Joisey

New Jersey

Once the paradox of salt water in the lower reaches of the Delaware and Hudson rivers has been noticed, it gets easier to understand current theory that southern New Jersey was once an island. Like Long Island, it was separated from the mainland by a sound, but in this case the sound silted up from Trenton to New Brunswick, creating the peninsula of "West" Jersey by uniting the island with the mainland. The colony was even named after the island of Jersey off the coast of England, a gesture for Sir George Carteret, who was given the American area out of gratitude for his military efforts in that other Jersey. Furthermore, Cape May was probably another island later joined to the larger one by the conversion of silted ocean into the bogs of the Maurice River. Cape May started as a whaling community, populated by Quakers from New York and New England, always maintaining something of a social distance from the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. The long Atlantic beaches of New Jersey now repeat the geological process, with barrier islands generated by the ocean separating by a brackish bay from the mainland, and the bay then slowly silting up. In a larger sense, the process consists of the former mountains of Pennsylvania crumbling into the ocean.

It should be no surprise, therefore, that southern New Jersey is flat, broken up by turgid meandering streams which empty in both directions. The head of Timber Creek, which flows into the Delaware, is only eight miles from the head of the Mullica River, which flows to the ocean. During the Revolutionary War, the British found it to be extremely dangerous to sail up these winding creeks, since at any moment they might make a sharp turn and be facing a battery of cannon. The system quickly grew up that buccaneers would build ships out of the heavy oak forests and sail them out to Barnegat Bay, hence out one of the inlets of the barrier islands and into blue water. The financiers of Philadelphia, many of them with names now in the Social Register, would come the other way by sailing up the Delaware River creeks, and walking the last mile or two to privateer headquarters on the Atlantic creeks. Auctions were conducted, in which the ships were examined, the captain interviewed, and the crew observed in target practice. If you bought a small share you would be rich when the ship returned, and if it never returned, well, you had to invest in a different one. New Jersey is indignantly of the opinion that these privateers were mainly responsible for winning the Revolution, but given little credit for it. Many more British sailors were lost to the privateers than soldiers were lost to Washington's troops, and the economic loss to Great Britain of the ships and cargoes eventually became serious. Since much of the profit from privateering was recycled into the American war effort by Robert Morris, the British found themselves facing an enemy much more formidable than just the ragged frozen troops at Valley Forge on the Schuylkill. Meanwhile, William Bingham was conducting much the same privateering operation with Morris from Martinique, but that's another story.

In later centuries, the traditions and geography of the Jersey Pine Barrens suited themselves to smuggling and bootlegging during the era of alcohol Prohibition, and even after Repeal, high taxes on liquor kept bootlegging profitable. Even in the 1950s, there were divisions of FBI men prowling the woods of South Jersey, on the lookout for trucks carrying bags of cane sugar, or coils of copper tubing. Even today, when housing developments have started to invade the forests, the hard-ball politics of the South Jersey reflect a culture thought more characteristic of South Philadelphia. Near Vineland and Atlantic City, it isn't just the culture, it is the accent, because it is also the ancestry.

Lansdowne

Lansdowne Map

The Granville, or Lansdowne, family had so many members important in English history, that the Lansdowne name adorns countless schools, boroughs, colleges, museums and other monuments around the former British empire. It would require undue effort to sort out just why each memorial is named after just which member of the family. In the Philadelphia region, Lansdowne is the name of a small borough in Delaware County,

Lansdale

often annoyingly confused with Lansdale, a small borough in Montgomery County. However, it really seems more appropriate to focus reverence on the Lansdowne mansion, which from 1773 to 1795 was the home in now Fairmount Park of the last colonial Governor. That would have been John Penn, who was one of several Penns who still shared the Propietorship until 1789, and who shared in the miserly payment which the Legislature of the new Commonwealth made as compensation for expropriating twenty-five million acres of their property. The French Revolution was going on at that time, so there were probably some patriots who would scoff that John Penn was lucky not to be guillotined.

The Penn family could see the Revolution coming, and like everyone else were uncertain who would win. Real decision-making for the Proprietorship rested with Thomas Penn in London, a close friend of the King and his ministers. The strategy employed in this difficult situation was to surrender the right to govern the colony conferred by its original charter, and to become mere real estate owners with John their local representative pledging local allegiance. That might have worked for a while, until General Howe's troops captured Philadelphia. Soldiers were dispatched to Lansdowne to tell John Penn he was under detention, to reduce his potential utility to the occupying army.

Horticultar Hall

As matters eventually worked out, some of the Penn descendants remained fairly wealthy after the Revolution, especially those whose wives had inherited substantial assets from other sources. But some were severely impoverished. The stately Georgian mansion burned down in 1854, and the site was then occupied by the Horticultural Hall of the 1876 Centennial Exposition. Perhaps because of misplaced patriotic fervor, it is now difficult to find a picture of Lansdowne.

William Bingham

The elegance of the place, on 140 acres, is suggested by the fact that William Bingham, the richest man in America at the time, apparently acquired it from James Greenleaf the partner of Robert Morris, and the nephew by marriage of John Penn, who acquired it from Penn's estate but probably had to give it up in the financial disasters of Morris and his firm. Lansdowne was still a grand manor when it was briefly acquired by Joseph Bonaparte, the former King of Spain. In view of the fact that Bingham had provided President Jefferson with the gold to finance the Louisiana Purchase from Napoleon Bonaparte, and earlier had practically forced the Congress to call off an impending war with France, there was likely a connection here.

And to some extent, the ill treatment which John Penn received from the Pennsylvania legislature in the Divestment Act of 1779 can possibly be traced to the unrelenting hatred by Benjamin Franklin, Pennsylvania's icon. History does not tell us what made these two friends fall out in 1754, sufficient to make Franklin willing to spend years in London trying to get the colony away from the Penns. The feeling was surely mutual. When John Penn was offered the patronship of the American Philosophical Society, he declined, just because Franklin was its president. In retrospect, that sounds unwise.

The Heirs of William Penn

William Penn

Freedom of religion includes the right to join some other religion than the one your father founded; William Penn's descendants had every right to become members of the Anglican church. It may even have been a wise move for them, in view of their need to maintain good relations with the British Monarch. But religious conversion cost the Penn family the automatic political allegiance of the Quakers dominating their colony. Not much has come down to us showing the Pennsylvania Quakers bitterly resenting their desertion, but it would be remarkable if at least some ardent Quakers did not feel that way. It certainly confuses history students, when they read that the Quakers of Pennsylvania were often rebellious about the rule of the Penn family.

Delaware

Such resentments probably accelerated but do not completely explain the growing restlessness between the tenants and the landlords. The terms of the Charter gave the Penns ownership of the land from the Delaware River to five degrees west of the river -- providing they could maintain order there. King Charles was happy to be freed of the expense of policing this wilderness, and to be paid for it, to be freed of obligation to Admiral Penn who greatly assisted his return to the throne, and to have a place to be rid of a large number of English dissenters. The Penns were, in effect, vassal kings of a subkingdom larger than England itself. However, they behaved in what would now be considered an entirely businesslike arrangement. They bought their land, fair and square, purchased it a second or even third time from the local Indians, and refused to permit settlement until the Indians were satisfied. They skillfully negotiated border disputes with their neighbors without resorting to armed force, while employing great skill in the English Court on behalf of the settlers on their land. They provided benign oversight of the influx of huge numbers of settlers from various regions and nations, wisely and shrewdly managing a host of petty problems with the demonstration that peace led to prosperity, and that reasonableness could cope with ignorance and violence. When revolution changed the government and all the rules, they coped with the difficulties as well as anyone in history had done, and better than most. In retrospect, most of the violent criticism they engendered at the time, seems pretty unfair.

John Penn

They wanted to sell off their land as fast as they could at a fair price. They did not seek power, and in fact surrendered the right to govern the colony to the purchasers of the first five million acres, in return for being allowed to become private citizens selling off the remaining twenty-five million. Ultimately in 1789, they were forced to accept the sacrifice price of fifteen cents an acre. Aside from a few serious mistakes at the Council of Albany by a rather young John Penn, they treated the settlers honorably and did not deserve the treatment or the epithets they received in return. The main accusation made against them was that they were only interested in selling their land. Their main defense was they were only interested in selling their land.

As time has passed, their reputation has repaired itself, and they bask in the universal gratitude which is directed to their grandfather and father, William Penn. Statues and nameplates abound. Nobody who attacked them at the time appears to have been really serious about it, except one. Except for Benjamin Franklin, who turned from being their close friend to being their bitter enemy. Franklin tried to destroy the Penns, traveled to England to do it, and after twenty years seemed just as bitter as ever. Something really bad happened between them in 1754, and neither the Penns nor Franklin has been frank about what it was.

Unexpected Benefits of a Lurid Past

Map of Barnegat Bay

Centuries came and centuries went, while a Quaker shipyard went on about its business along the shore of Barnegat Bay. Next door there was a notable roadhouse after the second World War, rumored to have formerly been a secret speakeasy during the days of Prohibition. In time, the only occupant of the roadhouse was a wealthy widow, who mostly minded her own business and grew to be an affable neighbor to the Quakers next door. As rowdy days of Prohibition faded into the background of decades past, the old lady felt free to recall some of the less tawdry features of her past, to the Quakers who in turn felt free to chuckle about them. Ancient history, perhaps a little varnished and polished up. It was, however, a little disquieting to hear her say that the liquor for the speakeasy was often supplied by sailors from the Coast Guard, who routinely diverted 20% of the cargo of rum Runners they had captured, into commercial channels. Exciting times, those were.

The Coast Guard out looking for Rum Runners

One day when the widow was ninety-six years old, the lights of her house stayed on, without other signs of activity. The neighbor eventually walked over to the back door and looked through the window, where it could be seen that the old lady was lying on the floor, rather motionless. He might have called the police, or broken into the house, but there was another option.

He went down to the basement, entering a rather dusty but quite elaborate barroom. Following old directions, he walked to a closet and climbed up a stepladder leading into another closet on the floor above. Stepping out, he found the lady was still breathing, called her relatives, and watched her be taken off to a nursing home to end her days. No one seemed to ask very many questions.

A Keg Tapped at Both Ends (2)

The New Jersey legislature began by ratifying the Declaration of Independence, then concerned itself with debts, then the railroads, then corporations, and now -- with debt, again.

The New Jersey legislature ratified the Declaration of Independence in the Indian King Tavern of Haddonfield, then moved to Princeton, and since then has been in Trenton. The Statehouse in Trenton is the second oldest in the nation, after the one in Annapolis, although it has grown like a snail with the original building nestled inside many additions. In one sense it is totally unique; it's the only state capitol in the nation where you can look out a window and see another state. It's right on the water's edge of the Delaware, a hundred yards from the Hessian barracks that Washington surprised in 1777.

In its early years the legislature concerned itself with raising troops and paying for them during the Revolution. After that, it spent a great deal of time settling debts. From that began the traditional rivalry, even hostility, between the northern and southern halves of the state. The northern half, with many Dutch settlers spilling over from New York, was mainly a population of debtors; debtors like inflation, because it cheapens the cost of their repayments. The southern half of New Jersey, mainly Quaker in settlement, was where the creditors lived; creditors like to see sound currency, hate inflation. The Mason Dixon line, extended, crosses New Jersey. However, it was the northern half of the state which favored the Confederacy during the Civil War, while the Quakers in the south were strongly opposed to slavery. Irritation over Atlantic City gambling was only one of various issues which prompted South Jersey to try to secede; the proposition was actually on the ballot in the late Twentieth Century. Up until 1966 the Republicans always dominated the Senate, but that was because each of the 21 counties had its senator. Then, it was ingeniously designed that the state would be re-divided into 40 numerically equal legislative districts; the Senate has had a Democrat majority more or less ever since, in spite of Republican majorities in the overall state elections. The legislative districts are re-apportioned every ten years with the new census; it is close to the truth that the gerrymandering of that reapportionment effectively forecloses the politics of the legislature for the following decade.

Over time, the early legislature began to devote most of its time to incorporation because there were no universal corporation laws, and during the early Industrial Revolution lots of new businesses sought the authority to limit investor liability. Each corporation had its own deal, its own set of rules and conditions. Along came the first railway, Stevens's idea of the Amboy and Camden Railroad. The New Jersey legislature, no doubt suitably persuaded by private arrangements, not only gave the Amboy and Camden permission to use eminent domain to acquire its right of way, it conferred a perpetual tax exemption, and perpetual monopoly. For fifty years, the legislature then concerned itself with hardly anything except railroad matters.

Perpetual is a pretty unambiguous adjective, of course, and it might be an interesting topic in judicial gymnastics to observe how the state would get itself out of an impossible economic straight-jacket. That proved unnecessary however, when the proprietors of the Stanhope Railroad slipped exemptions and enabling legislation into one of the thousands of corporation bills which flooded through the legislature, unread by anyone. After the Governor who also hadn't read the bill, signed this sleeper into law, the uproar was predictably loud and accusatory. In a sense, the wrangle about New Jersey railroads was not settled by the legislature but by the Pennsylvania Railroad, which crossed the Delaware at Trenton, and went south to Philadelphia along the Pennsylvania side of the river. New Jersey preferred to get a new constitution with a new organization of matters, but one thing about New Jersey never seems to change. Between eleven and twelve thousand bills are still introduced, every year. It's remarkable that New Jersey accomplishes this by having the legislature sit for 30 or 40 afternoons a year, usually Monday and Thursday, from November to May. We are a nation of laws and not of men, but it would be hard to praise the application of that truism in New Jersey, where quite obviously the Governor does most of the deciding.

Burlington County, NJ

Burlington County used to be called Bridlington. It once contained Burlington City, the capitol of West Jersey, which is how they styled the southern half of the colony which belonged to William Penn. In colonial times, the developed part of New Jersey was a strip extending from Perth Amboy, the capital of East Jersey, to Burlington. To the north of the fertile strip extended the hills and wilderness mountains, to the south extended the Pine Barrens loamy wilderness. The strip was predominantly Tory in sentiment, while the remaining 90% of the colony consisted of backwoods Dutch farmers to the north, and hard-scrabble "Pineys" to the south, except for the developments farmed by Quakers. The Quakers had ambiguous sentiments during the Revolution, while the real fighting went on between the Episcopalian Tories and the Presbyterian rebels. It was bitter, with the Tories determined to hang the rebels, and the rebels determined to evict or inflict genocide on the loyalists. When the two parts were consolidated into New Jersey in 1708, the main reason was the ungovernability of the area, with animosities which endure to the present time in submerged form. Benjamin Franklin's son William was appointed Governor through his father's manipulation, but when he turned into a rebel-hanging Tory, his father extended his bitterness into a hatred of all Tories. The effect of this was felt at the Treaty of Paris, where Ben Franklin would not hear of leniency for loyalists, striking out any hint of reparations for their property losses. In a peculiar way, the factionalism resurfaced at the time of the Civil War, where the slave-owning Dutch in the North came into conflict with the slave-hating Quakers in the South. The problem would have been much worse if the slave holders had been contiguous with the Confederacy, but it was bad enough to perpetuate the sectionalism. A few decades ago, it was actually on the ballot that Southern Jersey wanted permission to secede.

Under the circumstances, when James F. Wujcik wanted to work for progress in his native area, he abandoned all ambition to enter State politics, and concentrated his efforts at the county level. He is now a member of the Board of Chosen Freeholders of Burlington County, along with four other vigorous local citizens. Most notable among them is William Haines, the largest landholder by far in the area. Membership on the Board of Freeholders is a part-time job, so Mr. Wujcik is also president of the Sovereign Bank. We are indebted to him for a fine talk to the Right Angle Club, avoiding with obvious discomfort much mention of state politics or sociology.

Burlington is the only county which stretches from the Delaware River to the Atlantic Ocean, including the Pine Barrens with 80% of the land mass in the center; fishing and resorts dominate near the ocean, and former industrial areas along the river. Much of the area has been converted to agriculture for the Garden State, but about 10% is included in a National Preserve. The population has doubled in the past fifty years, so urbanization is replacing agriculture, which earlier displaced wilderness. The county includes Fort Dix and Maguire Air Force Base, strenuously promoted for decades by now retiring Congressman James Saxton.

Somewhere in the past few decades, Burlington became quite activist. Although we tend to associate real estate planning with urban planning, this largely rural county went in for planning in a big way, deciding what it was and what it wanted to be. Generally speaking, its decision was to replace urban sprawl with cluster promotion. The farmers didn't like invasion by McMansions or industries, while the towns lost their vigor by tax avoidance behavior by the residents. Overall, the decision was to push urban development along the river in clusters surrounding the towns, and to push exurban development closer to logical commuting centers, leaving the open spaces to farmers. Incentives were preferred to compulsion, with a determination never to use eminent domain except for matters of public safety. So, two referenda were passed with 70% majorities to create special taxes for a development fund, which bought the development rights from the farmers and -- with political magic -- clustered them around the river towns. The farmers loved it, the environmentalists loved it, and the towns began to thrive.

They thought big. The central project was to push through the legislature a billion-dollar project to restore the Riverline light rail to the river towns, along the tracks of the formerly pre-eminent Camden and Amboy Rail Road. It was an unexpected success. During the first six months of operation, ridership achieved a level twice as large as was projected as a ten-year goal. Along this strip of the Route 206 corridor, the old Roebling Steel Works are becoming the Roebling Superfund Site, now trying to attract developers. The Haines Industrial Site, originally envisioned as a food distribution center, was sold to private developers who have created 5000 jobs in the area. Commerce Park beside the Burlington Bristol Bridge is coming along, as are the Shoppes of Riverton and the growth of Old York Village in Chesterfield Township. As Waste Management cleans up the site of the old Morrisville Steel plant acrpss the Delaware River, the whole development project is becoming an interstate regional one.

No doubt there will be bumps in these roads; the decline of real estate prices nationally is a threat on the horizon. And anyone who knows anything about all state legislatures will be cautious about their cooperation in a state as tumultuous as New Jersey. The Pennsylvania Railroad destroyed the promise of this state once; something else could do it again. Right now, however, Burlington County looks like a real winner.