Metuchen Edison History Features

Recollections of

Boyhood Days

In Old Metuchen

By

David Trumbull Marshall

Published by The Case Publishing Co., Flushing NY 1930

(Second Edition)- (c) 1930

The Old Presbyterian Cemetery.

The First Presbyterian Church building, 1731 to 1835, stood near where the large white oak tree stands in the old cemetery near the Main Street crossing of the Pennsylvania Railroad.

In 1835 the old church was torn down and part of the timbers went to make a house and barn on the J. J. Clarkson place on the north-west corner of Main Street and the Lincoln Highway.

That old barn stood until it literally fell to pieces.

I remember when the barn did finally collapse, Jimmy Clarkson proudly showed a walking-stick which he had had made from one of the old oak timbers. I was not much impressed at that time. I should like well to own such a relic now.

The oldest headstone in the Old Cemetery stands under the old oak. It was placed to mark the grave of John Campbell, who died in 1731, aged 72, and who was said to have been the grandson of the Duke of Argyll.

I don't know whether or not he was the grandson of the famous scratching-post Duke or not.

Once Dr. Ezra Hunt engaged my father to make a copy of the inscriptions on all the headstones in the Old Cemetery.

I remember as I assisted my father, thinking I had struck some old stone when I ran across one dedicated to the memory of "David, son of Jesse."

I knew a boy once who whenever he passed the cemetery near the present Presbyterian Church used to put his head down under his coat and run until he got past.

When I lived at the Parsonage I very often walked through the cemetery when it was so dark that I could tell my way only by the feel of the ground under my feet.

A graveyard is a pretty safe place for any man, living or dead.

Once when we lived at the Parsonage a lady came to our house from somewhere in New York State who wished to look up her ancestors.

After two weeks of gunning through the old cemetery and the new she could not come to a conclusion as to just which one of the Mundy tribe she had sprung.

My father, who was a good deal of a wag, suggested to her that she assume some ancient Mundy and work, as does the College of Heralds, from that one.

Somehow she did not fall for that suggestion.

Years ago, somewhere around 1870, the railroad station at Metuchen stood where the station is now.

The crossing of Main Street was at grade.

About that time the station was burned and later, after the Lehigh Valley Railroad was finished, a junction with the Pennsylvania Railroad was made.

This spur commenced down where the Lehigh Valley Railroad passenger station was located, near where the water-works are now.

The spur ran up quite a slope to the Pennsylvania Railroad, where the Lincoln Highway now crosses the Pennsylvania Railroad.

The new passenger station was built there and for some years remained there.

I can remember the long trains of coal cars which used to be run from the Lehigh road up onto the Pennsylvania Railroad, with a locomotive at each end.

About 1877 there used to be a long board walk running from the Main Street crossing on the north side of the Railroad down to the station.

Later there was an agitation to have the station returned to its location at Main Street.

This proposition was opposed by Dr. Ezra Hunt and some other property owners, and in order to head off the removal of the station it was proposed to open a street from Main Street through to the Lincoln Highway, on the south side of the Railroad.

This would necessitate taking a strip off the old Presbyterian cemetery, which since its establishment in 1731 has housed the dust of the ancestors of many of Metuchen's best families.

Dr. Mason tells me the following incident of that time.

One day he was walking down town, when in those pre-prohibition days he met a blacksmith by the name of John. John threw his arms around Dr. Mason's neck and said:

"Mr. Mason I love you, I love that church (he never attended the church), I love them graves, but I'll shoot Dr. Hunt."

The Pastor said, "Oh, John, that is not a good spirit. God would not approve that." John shouted, "But God never came the shenannigan over me."

The station was rebuilt where it now stands and the dust of the ancestors remains undisturbed.

Speaking of the blacksmith reminds me of a time when I was watching him in his little old-fashioned shop back of Robins Hall.

A man came in the doorway whom John had not seen for some years.

John stopped his work and, grasping the friend by the hand shook the hand vigorously, and calling down the whole list of profane curses on the head of his friend, he assured him that he was glad to see him.

And glad John was. It was then for the first time that I realized that profane cursing does not necessarily connote ill will, but is simply the strong language that a profane man uses to express strong feelings.

I suppose a village blacksmith shop always had the strong attraction for a country boy that it had for the children of Longfellow's "Beneath the spreading chestnut tree the Village Smithy stands."

Certain it was that I never was able to pass the smithy under the spreading mulberry tree that stood near the house on Main Street just south of the Pennsylvania Railroad, which was formerly occupied by Mr. Alexander Ayers.

The old wheel-wright shop stood near the blacksmith shop. Many and many a time I have stopped to watch the blacksmith forge up a hat-full of Wrought nails or to watch Old Pop Martin set a spoke in a wagon wheel.

Old Pop Martin was a good workman, old and rheumatic as he was.

I remember hearing him say to some young mechanic: "Young man, when you learn to take care of your tools a big part of your trade will be learned."

I have served as foreman in a machine shop myself since those days and have recalled that saying of Pop Martin many times.

In those days when much more work was done by hand than is the case now, a mechanic had to learn to care for his own saws and planes.

On a recent examination of the headstones in the old Presbyterian Cemetery at Metuchen I was much interested in the wording and lettering on the old red sandstone headstones.

These stones date from 1731 to 1800. The McDaniel stone, as shown by the picture, is as clear and legible as the day it was cut 166 years ago, while others have crumbled or flaked off so that in many cases there are no letters left. The red sandstone gravestone of Margaret, wife of William McDaniel, made in 1764, is clear and distinct. The stone at the grave of John Campbell might, from the looks of it, have been cut in the first place by the Village Blacksmith. The date is 1731 and reads in this wise:

as you are now so once was I
in health and strength though here I
lie
as I am now so you must
be
Prepare for death and follow
me
John Campbell dec Octob
e
y 15 1731
Aged 72 years.

The stone is brown sandstone of an uneven texture, not in smooth strata, but of a wrinkled, irregular texture and must have been a difficult stone on which to cut clear letters. I have been told that the clear-cut artistic stones were, many of them, imported ready cut from England or Holland. Be that as it may, I have herewith a picture of a stone standing in a little neglected private cemetery on a farm near Flushing, Long Island, which is as clear-cut as the McDonald stone at Metuchen, on the face of which, cut clear across the stone in large letters, are the words "Cut by Azuel Ward at Newark."

The stone in size, shape, pattern, lettering, and quality of stone is similar to the Metuchen stone. I have no doubt these stones were both made at the same place by the same party. A similar sandstone is quarried at Bellville, near Newark.

The Campbell headstone has a border marked about an inch from the edge and any line which would not fit inside that border had to be carried to a line below. The lines on which the letters were cut are still in evidence, just as the pencil lines of the printing of a six-year-old child would appear on a child's letter to Mother.

Brown sandstone occurs in layers and after being exposed to the air, rain and frost for from fifty to one hundred years, crumbles and splits so that the original surface is destroyed.

Once a crack forms in the upper, exposed edge and the frost gets in it is only a question of time when the stone will flake off.

The white marble headstones do not split and flake off but the action of the acid in the atmosphere, largely derived from the burning of soft-coal, which almost always contains sulphur, dissolves the carbonate of lime and the letters become illegible.

When I lived on Twelfth Street in New York City there were men who made a business of restoring the surfaces of the brownstone fronts and steps of the once fashionable neighborhood of Washington Square and adjacent streets.

The photograph on page 84 of the stone at the grave of the wife of Niel Campbell is still legible, but badly weathered after about one hundred years of exposure.