The books of the upper classes were good though few, and consisted chiefly of the classics of English literature and books of information and travel.The diaries and letters of colonial native Jerseymen, the pamphlets of the time, and John Woolman's "Journal," all show a good average of education and an excellent use of the English language.Samuel Smith's "History of the Colony of Nova-Casaria, or New Jersey," written and printed at Burlington and published there in the year 1765, is written in a good and even attractive style, with as intelligent a grasp of political events as any modern mind could show; the type, paper, and presswork, too, are excellent.Smith was born and educated in this same New Jersey town.He became a member of council and assembly, at one time was treasurer of the province, and his manuscript historical collections were largely used by Robert Proud in his "History of Pennsylvania."The early houses of New Jersey were of heavy timbers covered with unpainted clapboards, usually one story and a half high, with immense fireplaces, which, with candles, supplied the light.The floors were scrubbed hard and sprinkled with the plentiful white sand.Carpets, except the famous old rag carpets, were very rare.
The old wooden houses have now almost entirely disappeared; but many of the brick houses which succeeded them are still preserved.They are of simple well-proportioned architecture, of a distinctive type, less luxuriant, massive, and exuberant than those across the river in Pennsylvania, although both evidently derived from the Christopher Wren school.The old Jersey homes seem to reflect with great exactness the simple feeling of the people and to be one expression of the spirit of Jersey democracy.
There were no important seats of commerce in this province.
Exports of wheat, provisions, and lumber went to Philadelphia or New York, which were near and convenient.The Jersey shores near the mouth of the Hudson and along the Delaware, as at Camden, presented opportunities for ports, but the proximity to the two dominating ports prevented the development of additional harbors in this part of the coast.It was not until after the Revolution that Camden, opposite Philadelphia, and Jersey City, opposite New York, grew into anything like their present importance.
There were, however, a number of small ports and shipbuilding villages in the Jerseys.It is a noticeable fact that in colonial times and even later there were very few Jersey towns beyond the head of tidewater.The people, even the farmers, were essentially maritime.The province showed its natural maritime characteristics, produced many sailors, and built innumerable small vessels for the coasting and West India trade--sloops, schooners, yachts, and sailboats, down to the tiniest gunning boat and sneak box.Perth Amboy was the principal port and shipbuilding center for East Jersey as Salem was for West Jersey.
But Burlington, Bordentown, Cape May, and Trenton, and innumerable little villages up creeks and channels or mere ditches could not be kept from the prevailing industry.They built craft up to the limit of size that could be floated away in the water before their very doors.Plentifully supplied with excellent oak and pine and with the admirable white cedar of their own forests, very skillful shipwrights grew up in every little hamlet.
A large part of the capital used in Jersey shipbuilding is said to have come from Philadelphia and New York.At first this capital sought its profit in whaling along the coast and afterwards in the trade with the West Indies, which for a time absorbed so much of the shipping of all the colonies in America.
The inlets and beaches along the Jersey coast now given over to summer resorts were first used for whaling camps or bases.Cape May and Tuckerton were started and maintained by whaling; and as late as 1830, it is said, there were still signs of the industry on Long Beach.
Except for the whaling, the beaches were uninhabited--wild stretches of sand, swarming with birds and wild fowl, without a lighthouse or lifesaving station.In the Revolution, when the British fleet blockaded the Delaware and New York, Little Egg, the safest of the inlets, was used for evading the blockade.
Vessels entered there and sailed up the Mullica River to the head of navigation, whence the goods were distributed by wagons.To conceal their vessels when anchored just inside an inlet, the privateersmen would stand slim pine trees beside the masts and thus very effectively concealed the rigging from British cruisers prowling along the shore.
Along with the whaling industry the risks and seclusion of the inlets and channels developed a romantic class of gentlemen, as handy with musket and cutlass as with helm and sheet, fond of easy, exciting profits, and reaping where they had not sown.They would start legally enough, for they began as privateersmen under legal letters of marque in the wars.But the step was a short one to a traffic still more profitable; and for a hundred years Jersey customs officers are said to have issued documents which were ostensibly letters of marque but which really abetted a piratical cruise.Piracy was, however, in those days a semi-legitimate offense, winked at by the authorities all through the colonial period; and respectable people and governors and officials of New York and North Carolina, it is said, secretly furnished funds for such expeditions and were interested in the profits.
