription on it, cut long before our town 
 was known as Camden, is : 
 
 "i Mile to Coop's Fy s 
 to Salem." 
 
 The distance to Salem has become obliter- 
 ated, but the rest of its lettering is clear. 
 
 The first Camden county courts were held 
 in the old city court house on Federal street 
 Small and homely in its lack of any architec- 
 tural merit as great a contrast to the chaste 
 charm of our present beautiful Court House 
 as it is possible for any building to be, it an- 
 swered the purpose for a decade, or until the 
 county built the old Court House on Broad- 
 way, the corner-stone of which was laid on 
 June 26th, 1852, and which was torn down in 
 1903 to make room for the present one, the 
 corner-stone of which was laid on August i8th, 
 1904, and the beauty and harmony of whose 
 perfect dome and every outline is a continued 
 joy to view. 
 
 New Jersey, happily not a land of earth- 
 quakes, is not without their experience. Smith, 
 in his ''History of New Jersey," states that, in 
 November, 1726, a small one was felt between 
 the hours of ten and eleven at night; that on 
 September 5th, 1732, ''about noon a small 
 shock of earthquake was felt" ; that on Decem- 
 ber 7th, 1737, "at night was a large shock of 
 earthquake, accompanied with a remarkable 
 rumbling noise; people waked in their beds, the 
 doors flew open, bricks fell from the chimneys, 
 the consternation was serious, but happily no 
 
62 HISTORICAI, SKETCH 
 
 great damage ensued"; and that November 
 1 8th, 1755, ''at four o'clock in the morning, 
 was a considerable shock of an earthquake, 
 which lasted about two minutes. >i^ ^i^- * j^ 
 did not begin with so much of a rumbling 
 noise as that in 1737, but was thought not to 
 fall short in the concussion." One hundred 
 and twenty-nine years after Smith's last rec- 
 ord Camden experienced an earthquake. It 
 came on Sunday afternoon, August loth, 1884, 
 a clear day, about ten or twelve minutes past 
 two o'clock, without rumble or other warning, 
 in three distinct tremors, the last lighter than 
 the first two and was over in a few seconds. 
 The walls of strong stone houses shook per- 
 ceptibly and the bells in large brick houses 
 rang. People walking along the street appear- 
 ed not to notice it, but to many within well- 
 built houses the sensation of irresistible tremb- 
 ling of floors and distinct shaking of stout 
 walls gave a feeling of instability never before 
 experienced. The earthquake was very gen- 
 eral over the Eastern United States, toppling 
 over chimneys, but doing little other damage. 
 
 A year afterwards, on Monday, August 3d, 
 1885, ^ terrible wind cyclone, twice crossing 
 the Delaware, swept over Camden between the 
 river and Sixth street, from Kaighn's Point 
 to Cooper's Point, killing five persons and seri- 
 ously wounding over thirty others, unroofing 
 houses, schools, churches and buildings of 
 every kind, and demolishing large parts of 
 their walls. It followed a rain of several 
 hours, but did not last more than five minutes, 
 
01^ CAMDEN, NEW JERSEY. 63 
 
 yet in that time it was estimated that, in addi- 
 tion to the deaths and wounding of many peo- 
 ple, the loss to property amounted to from a 
 half a million to a million of dollars. As it 
 passed his shipyard at Kaighn's Point, John 
 H. Dialogue saw a huge ball of fire, looking to 
 him to be ten feet in diameter, accompany the 
 storm and explode about two hundred and fifty 
 yards north of him with a report that shook 
 the foundations of the buildings in his ship- 
 yard. At the time the sky eastward of the 
 narrow belt of the cyclone was unusually bright 
 with a rainbow effect. 
 
 The most prominent feature in the view 
 over the Delaware from Camden's shore for 
 more than a century prior to its removal by 
 the United States Government, in 1894, in its 
 improvement of the channel of the river, was 
 Windmill Island, extending, at its removal, 
 from about opposite Berkley street to about 
 opposite Arch street, with bars at each end, 
 extending southward to Line street and 
 northward to nearly opposite Linden street, 
 and originally to the fast land at Cooper's 
 Point. Shown as a bar in 1681 on Holm's 
 map of the Delaware river, it had grown to 
 be a firm island in the middle of the next cen- 
 tury, when John Harding built on it a wind- 
 mill, whence its name. And, later, when 
 Joseph Wright, of Philadelphia, in 1786, 
 established his ferry from Robert Wain's 
 wharf below the drawbridge over Dock creek 
 (now Dock street), Philadelphia, to Camden, 
 he made on the island a landing where he 
 
64 HISTORICAI. SKE:TCH 
 
 erected a half-way house and pubHshed that 
 'Tassengers would ahvays meet with hearty 
 welcome and a hospitable fire in the cold sea- 
 son to warm and refresh themselves while 
 waiting for an opportunity of evading those 
 large fields of ice which generally float up and 
 down with the tide and obstruct the passage 
 during winter." A graphic glimpse of the 
 dif^culty besetting the crossing of the Dela- 
 ware in the open wherries when the cold was 
 not severe enough to so freeze it as to enable 
 it to be crossed on the ice. A difficulty inten- 
 sified in stormy weather when umbrellas, were 
 they then used, could not have been raised lest 
 they impede the boats. Edward Sharp, in 
 1820, tried to solve the problem of a better 
 crossing of the river by a bridge to be built 
 from Camden to the island, so that only the 
 narrow channel between it and Philadelphia 
 would have to be crossed by a ferry. In his 
 furtherance thereof he laid out Bridge avenue 
 one hundred feet wide on his plan of the con- 
 tinuation of ''Camden Village," from which 
 his bridge, that, from want of financial aid, 
 never materialized, was to start. When the 
 Camden and Amboy Railroad was built, and 
 its Philadelphia landing fixed at the foot of 
 Walnut street, near the location, in 1786, of 
 Joseph Wright's ferry landing, the island was 
 such an impediment to the crossing of the 
 river by its boats, that the company procured 
 from the Pennsylvania Legislature authority 
 to cut a canal through it. Begun in 1837, 
 finished in 1838, the canal was kept open so 
 
4' 
 
 rc A'^ 
 
 WALT WHITMAN'S TOMB 
 
01^ CAMDEN, NEW JERSEY. 65 
 
 lone: as the island remained in the river. In 
 the nineteenth century, Thomas Smith be- 
 came the owner of the northern end of the 
 island, and he and his heirs held the ownership 
 and kept there a pubHc garden until within a 
 few years of its removal, so that it became 
 commonly called Smith's Island during all 
 the latter years of its existence. 
 
 Besides Camden's association with Wash- 
 ington, Franklin, Wayne and Pulaski, there is 
 linked with its history the names of four other 
 noted men of widely-different fame. 
 
 The great Indian chief, Tammany, patron 
 saint of that powerful organization of the New 
 York City Democracy bearing his name, died 
 on Pea Shore, according to a tradition so 
 firmly fixed that it is but emphasized in the 
 location, by the Tammany Fishing Club, for 
 many years of its club house there, now within 
 the city limits. Until shortly before the nine- 
 teenth century a forest stood along the Dela- 
 ware River, between Bridge avenue and Line 
 street, called by a name singularly like Tam- 
 many's woods.' The eccentric Colonel David 
 Crockett, then a Representative in Congress 
 from Kentucky, stopped at Camden on his 
 way to Washington in 1831 or 1832, staying 
 at the hotel of Isaiah Toy, afterwards and 
 until it was torn down, in 1882, well known 
 as Parsons' Hotel, which stood on the north 
 side of Federal street just above Front street, 
 then close to the ferry landing. While there 
 Crockett went with some friends to a shooting 
 
 I Mickle, pp. 19, 46. 
 
 5 
 
66 HISTORICAIv SKETCH 
 
 match held near the present Court House, 
 then in full view of the Camden and Amboy 
 (now Pennsylvania) Railroad. As he was 
 shooting, the first locomotive of that road 
 passed. Gazing at it in wonder he exclaimed, 
 ''Hell in harness!" The distinguished orni- 
 thologist, John James Audubon, lived for a 
 short time in a small two-and-a-half story 
 brick house that stood on the south side of 
 Cooper street, nearly opposite Friends' ave- 
 nue, and was torn down in 1901. Walt Whit- 
 man's home in Camden for the last nineteen 
 year of his life, from 1873 to 1892, has made 
 it known and linked its name with his fame, 
 wherever his "Leaves of Grass" is read. His 
 plain old-fashioned two-story frame house, 
 No. 328 Mickle street, and his tomb, in beau- 
 tiful Harleigh Cemetery, designed by himself, 
 striking in its massive simplicity, are the two 
 points of interest sought by all his admirers 
 visiting: Camden. 
 
o'TTiin^n'^TTTin 
 
 ±L 
 
 it 
 
 ^3b^ 
 
 WALT WHITMAN'S HOME 
 
01^ camde:n, new jersey. (>^ 
 
 Around Camden cling aboriginal legend and 
 pioneer romance enriching her story of the 
 
 past. 
 
 David Peterson De Vries, the Dutch com- 
 mander, who first came to New Jersey in 163 1, 
 with a colony of thirty-four Dutch settlers, left 
 them at Fort Nassau (near Gloucester Point), 
 and returned to Holland. During his absence, 
 the colonists raised over the fort his standard, 
 which an Indian stole and for which they hung 
 him. That, with outrages committed on the 
 Indian wives, so exasperated the Indians that 
 they massacred the whole Dutch settlement, 
 and when De Vries returned, in 1632, he found 
 no sign of his colonists except their bones. 
 -The Indians charged with the massacre con- 
 fessed it with much pretended penitence. De 
 Vries, being in sore need of food, and in no 
 condition to punish them, made a new treaty 
 with them for a supply of venison and corn. 
 Pretending to fulfill their agreement the In- 
 dians decoyed De Vries from Fort Nassau and 
 up TimmerkiU (Cooper's Creek) with his 
 vessel and crew on the pretence that on that 
 stream provision was stored. Sailing up the 
 creek he came to anchor near Red Hill, or 
 Ward's Mount, in Forest Hill Park. In the 
 hearing of a young Indian mother, whom they 
 thought slept, the Indians planned to waylay 
 and slay the Dutch when they landed. The 
 young mother, of unknown name, in her quick- 
 
68 HISTORICAI, SKETCH 
 
 witted mercy and brave determination to save 
 the palefaces from the doom designed for 
 them, rivalled Pocahontas, and so soon as the 
 conference of the chiefs ended, at the risk of 
 her life, went in the night to the creek, 
 paddled in a canoe to De Vries' vessel and 
 told him of the plot. So warned, he sailed 
 back at once to Fort Nassau to find that, ex- 
 pecting his slaughter up the creek, the Indians 
 were in possession of the empty fort. Con- 
 cealing their surprise they came in their 
 canoes and surrounded his vessel. Deeming it 
 prudent not to attack them, De Vries said to 
 them the Great Spirit had told him of their 
 treachery, and before he was directed to use 
 on them the thunder of his swivel gun they 
 had better leave. They did so, and De Vries 
 soon after sailed out of the Delaware, aban- 
 doning the effort of the Dutch to colonize New 
 Jersey.* A well-told story, founded on this 
 incident, entitled "Mahala, a Legend of New 
 Jersey," was published in Miss Leslie's Mag- 
 azine in 1843, ^^^ reprinted in the West Jer- 
 sey Press, on March ist, 1876. 
 
 Though Elizabeth Haddon's home, after 
 emigrating to New Jersey, was first at Coles' 
 Landing on Cooper's Creek, and afterwards at 
 Haddonfield, her close social and religious 
 association with Camden's first settlers, she and 
 they alike worshipping in the same Friends* 
 log meeting-house at what is now West 
 Collingswood railroad station, and her niece 
 Mary Estaugh marrying Joseph Kaighin, son 
 of John Kaighin, the emigrant, causes her 
 
 I Qordon's History of New Jersey, p. 9. 
 
01^ camde:n, nkw jersey. 69 
 
 romance to so linger about their lives as to 
 justify its mention as fittingly a part of Cam- 
 den's story. Read in Lydia Maria Childs' 
 '*'Tale of the Youthful Emigrant" how John 
 Estaugh, a young minister on a religious visit 
 from England to America, found favor in her 
 sight; how by simple device she detained him 
 behind the others of the cavalcade of Friends, 
 on their way to Salem Quarterly Meeting, and 
 with all maidenly modesty confessed to him 
 in Friendly phraseology her love for him ; how 
 he, poor, with her young, beautiful and rich, 
 blushing as she offered herself was coy, claim- 
 ing that he came solely on a religious visit 
 from which that subject might distract his 
 mind; how he held his advantage by saying, 
 ''When I have discharged the duties of my 
 mission we will speak farther" ; how nothing 
 more was then said by them on that nearest 
 to their hearts and John returned to England, 
 and how, when away from her, he quickly ap- 
 preciated what he was missing and returned 
 the following fall and married her. Then read 
 Longfellow's poem "Elizabeth," and there will 
 be told the legend which has gathered as a halo 
 around Elizabeth Haddon's life, clinging too 
 closely for criticism to dissipate and brighter 
 growing with the passing 3^ears. 
 
 No more prosaic part of Camden can now 
 be found than the crossing of the railroad over 
 Federal and Twelfth streets. But at the com- 
 mencement of the Eighteenth century it was 
 an attractive spot, as romantic a Gretna Green 
 as could well be chosen. Near there the pub- 
 lic road from Gloucester to Burlington, cross- 
 
70 HISTORICAI. SKETCH 
 
 ing Cooper's Creek at Spicer's Ferry, met the 
 roads from the two Cooper's Ferries under the 
 tall pine forest covering the land for many an 
 acre thereabout. Very early one day in the 
 year 1707, Sarah Eckley, a rich young Friend 
 of Philadelphia, and Colonel Daniel Coxe, a 
 young Church of England man on the staff 
 of Lord Cornbury, Governor of New Jersey, 
 crossed the Delaware and were married by the 
 Lord's chaplain ''between two and three in the 
 morning.'" The meeting of those roads where 
 Cooper street now ends has been located as the 
 place "on the Jersey Side" where that marriage 
 took place, upon the probability that Colonel 
 Coxe, knowing that Lord Cornbury, accom- 
 panied by his chaplain, would then be on his 
 return to Burlington, from holding court at 
 Gloucester, planned to intercept him as if by 
 accident where the roads from the Cooper's 
 Ferries entered the King's Highway. Imag- 
 ination may easily bring back the picturesque 
 sight — the tall pine trees, the ground covered 
 with their needles, the yet dark of night, Lord 
 Cornbury and attendants, Indians in silent 
 wonder at the unfamiliar ceremony, the young 
 couple before the chaplain, and the glow of 
 the wood fire through the deep forest casting 
 over all its illumination. Colonel Coxe, after 
 his romantic marriage, had his home in Bur- 
 lington, was Governor of New Jersey, and 
 studying law became a judge of the Supreme 
 Court of the State, continuing so until his 
 death, in 1739. ''He lived," says Judge Field, 
 
 I Watson's Annals. 
 
01? CAMDEN, NEW JERSEY. 7 1 
 
 ''to enjoy the confidence and respect of the 
 community, and his judicial duties appear to 
 have been discharged with abihty and integ- 
 rity." He was the originator of the plan of 
 union of the North American Colonies after- 
 wards suggested by Franklin, called the ''Al- 
 bany Plan of Union," proposing it in a pam- 
 phlet he issued to induce settlers to remove to 
 New Jersey. His sister, who was said to have 
 promoted his runaway match with the young 
 Quaker, Sarah Eckley, was the wife of Wil- 
 liam Trent, then of Philadelphia, who later 
 purchased from Mahlon Stacy the land where- 
 on the city of Trenton is now built, moved 
 there, gave it his name and, though not a law- 
 yer, became Chief Justice of the Supreme 
 Court of New Jersey. 
 
 Such, brokenly told, is Camden's story of 
 the past. To-day, with a territory of some 
 twelve square miles, with a population of 
 93,000, and growing steadily, it is the fourth 
 city in New Jersey. Never so vigorous as 
 now, its well-paved streets, its growing parks, 
 its pure water, with the accompaniment, good 
 health, its excellent free schools, its liberal free 
 libraries, its fine hospital, may well cause its 
 people to work to make its motto, virtus et in- 
 diistria, a reality and Camden citizenship to be 
 so prized by its inhabitants that, adapting the 
 toast of the old Scotch town of Ayr, they shall 
 say: 
 
 Here's to auld Camden wham ne'er a town 
 surpasses 
 
 For honest men and bonnie lasses. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Page. 
 
 Academy, Camden 54, 55 
 
 Arms, Coat of 49 
 
 Arnold, Richard ^ 
 
 Audubon, John James 66 
 
 Banks 32, 33, 51 
 
 Baptist Church SO 
 
 Bridge, Delaware 64 
 
 British occupancy 21 
 
 Building and loan associations 43 
 
 Camden County 41 
 
 Camden, Earl of 
 
 Cemeteries 
 
 Children, Friendless 
 
 Civil War 
 
 Cooper Hospital 
 Cooper, William 
 Cooper's Creek 
 
 19 
 
 54 
 
 59 
 
 City Hall 57 
 
 45 
 
 [ 56 
 
 9 
 
 67 
 
 Cooper's Ferries 29, 38 
 
 Cooper's pine field 28 
 
 Cooper's Point ^ 
 
 County lines 41 
 
 County seat 41, 42 
 
 Court houses 13, 43, 61 
 
 Coxe, Governor '^^ 
 
 Crockett, David ^ 
 
 Cyclone ^2 
 
 De La Warr, Lord "^ 
 
 Delaware River '^' 64 
 
 Democrats 
 
 De Vries (Dutch Commander) 7, 67 
 
 Diamond Cottage 29 
 
 Dispensary ^^ 
 
 Dutch 7, 67 
 
 Earl of Camden 19 
 
 Earthquakes 
 
 Election, first city 36 
 
 Estaugh, John ^ 
 
 Ferries 14. 15. 30. 31. 32 
 
 Fire department 
 
 Fire insurance 39 
 
 Franklin, Benjamin 25 
 
 Friends' meeting H' 30 
 
 Gas supply ^ 
 
 Gloucester County, Origin of 1^ 
 
74 INDEX. 
 
 Page. 
 
 Haddon, Elizabeth 17, 69 
 
 Haddonfield 34 
 
 Incorporation 34 
 
 Indians 10, 67 
 
 Jail 38 
 
 Jones, Paul 27 
 
 Kaig-hin, John 16 
 
 Kaighn School 55 
 
 Kaighn's Point 16, 17, 30 
 
 Libraries — 47 
 
 Line Ditch 18 
 
 Mahala, a legend - 68 
 
 Market houses 40 
 
 Mickle, Archibald 16 
 
 Mickle, Isaac 60 
 
 Mile Stone 
 
 Mulford, Dr. Isaac S 
 
 New Jersey, Burning of Ferryboat. 
 
 Newton Creek 
 
 Newton Township 
 
 Orphanage, West Jersey 
 
 Parsons' Hotel 
 
 Pea Shore 
 
 Post Office 
 
 Princeton College Trustees 
 
 Pulaski, Count 
 
 Pyne Poynt 
 
 Railroad, first 
 
 Republicans 
 
 Schools 
 
 Smith's Island 
 
 Starr, Jesse W 
 
 Steamboats 
 
 Stockton, Annexation of 
 
 Street cars ....:v;;vr>vv 
 
 Streets, as first namedv ; 
 
 Swedes 
 
 Tammany, Chief ... 
 
 Town hall, first 
 
 Town meeting 
 
 Town plot, first 
 
 Trent, William 
 
 Union Army Volunteers. 
 
 Washington, George 
 
 Water supply 
 
 Wayne, General Anthony 
 
 Wedding in forest 
 
 Whitman, Walt 
 
 '^^i 
 
 60, 
 
 61 
 
 
 45 
 
 
 44 
 
 
 18 
 
 16, 
 
 34 
 
 
 59 
 
 
 65 
 
 
 65 
 
 
 38 
 
 
 24 
 
 
 24 
 
 
 9 
 
 
 39 
 
 
 51 
 
 54, 
 
 55 
 
 
 65 
 
 
 57 
 
 31, 
 
 32 
 
 
 49 
 
 
 47 
 
 
 20 
 
 
 7 
 
 
 65 
 
 
 38 
 
 
 34 
 
 
 19 
 
 
 71 
 
 
 46 
 
 
 26 
 
 44, 
 
 53 
 
 22, 
 
 23 
 
 
 70 
 
 Windmill Island A.rV 28. 63 
 
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