Merchants and Gentlemen at Raritan Landing

IT WAS THE FRESHET OF 1738 that finally convinced me to build on the bluff. We quarried some of the stone on Aaron Lowzada's property at Chimney Rock. The stone on the front came from a quarry near Second River, big rectangular blocks that were very expensive. It had to be, because I fully intended to have the best house—and best storehouse—in town. We chose the elegant Georgian style—all the rage in England—with a center hall and large rooms for entertaining and dining, very different than the houses of the traders down below who preferred the old Dutch style. I was proud to move the family, which already included five children, into the new house in 1741 and we stayed there for the rest of my days. We tried to rent the storehouse in 1774 by which time my son, Isaac, in New York was handling most of the business. The storehouse was 80 feet long and 25 feet deep with a shop on the ground floor and a wheat loft above capable of holding several thousand bushels. You should have seen the Landing in those days: the wagons bringing the grain down the Road Up Raritan would line up for miles. My storehouse was the biggest, but there were many more. We all did well before the war tore everything asunder.

Merchants and Gentlemen at Raritan Landing From Voices of Raritan Landing
woodcut Gentleman artist and date unknown WILLAM DUGDALE THEY CALLED ME A "MERCHANT,"' probably because I did more than just trade at the Landing. I had a fine and fashionable house on the north side of the Road Up Raritan and maintained a good orchard and garden. There were 50 acres of upland and 11 of choice fresh meadow. I didn't think it wise or seemly for someone of my status to depend only on commerce. You had to have land is what I thought; a gentleman has land. But that trader, John Bodine, bought my place from my widow, Jane, in 1741. Who knows what he did with it, being one of those modern types who lived merely from trade? woodcut Gentleman Walking Thomas Bewick, active 1785-1828 BERNARDUS LAGRANGE WE COULDN'T BUILD A CHURCH without money so the first thing we did was hold a lottery. Other Landing residents, all gentlemen, worked on it with me. Edward Antill, William Mercer, M.D., and Peter Kemble were on the committee along with some upstanding residents of New Brunswick. Antill, Mercer, and Kemble were also charter members of the Church of England congregation, as was Frances Brasier, my brother-in-law, and Patrick Riley. We were close in the 60s, but when the war came we took different sides. I believed we should stay with England, and paid dearly for it— lost my land and was chased out of town. They threatened me with terrible letters and actually burned an effigy of me. I wasn't the only Tory at the Landing. My brother-in-law favored the English, too. Some families were split over the war. Evert Duyckinck, for instance, sided with the rebels while his son, John, stood with me. I left the Landing and my law practice in New York and New Brunswick and settled in England. I filed a claim for compensation for the farm at Raritan. William Paterson had bought it for only a fraction of its real worth. lottery ticket unknown printer, Raritan Landing or New Brunswick? 1748 JOHANNES TENBROOK I ASKED ABRAHAM DUMONT and Henry Dumont to manage my lottery for me in 1748. They were to sell 2000 tickets at 14 shillings apiece; Daniel Bray and Henry Lane would oversee the drawing, and I, of course, was responsible for turning over title to the prizes. The three highest prizes were: 1) a lot of ground 100 feet square with a good storehouse right opposite it with as much ground back as the breadth of the storehouse to the end of the lot; 2) a good dwelling house with a fine shop and good kitchen to it, good well, and a fine garden; and 3) a new storehouse and bam, and ground at the front to build a large dwelling house. My wife, Catheryntje, and I lived next to the prize lots, with our son, Johannes, just nine years old in 1748. Johannes kept asking whether the new owners would have a boy his age to play with. I hoped so.	engraving "A Merchant," in The Book of Trades, or Library of the Useful Arts, part 2 Jacob Johnson, publisher Philadelphia, 1807. CORNELIUS LOW IT WAS THE FRESHET OF 1738 that finally convinced me to build on the bluff. We quarried some of the stone on Aaron Lowzada's property at Chimney Rock. The stone on the front came from a quarry near Second River, big rectangular blocks that were very expensive. It had to be, because I fully intended to have the best house—and best storehouse—in town. We chose the elegant Georgian style—all the rage in England—with a center hall and large rooms for entertaining and dining, very different than the houses of the traders down below who preferred the old Dutch style. I was proud to move the family, which already included five children, into the new house in 1741 and we stayed there for the rest of my days. We tried to rent the storehouse in 1774 by which time my son, Isaac, in New York was handling most of the business. The storehouse was 80 feet long and 25 feet deep with a shop on the ground floor and a wheat loft above capable of holding several thousand bushels. You should have seen the Landing in those days: the wagons bringing the grain down the Road Up Raritan would line up for miles. My storehouse was the biggest, but there were many more. We all did well before the war tore everything asunder. woodcut Gentleman Farmer Thomas Bewick, active 1785-1828 EDWARD ANTILL, ESQ. FROM MY HOUSE on the Road Up Raritan, Raritan Landing looked like New Amsterdam. That's what I called it when I advertised the property for sale in 1753. I had 370 acres, much of it in meadow, but there were also 70 acres of good woodland and 10 acres of orchard in its prime together with a large collection of the best fruit trees: apricots, nectarines, peaches, plums, pears, hard and soft-shell almonds, early apples and English cherries. I even had a vineyard of about 600 vines for which I received £200 sterling from the Society for Promoting Arts and Agriculture. I was mainly what you would call a gentleman farmer—after all I was married to Anne Morris, the governor's daughter, and needed to stay above the fray—but we did some brewing on the property. My brewhouse was 60 feet long and 38 feet wide with a new boiler, called a copper, and 22 barrels that were connected to a system for carrying the liquor directly from place to place. My main income came from importing. Unlike the small-time traders in the village, I ordered linens directly from London; John Watts of New York conveyed my orders to Bristol. With other members of my class, I was a charter member of the Church of England in New Brunswick, which finally opened in 1761. I served as a vestryman and am buried in the churchyard.