The great memory of Bordentown, however, is of the famous railroad,
originally begun there, whose managers for nearly a half-century so
successfully ruled New Jersey that it came to be generally known
throughout the country as "the State of Camden and Amboy." In the
little old Bordentown station, which still exists, set in the bottom
of a ravine, with the house built over the railroad, were for many
years held the annual meetings of the corporation; and its magnates
also met in almost perpetual session, to generally run things, social,
political and financial, for the State of New Jersey, and
semi-annually declare magnificent dividends. Not far from this station
a monument marks the place of construction of the first piece of
railway track in New Jersey, laid by the Camden and Amboy Company in
1831. Upon this track the first movement of a passenger train by steam
was made by the locomotive "John Bull," on November 12th of that year.
This granite monument, erected in 1891 to commemorate the sixtieth
anniversary, stands upon a foundation composed of the stone blocks on
which the first rails were laid, and two of these original rails
encircle it. A bronze tablet upon the monument represents the old
"John Bull," with his primitive whisky-cask tender, and the two little
old-time passenger coaches which made up the first train he drew. Thus
began the great railroad highway between the two chief cities of the
United States.
The original method of transport between Philadelphia and New York was
by steamboat on the Delaware to South Trenton, stages from Trenton to
New Brunswick on the Raritan River, and then by steamboat to New
York. This was the "Union Line," which for many years carried the
passengers, and of which John Stevens was the active spirit. He
conceived the first idea of a railway, and in 1817 procured the first
railway charter in America for a railroad upon his stage route between
Trenton and New Brunswick. In subsequent years there were advocates
both of a railway and a canal across New Jersey, his son, Robert L.
Stevens, being the railway chieftain, while Commodore Robert F.
Stockton championed the canal, the rival projects appearing before the
New Jersey Legislature in 1829-30, and causing a most bitter
controversy. It is related that the conflict was ended in a most
surprising manner. Between the acts of a play at the old Park Theatre
in New York, Stevens and Stockton accidentally met in the vestibule,
and after a few minutes' talk agreed to end their dispute by joining
forces. The result was that on February 4, 1830, both companies were
chartered--the "Camden and Amboy Railroad and Transportation Company"
and the "Delaware and Raritan Canal Company." In furtherance of this
compromise, what is known as the celebrated "Marriage Act" was passed
a year later, creating the "Joint Companies," their stock being
combined at the same valuation, though each had a separate
organization. They were given a monopoly of the business, paying
transit dues to the State of ten cents per passenger and fifteen cents
per ton of freight carried, and this afterwards practically paid all
the expenses of the New Jersey State Government. The railroad was
completed between Bordentown and Amboy in 1832, and on December 17th
the first passengers went through, fifty or sixty of them. It was a
rainy day, and the cars were drawn by horses, for they could not in
those days trust their locomotive out in the rain. The next year
regular travel began, galloping horses taking the cars from Bordentown
over to Amboy in about three hours, there being three relays. Later in
the year the locomotive "John Bull" took one train daily, each way. In
1871 all the railway and canal properties of the two companies, which
had become very extensive, were absorbed by the Pennsylvania Railroad,
which pays as rental 10 per cent. annual dividends on the stocks.
The line of the Delaware and Raritan Canal begins at Crosswick's Creek
in Bordentown, and is constructed alongside the Delaware River up to
Trenton, and thence across New Jersey to the Raritan River at New
Brunswick. This is a much-used "inside water route," and it had one of
the old lines of the railroad constructed on the canal bank all the
way. It was in former times a very profitable route, and is said to
have made most of the dividends of the old monopoly, as it carried the
greater part of the freight between the cities. It was originally
projected in 1804, but the scheme slumbered for years. When the route
was surveyed through Princeton, where Commodore Stockton lived, he
became interested, and he induced his father-in-law, John Potter, of
South Carolina, who had over $500,000 in the United States Bank, to
withdraw the money and invest it in the canal, he being the chief
shareholder. Thus his fortune was not only saved from the bank's
subsequent collapse, but was increased by the profitable investment.
The canal is forty-three miles long, with fourteen locks in its
course, having an aggregate rise and fall of one hundred and fifty
feet. Its enlargement to the dimensions of a ship canal is suggested.