History of Bordentown, New Jersey
Thomas Farnsworth, an English Quaker, is credited with having first settled the Bordentown area in 1682, when he moved his family up river from Burlington to make a new home on the windswept bluff overlooking at the broad bend in the Delaware River. The Farnsworth's cabin was situated near the northwest corner of Park Street and Prince Street, perhaps on the spot upon which an 1883 frame house now stands. "Farnsworth Landing" soon became the center of trade for the region.
Joseph Borden, for whom the town is named, arrived in 1717, and by May 1740 founded a transportation system to carry people and freight between New York City and Philadelphia. This exploited Bordentown's natural location as the point on the Delaware River that provided the shortest overland route to South Amboy from which cargo and people could be ferried to New York City.
By 1776, Bordentown was full of patriots. Patience Lovell Wright, America's first sculptor, was creating wax busts in King George's court in England. Later, however, Bordentown became a rabble-rousing hotbed. In addition to Joseph Borden, who became a colonel during the war, Patriots Francis Hopkinson (a signer of the United States Declaration of Independence), Colonel Kirkbride, Colonel Oakey Hoagland, and Thomas Paine resided in the area. Due to well-published activity in Bordentown, the British retaliated. Hessians occupied the town in 1776 and the British pillaged and razed the town during May and June of 1778.
Other famous residents included Clara Barton who, in 1852, started the first free public school in New Jersey in the original schoolhouse, a re-creation of which stands at the corner of Crosswicks and Burlington Streets. Ms. Barton later founded the American Red Cross. Several years after the banishing of his family from France in 1816, arriving under vigilant disguise as the Count de Survilliers, Joseph Bonaparte, former King of Naples and Spain and brother to the ill-fated Napoleon I of France, established his residence in Bordentown for 17 years, later to entertain guests of notoriety, such as Henry Clay, Daniel Webster and the future 6th U.S. President, John Quincy Adams. The residents of Bordentown nicknamed the Count "The Good Mr. Bonaparte" (Good to distinguish him from his younger brother). He built a lake near the mouth of Crosswicks Creek that was about 200 yards wide and half a mile long. On the bluff above it he built a new home, "Point Breeze", which was located at the present site of the Divine Word Mission along Park Street. Today only vestiges of the Bonaparte estate remain. Much of it is actually the remains of a building remodeled in English Georgian Revival style in 1924 for Harris Hammon who purchased the estate at Point Breeze, as built in 1850 by Henry Becket, a British consul in Philadelphia. In addition to the rubble of this mansion and some hedges of its elaborate gardens, only the original tunnel to the river (broken through in several places) and the house of Bonaparte's secretary remain.
Isaac Dripps of Bordentown assembled (without blueprints or instructions) the locomotive John Bull. It was built by Robert Stephenson and Company, in England, and was imported by the Camden and Amboy Railroad. It was one of the first successful locomotives in the United States.
In 1881, Rev. William Bowen purchased the old Spring Villa Female Seminary building (built on land purchased from the Bonapartes in 1837) and reopened it as the Bordentown Military Institute. In 1886, African-American Rev. Walter A. Rice established a private school, the Manual Training and Industrial School for Colored Youth, in a two-story house on 60 West Street, later moved to Walnut Street. In 1909, the religious order Poor Clares established a monastery in the former Motherhouse of the Sisters of Mercy on Crosswicks Street. The building still stands as a home for non-ambulatory elderly, but the order of Poor Clares has since moved to a new facility in a more bucolic setting just outside of Bordentown City.
Thomas Paine
The pen of Thomas Paine was as important to the American Revolution as the sword of George Washington. He referred to himself as a 'Citizen of the World', wanting to make good changes for the common man all over, but he loved and considered Bordentown his home. This is the only place in the world that he purchased property and a little house on Church Street.
He was a close and highly regarded friend of Col. Kirkbride. His 'Common Sense' , 'Age of Reason' and 'Rights of Man' were best sellers of the day. Governments were being shaped by his writings. These books have been in continuous publication and are still widely read.
Yet, even while he was helping France to achieve a better government during their revolution, he wrote 'I had rather see my horse Button in his own stable or eating the grass of Bordentown.....than see all the pomp and show of Europe"...
For the first ride on the rails laid between White Hill and Bordentown, Isaac Dripps was the engineer, Benjamin Wiggins was the fireman and Col. Stevens was the conductor. Trenton's officials and notables came down for a free ride. Madame Murat, wife of Prince Murat of the Bonaparte household was the first woman to ride on the 'iron horse' that day.
Locomotives and passenger coaches were built in shops that sprung up along the river. Repair shops came next. Before long there were nine large buildings on three acres of ground and small tenant houses lined the hill. A thriving industry had begun and lasted until 1870 when the Pennsylvania Railroad leased the rail line and moved the shops out of the area.
The late Ed Sholl and his wife Mildred bought the house on Willow Street built by the last engineer of the 'John Bull', Benjamin F. Jobes. Ed's father was an engineer and his grandfather a fireman on the 'John Bull'.