British Headquarters: Perth Amboy, New Jersey, in its 1776 Heyday
Not everyone would think of the town of Perth Amboy as part of Philadelphia history or culture, but it certainly was so in colonial times. Sadly, the town has since declined to the condition of a quiet middle-class suburb. There are quite a few Spanish-language signs around, and some decaying factories.
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To understand the strategic importance of Perth Amboy to Colonial America, remember that King James (the First, the one Shakespeare knew) thought of New Jersey as the land between the North (Hudson) River, and the South (Delaware) River. This land has a narrow pinched waist in the middle. It's easy to see why the Seventeenth Century regarded the bridging strip of New Jersey narrows as the likely future site of important political and commercial development. The two large and dissimilar land masses which adjoin this strip -- sandy South Jersey, and mountainous North Jersey -- were sparsely inhabited and largely ignored in colonial times. The British developed the quite sensible plan that subjugating this New Jersey strip would simultaneously enable the conquest of both New York and Philadelphia at the two ends of it.
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Perth Amboy is a name modified from local Indian words. Like Pittsburgh at the conjunction of three rivers, Perth Amboy's local importance was that it dominates the mouth of Raritan Bay (an extension of the Raritan River) as it empties into New York Bay just inside Sandy Hook. The third "river" of the three-way fork is really just a channel between New Jersey and Staten Island. Viewed from the sea, Perth Amboy sits on a bluff, commanding that junction. Amboy was the original ocean port in the area, soon overtaken by New Brunswick further upriver when increasing commerce required safer harbors. It was the capital of East Jersey, and then the first capital of all New Jersey after East and West were joined in 1704. The Royal Governor's mansion stood here, as well as the grand houses of the Proprietors and Judges overlooking the banks of the bay. The last Royal Governor was William Franklin, the illegitimate son of Benjamin. When Benjamin was stationed in London as a representative of Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, he arranged the appointment of William to a plush job in the colonies. That was sort of the normal method of government, although patronage favors were made somewhat worse by King George III. Urged on to be a really King-like King by his mother, George III had considerably expanded the system of buying the loyalty of important people by giving them jobs and favors. Where people were already rich and powerful, they could still be offered monopolies and protective tariffs in return for their loyalty. Irritation at these intrusions into trade was to become a main incitement to the American Rebellion. William and Benjamin Franklin eventually had a permanent falling-out over political matters, and naturally American historians take the side of the father, who was greatly hurt by the ingratitude. However, it would appear that William was a very good governor, a charming and diplomatic person, who used his considerable talents to smooth over the local conflicts between his King and his neighbors. Even after hostilities broke out and the rebels took over the government, William Franklin stayed on trying to calm things down, instead of fleeing behind the British lines as most Loyalists tended to do. His reward was to be packed off to confinement in Connecticut.
By the time of the Revolution, the New Jersey strip was mainly inhabited by rich farmers who tended to favor the Loyalist cause, while the pine barrens to the South and the hilly woods to the North were inhabited by later immigrants who were still poor and hence favored the rebel cause. In his autobiography, Benjamin Franklin relates how, as boy, he came from Boston to Philadelphia by coming down from Perth Amboy (the capitol of East Jersey) to Trenton and nearby Burlington (the capitol of West Jersey), and then down the Delaware to Philadelphia. To jump ahead in our story, Washington would retreat down the same path from his defeats in New York, hotly pursued by the British. After the battle of Trenton, Washington promptly chased the British back up the Raritan to New Brunswick and Perth Amboy, and bottled them up there by establishing winter quarters in Morristown. Much later, when the British General Henry Clinton was put in command and later abandoned Philadelphia, which General Howe had captured by coming in the back door from the Chesapeake. The British marched back up the same Raritan waist of New Jersey by first crossing the Delaware from Philadelphia to Haddonfield, up the king's Highway to Trenton/Burlington, and then East to New Brunswick and the British fleet. This was the main highway of the middle colonies, and the persisting term "King's Highway" was once entirely appropriate.
When considering the relationships between New Jersey's Raritan Strip and Philadelphia in later decades, the names of Aaron Burr, Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, Robert Oppenheimer, Doris Duke, and Charles Lindbergh come up, along with a number of others whose tales need retelling. College football was invented in a game between Rutgers and Princeton, eighteen miles apart, and Woodrow Wilson started the movement to put an end to college fraternities, called eating clubs at Princeton. But the strip itself seems to have been directly glorified only by Thornton Wilder.
A short play called A Happy Journey To Trenton and Camden has been a favorite production by the drama societies of Rutgers, Princeton and Lawrencevile for almost a century. As written by Wilder during the time when he was a school teacher at Lawrenceville, the occupants of a Model T rattle and bump along the strip, commenting on the passing scene. Both the play and the strip deserve more attention than they usually get.
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149 Kearny Avenue Perth Amboy, NJ 08861  |
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