MySource:Quolla6/Bishop, Freedly, and Young, 1866:539-540

From Source:Bishop, Freedly, and Young, 1866:539-540

NEW JERSEY.—The system of Primary and older Secondary rocks, which furnish the immense masses of iron ore in New York, carry with them where they cross into New Jersey in the gneissoid structure of the south mountain range, the same rich veins of magnetic oxyd and brown hematite ore. These, with the bog ore of the Tertiary and Cretaceous formations of the southern portion of the State, have supplied numerous Iron-works from the earliest colonial days. The metallic wealth of New Jersey was partially discovered by the Dutch in the neighborhood of the Delaware and Raritan rivers, and early became the principal source of domestic Iron.

The earliest Iron-works in that Province of which we have any ac count belonged to Colonel Lewis Morris, a merchant of Barbadoes, whose brother Richard, of Morrisiana, and himself were the ancestors of the Morris family in that and adjacent States. These works were situated in the town of Shrewsbury, in Monmouth County, and, with other improvements of the owner, formed a large establishment for that First iron- period. We are unable to say at what date precisely they works. were erected. They are supposed by Dr. O'Callaghan to have been purchased of Person:James Grover (1), who in 1650 was the collector for the poor at Gravesend on Long Island. In 1655, Grover, with other disaffected people, hoisted the British ensign at that place, and read a declaration of independence of the Dutch government. In the following year, he was the bearer of a petition from some of the Yankee inhabitants of the Island to Cromwell asking to be emancipated from the Dutch yoke. He subsequently removed to New Jersey, where he is believed to have been the owner of the Iron-works in question.l Shrewsbury was settled by Connecticut people about the year 1664, when the Province was surrendered to the English. Henry Leonard, one of the workmen at the first Iron-works in Lynn, Mass., removed to this part of Jersey near that time, and is said to have set up one of the first forges in the Province.

The grant of lands to Mr. Morris is dated October 25, 1676, and embraced 3,540 acres, with full liberty to him and his heirs " to dig, delve, and carry away all such mines for iron as they shall find or see fit to dig and carry away to the iron work, or that shall be found in that tract of land that lies enclosed between the southeast branch of the Raritan river and the whale pond on the sea side, and is bounded from thence by the sea and branch of the sea to the eastward to the Raritan river, he or they paying all such just damages to the owners of the land where they shall dig as shall be judged is done by trespass of cattle, or otherwise sustained by the carting and carrying of the said mine to the work."

The East Jersey Proprietaries, in their account of the Province in 1682, speak of its mineral treasures as remaining to be discovered, but they state that a smelting-furnace and forge were already set up, which made good Iron, and were of great benefit to the country. These were doubtless the works of Colonel Morris, which then employed sixty or seventy negroes in addition to white servants and dependents of the proprietor. Shrewsbury was at that date the most southern settlement in the Province, and had a population of about 400; that of Eliza- bethtown, the seat of government, being about 7OO, and of Newark 500.

In December, 1741, Mr. Morris addressed a letter to the Lords of Trade, transmitting an address from the Council and Assembly asking for encouragement of the manufacture of Iron in the Province. It would thus appear to have already become a promising industry in New Jersey.

[goes on further about early iron manufactury in New Jersey....]

( 1) O'Callaghan's New Netherlands, ii. (2) Whitehead's East Jersey, i. 91.