Firing up a celebration of joy in New Brunswick

John Adams famously predicted that the anniversary of America's independence would "be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty." In a letter to his wife Abigail just after the Declaration of Independence was adopted by the states, he said, "It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more."

That brings up the question -- when did celebrations actually begin? Who declared the day an official event for commemorating the act of separation from Great Britain and the official birth of the United States? I'm sure if you go to Massachusetts or Pennsylvania, you'll find people who say their forebears were the first to make July 4 a major holiday, but they'd be wrong. Like so much of what occurred during the Revolution, the first celebration was held in New Jersey, ordered by General George Washington himself. You can't get much more official than that.

The story brings us to 1778, just after the Continental Army fought the British at the Battle of Monmouth on June 28. Having demonstrated to the enemy in a daylong conflict that the Americans were a force to be reckoned with, Washington led his 11,000 Continentals to New Brunswick to rest. The Raritan River would provide refreshment to the parched and exhausted troops, who camped on both banks during the first week of July while the General made his headquarters at Ross Hall on River Road in Piscataway.

Marking the route of the 1778 Independence Day celebration
on River Road in Piscataway.

Washington capitalized on the massive gathering of soldiers to make a LOT of noise on the Fourth. He ordered them to line the Raritan's edge in a single file that ran two miles from White's Farm -- the present-day Buccleuch Park -- to Sonman's Hill, where Douglass College of Rutgers University now stands. Bolstered by an artillery force of more than a dozen cannons, the men then fired their muskets one by one in sequence in a feu de joie, or fire of joy.

That was just the start of the celebration. Every soldier was issued an extra ration of rum, and the officers gathered at Ross Hall for an evening party. Notables including Baron von Steuben, Alexander Hamilton and the Marquis de Lafayette were among the 100 people in attendance at Ross Hall.

Imagining the celebration as it occurred is a little difficult these days -- subsequent development and Route 18 have obliterated the 18th century landscape in New Brunswick, though the terrain remains a little more natural once the Raritan flows into Piscataway. Ross Hall was torn down in the 1960s after a destructive fire, though a single wall was saved for eventual restoration; plans are to have it displayed at the nearby Metlar-Bodine House. However, anyone driving the length of the highway along the river can appreciate the sheer mass of humanity it took to create a two-mile long shooting range, along with the duration of the gunfire they created, firing one after the other in sequence.

We can still get a little taste of the 1778 celebration every year on Independence Day. On the afternoon of July 4, reenactors gather at New Brunswick's Buccleuch Park for a smaller though no less enthusiastic feu de joie, a reminder not only of our fight for independence, but of New Jersey's significant sacrifice toward the goal.

History under River Road: the vanished town of Raritan Landing

Over the weekend, we made another visit to East Jersey Olde Towne, a collection of historic buildings moved to Middlesex County's Johnson Park when threatened with destruction. This time around, the buildings were open and we arrived just in time for the afternoon tour.

The buildings themselves are interesting examples of colonial-era architecture, with ties to the area's original settlers and their descendants. The really fascinating part of the tour, however, wasn't the structures or their former owners, but of another town whose remnants remained hidden below the grounds around us. 

A hint of its existence is in the name of the Landing Lane Bridge, which crosses the Raritan River near the borders where New Brunswick, Franklin Township and Piscataway meet. The name always seemed a little odd to me, but it suddenly made sense when I learned the name of the hidden community: Raritan Landing.

True to its name, Raritan Landing was a busy port community starting in the early to mid-1700s. The sons of New York merchants, eager to strike their own fortunes, realized that there was money to be had in the productive lands of the Raritan Valley, if they could get the bounty to the city. Farmers had plenty of grain, timber and livestock to sell, and the growing city populations had a large appetite and shrinking amounts of available land on which to farm. Shipping by boat would be the fastest and most productive route, leading them to set up shop on the farthest inland point of navigation on the Raritan River.

Raritan Landing, courtesy Rutgers Libraries

Warehouses started popping up on the northern banks of the Raritan River, west of New Brunswick as farmers learned of the new opportunity to sell their crops. It's said that 50 or more wagons at a time would be lined up on the Great Road Up Raritan (now River Road), waiting for their opportunity to unload their wares. A small but dense community grew around the commerce with residents building houses, stores, stables and a mill, among other structures.

Land along the Raritan is low, and Johnson Park floods in a decent-sized storm, as we've seen with Hurricanes Floyd, Sandy and Irene. Raritan Landing was a good three feet lower than the land is today, and residents found themselves flooded out time and time again. Wealthy merchants retreated to the bluffs above, building stately houses befitting their success. Today, the stone Cornelius Low mansion stands near the corner of Landing Lane and River Road, the only visible sign of the community that once bustled below.

So why did Raritan Landing disappear? Its demise came in stages. First, the Revolutionary War brought raids from foraging British and Hessians who first looted property and then burned buildings down, driving many residents away in the process. Some locals returned, but many sold their lots to wealthier merchants, changing the character of the community in the process. In the 1830s, newer, faster transportation came to the area in the forms of the Delaware and Raritan Canal and the Camden and Amboy Railroad, enabling farmers and merchants to get their goods to market faster. Raritan Landing essentially became obsolete.

By 1870, many of the buildings had been dismantled, the land converted to pasture. Sixty years later, visible traces of the village were obliterated, covered by three feet of fill dumped there when land across River Road was excavated for the construction of Rutgers Stadium. Fortunately, local historian Cornelius Vermeule created a map of Raritan Landing based on his own childhood recollections and stories garnered from family members. 

Ironically, much of what we know about Raritan Landing comes thanks to sewer enhancements in the 1970's and road-widening projects of the late 90's and early 2000's. The New Jersey Department of Transportation was required to underake an archaeological survey before building the Route 18 extension into Piscataway, resulting in the unearthing of several building foundations and a treasure trove of 18th and 19th century artifacts. Luck played a role in the project, too. Archaeologists were about to walk away empty-handed in the 70's when a local resident came by to ask what they were up to. He recalled the mounds of excavated dirt dumped near the river bank from the stadium construction, leading the researchers to dig much deeper for their quarry.

Several of the more interesting artifacts from the digs are on display at East Jersey Olde Towne, but frustratingly, DOT archaeologists unearthed only a portion of what remains of Raritan Landing. The state was only required to investigate areas that would be disturbed by road construction, leaving much more of the old village below the surface. Even the foundations they discovered are now invisible to the eye, having been covered over again. Some might have even been paved over.

The thing is, it's still there, waiting for future generations to find it. Who knows when it will be unearthed, or by whom. We can only hope that if our descendants choose to build more road there, they'll care enough to dig for the treasure of our shared past.

A goose we wanted to find: the Greater White-Fronted at Duke Island Park

"What are you doing this afternoon? There's a greater white-fronted goose in Bridgewater."

Sometimes you have to put everything aside and go after a chase bird, even if it means you'll probably be scanning a huge flock of grounded Canada geese. That's why I said yes to Ivan and made the trip to Duke Island Park on Wednesday. As I mentioned in a past post, I've joined the insanity of keeping a life list, and this new goose would be an addition for me.

Bordered by the Raritan River and traversed by the Raritan Water Power Canal, Duke Island Park is an active recreation area, with several picnic areas, a bandstand and a couple of ballfields as well as some hiking trails. The weather was cold and blustery when we visited, so the only other park users were some dog walkers and a runner or two. Odds were good, then, that our birding would be uninterrupted by others who might inadvertently flush out the species we were looking for.

Two gatherings of multitudes of geese were visible as soon as we drove into the park, one being within binocular range of the road. No greater white-fronted goose there, and no place nearby to park to get to the other flock easily. We'd have to drive several hundred feet farther to deposit the car, which normally isn't a problem, but in this cold it felt like an imposition. Hopefully our investment in frostbitedness would pay off.

Maybe in a typical winter, the 20 degree temperature wouldn't have seemed so bad, but given the unusual warmth this season, it felt downright polar. I was bundled in a parka with ski gloves, plus a hood that covered my Elmer-Fudd-type polar-tec baseball cap with ear flaps, all of which made it hard to hear or to focus my binoculars appropriately. Conversation went something like this (from my perspective):

Ivan:  *sounds like Charlie Brown's teacher*
Me: (pulling up earflaps and straining) "Huh?"
Ivan: "Wow, it's cold."

In all honesty, it took maybe five minutes to walk from car to vantage area for that second set of geese. I found myself regretting that I hadn't taken another look at the bird in the guide so I'd be sure to spot the right one. Then I remembered that the best course of action was to play the old Sesame Street "one of these things is not like the others" game: spot the one goose that looked out of place. Unlike a cackling goose or a brant, the greater white-fronted looks nothing like a Canada; the only white on its upper body is the facial outline around the base of the bill, and its legs are an orangey yellow. It should stand out like a sore thumb in any flock of standard lawn geese.

It didn't take long for me to find it in the flock, and yes, I was the one to find it (yeah, me!), innocently plucking through grass with its Canada cousins. Life bird for me, year bird for Ivan. While not once-in-a-lifetime rare in the Eastern US, these guys show much more frequently out west, making them a nice find in New Jersey. We were also fortunate to see a pair of killdeer scouring the ground nearby, the sound of their voices a nice treat for the afternoon.

While we were there, we checked out the Raritan but found only a huge flock of Canada geese going with the flow and a determined pair of mallard ducks swimming against traffic. The nearby trees and brush were far more productive, with red-bellied woodpeckers, plenty of juncos and nuthatches, and a bonus brown creeper to add to my life list. All in all, our impromptu trip netted some great January finds and a promising new birding spot to revisit in the spring. Not bad, overall!

Who's good and kind and has bridges named after them?

Cross the Raritan River on Route 1 northbound, and you'll see a sign commemorating the Morris Goodkind Bridge you're traveling atop.

Cross the Raritan River on Route 1 southbound, and you'll see a sign commemorating the Donald Goodkind Bridge you're traveling atop.

I've been taking this route occasionally for my entire adult life, and it's only recently that I discovered the difference. Sure, I'd noticed that the two directions are carried on different spans, with the southbound bridge being several years newer than the northbound, but I never gave the name much thought. I knew the Morris Goodkind name, but I guess I assumed it covered both directions, and I assumed he was a notable New Jerseyan from colonial times. Discovering the Donald connection got me curious. I don't know of many colonial Donalds.

So who are these Goodkind guys, and why do they get bridges named after them? The answer is quite simple, actually: they were both engineers with the New Jersey Department of Transportation and responsible for the design of the bridges that now bear their names.

The older bridge, built in 1929, is much more graceful: concrete with arches beneath and commemorative plaques embedded at either end. I've never been able to read them because they're against the left-most lane and impossible to get to with your life intact; in more recent years they've also been sprayed with graffiti. There's a war memorial at the southern end, largely unreadable at highway speed. Originally called College Bridge, the span was named after the elder Goodkind in 1969, just one of his many accolades. He'd won a medal for excellence in bridge design from the American Society of Civil Engineers for the bridge's design and eventually became chief bridge engineer for the state highway department. The Pulaski Skyway is just one of the spans built under his leadership. Interestingly, he'd begun his career in subway design in New York City.

According to the Encyclopedia of New Jersey, Morris believed that bridges were monuments to structural elegance and that unless a bridge was beautiful, the engineer had not given all that was expected of him. It's a shame that his son didn't (or perhaps couldn't) design the newer bridge consistent with that goal. A garden-variety highway bridge of steel and concrete, the southbound span was built in 1974 and named after Donald in 2004. Maybe engineering standards at the time favored that kind of design, or maybe it was more cost effective, but wow ... not really all that impressive-looking. The body of his work, however, warrants recognition. Like his father, Donald also made notable contributions to the state's roads and engineering discipline. He was also a trustee of the New Jersey Institute of Technology and co-founder of the state Consulting Engineers Council.

You have to admit, there's a nice little symmetry to the father-son bridges. They show the tenor of their times, and they certainly get the job done.

Franklin and Adams slept here: Indian Queen Tavern at East Jersey Olde Towne

New Brunswick's reputation as a Revolutionary-era city is tempered largely by the presence of Rutgers University, one of the original eight colonial colleges. Essentially all of the period architecture is gone from the city's riverfront and dock area, obliterated by Route 18 and redevelopment over the past 30 years. However, history buffs and fans of the musical 1776 are well aware of the some of the more notable of the era's personages who visited during the war.

Yes, Alexander Hamilton was there with his troops at a point... but the big guns are John Adams and Benjamin Franklin. New Brunswick was a stopover for them in August 1776 as they traveled from Philadelphia to Perth Amboy and Staten Island to meet with British General Howe. According to David McCullough's venerable biography John Adams, the pair were to represent America's side in a discussion of the recent declaration of independence from the British crown. The conversation ended, of course, with a stark refusal to surrender and thus rejoin the empire.

The story of the night before the discussion is rather whimsical in nature and says a lot about the historic pair. Because accommodations in New Brunswick were mostly full at the time, Adams and Franklin were forced to share a room. Some even say that the pair even had to share a mattress. It wouldn't be surprising -- after all, inns of the day didn't exactly have the queen posturpedics today's hotels do. According to legend, Franklin spent much of the night expounding on the merits of keeping the window open. He'd published a theory on the benefits of fresh air, believing that people in closed rooms were more likely to catch cold from each other. Adams, on the other hand, feared the night air but eventually fell asleep to the sound of his bed partner explaining his beliefs.

Fortunately, the inn where they overnighted, the Indian Queen Tavern, has been restored. Unfortunately, it's not at its original location at the corner of Albany and Water Streets, an intersection now covered by an entrance to Route 18. You can visit the tavern now at East Jersey Olde Towne in Piscataway, which is where I found it.

Olde Towne is a collection of historic and reconstructed homes and buildings from around Middlesex County and environs, all arranged in a tidy, walkable community off River Road. Though they feel a bit too tidily situated, the New Brunswick barracks next to a tavern next to a home and blacksmith shop... and a tiny square brick church.... a visitor quickly warms to the thought of them all located in one place. You could do a nice little study of East Jersey colonial architecture in probably a half hour.

The tavern and the barracks, especially, caught my attention. Long interested in New Brunswick's colonial past, I took a look at the addresses and tried to place where the buildings had stood, in comparison to today's streetscape. Not surprisingly, both were fairly close to the Raritan, if not absolutely on it. The city had been a busy and productive port area, with lots of shipping and commerce. No doubt, it was quite a toddling town in its day. Small wonder that colonial luminaries had found their way there.

The community is open from Tuesday through Friday and on Sunday afternoons; I guess they keep it closed on Saturdays due to the proximity to Rutgers Stadium. Unfortunately that's when I was there, so I didn't get the chance to check out the building interiors, but it's definitely worth another visit. The Indian Queen, at the very least, deserves more attention.

Take Raritan, spell it backwards...

Based on a suggestion from a Hidden New Jersey reader, Ivan and I recently visited Natirar, a new park within the Somerset County Park System. Nestled in the rolling countryside of Peapack-Gladstone, it's in an area of old estates I've long been curious about.

So how did a county park get located in such lush and, most likely, costly real estate?

More than 100 years ago, lawyer Walter Graeme Ladd and his wife Kate Macy Ladd began purchasing land in Peapack/Gladstone and Bedminster, eventually amassing over 1000 acres. They built a 40-room Tudor mansion atop a hill on the land, also constructing additional outbuildings to accompany maintaining structures that had been on the land since the 18th century. The estate was named for the Raritan (spelled backward), the river that flows through it.

Not long after they acquired the property Mrs. Ladd built a convalescent home for women there, and that entity gained control of Natirar after her death in 1933. Consistent with Mr. Ladd’s will, the convalescent home was disbanded 50 years later, and the property was sold. The King of Morocco acquired the estate but never lived there, ultimately selling more than 400 acres of it to Somerset County. Rather than keeping the house and many of the buildings, the county is leasing them to outside operators, including entrepreneur Richard Branson, who’s turning the mansion into a spa.

Today, great expanses of well-manicured lawn and open space welcome you as you drive past the gatehouse onto the property. Park visitors are directed to a parking lot near some barns, while spa guests are guided up to the mansion, high on the hill.

The evidence of human intervention on the land is strong, as you'd expect on an old estate. This park definitely isn't a Sierra Club project. That said, there's about four miles of gravel pathway on the property, a good stroll for visitors and anyone wanting to take their regular daily walk in very pleasant surroundings. We visited on a very sunny, very hot day and pretty much had the paths to ourselves.

The closest path crosses the well-kept lawn, with very few trees nearby to provide shade or habitat for birds. We saw a bluebird or two, but other than that, the main attraction was a couple of vultures and hawks above. Eventually, the path started to hug a shady tributary of the Raritan River, which we crossed on a broad carriage bridge. A temporary sign advised us that bees were at work, and that we should stay on the path. Indeed they were. In droves.

Farther down, the path splits, with the left fork veering upward and through additional woods, including some very mature rhododendrons. Reaching the top of the hill, we found the designated nature path, a loop around a broad field of tall grasses, thistle and the like. Again, much of this path lacks trees, though a few benches are thoughtfully placed in shady nooks. An unoccupied stable stands pretty much in the middle of all of it.

The birding got a little better at this point, though most of the avian activity was either far above us or somewhere in the distance. The vultures and some redtail hawks seemed to find this area a bit more interesting. Plus, I was happy to spot a pileated woodpecker in the distance, bare-eyed (to be fair, Ivan made the ID by sound; I was just the first one to lay eyes on it).

The real fun was in the butterflies. Ivan spotted three or four different types, including a black swallowtail and a buckeye, and the volume of butterflies in the area seemed especially high. Neither of us is very well versed on the topic, so we couldn’t identify some of them accurately, except to say there’s a good variety.

Summing up the Natirar experience, it’s not exactly the place for a hiker or naturalist, but it would be a nice spot to share a cultured picnic, perhaps after the fox hunt.