Letter to the Hunterdon Gazette from “An Inhabitant of Old Amwell,” March 14, 1838 – click to enlarge<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nAfter news broke in the Hunterdon Gazette about the Legislature\u201a\u00c4\u00f4s high-handed division of Hunterdon County into Hunterdon and Mercer Counties, and of Amwell Township into Delaware, Raritan and what is now East & West Amwell, letters began pouring into the editor\u201a\u00c4\u00f4s office at the Hunterdon Gazette.<\/p>\n
One of the letters was from \u201a\u00c4\u00faAn Inhabitant of Old Amwell,\u201a\u00c4\u00f9 another pseudonymous writer, who laid the blame for the division on a member of Council he declined to name, but happened to be Joseph Moore of Hopewell. He wrote that \u201a\u00c4\u00faThe county [Mercer] would have been different in its northern boundary had it not been for the singularly untimely sickness of our representative in Council. It had been agreed among the members of Council that Hopewell should have been left in Hunterdon entire, upon our member in Council voting for the bill. To this he assented, for it was all that the citizens in the upper part of the county wanted or could expect, when it was determined to divide the county.\u201a\u00c4\u00f9<\/p>\n
But then \u201a\u00c4\u00fasome persons persuaded our staunch and true member of Council to recede from his promise. He accordingly went home after saying he would not vote for it;\u00ac\u2020 and when the question came up, was most unfortunately sick at home.\u201a\u00c4\u00f9<\/p>\n
It appears that at first the Whigs persuaded Joseph Moore to vote for the new county by promising to attach Hopewell (a Whig town) to a Democratic county (the remainder of Hunterdon). On February 14, 1838 the Gazette reported that \u201a\u00c4\u00faThe New County Bill was to be reported in Council on Monday. It is said that an amendment has been introduced into the bill, by which Hopewell township will remain with Hunterdon.\u201a\u00c4\u00f9<\/p>\n
But then someone decided to divide Hopewell between the two counties; the northern half kept the name Hopewell and went with Hunterdon County; the southern half was given the name \u201a\u00c4\u00faMarion\u201a\u00c4\u00f9 and attached to Mercer County. The boundary ran right through the middle of Pennington. (This division was undone the following year, when all of Hopewell was attached to Mercer County.)<\/p>\n
The \u201a\u00c4\u00faInhabitant of Amwell\u201a\u00c4\u00f9 seemed to think Joseph Moore had a hand in that decision to divide Hopewell, and his claims of illness were deceitful. After all, Moore, being a Democrat, could not appear to support this Whig maneuver. But he couldn\u201a\u00c4\u00f4t vote against it either.<\/p>\n
Perhaps this was because he had some dealings with the Whigs. As it happens, he was \u201a\u00c4\u00fathe maverick Democrat from Hunterdon,\u201a\u00c4\u00f9 according to the New Jersey Gazette, who had joined with the Whigs to shut down the legislature in the winter of 1837-38. That was when the Whigs first took a majority in the Council and were flexing their muscles by refusing to meet with the Assembly. Since Hopewell residents tended to have Whig sympathies, Moore\u201a\u00c4\u00f4s behavior in 1837 is not so surprising.\u00ac\u2020The new county bill was passed into law on February 22, 1838.<\/p>\n
Democratic Power Brokers<\/h3>\n
I do not know who persuaded Moore not to vote for the bill, but the Democratic party bigwigs at the time were Peter D. Vroom, Stacy G. Potts and Garret D. Wall. Some of the prominent Democrats in Flemington were lawyers: Peter I. Clark, Alexander Wurts, John T. Blackwell and Andrew Miller. They were all likely to lean on Councillor Moore.<\/p>\n
Also exerting pressure were probably the Democratic members of the Assembly from Hunterdon (John Hall, James A. Phillips, David Neighbor and Jonathan Pickel). The fifth member of the Assembly was John H. Huffman, who was aligned with the \u201a\u00c4\u00faanti-Caucus ticket.\u201a\u00c4\u00f9 Anti-Caucus Democrats were essentially disillusioned Democrats who had not yet joined up with the Whigs.<\/p>\n
The \u201a\u00c4\u00faInhabitant of Old Amwell\u201a\u00c4\u00f9 went on: \u201a\u00c4\u00faHe [Joseph Moore] however very soon recovered [from his supposed illness]\u201a\u00c4\u00ec soon enough to introduce into Council a bill for the division of Amwell, with the representation that the inhabitants of Amwell were well satisfied with it; while to their utter astonishment not an inhabitant of Amwell hardly was aware of it. Well may the New Jersey State Gazette make the remark it did a week ago \u201a\u00c4\u00ec that the legislature were deceived with regard to the division of the township.\u201a\u00c4\u00f9<\/p>\n
Was Joseph Moore just making this up\u201a\u00c4\u00eethat the residents of old Amwell were happy to be divided, or was this something that political operatives had assured him of? Was he an actor in this drama or was he duped? Some things we will never know for sure, but the “Inhabitant of Old Amwell” had little doubt that Moore was in on the schemes, and was the one who should take the blame.<\/p>\n
The Division of Amwell<\/h2>\n
In his letter, the \u201a\u00c4\u00faInhabitant of Old Amwell\u201a\u00c4\u00f9 asked: \u201a\u00c4\u00faHow just and true must have been the representations made to the legislature, when he who proposed the bill, and those who drew it, well knew that they were putting Amwell, as it is now, to every sort of inconvenience \u201a\u00c4\u00ec were leaving her all the paupers, and a township composed of a very long and very narrow strip of old Amwell.\u201a\u00c4\u00f9<\/p>\n
The \u201a\u00c4\u00falong and narrow strip\u201a\u00c4\u00f9 would be the combined East and West Amwell, running along the southern border of Hunterdon County. Why it was that all the paupers were located in that portion of old Amwell Township I cannot say, other than that Lambertville was a likely place for them to live. The canal had been completed in 1834, and some of those paupers may have been canal workers who had no work once the canal was finished. The problem of \u201a\u00c4\u00fakeeping the poor\u201a\u00c4\u00f9 was a major financial issue for local governments in the 1830s.<\/p>\n
The \u201a\u00c4\u00faInhabitant of Old Amwell\u201a\u00c4\u00f9 concluded by writing: \u201a\u00c4\u00faWell done, ye just and faithful servants of the people \u201a\u00c4\u00ec self-elected guardians of their rights. Well do you deserve a crown \u201a\u00c4\u00ec but what kind of crown? You have made one of thorns, and shall wear it. We have been aggrieved, and our wishes not consulted. We only wish for justice; and when Amwell was divided, the good and convenience of all should have been consulted \u201a\u00c4\u00ec not the dictation of a few, nor the convenience of a part.\u201a\u00c4\u00f9 The writer was expecting that voters would take their revenge on the legislators who created this travesty. But in the following election, in October 1838, Joseph Moore was re-elected to the Council with a much larger plurality than before, thanks to the re-configured Hunterdon County. He declined to run in 1839.<\/p>\n
In 1844, the state legislature was once again controlled by the Democrats, but the votes from Amwell and Hunterdon did not make the difference.<\/p>\n
Motivations<\/h3>\n
It is still a question why those \u201a\u00c4\u00fafew designing individuals\u201a\u00c4\u00f9 who had such influence over Joseph Moore wanted to divide Amwell. Perhaps it was felt that Amwell was just too big and populous compared to the other towns in Hunterdon; it was three times larger in both size and population. But it seems clear from the letters to the Gazette that the division was instigated by the Democrats. They created two Democratic towns to one slightly Whig town. Perhaps they thought this would give them more clout on the Board of Chosen Freeholders, the governing body of Hunterdon County. In the 1830s, each town sent two \u201a\u00c4\u00f2chosen freeholders\u201a\u00c4\u00f4 to sit on the Board.<\/p>\n
If the County Board of Freeholders objected to these events, they did not memorialize their feelings in the minutes of their meetings. James Johnson Fisher, who represented the new township of Delaware on the Board of Freeholders, was the chosen freeholder of old Amwell in 1837. The other freeholder from Delaware in 1838 was James Snyder, who was elected to the State Council the following year as a Democrat. (James Johnson Fisher could not get elected to the Council because he was in the minority as a Whig.)