Two Wars: An Autobiography of General Samuel G. French. French Samuel Gibbs
abandoned it and became a member of the Society of Friends (Quakers), and for this apostasy was persecuted and imprisoned. To escape the persecution he sailed to the colonies, and when he returned to England he became "one of the landed proprietors of West New Jersey in America."
Taking passage for himself, wife, and nine children, he landed in Burlington, West New Jersey, on the 23d of July, 1680, O. S.
In 1664 Charles II. granted to his brother, the Duke of York, the territory along our coast north of the mouth of the Delaware river. The duke sold the land lying between the Delaware and Hudson rivers to the forty-first degree of north latitude to Lord John Berkeley and Sir John Cartaret; who named it New Cæsarea, or New Jersey. They divided it into East and West Jersey; but later, the grant being unsatisfactory to the king, owing to conflicting claims of the proprietors and their heirs, James in 1689 compelled them to surrender or sell their claims to the crown, and all were embodied in one province, New Jersey. Thomas French, under these proceedings, signed the articles relinquishing to the king his proprietary privileges to the one-ninetieth of the one-eighth of West Jersey. Thus New Jersey became a royal colony after the king bought the rights of the proprietors. Sir John Carteret named the land purchased New Jersey because he had been governor of the Isle of Jersey off the coast of France in the English Channel.
My mother's name was Rebecca Clark. She was born January 1, 1790, at Billingsport, on the banks of the Delaware river, in New Jersey. She was married to my father on the 3d day of October, 1816. The names of their children were: Garret, Samuel G., Charles C., John C., Sallie C., and George W.
Passing from family records, I will now revert to myself, and will endeavor to show what creatures of circumstances most men are. One day, when a boy (aged about eight years), my father left me at a store in Market Street, near Water Street, Philadelphia, Pa., where he usually obtained his family groceries. Over the door of that store was a modest signboard, and on it was painted the names, Hamilton and Hood. Mr. Hood was always kind to me, and usually gave me a paper of candy or other sweetmeats. On this particular occasion, it being a rainy day, I was left there alone with Mr. Hood, and I remember now – although near seventy years have passed – what there and then occurred. Eating candies and playing about in the store, I discovered hanging in the office a picture of a young person (full-size bust) clad in a gray coat, with three rows of round brass buttons thereon, braided horizontally. From some cause it riveted my boyish attention. After looking at it for some time, I exclaimed: "Who is that?" Mr. Hood replied: "That is my son." "What is he dressed so fine for?" I asked. Mr. Hood then told me his son was a cadet at the United States military academy at West Point; that he was at school there. Dancing around, I said: "I want to go to that school too." The response was, "Only a few boys can go to that school; to get there the boy's father must have influence with the President, and get an appointment from him," etc. I still looked at the picture, and I can see it to-day as I did then. It will never be effaced. As years rolled on, and I knew nothing about West Point, except that it was not open to all applicants, it was fading away in my mind, until one day when passing along Chestnut Street I saw in the window of a clothing house a large picture of the cadets of the United States military academy on dress parade. I gazed on it a very long time, oblivious to all around me, calling to mind only the remarks made to me by Mr. Hood; on these I pondered long, and made some inquiries, and finally resolved to make an effort to get an appointment to the academy. On entering school, kept by the Rev. Samuel Aaron in Burlington, N. J., my roommate was a boy named Duer, who was from Pennsylvania. One day he opened his trunk and showed me his appointment as a cadet to the United States Military Academy. I told him I wanted to go there also, and questioned him about how he obtained the appointment. It was the same story that Mr. Hood had told me when I was almost a child. But, undaunted by the requirements, I resolved to act for myself, for up to this time I had not mentioned the subject to either my father or mother, because the former belonged to the Society of Friends, or Quakers; save only that, marrying "out of meeting," he was no longer regarded as an orthodox member, and they were not considered as warlike people in any respect. Accordingly, when at home one day, I wrote to the President of the United States asking in the name of my father the appointment. As his name was the same as mine, I supposed I would get the reply myself from the post office.
I was on the lookout for the answer, when one day in walked, to our house, my Quaker Uncle Charles, and handed to my father a letter that looked to me a foot long, and as it had on the envelope "War Department, Engineer's Office" in large letters, he said he was "anxious to know the contents of the document." As father replied he did not understand why such a letter was sent to him, I rose "to explain."
My father said but little, but my uncle created some confusion by telling the family I was going to the "bowwows" and the "bad place." Without waiting to first ascertain whether I was "going to the war" or not, several of my Quaker aunts called soon after to say good-by before I got shot, as they were sure the British would kill me, so filled were their minds with "war's alarums" caused by the war of 1812.
When peace was restored and my uncle gone, my father told me that if I really desired the position he would aid me in getting it. So one day he took me with him and called on Charles C. Stratton, a relation of ours living near by, and then a Whig Member of Congress. New Jersey was not at that time divided into congressional districts, and a Whig delegation was seated in Congress under "the broad seal of New Jersey," and had no influence with a Democratic administration; and so no appointment came.
But, nothing discouraged, the following winter, being still at the Burlington Academy, I called one day on Gen. Garret D. Wall, then one of our United States Senators, a resident of Burlington. I made known to him the object of my calling. He listened attentively to my request, said that he knew my father and many of my relatives very well, and that he would aid me. The winter passed, Congress had adjourned, and no appointment came.
About this time my father, passing through the town of Woodbury, N. J., happened to stop at the courthouse, and meeting Senator Wall there, asked him about my cadetship, who, on being told the appointment had not been received, sat down in the court room, wrote a few lines to the President, handed them to father, and told him to mail them. In a few days the appointment came, the reward of diligent perseverance and waiting.
Good Mr. Hood! I suppose I often stopped at his store in after years, and yet I can only call to mind one allusion made to West Point. He told me once that his son, Lieut. Washington Hood, was in Cuba surveying a route for a railroad – for Tacon, Governor-General of Cuba – from Havana to Matanzas.
As there may be a desire in long after years to have a knowledge of how the "well-to-do" farmers lived in the early part of the present century in New Jersey, I will describe the condition of the people at my father's. New Jersey was a slave State when I was born. In 1820 slavery was abolished; but there were two hundred and thirty-six slaves for life in 1850 in the State, because it did not emancipate a slave then in being. It only set free the unborn babes. You see the difference between abolition and emancipation? The superabundance of the necessaries of life at that period can scarcely be realized now, and every one fared sumptuously, and nearly all alike. Under the house there were four cellars. As winter approached, perhaps forty cords of oak and hickory wood, four feet in length, were hauled to the wood pile. Some twenty or more fat hogs were killed, the hams and shoulders sugar-cured and smoked in a large stone smokehouse. The sides, etc., were salted down in great cedar tanks. The beeves were killed, the rounds dried, not smoked, and the rest "corned." Minced meat and sausage, in linked chains by the hundreds of pounds, cider boiled down in great copper kettles, and apple butter and pear sauce made without stint. Shad from the fishery were bought for salting down for six dollars per hundred. Oysters by the wagon load were in winter put in the cellar and kept fat by sprinkling them with brine and corn meal. In bins the choice apples were stored, each variety by itself, for daily use, while large quantities were buried in the earthen pits for spring. On the swinging shelves was the product of the dairy, cheese and butter. Four hogsheads were kept full of cider vinegar; and "apple jack" (apple brandy) in barrels in a row, according to age; great old-fashioned demijohns were kept full of cherries, wild and cultivated, covered with brandy. Apples, peaches, pears, huckleberries, currants, plums, etc., were dried on scaffolds in the sun for pies and other purposes: and the children forgot not their ample supply of chestnuts, shellbarks, hazelnuts, etc. Turkeys, geese, and barnyard fowls were raised largely, but they were considered