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Originally published in 1939
Some of this information may no longer be current and in that case is presented for historical interest only.
Edited by GET NJ, COPYRIGHT 2003
Settled in 1682 by Thomas Farnsworth, an English Quaker, the village was first known as Farnsworth's Landing. It became a busy shipping center, thanks to its location at the confluence of Delaware River and Crosswicks Creek. By 1734 the Landing had a stage line and packet service, making connections at Philadelphia and at Perth Amboy for the New York boat. This enterprise was established by Joseph Borden, for whom the town was soon named.
The pleasant site attracted the fashionables of Philadelphia as summer visitors. Among the Morrises, the Shippens, the Chews, the Norrises, and the Hokinsons a gracious social life developed.
Patience Lovell (1725-1785), born in Bordentown of Quaker parentage, began as a child to model in bread crumbs and clay. As a young woman she went abroad to study art, but it was not until she was 47 and a widow with four children that her work received recognition. She won international attention for her figures in wax, notably one of Sir William Pitt which was placed in Westminster Abbey.
Bordentown was severely punished by the British for the famous "mechanical keg plot" of the Revolution. In January 1778 the British fleet was anchored in the Delaware at Philadelphia. One night the patriots upstream launched a flotilla of kegs filled with gunpowder, depending upon the river current to carry them to the fleet, which --unknown to the Colonials -- had just been removed from its exposed position. Only one of the primitive mines exploded, but it killed four men and created a panic among the British. Thereafter every piece of flotsam was viewed with suspicion and orders were given to fire without warning upon any unidentified log, keg or barrel.
The mechanical kegs had been built in the cooperage of Col. Joseph Borden. It was his son-in-law, the talented Francis Hopkinson, who promptly wrote one of the best jingles of the Revolution, The Battle of the Kegs, 22 verses that were published throughout the Colonies and caused some British officers to wear countenances no less scarlet than their uniforms:
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Gallants, attend, and hear a friend Trill forth harmonious ditty: Strange things I'll tell, which late befell In Philadelphia city.
'Twas early day, as poets say, Lay all this time a snoring; Nor dream'd of harm, as he lay warm In bed with Mrs. L-----. The rebels -- more's the pity Without a boat are all afloat, And rang'd before the city. The small-arms loud did rattle; Since wars began, I'm sure no man E'er saw so strange a battle. |
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