“Their Favorite Bent for Navigation”: Wind-Jamming on the Hackensack River
Researched and written by Kevin Wright
The Hackensack River long remained the principal artery of commerce and travel through the cultivated heartland of Bergen County. By 1748, the river was considered “navigable for Vessels of about 50 Tons” as far inland as New Bridge. When visiting the Lutheran Church at New Bridge in October 1751, the Reverend Henry Muhlenburg noted that local farmers and merchants “bring the products they raise to the market in New York in little ships or vessels, and take back whatever is necessary for subsistence.” The progress of such water craft was somewhat slowed “since the river has a tide.”
River traffic on the river was seasonal. Boats usually were able to begin making regular trips by the third week of March. Freezing weather generally closed the river to navigation by the last days of December.
Shallow draft boats were used to navigate the tidal channel. In 1759, John Zabriskie, of New Bridge, owned “a Boat carrying seven Cord, all in good Order to attend a Mill; when deeply loaded won’t draw above four Feet eight Inches Water; Sails and Rigging all in compleat Order.” It would appear that river craft increased in size during the nineteenth century and two-masted sloop yachts and large, three-masted schooners became a common sight, especially carrying brick as well as agricultural commodities. In January 1868, a schooner belonging to Jacob Van Buskirk, of New Milford, burned while anchored near New Bridge. Its cargo consisted of 1400 empty bags and 30 cords of wood.
Vessels off-loaded lumber and coal at riverside yards and docks. Farmers spent hundreds of dollars in the purchase of manure in New York, which was back-loaded by schooners owned by Messrs. Zabriskie, Lozier and Cole. In prosperous years of the brick trade, river boatmen were steadily employed conveying their product to market. From 1876 to 1890, Captain D. Anderson Zabriskie, of New Bridge, commanded the steam tugboat Wesley Stoney, maneuvering brick scows and large vessels. From the report of the Chief of Engineers, United States Army, for 1889, commerce on the Hackensack River amounted to 150,000 tons, valued at $1,000,000. Commercial traffic was said to be increasing in 1896.
Creolization and the Jersey Dutch
Researched and written by Kevin Wright
New Jersey was the most culturally diverse colony on the Atlantic seaboard, bringing different cultures and ethnicities into community throughout its complicated settlement history. Colonial heterogeneity was more involved than it may appear to modern eyes, owing to the great variability of local cultures and parochial attitudes even within the boundaries of emerging European nation-states.
The process of “creolization” is defined as the merging of two or more cultural identities so as to produce a distinct new cultural meld, different from its source contributors, though often containing recognizable elements of its antecedents. The process of creolization led first to regional folk patterns of culture (such as the Jersey Dutch), which eventually nourished the emerging American culture.
Entrepreneurs of the Dutch West Indies Company never succeeded in convincing large numbers of their own countrymen to exchange comfortable abodes in the Low Countries for pioneer huts in a remote wilderness. Families seeking haven from religious intolerance throughout Western Europe made more willing adventurers to the New World. By the time of the American Revolution, only one-third of the population of Bergen County, New Jersey, could claim Netherlandish descent. Africans comprised one-fifth of the population; Germans comprised another one-fifth; while English, French and Scotch-Irish formed the remainder of the population. Through intermarriage and the convenient adoption of a hybrid language rooted in Dutch, this varied stock blended to form the Bergen Dutch. Besides such distinctly Dutch surnames as Akkerman, De Groot, Blinkerhof, Hopper, Van Winkel, Brouwer and Blauvelt, the surnames of some founding families echo a diversity of origins: Zabriskie (Saborowski), Demarest (De Maree), Lozier (La Seur), Campbell, Christie, Stagg, Sandford, and Kingsland.
Early attempts to settle patroonal colonies upon the Jersey Mainland were wrecked by mistreatment of the native Hackensacks and Tappans and their consequent enmity. With the English Conquest of 1664, a ducal grant of all lands lying westward of Manhattan and Long Islands to Sir George Carteret and Lord John Berkeley created the province of New Jersey. On Manhattan, Governor Nichols loudly complained that the distant Duke of York had unwittingly ceded the most improvable part of his domain. Viewing the untapped wealth of pliable soils and natural meadows, New Netherlanders soon spread westward from Long Island and New Haarlem to establish plantations along the tidal waterways feeding into the Rivier Achter Kol, behind Bergen Neck.
The process of creolization commenced immediately on the frontiers of settlement. By October 1751, the Lutheran pietist preacher, Rev. Henry M. Muhlenberg offered this description of the congregation at New Bridge:
“The inhabitants of Hackinsack are natives of this country. Most of them are descendants from three or four ancestors who came from Holland and purchased this tract [that is, the New Hackensack tract at Teaneck] from the Indians about 80 or 90 years ago and settled here. Hence, almost all of them are inter-related and bear the original family names, such as van Buskirk, van Horn, van Orden, etc. The old folks had a certain natural honesty and artlessness. They did not use documents, seals, signatures, bonds and other such contracts. A man’s word and handshake was his bond. The older folks at the present times are shrewd; they are still good as their word; they are sociable and command great respect in their families. Like all other nationalities, they have a special love for their mother tongue. The young people are gradually degenerating because they receive no instruction in God’s Word and are mixing with other nationalities...”
The process of creolization was particularly evident at New Bridge, which, as the gateway into the upper valley of the Hackensack, seems to have attracted certain ethnicities from among the general population of New Netherlands who wished to preserve their cultural identity: the Van Buskirks who settled northern Teaneck were Holstein (Danish) Lutherans; Cornelis Mattysen, first owner of the lands in River Edge whereon the Steuben House stands, was a Swede and Lutheran; Albert Zabriskie, first owner of a neighboring tract in River Edge, was Polish Silesian and a Lutheran; the Demarests who established the French Patent (now New Milford) were French Huguenots who established a French Reformed congregation.
The Great Awakening fractured Jersey Dutch society into competing conservative (Conferentie) and liberal (Coetus) factions, often dividing families. Conservatives wanted all their ministers trained in Holland, conducting services in Dutch. Espousing the value of the conversion experience and religious “enthusiasm,” the liberals were eager to Americanize their church and to appeal to a younger generation. This split widened during the American Revolution, taking on an often-violent political dimension. The success of the Whig rebellion and the attainment of American independence drove away many Loyalists or diminished (at least briefly) their social standing. It is interesting to note how the genealogical entries in many Jersey Dutch Bibles change from Dutch to English after 1783, indicating the emergence of a larger and more nearly national sense of cultural identity.
In a journal of his travels through this vicinity in 1797-1799, the Polish patriot and poet, Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz, noted that: “The whole countryside is inhabited by old Dutch colonists. I recognized them by their favorite bent for navigation. They were all busy constructing or refitting boats. They are said to be ignorant, avaricious and inhospitable. They love to work and to hoard. They have kept until now their mother tongue; however, nearly all speak and understand English.”
Nineteenth century revolutions in transportation, mechanization and industrialization progressively forced regional folk cultures into competing in a national marketplace, inducing increasing economic specialization and cultural standardization. In 1876, the author of Walker’s Atlas of Bergen County, commenting upon Union Township, duly reported that: “Fifty years ago this township was occupied by farmers and gardeners of the Holland Dutch stock, who plodded on from year to year, taking their truck to market in their wagons frequently over night, and reducing their expenses by such return loads as they could get for the country stores, etc. The old inhabitants were peculiarly jealous of strangers, and it was with great difficulty that they could be persuaded to part with any of their land. This feature held sway over them long after the building of the New York and Paterson Railroad, which was one of the first railroads in the country; and it is only within about twenty years that any serious inroads have been made on the domains of this peculiar people. Possessing one of the most desirous and attractive districts for the suburban residences of New Yorkers, they refused to use their land for improvements, and continued to plant and plod on as aforetime, while other localities, far less attractive, were being built up and making the land-holders wealthy. There was not even a village in the whole township.”
The plodding Bergen Dutch were slowly overwhelmed by suburban encroachment on their agrarian communities and lifestyle. By the 1890s, the growing population of new comers, called Commuters, were warring in school elections and borough formation to seize political control from the old-time rural natives, called Punkin-Dusters (in reference to their supposed habit of dusting the frost from pumpkins).
