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Originally published in 1939
Some of this information may no longer be current and in that case is presented for historical interest only.
Edited by GET NJ, COPYRIGHT 2003
Angered no less by Hopkinson's verses than by the plot to blow up the fleet, the British sent 5 armed vessels and 24 flat-bottomed boats with about 800 soldiers to Bordentown in May 1778. At their approach, the townspeople destroyed more than 2o American vessels that had been lying at the White Hill. Disappointed, the British turned on the town and razed the home and store of Colonel Borden. As the colonel's wife sat in the middle of the street and watched the destruction, a British officer expressed his sympathy. The proud old lady retorted: ". . . This is the happiest day of my life. I know you have given up all hope of reconquering my country, or you would not thus wantonly devastate it." Before they left the British also burned two Continental galleys that had been moored up Crosswicks Creek.
Thomas Paine, the firebrand of the Revolution, made his home in Bordentown with Col. Joseph Kirkbride in 1783 before buying his own house. Here he received a cordial invitation from Washington to visit him at Rocky Hill. Paine had been virtually ignored, and Washington hoped thus to remind Congress of the value of his Revolutionary services.
After Paine had been rewarded by appointments to several responsible positions he was often visited at Bordentown by Benjamin Franklin, Gouverneur Morris, and other distinguished men. The gunsmith and dreamer, John Fitch, came with plans and a proposal of partnership in the building of a steamboat. Although Paine offered mechanical suggestions he was not further interested.
When Paine returned to Europe and became embroiled in the affairs of the French Revolution he still held an affectionate memory of Bordentown. In one letter he wrote: ". . . my heart and myself are three thousand miles apart; and I had rather see my horse, Button, eating the grass of Bordentown, than see all the show and pomp of Europe."
Following his escape from the guillotine and the publication of the Age of Reason, Paine again sought the comfort of the pleasant river town and, more particularly, of his friend, Colonel Kirkbride. His liberal religious views had outraged most of his former admirers, and there were few who cared or dared to greet him. But Colonel Kirkbride welcomed his old friend-only to flee with him from a mob of jeering pursuers who forced their way into the quiet garden and literally ran Paine out of town.
In the summer of 1790 the townspeople gathered on the bluff to cheer the first commercially operated steamboat in America. John Fitch, the ridiculed inventor, had at last succeeded in building a steam packet for a service along the Delaware, and Bordentown was a scheduled stop. Two years earlier Fitch had made an experimental trip from Philadelphia to Bordentown.
In 1816 Joseph Bonaparte, exiled King of Spain and brother of Napoleon, bought about 1,500 acres, which he developed into an elaborate estate on the outskirts of the town No alien was then permitted to own property in the United States, and transference of title was delayed a year pending passage of a special act by the legislature. The little kingdom on the edge of the Delaware River earned for New Jersey the sobriquet of "New Spain."
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