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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
Bordentown was the scene of a peacetime mechanical feat no less remarkable than the launching of the powder kegs. In 1831 there arrived from England a strange assortment of iron plates, pipes, bolts, nuts, rods, and other parts. These were the makings of the first locomotive to run on the new Camden and Amboy Railroad. To Isaac Dripps, a young mechanic of Bordentown who had never seen a locomotive, fell the task of assembling these parts without the aid of a shop drawing -- the only item omitted by the British manufacturers. After 2 weeks of dogged effort, Dripps had the John Bull ready for service, and on November 12, 1831, at a point 1 mile northeast of Bordentown, the engine was successfully tested in a run with two coaches filled with distinguished passengers.
Shops employing hundreds of skilled mechanics were established in Bordentown for the construction and repair of locomotives and coaches. Meanwhile the Delaware and Raritan Canal was completed in 1834 from New Brunswick to Bordentown. For the succeeding 30 years the canal as a freight carrier made the town an important water transport center.
Bordentown was incorporated as a borough in 1825, and rechartered as a city in 1867. Population expanded to 6,000 with an influx of Irish and German immigrants, employed on the railroad and canal. As the town changed its character many of the aristocrats left their fine mansions.
In 1871 the Pennsylvania Railroad dealt a double blow to Bordentown. After it'had leased both the railroad and the canal, it removed the railroad shops to its own locations in Altoona, Pa., and Newark, and stifled canal commerce by refusing to allow coal to be water-hauled in competition with the railroad. Bordentown has never recovered the commercial importance lost in those years after the Civil War.
In the last 50 years Bordentown's population has increased less than 14 percent and there are fewer inhabitants than during the railroad boom of the 1850's. Industry has hardly disturbed the rural quiet. Small factories produce trousers and overalls, ice cream, dyes, and bricks. The working population includes Negroes, Italians and Jews, many of whom live on the edge of town in nondescript houses, some of them quite old.
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