Old Belleville

Remembering our town one bit at a time!

Belleville, New Jersey

A brief history

Rambling Round

BELLEVILLE HISTORICAL SOCIETY:

THE HISTORY OF BELLEVILLE

1700s

*    In 1753, Josiah Hornblower smuggled the first steam engine into America from England to pump water from the flooded Schuyler Copper Mine at Second River.

The first homemade steam engine was constructed in 1794 by Nicholas Roosevelt in his Soho works at Second River.

In 1798, he, along with Robert Livingston of New York and John Stevens of Hoboken, built one of the earliest steamboats, the Polaicca, in Soho.

Soho also manufactured America's great municipal water supply projects. Steam power marked the birth of the industrial revolution in America that would change the way people worked and lived.

Josiah Hornblower is buried in the Reformed Church Cemetery, along with his wife and many of Belleville's early settlers.

Sixty-two revolutionary soldiers are also interred here. It could be that no other town in the United States can make such a claim.

Actually, there are at least three more Revolutionary veterans that are not listed because they fought in other regiments.

They are Col. Van Courtland who is buried in the Van Courtland Crypt, Captain Robert Rutgers and Captain Gerard Rutgers whose monuments are in the Rutgers' Plot, making a total of sixty-five revolutionary veterans, a truly historical fact, one that Belleville should be proud of.

The Rutgers that are buried here are related to Col. Henry Rutgers, whom Rutgers University is named after.

Soldiers of the New Jersey Second Essex Regiments were posted here during the Revolution to watch for an English invasion from New York.

Skirmishes occurred in 1779 and another in 1780.

In 1789 when George Washington was inaugurated as the first President of the United States, the Schuyler Copper Mine was revived by a company called the New Jersey Copper Mines Associates founded by Philip Schuyler, a Revolutionary War Veteran, and Nicholas Roosevelt, the ancestor of two United States presidents.

Josiah Hornblower was employed as its consulting engineer. The copper industry, thus reborn, grew large and important in Belleville during the next century.

On June 24, 1797, the name of the Second River was changed to Washington.

On June 26, 1797, the name Washington was changed to Belleville, meaning beautiful town.

Josiah Hornblower was clerk of the meeting that changed the name. Belleville still remained a part of Newark until 1812 when it was placed under the jurisdiction of Bloomfield.

*    The American detachment that guarded Belleville or Second River was part of Jersey Militia raised for the "defense of the frontiers".

Its commander was Abraham Speer, a native of Second River who was commissioned Captain in the Second Essex Regiment on May 28, 1777.

Speer's guardhouse was near the ferry across the Passaic, not so much because the ferry was owned by the young captain's father, John, but because the flat-bottomed boat was the only permanent means of communication between the two shores.

Here was the spot most in need of defense against a possible surprise attack on Second River. Washington's army retreating from Fort Lee crossed the Passaic River at Passaic and then proceeded down the west coast of the Passaic, knowing that the Americans at Second River would protect him.

He spent the night of November 22, 1775 in Second River-Belleville and then proceeded to Newark and points south.

The British, under the leadership of General Cornwallis, was forced to stay on the east side of the Passaic and never did catch Washington. A watch was maintained in the belfry of the Dutch Reformed Church.

At the first sign of the enemy's approach, an old mortar would be fired to rally the residents against attack. Watchfulness had to be doubled in winter due to the river freezing and they could walk across.

*    Colonel Philip Van Cortlandt commanded a New Jersey regiment in the Revolution. Minard Coeyman served under him.

Jasper King's son, a soldier under General Anthony Wayne, was killed in action. He was one of the soldiers who crossed the Delaware with Washington.

When he was going off to war, his wife lifted their son up, so that he, on horseback, could kiss him good-bye. His son never saw him again.

Washington, in his retreat, stopped at Bennett's Mill on Main Street where his troopers purchased food for their horses.

South of The Mill stood the Miller's house, where Captain Henry Benson was born. His death at Malvern Hill in 1862 in the Civil War furnished Belleville with its first military funeral. He is buried in the Dutch Reformed Church Cemetery.

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Belleville Historical Society

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