Highlands, New Jersey

1968.

INTRODUCTION

Highlands, a town defined by its rugged high hills and embraced by the surrounding waters of the ocean, bay, and river, has always been both a desirable destination for thousands of visitors and a comfortable home for some 1,200 families. Today, visitors know the little (just .67 square mile) town for its many fine seafood restaurants located right on the river, its marinas, its fast and comfortable commuter ferries to Manhattan, its historic Twin Lights, and its being the gateway to Sandy Hook National Recreation Area, all with a wonderful, quaint character and seaside feel.

Years ago, from as early as the 1830s through the 1960s, city people knew Highlands as a summer resort, a haven from the heat and hard life in the cities. They would come for a week, a month, or the whole summer to stay first in tents and later in bungalows, boarding houses, and hotels. Thousands used to come to spend the day, arriving on trains and steamboats and later in family-packed automobiles, breathing in deeply the clean salt air, eating locally caught seafood—especially the clams, for which Highlands for many generations has had an enviable reputation—enjoying the sun and water on the beaches.

Highlands has been the scene of many exciting and historically significant happenings. The explorers Verrazzano and Hudson made the first European contact with the Lenape Indians, who were native to the Highlands area, changing their world forever. During the American Revolution, enemy forces executed national patriot and local hero Captain Joshua Huddy in Highlands, causing excited debate in the capitals of the world. Marconi, the father of radio, came to Highlands Twin Lights hill to excite the world with the wonder of wireless radio communication. Gertrude Ederle, who summered with her family in Highlands and learned to swim in its Shrewsbury River, excited all America, cheering her as America’s Best Girl, the first American and the first woman to swim the English Channel in world-record time. Discovery of gold coins on a river beach caused an excitement of Gold Rush fever as thousands of get-rich-quick prospectors ripped through the Highlands sands.

In the year 2000, there was an excitement in Highlands once again, then in its Centennial Celebration of 100 years as a Borough, as the town looked forward to a new year, a new century, a new millennium of continued progress. Highlands was and is still today a hometown. From its waterfront neighborhoods, to its active restaurant and business area, to its homes in the spectacular Highlands hills, this little community, proud of its exciting history, is equally proud of being a good family town.

1.

THE FIRST EUROPEANS ARRIVE

The early sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are times of accidental discovery and tentative exploration of the Highlands by French, Italian, Spanish, English, and Dutch navigators, attracted by the prominence of the High Lands. They came and stayed just long enough to deem the area worthy of a later return in force. The native Lenape always remembered how they met them, how remarkable it all was, and how badly mistaken they had been to think it was their Manito coming to them.

In June 1524, Giovanni da Verrazzano, an Italian from Florence, was sailing the Dauphine on a voyage of exploration for King Francis I of France. In his report, he wrote that he found a very agreeable place between two small but prominent hills, the Highlands and Staten Island hills between which a very wide river, deep at its mouth [the Hudson River], flowed out into the sea. Verrazzano guided his ship around the tip of Sandy Hook, and as he sailed in, he viewed the green oak–topped Highlands hills. He explored within Sandy Hook bay and came closer to the hills, anchoring probably within the Horse Shoe Cove, well sheltered from storms.

Verrazzano, with modern political correctness, paid a compliment to one of the noble supporters of his royal benefactor, Francis I, and named after him the hill where the Twin Lights are located today. At this time, the Hook was attached to the northeastern part of the Highlands mainland, and the ocean broke right at the base of the hill, the barrier beach of Sea Bright not yet existing. Verrazzano noted, "We baptized a little mountain by the sea ‘Di San Paolo’ (of St. Paul) after the Count."

With his crew, Verrazzano continued exploring the area that centuries later thousands upon thousands of visitors would know and love as Highlands, even meeting and describing for the King the native American Indian residents. The voyagers went onto the land, which they found densely populated. Verrazzano described the Lenape as dressed in bird feathers of various colors, coming toward the landing party, and he assumed, joyfully, uttering loud cries of wonderment and showing the safest place to beach the boat.

Suddenly, a violent, unfavorable wind blew in from the sea, perhaps a northeast storm, or nor’easter, so common to the Highlands area, forcing the crew to return to the Dauphine and set sail to the open sea. They left this land with much regret on account of its favorable conditions and beauty. By July 1524, Verrazzano, the leader of the first Europeans to leave their footprints in the Highlands hills, was back in Dieppe, France, spreading word of the marvelous sights he had seen.

Lenape tribespeople in the Highlands are watching in wonder and awe at the coming of the Half Moon into Sandy Hook Bay.

Another navigator was preparing a voyage of exploration for a passage to the Indies for Charles V of Spain. By May 1525, the Portuguese Estevan Gomez viewed the Highlands and the Hook. Unfortunately, he left no report of his experiences, but today’s researchers and historians know from the Diego Ribero chart of 1529 (found in the Vatican Museums in Rome) what lands he saw.

On the map, Sandy Hook is clearly visible and is so named for the first time in history, Cabo de Arenas, or Cape of Sand. The Navesink and Shrewsbury Rivers are seen flowing directly out to the ocean, with traces of the barrier beach forming in lower Sea Bright, and they are labeled Rio de Santiago, or River of St. James.

Nearly a century passed before another European came to view the Highlands, while in search of a passage to Asia. In 1609, a company of wealthy Amsterdam merchants bought a ship called the Half Moon and chose the Englishman Henry Hudson, an able and very experienced master, to form a crew and outfit the ship for a voyage of exploration into the West.

Fortunately for Hudson, the Highlands, and history, he brought aboard an officer of keen ability at sea and of capable literary skill: Robert Juet of Lime-House. Juet wrote a detailed account of this trip called Third Voyage of Master Henrie Hudson.

Having sailed down from New England, Hudson reversed course off Virginia and sailed north searching the coastline for likely water passages through the land mass and barrier of North America to Asia. After testing Chesapeake Bay and then Delaware Bay and finding them fruitless, he sailed off past Barnegat Bay until on September 2, 1609, he anchored the Half Moon in 8 fathoms of water at five o’clock. Hudson took sightings of the coastline, which he plotted at 8 degrees from North, and then he saw them, the Highlands. Juet recorded in his diary, For to the Northward off us we saw high hils. For the day before we found not above two degrees of Variation, followed by the words so frequently quoted, This is a very good Land to fall with, and a pleasant Land to see. The next morning on September 3, a southeast breeze appeared to have cleared away the mist, and as Hudson moved his ship farther north for a better look, Juet wrote that the Land is very pleasant and high and bold to fall withall.

American Indians and Europeans encountered each other close-up as Hudson’s Half Moon moved up the river above Manhattan, just as the Lenape and Hudson’s men had met for the first time in Highlands.

Emotions similar to Juet’s expressions of awe, with perhaps a bit more enthusiasm, at the magnificent views of the Highlands, have been repeated again and again since Juet’s first words, at different times, under different circumstances, in different words and languages, whenever seen by one coming upon the Highlands for the first time.

One can let Juet speak for himself in his old fashioned words as the Half Moon came into Sandy Hook Bay, which was just teeming with fish, reminding one of the Lenape word for the area, Navesink, or Place of Good Fishing:

So wee went in to our Boate to sound and found no lesse water than foure, five, sixe, and seven fathoms and returned in an Houre and a Halfe. So wee weighed and went in and rode in five fathoms, Ozie ground, and saw many Salmons, and Mullets, and Rayes very great. The height is 40 degrees 30 minutes. [i.e. latitude] .

The fourth [September 4] in the morning as soone as the day was light wee saw that it was good riding farther up. So wee sent our Boate to sound and found that it was a very good Harbour, and foure and five fathoms two Cables length from the Shoare. Then we weighed and went in with our ship. Then our Boate went on Land with our Net to fish and caught ten great Mullets of a foot and a halfe long a peece and a Ray as great as foure men could hale into the ship.

Having experienced Horse Shoe Cove and its bounty of big fish, Hudson’s party was forced to encounter the local people, the Lenape Indians. Juet noted the following:

This day the people of the country came aboard of us, seeming very glad of our coming and brought greene Tobacco and gave us of it for Knives and Beads. They goe in Deere skins loose, well dressed (i.e. tanned). They have yellow Copper. They desire Cloathes and are very Civill. They have great store of Maiz or Indian Wheate whereof they make good Bread. The country is full of great and tall Oakes.

The crew was sent by boat to the Highlands mainland where there apparently was a Lenape village. Juet recorded his impression of the village as follows:

Our men went on Land there and saw a great store of Men, Women, and Children who gave them Tobacco at their coming on Land.

Hudson and his men were the second and better documented Europeans to set foot on the Highlands sands, and the first to climb into the hills and admire the fantastic vista across the bay and ocean. Juet recalled the experience as follows:

So they went up into the Woods and saw a great store of goodly Oakes and some Currents. For one of them came aboard and brought some dryed and gave me some which were sweet and good.

This day many of the people came aboard, some in Mantles of Feathers and some in Skinnes of divers sorts of good Furres. Some women also came to us with Hempe. They had red Copper Tobacco pipes and other things of Copper they did weare about their neckes. At night they went on Land againe, so wee rode very quiet, but durst not trust them.

Their distrust of the Indians is without reason at this point in Juet’s narrative and was possibly included here if this and the next section were composed together. Now in secure anchorage close to the Highlands shore, perhaps in the deepwater off Gravelly Point, Hudson began exploring the area west of the Hook up to the Raritan, Newark Bay, the Kill Van Kull, and the Narrows. Then something went terribly wrong late that afternoon, described as follows:

Our Master sent John Coleman with foure men in our Boate over to the North-side.... They were set upon by two Canoes, the one having twelve, the other fourteen men. The night came on and it began to Rayne so that their Match went out. And they also had one man slain in the fight, which was an Englishman, named John Coleman, with an Arrow shot into his throat, and two men hurt. The seventh was faire and by ten of the Clocke they returned aboard the ship and brought our dead man with them, whom we carried on Land and buryed and named the point after his name, Colmans Point.

John Coleman is remembered in history as the first European to die in the New World of America. The exact location of his grave is in dispute, although it may have been on Sandy Hook rather than on the bayshore coast, where the burial party would have feared encountering more Lenape.

Hudson’s men expected a full-scale attack and were suspicious of the Lenape friendliness. They raised the wooden sides on their boat as a protection from arrows and kept a careful watch all night long. The next day, the eighth, some Lenape natives approached and again came aboard the Half Moon with tobacco and maize to trade for knives and beads. The crew was uneasy and mystified that the Indians offered no hostility and made no show of remorse for the death of John Coleman. Their crew’s anxieties increased the next day as seen with the following:

The ninth, faire weather. In the morning, two great Canoes came aboard full of men; the one with their Bowes and Arrows and the other in shew of buying Knives, to betray us; but wee perceived of their intent. We took two of them to have kept them and put red Coates on them and would not suffer the others to come neere us. So they went on Land and two others came aboard in a Canoe. Wee tooke the one and let the other goe; but hee which wee had taken, got up and leapt over board.

At this point of deteriorated relations with the Lenape, Hudson left the Highlands area immediately and the next day set about exploration of the river that bears his name, having gone as far as Albany before abandoning the search for the elusive passage to the riches of the East. Then Juet concludes his journal with Henry Hudson’s last look upon the Highlands,

The fourth [October 4] . . . We . . . steered away . . . into the mayne sea and the Land on the Souther-side of the Bay or Inlet did beare at noone West and South foure Leagues from us.

The Lenape did not possess a written language and depended upon oral tradition to preserve the records of events, passing down to each generation stories like The Coming of the White Man, which ultimately was written down for them in 1819 by John Heckewelder, a missionary to the Lenape. The events recorded here generally are accepted as the arrival of Henry Hudson and the Half Moon in September 1609:

A long time ago before men with a white skin had ever been seen, some Indians fishing at a place where the sea widens, espied something at a distance moving upon the water. They hurried ashore, collected their neighbors and together returned and viewed intently this astonishing phenomenon.

This historically accurate replica of Henry Hudson’s Half Moon sailed on a voyage of the rediscovery of Highlands on September 16, 1993, recreating the journey by Hudson and his men in 1609.

What it could be baffled conjecture. Some supposed it to be a large fish or other animal; others that it was a large house floating upon the sea.

Perceiving it moving toward the land, the spectators concluded that it would be proper to send runners in different directions to carry the news to their scattered chiefs, that they might send off for the immediate attendance of their warriors.

They arrived in numbers to behold the sight and perceiving that it was actually moving toward them, that it was coming into the bay, they conjectured that it must be a remarkably large house in which the Manito or Great Spirit was coming to visit them. They were much afraid, yet under no apprehension that the Great Spirit would injure them.

The chiefs now assembled at New York Island and consulted in what manner they should receive their Manito. Meat was prepared for a sacrifice....

Utterly at a loss as to what to do and distracted alternately between hope and fear, in the confusion a great dance was begun.

In the meantime fresh runners arrived, declaring it to be a great house of various colors and full of living creatures. Others declared it positively full of people of different color and dress from them and that one appeared altogether in red. This then must be the Manito. They were lost in admiration, could not imagine what the vessel was, or what all this portended for them.

They were now hailed in a language they could not understand. They answered by a shout or yell in their own way. The house stopped. A small canoe came on shore with the red man in it. The chief and wise men formed a circle into which the red man and two attendants entered. He saluted them with a friendly countenance and they returned the salute after their own manner.

They were amazed at their color and their dress, especially at him. They thought that he must be a great Manito but wondered why he should have a white skin. And they wondered what all this portended for the Lenape.

From the historic first encounter between the Lenape in New Jersey and the Europeans to the 1802 removal of 100 remaining Lenape Indians to lands in New York was a long period of hardships for the tribe. They suffered losses to their ancestral ways of life and an incredible decrease in their numbers, through war, disease, and alcohol abuse. Today, little remains to attest to the Lenape presence—just museum artifacts and place names of Indian origin.

2.

THE PRE-COLONIAL PERIOD

About the middle of the seventeenth century, both Dutch and English in New Holland looked out across the lower bay toward the High Lands of the Navesink and saw them as a prominent mark of land guiding Dutch traders with the Lenape there and later English settlers on the Lenape lands. Richard Hartshorne bought their land and settled it, for it was a pleasant region to see and live upon, in a manner common for Europeans and extraordinary for Indians who, just 150 years after first encountering men with white skin on their lands, were compelled to leave it forever.

The Lenape Indians of the Navesink area maintained year-round settlements rather than seasonal summer villages in the hills that make