From This Side of the Pond 12: New Jersey

I've written about this project before. From now the essays which are written will be posted here and, as soon as I have a suitable space worked out, I'll be recording the essays.

Anyone who has any input on the essays, either corrections or additional information, add a note and I'll look to include it.

Please, enjoy.

New Jersey has already had a dishonourable mention in From This Side of the Pond so we’ll not dwell on the way it conspired with businesses in the nineteenth century to engage in practices which had the Garden State nicknamed the Traitor State.

But there must be something in the air or the soil which makes New Jersey a place ripe for shenanigans and legal dubiousness. The state’s name was provided by Sir George Cartaret, who received the land from James, Duke of York, as payment for a debt reputed to do with gambling.

Sir George named the then province after his ancestral home, the island of Jersey in the English Channel. Following this Sir George and fellow landowner Lord John Berkeley drew up the Concession and Agreement document which laid out religious freedoms, amongst others, which would be available to people moving to the province. This document was dispatched with Sir George’s cousin, Philip Cartaret, to the new world.

Before we pass on it is worth reflecting that, while the land grants and religious freedom offered by Sir John Cartaret were generous and liberal in the terms of the time, he was also a joint founder of the Company of Royal Adventurers into Africa. Over a sixty-year period this venture transported nearly a quarter-of-a-million people into slavery, give or take forty thousand or so who died en route.

On arrival in the new colony Philip designated Elizabethtown (now known as the city Elizabeth) as the province’s capital - the town being named in honour of Sir George’s wife. Here, in sixteen-sixty-eight, Philip called for a New Jersey assembly, but Middelton and Shrewsbury Townships declined to gather, declared themselves independent, and elected a different Carteret, James, as their leader.
Somehow things carried on and by the end of Philip’s term the province’s population had increased from a few hundred to three and a half thousand.

However, that end came with hardship. After Phillip’s elder cousin died in sixteen-eighty the Governor of New York sought to grab power in the area, kidnapped Phillip, had him beaten, and then put on trial. The jury acquitted the wronged man and he was released, though the injuries sustained played part in his dying not many months later. This though would not be the last time these neighbouring states had issues.
Between seventeen-oh-one and seventeen-sixty-five fights and skirmishes as to where the border between New Jersey and New York lay were frequent. It took King George the Third establishing a royal commission to settle the matter. The matter was only settled in seventeen-seventy-three.

Just in time for independence.

And New Jersey had a major role in that fight. Indeed, on Christmas Day seventeen-seventy-six George Washington led two-thousand-four hundred soldiers into New Jersey on a ten-day expedition which made the British realise this would be no minor, and soon quelled, rebellion, but a fight against resolute forces.

In eighteen-eighty-three, while the Continental Congress met in Nassau Hall at Princeton, word was received that the Treaty of Paris had been signed, and the war ended.

With the end of the war, and a desire to set forth as a new nation unencumbered by ties to old colonial masters, New Jersey was instrumental in helping revolutionise largely agrarian and resource exporting colonies into a nation capable of standing by itself.
The town of Patterson was created specifically to harness the energy of the nearby Passaic Falls into power for factories and mills and the city became a powerhouse providing textiles, firearms (Samuel Colt had a factory here for a few years), and railroad goods.

Sometime during the middle of the nineteenth century silk production became so prominent Paterson became known as Silk City. Such work drew immigrants with complimentary skill sets and English, German, French, and Italian weavers flocked to fill the booming mills. Work was long, a standard week being fifty-five hours, and the pay was lower than many other industries. On the upside, if it can so be called, working in a silk mill meant working in clean conditions and with good lighting, with such an environment being essential in ensuring the delicate fibres - imported from China, Japan, and Italy - remained unsullied.

When industrial unrest led to a five-month strike of silk workers in nineteen-thirteen mill owners sought to foment divisions amongst the striking workers based on national lines, or skill levels. Eventually English-speaking workers were convinced to return to work and shortly after this accommodation the strike ended with no concessions made.
But the writing was already on the wall. Cheaper methods of production and newer facilities in Pennsylvania and elsewhere cut into Patterson’s dominance in the trade, and the arrival of synthetic materials like Rayon in the mid twentieth century ended finally Silk City.

And that is a familiar tale around the USA, not just New Jersey. Technological advances make things easier or cheaper to produce with fewer people and it is easier to start somewhere new with people glad to have the jobs, rather than deal with a workforce willing to band together as they see their work disappearing. Since the seventies more and more of those jobs went not to different states, but different countries.

Now, things have ticked back up in New Jersey. Life Sciences are a major employer in the state and chemical production added as much as nine billion dollars to the GDP in twenty-twenty-one; Technology companies such as Audible have helped bring workers who demand good internet access and the state is one of the best for both connectivity and download speeds.

Other major sectors include Film and Media, Logistics, Financial Services, and Clean Energy, which will only grow more in years to come. These have helped New Jersey to be one of the states least reliant on the Federal Government for assistance, with only Delaware taking less Federal funds in most recent assessments.

Oh, and there’s Food and Beverage companies in New Jersey. Companies such as Mars Wrigley, Campbells, Goya, and Unilever all have operations in the state.

It’s always great to look at what a state provides by way of provender, and New Jersey has a number of things to tickle the palate.

Food trucks are a fact of life for many folks. A convenient way to pick up a meal at lunch time, after the game, or the like. It’s almost become natural to refer to them as taco trucks whatever they serve, but this staple way of serving us got its start in New Jersey. Other delights from the state are salt water taffy, which is still easy to find on the Atlantic City boardwalk; and Tomato pies, which to most of us will look and taste like pizza, but with the tomato sauce on the top instead of beneath.

While being known, renowned even, for it’s industrial nature, and much of that being readily visible from the major routes through the states, New Jersey is about forty-four percent covered with trees as of twenty-twenty-one though that is sharply down from fifty-six percent as recently as twenty-ten. As well as trees the state also produces fruit and vegetables to an extent that it is in the top ten states for produce like blueberries, peaches, tomatoes, and asparagus. As well as being a valuable source of export to other states, it allows local restaurants to use fresh, local produce.

Another feature of New Jersey cuisine is the influence of its inhabitants. Being a state with people who arrived, and continue to arrive, from all over the world it is easy to find influences from Europe, Asia, the Carribean, Africa, and South America. To split things further would require a new essay, but whether you want authentic taste-of-home dishes, fusions that see your all American burger topped with Korean kimchee, or something new which will tease your palate, you’ll find it in New Jersey.

As with food, music is also something which comes to New Jersey to be mixed up by all the influences to be found there. In the early nineteen-hundreds Newark was a hotbed of jazz and the stride style was developed in the state. A true jazz method, stride is about style and technique, less about notes on paper. It is music that goes with the vibe, and has a highly rhythmic structure, good for getting the feet tapping and limbs moving.

Other famous musicians from the state are familiar to nearly everyone. Frank Sinatra, Jon Bon Jovi, and Bruce Springsteen all hail from New Jersey.

Later on in the twentieth century New Jersey was instrumental in bringing another new style to popular attention. Rapper’s Delight was the first rap single to become a Top Forty hit on the Billboard Hot One. Hundred. Sure, the genre comes from New York’s Bronx, but it took New Jersey to break it out into the public conscious.

And there’s something about New Jersey helping New York look good that is a theme. Many of the epic scenes of Manhattan that grace screens, posters, and the like are taken from New Jersey. When Formula One was planning a street race to incorporate that magical backdrop, they didn’t plan on having the cars screaming down Fifth Avenue, but over the Hudson in Weehawken and West New York.

And F1 events which didn’t happen aren’t the only sports to take advantage of New York’s proximity and name, while being stationed in New Jersey. New York Giants, Jets, and Red Bulls all play their games in the Garden State.

Garden Staters don’t mind too much. They’re too busy watching the The Real Housewives of New Jersey, reruns of The Sopranos, or Boardwalk Empire. Or they’re in Atlantic City, eating salt taffy on the boardwalk or playing slots in a casino There’s still something about Atlantic City that carries a whiff of the illicit, of Prohibition era America where it was a city that largely chose to ignore enforcement of the eighteenth amendment. It’s a place to have a weekend with the boys, or the girls, or a specific boy or girl that your significant other doesn’t necessarily know about and while another city far away has advertised on it’s ‘What happens in Vegas…’ tag, folks don’t need to say anything so jejune about Atlantic City.

Not that there aren’t family friendly activities. Pleasure Piers stretch out from the boardwalk into the ocean, there’s shopping and exhibitions, soccer, baseball, basketball and ice hockey.

Of course most people won’t need to go to Atlantic City to have a fun time there. They head to the shelf with games on and take down the family’s old Monopoly set. When Parker Brothers purchased the rights to the early versions of the game they ringed the board with streets from Atlantic City.

Like many of the colonies and settlements which became part of the USA there is a range of historical events linked with the state, some we have already touched on. Others we’ll know about, but not necessarily that they happened in New Jersey. After fleeing Nazi Germany Albert Einstein made his home in New Jersey - unsurprisingly in Princeton. In the twenties and early thirties flight was still a new thing, and lighter-than-air was a mainstay, right up until The Hindenburg burst into flames at Lakehurst, New Jersey in May nineteen-thirty-seven. We’ve already mentioned Weehawken due to it nearly being the site of a motorsport street event, but back in eighteen-oh-four there was an event which did take place here. Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton’s rivalry and antipathy culminated in the duel which led to Hamilton’s death from the wound received.

On a lighter note, Thomas Edison’s Menlo Park laboratories were in New Jersey, where -with some dispute from other quarters- the incandescent light was invented, and Roselle became the first village in the world to be lit with such lights from a single generating station. And it was in Camden, New Jersey that the first drive-in Movie Theatre opened.

On a final note Grover Cleveland was born and died in New Jersey. As the only person as yet to serve non-consecutive presidential terms he feels like an embodiment of New Jersey’s battling attitude; as a child of the state that he is better known for his career as a New York politician is in harmony with the shadow New York casts over its sister state.

But such matters little to Garden Staters, so long as they continue to have Liberty and Prosperity.

words by stuartcturnbull. Picture licenced from Kirsten Alana and worked in Canva