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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
The site of Perth Amboy was part of a large tract purchased from the Indians in 1651 by Augustine Herman, a Staten Island Dutchman. After the English took possession of New Jersey, the charter to Woodbridge in 1669 stipulated "that Ambo Point be reserved . . . to be disposed of by the lords proprietors." Political difficulties during the next decade probably hindered settlement. In 1682 the twelve new proprietors described the point as "a sweet, wholesome, and delightful place," a view evidently long held by the Indians, who used it as a camp ground and for fishing excursions in the bay. The proprietors announced their "purpose by the help of Almighty God, with all convenient speed, to build a convenient town, for merchandise, trade and fishery, on Ambo Point." They contributed £1,200 to build a house for each, and by August 1683 three buildings had been completed.
Two years later the population took a sudden spurt when the Earl of Perth permitted the immigration of nearly 200 oppressed Scots, many of whom were in prison as dissenters. These were soon joined by other Scots, English merchants, and French Huguenots. In 1686 the steadily growing commercial and shipping center was designated capital of East New Jersey. In 1718 Perth Amboy was granted the charter that makes it the oldest incorporated city in New Jersey. Five years later in Perth Amboy, William Bradford, official State printer, printed the Session Laws of 1723, the first printing in New Jersey.
The Indians had called this point of land Ompoge (large level piece of ground). Through a series of corruptions it became Ambo and then Ambo Point. This name persisted even though the community was dubbed New Perth in honor of the Earl ; finally the two were blended into Perth Amboy. There is a story that the name arose when Indians, unfamiliar with Scottish kilts, referred to the Earl of Perth as a squaw. "No! Not squaw!" the Scot is supposed to have answered. "Perth am boy!" The nobleman, however, never crossed the Atlantic.
Tories were active in Perth Amboy at the outbreak of the Revolution, but several of the town's Royalist families fled when Revolutionists arrested Governor William Franklin and occupied the Governor's House in June 1776. Six months later the British jailed Richard Stockton, one of the five New Jersey signers of the Declaration of Independence.
During the war, Perth Amboy's tactical position at the mouth of Raritan River-highway for the whaleboat raids of Revolutionaries upstreammade it a goal for the contending armies. The town was occupied successively by the Americans under General Mercer and by the British under General Howe. Benjamin Franklin, Edward Rutledge, and John Adams stopped at Perth Amboy Inn in 1776 on their way to the conference on Staten Island, at which they refused Sir William Howe's offer of amnesty in exchange for surrender.
For twenty years after the Revolution, 'Perth Amboy was poor and barren, but from about the turn of the century until the Civil War the town enjoyed some vogue as a summer resort. The Governor's House was transformed into the Brighton House, a fashionable hotel, which became the social center for the hypochondriac rich utilizing the waters at the nearby spa. The city's industrial development began during the i86o's; its clay deposits were exploited, and steamboats replaced the sailing vessels. In 1832 South Amboy was made the terminal of the Camden and Amboy, the State's first railroad.
During this period, Eagleswood Military Academy was built as a school for young men. Eagleswood was also the home of Sarah Grimke, her sister Angelina Weld, and Angelina's husband, Theodore D. Weld, who were pioneers in the woman-suffrage movement and ardent Abolitionists. The school and home became the visiting place for many of the Abolitionists of the day, including William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips, and served as an important station of the Underground Railroad. One of the buildings is now part of a ceramics works.
Rebecca Spring, wife of the owner of Eagleswood, was also an Abolitionist. When John Brown and his companions were taken at Harper's Ferry and condemned to death, Mrs. Spring wrote to Aaron Dwight Stevens, one of the condemned men, and asked that she might bring his body for burial to Eagleswood. He replied that he was indifferent to what happened to his body after the spirit had left it, but agreed that she might bury him if his poverty-stricken father did not claim his body. Albert Hazlett, friend and conspirator with Stevens, also wrote to Mrs. Spring asking her to bury him by the side of his comrade. She visited the two men in the Baltimore jail and supplied them with food and clothing. After the execution the bodies were brought to Eagleswood and buried. In the 1890's the bodies were disinterred and sent to North Elba, N. Y., to lie with that of John Brown on his old farm.
The Lehigh Valley Railroad, which came to Perth Amboy in 1859, forecast the town's industrialization. After the Civil War, Perth Amboy gave itself wholeheartedly to the wave of industrial expansion that rolled over the land. With the establishment of new factories, foreign workers moved into the city, and the descendants of early residents gradually withdrew.
Among the factories that followed the already firmly established ceramic industry was the refinery of M. Guggenheim Sons, a most important link in the chain of mines and smelters that in 1900 acquired control of the American Smelting and Refining Company. In 1912 the workers at the refineries struck against the 12-hour shift. Armed guards and strikebreakers broke the strike after a number of bloody street battles that resulted in the death of four strikers.
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