Wampum. The small cylindrical shell beads used as a currency by Native Americans and colonists in early America are known as wampum. Wampum, derived from an Algonquian word, was also known as sewant in Dutch and peake or peage in English. The white beads were made from the columellas of whelk shells; black beads, cut from the purple portion of hard clamshells, were twice as valuable as white ones. Wampum, which was in use before European contact and was also employed for body ornamentation, became an important medium of exchange during the colonial period, functioning as a currency. Belts strung with wampum were exchanged by Native Americans, and in some cases colonists, to indicate the conclusion of a treaty. Bergen County was a major center for the production of wampum from the eighteenth through the late nineteenth century.
Delaware Indian family wearing wampum beads to show their status.
Wanaque. 8-square-mile borough on the Wanaque River in Passaic County. Wanaque was set off from Pompton Township in 1918. The Wanaque Valley, rich in both fertility and minerals, was historically a center of iron mining, smelting, charcoal burning, and agriculture. The Laflin-Rand and later, DuPont, companies manufactured explosives at nearby Haskell from the late 1800s to 1926. Much of nineteenth-century Wanaque was effaced by construction of the Wanaque Reservoir (6.6 miles long), built between 1920 and 1930, and dedicated in 1931. It services eighty-five towns in six counties. The reservoir and surrounding land occupies most of the northern part of the borough. The i,soo-foot-long Raymond Dam and the headquarters of the North Jersey District Water Supply Commission are major features of Wanaque’s main street. Much of the rest of the township is occupied by older residential areas. In the 1950s the borough saw significant residential growth.
In 2000, the population of 10,266 was 91 percent white. The median household income was $66,113.
Wantage. 68.15-square-mile township, the largest municipality in Sussex County. Wantage was set off from Newton (New Town) Township in 1754. Located in the rolling Kittatinny Valley, Wantage historically supported agriculture as a primary activity, and many farms remain. Since the late nineteenth century, dairy farming has been dominant, with farmers’ markets becoming popular in recent decades. Bluestone quarries were also active during the late nineteenth century. Among the notable early settlers was the Rev. Elias Van Bunschooten, whose large home is now preserved as a museum. High Point State Park (in the western portion of the township) and the Wallkill River National Wildlife Refuge (in the eastern section) are popular public open spaces. In recent years, Wantage has managed to preserve some of its farmland through state preservation programs, but housing subdivisions have also grown rapidly.
Ward, Jacob Caleb (b. Oct. 27, 1809; d. Aug. 10, 1891). Painter. The landscape painter Jacob Caleb Ward was born in Jersey City and raised in Bloomfield. His father was a portrait painter named Caleb Ward; the painter and daguerreotypist Charles V. Ward was his brother. Ward moved to Manhattan by i829, where he exhibited at both the National Academy of Design and the American Academy of the Fine Arts. Like many nineteenth-century landscapists, he traveled widely in search of new subjects, sketching the headwaters of the Mississippi River in i835 and making a three-year trip to South America in 1845-1847. Ward moved back to Bloomfield around 1848, where he died in 1891.
Jacob Ward, Passaic River at Belleville, c. 1830-1840. Oil on canvas, 18 1/2 x 26 1/16 in. unframed.
Ward, Marcus L. (b. Nov. 9,1812; d. April 25, 1884). Businessman, politician, and governor. Born into a prominent Newark family, Marcus L. Ward became a successful businessman. He served as director of National State Bank and played a leading role in numerous civic organizations, including the Newark Library Association and the New Jersey Historical Society. He became active in the Republican party in the i850s. During the Civil War, Ward was widely admired for his efforts to help provide for the financial and medical needs of New Jersey fighting men and their families.
In 1862, Republicans chose Ward as their candidate for governor, but he lost to Democrat Joel Parker. The setback, however, was temporary. When Ward was again nominated in i865 he won in a close but decisive election in which Republicans also captured the legislature. Ward owed his victory to the support he received from veterans as well as the general shift toward the Republicans in New Jersey as the war came to a close.
Shortly after Ward became governor in January i866 a serious rift developed between President Andrew Johnson and congressional Republicans over the restoration of the former Confederate states and the treatment of black Americans in the South. The political confusion in New Jersey was exacerbated by intense factionalism in Republican ranks and rumors that a new party might emerge that combined conservative Republicans and moderate Democrats.
Ward at first appeared unwilling to support either side in the dispute between Johnson and the Congress. In June, however, Ward decisively rejected Johnson’s leadership and requested a special session of the state legislature. He called for ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment and the selection of a new U.S. senator to replace John P. Stockton. Stockton, a Democrat, had been removed by Republicans in the U.S. Senate because he was not elected by a straight majority in the New Jersey legislature. Ward’s action energized New Jersey Republicans, ensured the election of a Republican senator, and helped in the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment. It masterfully served both idealistic and political ends.
Although Ward was a progressive Republican on the central issues of his day, he was also committed to building up the strength of the party. In 1866, he favored caution on extending the vote to black men, even suggesting that the Fourteenth Amendment had gone far enough in the cause of racial equality. When Republicans suffered a huge defeat in the state elections of 1867 after they endorsed black enfranchisement, Ward took steps to encourage moderation and rebuild the party’s strength. As governor he backed progressive measures, including the establishment of a reform school, mandated public education, and a statewide uniform health code. Ward also called for the creation of a nonpartisan commission to develop and tax riparian lands. Still Republican factionalism continued and the democratic capture of the legislature in 1867 hindered Ward’s leadership.
In 1872, he was nominated for Congress and won, but he was defeated for reelection in 1874. Ward retired from politics and concentrated on philanthropic activities, including the home for disabled soldiers he had earlier helped establish. A patrician with sound political skills, Ward served New Jersey and his community well.
Ware, Maskell (b. Dec. 13, 1766; d. Feb. 13, 1846). Chair maker. Maskell Ware was the patriarch of a six-generation dynasty of chair makers in Roadstown, New Jersey. Son of El-nathan Ware and Mercy Moore, he was apprenticed at fourteen to John Laning, a Quaker chair maker in Greenwich. Ware set up his own shop in 1787. In 1789, he married Hannah Simpkins of Roadstown, and soon settled there, where he built a house and with his wife raised eleven children. Ware produced turned ladder-back chairs. Made entirely of local materials, Ware chairs were characterized by distinctive ball finials, ball feet on the front legs, bold turned front stretchers, and curved, serpentine slats on backs.
Warinanco Park. Established in 1923, this 204-acre county park, located in Roselle, was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and is best known for its annual floral displays in the one-acre Henry S. Chatfield Memorial Garden (named after the park’s original commissioner) and the two-acre Azalea Garden. Each spring the Chatfield Garden’s twenty-one circular beds bloom with 14,200 tulips from bulbs imported from Holland. Over 9,300 annuals are planted each June and bloom throughout the summer. The Azalea Garden boasts hundreds of plants in several dozen beds that bloom from late April through June. The park also contains facilities for tennis, soccer, baseball, track, and boating, as well as a skating rink and picnic areas.
Warne, Thomas (b. 1652; d. May 15,1722). Proprietor of East Jersey. Born in Plymouth, Devonshire, England, son of Stephen Warne and Catherine Triplett, Thomas Warne was a merchant and shipowner. He became one of twenty-four proprietors of East Jersey in 1683 and then sailed to Perth Amboy to settle in the colony. He served on the governor’s council and the court of common right. Warne married Mary Lord Carhart (c. 1697), and they had six children.
War of 1812. Although all of New Jersey’s congressional delegates belonged to the Republican party of President James Madison, a majority of them voted against war in June 1812. American unpreparedness, Republican party factionalism, a record of moderation on war-related issues, and concern about Madison’s leadership influenced their decision.
The war became the major issue in the state elections of 1812, and Federalists capitalized on antiwar sentiment to win a majority in the legislature, the first Federalist victory in a decade. In the January 1813 congressional elections, antiwar Federalists won four of the six seats, reflecting the antiwar sentiment in the Garden State. Nevertheless, Aaron Ogden, elected governor by the Federalist-controlled legislature, pursued a moderate policy of cooperation with the Madison administration by providing the state militia for the defense of New York City and Philadelphia. British raids during 1813 and the return of Clintonian Republicans to the party led to a Republican victory in the 1813 state elections.
After a British expeditionary force overran and burned Washington in August 1814, Gov. William Pennington, a prowar Republican, called out the militia to defend New York, Philadelphia, and the Jersey coast from possible British attack. Already, British naval forces had engaged in small-scale raids along the Jersey Shore. On March 31, 1813, for example, the British seventy-four-gun Ramailles sent barges with armed men into Barnegat Inlet to burn the schooner Greyhound, and it attacked four coasters between Waretown and Forked River. At about the same time, British raiders seized twenty coasters in the Maurice River area of Cumberland County. During 1813 and 1814 British vessels cruised off the Jersey Shore, sporadically raiding from Sandy Hook to the Maurice River and capturing coasters. Worried residents from Monmouth to Salem counties helped the prowar Republicans regain and keep control of the state in 1813-1814. For the people of the Jersey coast, the War of 1812 turned from news accounts of distant battles on the Canadian frontier into the reality of hostile British warships sailing a few miles offshore.
"War of the Worlds” broadcast. One of the most famous events in New Jersey history never took place. On October 30,1938, the night before Halloween, Orson Welles broadcast a radio play based on H. G. Wells’s story "The War of the Worlds,” as part of his Mercury Theater of the Air. The script by Howard Koch replaced British place names with American, and it had the Martians landing in Grovers Mill, a small community in West Windsor. They poisoned an artillery unit in Morristown, and most of the citizens of Newark, before attacking New York.
The broadcast, which accurately mimicked the sound of authentic newscasts, caused a nationwide panic. More than a million Americans believed that Martians had indeed landed in central New Jersey. The event was studied by Princeton University psychologist Hadley Cantril, whose 1947 book, The Invasion from Mars: A Study in the Psychology of Panic, became a seminal work in the field of social psychology. Cantril found no variable that correlated strongly with who panicked that night. To a small degree, people with fundamentalist biblical views were more likely than others to believe what they heard.
Warren. 19.3-square-mile township in Somerset County. Straddling the First and Second Watchung Mountains, bisected by Washington Valley, Warren was settled in the 1720s by English and Scots-Irish following the Passaic River upstream from New Providence, or through what is now the Somerset Street Gap in the First Watchung Mountain. Formed March 5, 1806, from Bernards and Bridge-water townships, Warren’s name honors the Revolutionary War hero Joseph Warren. Farmers eked out a hard living on the rocky soil during the township’s first two centuries, with life centered on Mount Horeb, Coontown, Smalleytown, Union Village, War-renville, Mount Bethel, and Springdale villages. Landmark sites include the Kirch-Ford House (c. 1750) and the Mount Bethel Baptist Meeting House, erected 1761 in the valley and moved to its current location atop Mount Bethel hill in 1785. A series of building booms following World War II transformed Warren from rural to suburban; the opening of Route 78 in 1986 made it one of the county’s more desirable locations. Today it is primarily single-family residential, with a mix of small to manor-size homes on large wooded lots. Commercial development is located along Mount Bethel Road and in Warrenville.
The population in 2000 of 14,259 residents was 86 percent white and 11 percent Asian. The median household income was $103,677.
Warren County. Warren County, with an area of 362.68-square-miles, is located in northwestern New Jersey in what is also known as the Skylands Region. It is bounded by the Delaware River on the west, Sussex County on the north, Morris County on the east, and Hunterdon County on the south. The county is thirty-two miles long, and has an average width of thirteen miles. It ranks ninth in size among New Jersey’s twenty-one counties, and twentieth in population. The county is divided into twenty-two municipalities, and the countryside is dotted with many linear and crossroads communities.
The Warren County landscape is marked with ridges, valleys, streams, and small lakes, creating one of the more scenic regions in New Jersey. It includes the Delaware Water Gap, a geological wonder where, over countless millennia, the Delaware River has worn its way through the mountains. The streams of the county flow into the Delaware River. The fertile valleys make the county an important agricultural district in the state. Although today more people are involved in industry and service jobs than in agriculture, the county retains its predominantly rural character. Concern for preserving the rural character and farmland motivated the voters of Warren County to levy a dedicated tax in 1993 to purchase open space and preserve historic sites.
The county lies in what was part of the English proprietary colony of West Jersey, and for many years was part of the unorganized region of West Jersey. When Hunterdon County was created in 1713/1714, it included the area that is now Warren, Morris, and Sussex counties. During its evolution Warren County was included in both Morris County and Sussex County. Warren County was separated from Sussex by an act of the state legislature on November 20,1824. The county was named for Dr. Joseph Warren, a Revolutionary War hero who fell in the Battle of Bunker Hill.
After a vote by the inhabitants, the county seat was established in Belvidere on April 20, 1825. The civil divisions at the time of its organization were Greenwich, Hardwick, Independence, Knowlton, Mansfield, Oxford, and Pahaquarry townships. Presently, Warren County operates under an elected three-member Board of Chosen Freeholders. The freeholders administer all county services and function through a county administrator, who manages and supervises the day-to-day operations of the departments, boards, agencies, and commissions.
The Dutch saw the region as part of their colony of New Netherland and, as evidence and legend have it, came to Pahaquarry to dig for copper in the early 1600s. They are believed to have been the first Europeans to visit
Warren County. Remains of minor excavations are still visible. When they arrived, the region had many temporary and permanent campsites of territorial tribes of the Minisink, who relied on hunting and agriculture for their existence. During this period the Dutch constructed a road from Pahaquarry to Kingston, New York. The road was the first commercial highway built in the United States, known as the "Old Mine Road.” The Dutch early mining attempts were not particularly successful, and further exploration was abandoned. The county was later settled by the English after the conquest of the Dutch colony. Some early settlers came by in-migration from eastern and southeastern Jersey and Pennsylvania.
The Highlands Region, which runs through Warren County, is rich in magnetite, limestone, timber, and water. These four ingredients are used in the operation of iron blast furnaces. At Oxford Furnace are the ruins of an iron-ore blast furnace that provided cannon-balls for the Revolutionary War. The furnace was constructed in 1741 and, except for a short period in the early 1800s, was active until 1884 when it was shut down for the last time. The need in the mid-i800s for workers in the iron industry and ancillary jobs forced the operators to meet immigrant ships in New York to recruit available passengers. This practice introduced people of many nationalities to the region, who worked as furnace workers, miners, colliers, lumbermen, farmers, and tradesmen.
Pahaquarry Township no longer exists. The state of New Jersey owns the half of the township known as Worthington State Forest. The rest of the available land in Pa-haquarry was purchased by the federal government for the construction of a dam on the Delaware River to control flooding. Congress authorized this project, known as the Tocks Island Dam, in August i962. The project met with heated opposition from many residents of the county, who wanted to keep the river free-flowing. After many years the project was abandoned, but the federal government still owns the land, which became the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area. By the i990s the population of Pahaquarry had dropped to fewer than twenty people living in nine housing units, a number too low to effectively operate a municipal government. It was decided by the Pahaquarry township committee in 1998, with the concurrence of Hardwick, to become part of Hardwick Township. Pahaquarry exists today as a place name only.
The development of transportation was and is instrumental in the county’s development. The ancient Native American woodland paths became the first dirt roads. The county later was crossed by the Morris Canal, which ran from Phillipsburg to Newark. It carried anthracite coal from the Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania, to users along the route as well as to the metropolitan terminal region, and brought back manufactured goods. Chartered in 1824, the canal was completed in 1836 and operated until 1924. Its use declined with the improvement of land-travel methods and the coming of the railroads in the mid-i8oos. The convenience of "door-to-door" road transportation forced railroading into a decline. The elaborate Interstate Highway System was greatly expanded in 1956 when the Federal Highway Trust Fund was created and construction of roads was accelerated. Interstate Routes 78 and 80 cut through Warren County running east and west, and today connect the area with the New Jersey-New York metropolitan region.
Today Warren County has a broad economic base. The once-agrarian region now has more people in industry and service related occupations than in farming, and is becoming a bedroom community for the metropolitan areas of northeast New Jersey and New York. According to the 2000 census, Warren County’s population of 102,388 was 95 percent white. The median household income for the county was $56,100.
