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Changes in and Around Weehawken --The Great Tunnel---Early Scenes, Etc. A large strip of high land,o the south east of the mouth of the Weehawken tunnel, known as Deas’ Point, is being graded to a level with the tunnel. This upland belonged to the Brown estate, and was leased by a couple of truck farmers, whose roomy dwellings are oc cupied by Swedish boarding-houses for the laborers. Seventy-five horses are used in carting the excavated earth, and stables for them have been erected on the ground. There is a fleet of pile-drivers at work marking out the pier-line in front of Deas’ Point, where it is proposed to build ferries, etc. A little below the Point is the duel ground, where Captain Deas, still living, at the age of four score years, owned property and lived on the hill overlooking the fatal plateau, which was only six feet wide and eleven paces long. It could only be approached by boat, the bluff, twenty feet above the water, being reached by a ricvkety Might of steps. The spot was marked and sheltered by an old cedar, which stood there until a few years ago. The ball from Alexander Hamilton's pistol passed through a limb of this tree, twelve feet from the ground. At the first fire Hamilton instantly fell, and his pistol was discharred almost ac cidentally, going wide of where Colonel Burr was standing. Burr was indicted for murder by the Grand Jury of Bergen in 184, but the indictment was quashed by the Supreme Court. the St. Andrews’ Society of New York erected a monument on the spot where Hamilton fell, to his memory. Which was removed when the railroad cutting was begun. By some unaccountable means the tablet escaped from the possession of Captain Deas, but was subsequently found in a New York junkshop, from whence it was released by a member of the St. Andrews’ Society and presented to the late James G. King, at Highwood. Another memorial tablet, creted to an English officer who fell in the Battle of Paulus Hook, has had an ignoble, wan dering career, having been used as a doorstep in the Van Vorst homestead that once stood at Henderson and Fourth streets, and on the northeast corner of Jersey avenue and Wayne street, Jersey City. “This marble slab, which origi nally supported the equestrian statue of George III, in Bowling Green, New York, is now, trodden by pedestrians on the south side of Wayne street, below Jersey avenue, Jersey City, where it is lodged in the pavement, and may be recognized by the holes made for the hoofs of the King’s leaden charger, which was melted by Gov. Wolcott, of Connecticut. Before his fatal encounter with Hamil ton, Burr had fought a duel with John B. Church, who said he believed the rumor was true that was set afloat in New York State, that, for legislative services ren eered, the Holland Company had can celed a bond held against Burr for $20 ooo. They met at sunset, and the ball from Church’s pistol passed through Burr’s coat. Church apologized, ending the affair. On this occasion Burr's cool ness was put £ 0 @ severe test, as his sec ond, bringing the wrong pistol with him, hammered the balls in with a stone and Barr was obliged to draw them out and load the weapon himself. In the Dewitt Clinton and John Swartwout duel, the latter insisted on fighting until he could stand up no longer, having been shot in both legs by Clinton. In 1818 Commodore Perry, the hero of Lake Erie, and Captain Heath met, and of all the bloody encounters here this one was the most chivalric, as the gal lant Commodore received the fire of Cap tain Heath uninjured and did not return it. A reconciliation followed between the principals. The feud between Burr and Hamilton was the cause of many of the duels fought here, and in the affair between George I. Backer and Philip Hamilton, the eldest son of Alexander, the latter died on the morning after the duel. These were prophetic words of the Rev. Dr. Nott, in his funeral oration on General Hamilton: “Ah! ye tragic shores of Hoboken, crimsoned with the richest blood, I tremble at the crimes you record against us; the annual regis ter of murders which you keep and send up to God.” In 1816, on Sunday, at the meeting be tween Benjamin Price and Major Green, the former was killed at the first fire. Among a score of duels fought at the foot of the Weehawken Heights, prop erly called Highwood, was the one be tween Wm. G. Graham, associate editor of the New York Courier and Inquirer, and Mr. Barton, a leading society man of Philadelphia, in which the editor was mortally Wounded, dying the ensuing morning. Below the duel ground is King’s Point, the extremity of Highwood, and a little southward may still be seen the old Weehawken ferry landing and dock, situated midway between the coal and sail docks. It is, in truth, what it was called in 1419, a “very ancient ferry,” dating from 1680. The boat used was the Periauger, which was pointed at both ends, had two masts, but no bow sprit. When horses and wagons were crushed over, the animals had to be un harnessed and they and the vehicles lifted into the boat. The ferriage was for “man and horse, eighteen pence, single person, one shilling.” A large two-story house of the olden time yet faces the old ferry landing. It has an ‘extraordinary kitchen,” being a Jean-to, which was probably once a tap room, and is very long and low, with a huge open fire place in the north end. The place where this house and J. C. Smith's laundry stands, is erroneously called the old Stobo farm. Mr. Stobo kept a laundry for washing new shirts here fifty years ago, the same as the present occupant, Mr. Smith. All of these buildings were sold by auction re cently, the buyers being obliged to re move them within eight days. The laundry occupies the site of an old water mill in a vale beside a brook that was once a large stream. In those days the North Bergen farm ers came to the mill and the ferry by the Albany post road, which ran by the Weehawken creek through the King estate, striking the Bull's Ferry road at Bermes’ brewery, the boulevard being then undreamed of. Adjoining the “ old Stobo farm ” is the market farm of Freeholder John Frost, who has leased it from the Hoboken Land Improvement Company for the last quarter of a century. This company is an outgrowth of the rise of the city of Hoboken, which was founded by Colonel John Stevens about 1804. In 1711, Hoboken and that portion of Weehawken herein mentioned, was pur chased by the Bayards, an old Bergen family, Balthazar Bayard having been a Schout, or Sheriff, in the town of Bergen as early as 1664. In 1760 there was a beautiful garden of several acres on Castle Point, filled with orchards of pears, plums, cherries, nectarines and apricots. A large dwelling house then occupied the site of the present Stevens mansion, and was used by William Bay ard as a summer residence. The stable was something wonderful in those days, and the culinary department is men tioned by old writers as an ** extraordin ary kitchep,” probably having a fire place where oxen were roasted whole. ‘The adjacent farm was worked by Bay ard’s woants. ‘The owner of Hoboken, William Bayard, at the beginning of the war of Independence, was a Whig, and one of the committee of fiftty Whig sym pathizers. After the capture of New York in 1776 he became a Tory, and his house on Castle Point was burned by the patriots on Saturday, August 24, 17s0, and the farm was bald waste. At the close of the war he went to England, where he lived to an advanced age, dying in 1804, at his seat, Greenwich House, Southampton. All of his property was confiscated, and on March 16, 1784, it was sold to Colonel John Stevens. In 1804 the projected city was laid out upon a map, and Colonel , Stevens, through David Dison, auctioneer, con ducted a four days’ sale of eight hundred lots, on alternate days, at Hoboken and at the Tontine Coffee House in New York. Ten per cent of the purchase money was paid within ten days, the balance in four annual payments, the deeds being given on making the first annual pay ment. The Hoboken Land Improvement Company was incorporated February 21, 1938, and the heirs of John Stevens con veyed to it all of the unsold property, May 6, 1839. The township of Hoboken was set off from the township of North Bergen in 1849, and was incorporated as a city in 1855. Colonel John Stevens was born in New York in 1749, and died in 1838. His grandfather, John Stevens, was a native of England, who came to New York as one of the law officers of the Crown in the early days of British colonial rule. The market farm rented by John Frost from the Hoboken Land Improvement Company originally contained fifty-two acres, but the land has been taken piece meal by the railroads, until only one fourth of the old farm is left for tillage. Mr. Frost has been served with papers from the Hoboken Land Improvement Company, informing him that the land occupied by him has been transferred to the New York and Ontario Railroad Company, Who have exchanged all the land here with the New York, Lake Eute Western Company, for lands held and occupied by the latter company 43 41 abattoir in Guttenberg. A reporter re cently called at Mr. Frost's and was shown a lithograph of “ New York from Weehawk,” drawn in the days of the old Weehawken ferry. The New Jersey shore, with a grove of poplars around the old house on the hill at the ferry landing, is one of the loveliest spots in aginable. The dwelling occupied by Freeholder Frost consists of two of the stone houses built by the Dutch settlers one haurth and fifty years ago, and the walls are as stout as those of Port Amsterdam in its paling days. The oldest stone honse— there were three of them —must hae been the first built in Weshawken. In 1646, Maryn Adriavensen, a pirate received a plantation of fifty taareens at ‘Awiehaken,”’ the first mention at Wee hawken made in Mr. Winfield’s ‘ His tory of Hudson County,” and in 1768 a commission for the survey of patented lands and the allotment of commons, met in the house of Stephen Bourdett, at“ Wiehaken.” Senator Winfield is of the opinion that Weehawken, in its In lian sense, meant “the end of the Pali sades.’’ At the period that the houses under consideration were built, which may, with propriety, be termed the stone age of the Dutch, one low, large room, having a wooden loft above, was con sidered all that was needed. The late Edwin A. Stevens frequently called at Frost Park, and liked to sit by the huge, blazing ingle side in the house used as a kitchen, and no better speci men of the old-fashioned fire place can be seen in this country. The bricks used in the chimneys of the oldest house were from Holland, and the foundation of the house, on one site, is laid on the solid rock, where it crops up. The walls are three feet thick, and not having been rushed up, on contract, are solid. Free holder Frost was driven from Communi paw, when the abattoir was built there, and from the same cause is obliged to relinquish what is almost a homestead here. His crops for next spring are planted, and no matter how liberal the compensation he receives from the rail road authorities, he will lose heavily by the interruption and breaking up of his business. Mr. J. C. Smith, of the laundry, and Mr. Bullwinkle, who kept the boarding house attached to the laundry, will all remove to Lafayette, leaving the Frost and Stobo property to be graded and used as stock yards. This is a matter of regret, as the former was a green spot in the desert of the Hoboken flats.—J. C, Journal,
Newspaper Details
Hoboken Advertiser
Hoboken, New Jersey, US
Sat, Dec 10, 1881
Page 1
Full Page
Clipped by
Francisco N.
USA 30 Dec 2025
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Hoboken Advertiser
