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History of Rahway NJ The origin of Rahway is connected to the 1664 purchase of the Elizabethtown tract, and the establishment of the first permanent English settlement in New Jersey. An association of Englishmen living on Long Island looked forward to colonizing New Jersey, a province granted by the king to the Duke of York. The associates asked the duke’s deputy governor, Richard Nicolls, for permission to purchase a vast tract of land from the Lenni Lenape Indians. Nicolls agreed, and Chief Mattano signed the deed in return for cloth, coats, guns, kettles, lead and powder. Eventually known as the Elizabethtown Purchase, the tract stretched from the mouth of the Raritan River and included all of present-day Union County as well as parts of Somerset, Middlesex, Morris and Essex counties. The first settlement was established at the mouth of the Elizabeth River. It was named Elizabethtown after Lady Elizabeth Carteret, wife of Sir George Carteret, to whom East Jersey had been granted by the Duke of York. The province governed by Phillip Carteret, Sir George’s cousin, grew rapidly, and it was not long before a few colonists began to settle outlying areas—all part of Elizabethtown. Rahway became one of the earliest due to the navigable Rahway River, which provided an ideal situation for the establishment of mills and maritime pursuits. By the 18th century, Rahway consisted of several distinct communities: Upper Rahway, the area along St. Georges Avenue near Grand Avenue; Bridge Town, or Lower Rahway, the area of the present-day central business district; Leesville, the Leesville Avenue area; and Milton, the Milton Avenue-St. Georges Avenue area. The Marsh and Bishop families established mills in Upper Rahway and Bridge Town, though mills were established in other sections as well. Captain John Bishop became the first president of the town court, serving from 1688 to 1700, and Robert Wright was named first constable. The town leaders soon began a road construction program and started developing other community amenities. In 1741, the first church was built on what is now St. Georges Avenue by a group of Presbyterians, and Quaker families constructed a meeting house in 1757. Several popular taverns, including the Abraham Terrill Tavern, served travelers on the main thoroughfares. Known at that time as the King’s Highway or the Country Road to Elizabethtown, St. Georges Avenue was one of the principal routes from New York to Philadelphia. Because Staten Island, Elizabethtown and Perth Amboy were points of entry for the British during the American Revolution, Rahway saw its share of action. Presbyterians tended to be ardent revolutionaries, and the Reverend Aaron Richards fled to South Hanover to escape imprisonment by the British. Abraham Clark, who lived on a farm north of Rahway, was a delegate to the Continental Congress and signer of the Declaration of Independence. Like Richards, Clark was harassed by the British during the war. He lived to see independence from Britain and helped to establish the new national government. Clark died in 1794 while watching bridge construction in Rahway, and was buried in the Presbyterian cemetery. Throughout the war, troops traversed Rahway, which was the scene of several skirmishes. In January 1777, the Battle of Spanktown was fought on St. Georges Avenue in the vicinity of Robinson’s Branch and the North Branch of the Rahway River. The battle lasted twelve hours with the rebels getting the best of the British, who lost almost one hundred men. The British invaded Rahway again in March, killing a few rebels and taking fifteen prisoners. During the war, a young New York City merchant and known rebel, William Irving, moved to Rahway with his wife Sarah to avoid imprisonment by the British. In 1783, two years after they moved back to New York, Mrs. Irving gave birth to their son, Washington Irving, who was to become one of America’s most renowned authors. With the defeat of Britain, the individual states began to mint their own currency. In New Jersey, the General Assembly authorized Walter Mould, Thomas Goadsby and Albion Cox to coin copper pennies. They chose Daniel Marsh’s mill as the location for the first state mint. It was a likely choice, for Marsh, who represented the county in the Assembly, introduced the bill establishing the mint. Due to financial troubles, however, the mint folded in less than a year. The Rahway coin, featuring the head of a horse and a plow on one side, was the first coin of the new nation to feature the inscription E Pluribus Unum. A United States Post Office established in Rahway was one of only six in the entire state in 1791. Indeed, Rahway must have prospered following the war, for in 1794 a French traveler recorded the following in his diary: The winding layout of Rahway gives it an outstanding appearance. It is rich in charming situations, with pretty and diversified gardens and small clean houses that have the double character of town and country houses. There are fruit trees of all kinds; and the elegance of the women corresponds to the light caleches they drive. Everything about the place made us regret leaving, and impressed us unforgettably. In the 18th century, Rahway was part of Westfield Township; however, in 1804, Rahway broke away from Westfield. A town meeting was held at John and Catherine Anderson’s tavern, now known as the Merchants and Drovers Tavern, and the result was the creation of Rahway Township. Throughout the first half of the 19th century, the tavern hosted the township committee meetings, and general elections were held at the tavern well into the 1840s. The Rahway River fostered commercial development throughout the 19th century. By the 1820s, ships ran regular weekly and bi-weekly trips between Rahway and New York carrying the many products, such as hats, shoes, boots and carriages, manufactured in Rahway. Docks and brickyards abounded. As the Lower Rahway, or Bridge Town, business district grew, more taverns were established. The Peace Tavern was the scene of a festive celebration for the Marquis de Lafayette, who was touring the United States in 1824. Now used as a store, the old tavern building still stands on Main Street. Perhaps the most noteworthy development of the 19th century was the construction of a railroad through Rahway in 1835. This development made Rahway a link on the new mass transportation route between Philadelphia and New York, and Rahway’s population mushroomed. Although Rahway had hosted a number of industries from the days of its earliest settlement, manufacturing enterprises grew substantially during this period. By mid-century Rahway touted itself as “The Carriage City of the World.” Rahway boasted no less than thirty-five carriage-related factories, which shipped their products to Europe and the southern states. Although the Civil War curtailed carriage manufacturing to some degree, the industry continued until the automobile rendered it obsolete. Rahway’s economic success led to its incorporation as a city in 1858. By this time the population included substantial populations of immigrants, particularly from Britain, Germany and Ireland. The original Presbyterian Church, replaced in the 1830s by a larger structure on Grand Avenue, was now one of many churches of a variety of denominations, such as Roman Catholic, Methodist and Episcopal. With incorporation came the establishment of the Rahway Police Department, and by 1864, the new department included a police chief, who earned an annual salary of $365, and five patrolmen. Following incorporation, the volunteer fire companies turned over their equipment to a city-operated fire department. A group of civic-mined citizens established a library, which by 1869 had expanded to the point that a grand building was constructed on Irving Street. In the 1890s, a visitor to Rahway would have found pleasant neighborhoods of substantial houses occupied by affluent businessmen, a thriving commercial district filled with a variety of stores, more than a dozen churches, a library, three banks, four public schools and numerous private schools, several railroad stations, scores of industries with nearby neighborhoods of workers’ housing, a water works, a trolley line and a gas company. In the commercial district, Elijah Pippenger, the town crier, would have been ringing his bell and announcing everything from a municipal election to the sale of a household’s contents. Engaged in manufacturing for two centuries, it was only natural that Rahway would become the home of several manufacturing giants of the 20th century. The Regina Music Box Company located in Rahway in the 1890s. In 1903, a small chemical company began production on Scott Avenue. That small concern, started in 17th century Germany by Frederick Jacob Merck, is now an international giant in the pharmaceutical industry. Both the Mac-Lac Shellac Company and Quinn and Boden, a book manufacturing company, began production in Rahway in 1906. The latter grew from the Mershon Company, a successful publishing company founded by two Rahway brothers in 1882. The Wheatena Company came to Rahway in 1907. Wheatena, a manufacturer of cereals located on Elizabeth Avenue and Grand, harvested grain from its own wheat fields that encircled the plant. Following the close of World War I in 1919, automobiles slowly replaced carriages, and social clubs, fraternal organizations and service organizations such as the Rahway Yacht Club, the Ilderan Outing Club, the Masons, the Moose, the Elks and the Knights of Columbus, flourished. The year 1928 saw two construction projects that would have a major impact on the character of the city. In July, trustees broke ground on Jefferson Avenue for a new building for a hospital established in 1916 in a Jaques Avenue house by thirteen area physicians. In October, the million-dollar Rahway Theater opened its doors to reveal a palatial interior. Built for both vaudeville and movies, the 1,600-seat theater included a magnificent crystal chandelier, an orchestra pit, a Wurlitzer organ, dressing rooms, an elegant lobby, a sitting room and a nursery for the children of theater patrons. Now restored to its former glory and known as the Union County Arts Center, the theater features live entertainment throughout the year. In 1974, the Penn Central Railroad demolished the city’s train station built in 1913, where it quickly fell into disrepair as public and private investment in mass transit declined. In 1999, a new $16 million NJ Transit train station opened and was joined by a new public plaza in 2001. During the mid-1990s, Mayor James Kennedy strengthened the presence of Merck & Co., Inc. in Rahway by rezoning the company’s Rahway campus as the first research-and-development zone in New Jersey, fueling a billion-dollar expansion of the plant and a doubling of Merck’s workforce in Rahway. Since World War II, Rahway, like many municipalities in the Northeast, lost much of its industrial base as factory jobs shifted south or overseas. The city has seen the rise of service-dependent jobs within its borders and growth in finance, pharmaceuticals and telecommunications throughout the region as Rahway residents traveled throughout New Jersey and New York for employment. Now beginning the 21st Century, Rahway is a diverse middle-class community of 26,500 that has been reinventing itself in the post-industrial age and will be celebrating 150 years of its incorporation as a city in 2008.
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