This page is referenced by:

• 1 2019-11-19T20:02:47+00:00 The Beginnings 22 1779-1800 image_header 2019-11-20T18:58:48+00:00

  IN THE BEGINNING WERE THE WOODS—DEEP, DARK, AND foreboding. Acres of chestnut, oak, and pine trees dominated the landscape. Here and there were a few small clearings, overnight campsites of hunters in search of the fox. A tiny stream meandered timidly by the trees, seeking more light and less shadow in the creek to the westward. And a couple of rough, make-shift roads shouldered their way through the forest denseness.

  But the forest was dominant. It seemed to mock the feeble efforts of natural and man-made forces to challenge its power to rule the territory. Such was the Glassboro environment in 1779, two years before Washington crashed through the British breastworks in the little village of Yorktown, Virginia. And yet a few years later the scene had changed. Smoke came out of a group of cabins clustered around a larger structure which men entered clean in the morning and left grim at night. Wagons, loaded with fragile ware, left the larger building, traveling uncertainly over roads where trees had been three years previously. At night men entered a place called The Tavern, to relax after laboring hard in the larger building during the day.

  Man had challenged the forest and was well on his way in conquering it. The challenge and the conquest together make up the story of Glassboro’s beginnings.

  
  The Indians

  Before the white settlers came to inland Gloucester County, the redmen roamed its forest-packed confines. These were members of the Unalachtigo tribe, who picturesquely referred to themselves as "the people who lived near to the ocean.” The Unalachtigos owed allegiance to a larger nation of Indians called the Lenni-Lenape, which in the Indian language meant "men of men.” Known more popularly as the Delawares, the Lenni-Lenapes spread out over a wide geographical region. They pitched camps, at various times, in Delaware, virtually all of New Jersey, eastern Pennsylvania, southeastern New York, Long Island, and Staten Island.
  
  Fortunately for the early, white settlers of Gloucester County, the Unalachtigos were peaceful and friendly. Unlike the war-like and hostile Iroquois, of New York State and the Sioux, Comanches, and Apaches of the nineteenth century American west, the Unalachtigos’ policy vis-a-vis the white settlers was one of live and let live. Nowhere, for example, is there a single, authenticated account of an organized Indian attack on a white settlement. To be sure, there were times when individual Indians deviated from the way of peace and cooperation. But the white man’s "fife water” can be blamed for many of these infrequent Indian aberrations.

  The Gloucester Indians were peaceful; they were cooperative. In addition, their mode of living made the white settlers realize that they were dealing with redmen in an advanced state of Indian culture. These Unalachtigos were no mere wandering hunters, leading a simple, nomad existence. On the contrary, they were, to a great extent, settlers themselves. They cleared the land and established villages. They cultivated the earth and produced food. They fashioned cooking utensils and wove baskets. They deftly and quickly learned how to use the white man’s tools—guns, axes, knives, needles, and scissors. Finally, with their cutting tools, the Unalachtigos hacked away at the thick underbrush and forest of inland Gloucester County, blazing trails for travel to the sea and to game—trails which, enlarged upon, became the road network connecting the early nineteenth century Gloucester County settlements.
   

  ---

  
  VISIT A LOCAL MUSEUM: 
  • The Museum of Anthropology at Rowan University has a substantial collection of Lenape artifacts.
  •  The Woodruff Museum Of Indian Artifacts in Bridgeton, NJ, which has a collection of over 30,000 Lenni-Lenape artifacts.
  • The South Jersey Museum of American History has a collection of Lenape artifacts.
  • The Alan Ewing Carman Museum of Prehistory has a large collection of Lenape artifacts and fossils found in South Jersey.
   

  ---

  These were Indians seemingly the masters of their wild environment. They had the physical strength, agility, and cunning to adapt to their surroundings. In the art of hunting down game, an Indian authority claims that the Unalachtigo was…"uncanny in his attainments. He had learned to outwit the most alert animal of any species whatsoever. The bear was followed to his lair with ease and certainty. The fox was trapped unawares.” They had the manual dexterity to shape arrows, using the crude tools of a stone and a piece of antler.

  Moreover, in five days, using fire and a stone chisel, the Unalachtigos could fashion a navigable dugout canoe from the trunk of a chestnut, white oak, or poplar tree. With attainments like these, the Gloucester redmen seemed destined to hold on to his land for a long time.

  But the Unalachtigo had other traits, and these proved to be his undoing. He had a streak of vanity; therefore, he traded valuable land for mirrors and combs. He loved gay, ceremonial rites; consequently, he bartered away his land holdings in exchange for beads, bells, and jews harps. He yielded his plots of earth to gain the stimulation of the tobacco pipe and hard liquor. In other words, the Unalachtigo traded his birthright for a mere pittance. Never did a white financier have a softer sell.  

  Perhaps no better illustration of Indian gullibility can be found than the real estate transaction which took place, in 1677, between the Indians and nine white men. In that year, the Indians parted with the huge tract of land extending from Big Timber Creek southward to Oldman Creek and from the headwaters of these two streams to the Delaware River. Included in this parcel was the region which later became Glassboro. In exchange for this valuable real estate, the white men generously remitted to the Indians sundry items including thirty petticoats, sixty pairs of tobacco tongs, sixty scissors, sixty looking glasses, 120 fishhooks, 120 needles 200 bells, 100 jews harps, 120 pipes, and six anchors of rum. In making that kind of a financial deal, the white settlers made the fiscal machinations of the nineteenth century Jay Gould, Daniel Drew, and Diamond Jim Brady appear amateurish.

  The records show many transactions of this kind. Simple, trusting, and both unable and unwilling to adapt himself to the white man’s ways, the South Jersey Indian found himself dispossessed by the settlers and subject to the white man’s laws. Never really numerous in Southern Jersey, 2000 at a peak population, the Indians by the Revolutionary War had dwindled to 200. Long before the Revolution, the Unalachtigos had begun the long trek westward. From far off Green Bay, Wisconsin, the Delaware Indian Chief Bartholomew C. Calvin, in 1832, gave up what few tribal rights in New Jersey holdings his tribe may have still held. For this concession, the New Jersey Legislature appropriated $2,000 which it sent to the Delaware chief. The curtain had finally been lowered.

  An era in Southern Jersey and Gloucester County history had ended; a nation had died. As if writing the epitaph on the tombstone, a noted New Jersey authority on the South Jersey Indians wrote:

  We find the early inhabitants of our state were a simple-minded, kindly, peaceful people. Their bearing in the settlement of the State was no small factor in paving the way for civilization. They had located the most fertile areas, cleared the ground, established lines of communication, and on the arrival of the white man taught the newcomers how to cope with a wild country. They provided food, promoted trade in furs, showed the colonists how to cultivate corn and tobacco, and gave them ultimately their land as a heritage to an English-speaking people. They were a most unadaptable people and never even to the last accepted the white man’s ways. Their fate, as they were pushed westward, was a most inevitable one…

  Abundant evidence is available to prove that, in the pre-Revolutionary War era, the Unalachtigos occupied and traversed the land in and around Glassboro. Artifacts, if not written records, have been continually uncovered, some accidentally by those excavating and plowing fields, and others by students of Indian lore such as Charles Kier of Pitman and Allen Lutz of Glassboro.

  These resurrected Indian remains take many forms. In one instance, they were a moccasin, a rubbing stone, and a canoe anchor unearthed at Mantua Creek. Or they may take the forms of a plummet and a soapstone gorget found at Barnsboro. Still more evidence was presented by five boys who, while playing, uncovered an Indian dugout canoe in back of the Hurffville Methodist Church. Another dugout canoe was found by Dr. Heritage of Glassboro in a mill pond at Fries Mills. This medical practitioner put his finding to practical use by placing it in his backyard and growing flowers in it. More sensational proof of the Indians’ presence can be offered by the three Indian skeletons discovered in the Pitman area as late as the 1940’s.

  These Indian artifacts offer indisputable testimony of the Unalachtigos’ presence in the general Glassboro area. They do not provide, however, absolute assurance that the redman at any time settled even semi-permanently in any one spot. Evidence in the form of former campsites is needed. Such proof of Indian settlement was supplied by the Pitman archeologist, Kier, who has established the fact that the environs of Glassboro at one time were the sites of twenty-three Indian campsites.

  Among these were five located in Pitman and others very close to Glassboro—sites such as those discovered at Wilson Lake, Glen Lake, Bunker Hill, and Cross Keys.

  Glassboro’s Indian authority, Allen Lutz, claims that four Indian campsites were located within the Glassboro confines. Interestingly enough, he places all four at edges of the Borough’s present boundary lines. One campsite was made on the present Greentree Road, just south of the Mantua Creek; another on Route 322, south of Rough Acres; a third, on South Main Street about four-tenths of a mile south of the abandoned South Glassboro Railroad Station. The fourth and final Indian camping ground was on the Glassboro-Aura Road, on a spot four- tenths of a mile southeast of the Owens-Illinois Glass Works. All four of these Glassboro Indian sites possessed the two topographical characteristics the Indians looked for: a cleared area and one in which a stream of water meandered close by, usable for domestic purposes and for navigation.

  Mr. Lutz maintains that the Unalachtigos must have, at one time, pitched camp at these locations because of the kinds of artifacts his numerous diggings have unearthed there. Among the Indian remains that he has discovered are the following: paint pots, pottery ware, hide scrapers, corn grinders, stone hammers, and spearheads. Certainly these are not items which the Indians carried around with them. They are the kinds of articles used by people who have settled in one place at least for a little while.

  Digging for Indian relics used to be quite a hobby for some of Glassboro’s leading citizens. In the late stages of the nineteenth century, for example, Thomas Ferrell, Dr. John D. Heritage, and Hanley Beckett used their Saturdays to excavate for Indian remains at the sites mentioned above. They made these excursions all-day affairs: driving out by horse and wagon in the morning, digging until noon, eating packed lunches, digging once more, and finally coming home in the late afternoon, their wagon laden with the archeological treasure they had unearthed

  But the Unalachtigo Indians gave Glassboro more than ancient relics. Much more important were the trails they blazed- trails which later widened into early Glassboro roads. And the early white Glassboro pioneers owe a debt of gratitude to the Unalachtigos for the land clearings they made- clearings which made adjoining settlements possible. These were the built-up areas, not far from Glassboro, which made the first Borough settlers a little less lonely.

  Without question Gloucester County and Glassboro owe much to the Unalachtigo, the redman who could adapt to a rough wilderness, but who bowed before the civilized wiles of the early Gloucester County land-hungry settlers.

  
  The Historical Backdrop of the Glassboro Settlement

  It is not known when the Indians vacated the Glassboro region. One account puts the year at 1758. While the exactness of this year cannot be verified, it is true that Glassboro’s first white inhabitants, as they erected their crude dwellings, were free from Unalachtigo attacks. Glassboro s pioneering population had problems in common with the courageous settlers beyond the Alleghenies, but Indian assaults were not one of them. There just were no Indians around to mount an attack. The Glassboro settler had nothing more dangerous to do initially than to negotiate the purchase of land which the Unalachtigos had earlier handed over to the financially-astute proprietors in the l670’s.

  Considering the absence of hostile Indians and also the pace with which other settlements had already been made, the Glassboro venture was somewhat "long-a-coming." This might well have been the name first assigned to Glassboro, except for the fact that present-day Berlin Township had previously preempted the designation.

  For great events had taken place before the Glassboro settlement. A new nation had gone through a long period of labor and had been born. New Jersey had during a 112- year period passed from a dependent colonial status to one of independent statehood. Gloucester County, Glassboro’s home base, had been created and had already been functioning governmentally for almost one hundred years. Finally, a number of communities had sprung up on sites which were virtually in Glassboro’s backyard.

  Perhaps a brief account of specific dates and events occurring before the founding of Glassboro will point up the relative lateness of its entry into the world.

  
  The National Scene

  About 172 years before the first settlers had sunk their roots into Glassboro soil, three tiny ships—The Susan Constant, Godspeed, and Discovery—had placed about 100 apprehensive Englishmen on a spot of land called Jamestown. There, under the lash of John Smith and the astuteness of the tobacco expert, John Rolfe, they made a going concern of America’s first settlement. At the same time they established America’s first democratic, legislative body, the Virginia House of Burgesses.

  Approximately 160 years prior to Glassboro’s settlement, another diminutive ship had disembarked a group of God-fearing Separatists on the forbidding shores of Plymouth, Massachusetts. While still on board the Mayflower, William Bradford and his compatriots had given the world "The Mayflower Compact,” a document which laid down the principles that the best government is that which is controlled by those it seeks to govern.

  And almost 100 years before Glassboro’s appearance, a kindly Quaker had set up the colony of Pennsylvania, directly across the Delaware from New Jersey. It was here that William Penn had very early established the concept of human brotherhood. Offering settlement to the persecuted of every race and sect, Penn had boldly asserted that a man’s religion was his own business and no one else’s.

  There were other national events which predated Glassboro. For example, there was the French and Indian War, ending in 1763, which drove France' out of the New World and established England as the supreme power. There were those fiercely, contentious events between 1764 and 1774, actions taken by the American colonists to free themselves from England’s control—the Sugar Act, the Stamp Act, the Townshend Acts, the Boston Massacre, the Tea Tax, the Boston Tea Party, and the Intolerable Acts. There were Lexington and Concord, the tinderboxes which ignited an armed Revolution, which in turn produced the Declaration of Independence, and finally Yorktown in 1781—two years after Glassboro was born.

  
  The New Jersey Scene

  Glassboro’s first settlement was 156 years in the future when Cornelius Mey, employed by the Dutch India Company, sailed from Holland, in 1624, with a group of Dutch immigrants and a stock of merchandise for subsistence and defense in the New World. He crossed the Atlantic to the Cape Cod coast, from whence he sailed southward, hugging the shoreline until his vessel entered Delaware Bay. From there Mey proceeded northward on the Delaware River as far as Big Timber Creek. Here he landed and erected Fort Nassau at a location now occupied by Gloucester City, New Jersey. This settlement, although not successfully maintained, was the first made on the Delaware River. Quite possibly the Fort Nassau venture was the first settlement made in New Jersey.

  The Dutch claimed as their preserve all of the Delaware Valley region. But this assertion was contested by the Swedes who, in the second quarter of the seventeenth century, determined to trade and settle in this area. In fact, the Swedes not only planted their people along both banks of the Delaware, but they also proclaimed their determination to back their rights by erecting, in 1643, Fort Elfsborg near where the present Salem City now stands. With alacrity, the Dutch picked up the gauge of battle, setting in motion a conflict which was decided in 1655, when the redoubtable but irascible Peter Stuyvesant finally subdued the Swedes after a bloodless siege of Fort Christina. The conquest brought with it the extinction of Swedish claims in what later was to be called New Jersey. But the Dutch were destined to enjoy only for a brief time dominion over the lush Delaware Valley region.

  For up-and-coming England, restive with the gap that the Dutch colony created between her northern and southern colonies, was determined to seal the breach with English settlers. Short circuiting any long-drawn-out preliminaries, a British fleet easily overcame Peter Stuyvesant and his Dutchmen. What had been the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam became the English possession of New York. England now not only ruled the waves; she also ruled an unbroken chain of colonies along the Atlantic coastline.

  Charles II of England, in 1664, donated the new province to his brother, the Duke of York, who was later, as James II, to fall a victim in the English Glorious Revolution. The Duke immediately handed-over the region between the Hudson and Delaware Rivers to two courtiers, Sir George Carteret and Lord John Berkeley. The gift was a reward for services rendered the Royalist cause in the bloody English Civil War, especially for the defense Carteret had made against Cromwell’s attack on the Royalist-held Isle of Jersey. To honor this stand, the name New Jersey was given to the new province. Thus our state came upon the world scene in 1664—115 years before Glassboro’s entrance.

  In an effort to attract settlers to their newly-acquired territory, Berkeley and Carteret offered inducements such as: generous terms for the purchase of land, freedom of religion, and democratic government. Their efforts met with a degree of success. But, losing interest in the colonial enterprise, Berkeley, in 1674, sold his portion of the grant to two prominent Quakers. Two years later, the Quaker purchasers persuaded Carteret to divide the colony into two sections called East and West Jersey. Virtually all that is now called Southern New Jersey was contained in the West Jersey segment of the division.

  A steady flow of settlers came to West Jersey, attracted by fertile land and liberal government. In fact, West Jersey had a government of its own whose capital was located at Burlington. The plan of two separate governments for East and West Jersey continued until 1702 when, wearied of the political struggles waged by factional groups in the two provinces, the proprietors surrendered their political rights to govern to the English Crown. East and West Jersey were united into one colony with a single governor, council, and assembly.

  Relations between the colonial Assembly and the royal governors deteriorated from the year of reunion until the fateful year 1776. Members of the Assembly stubbornly frustrated the plans of the governors in such matters as payment of taxes, raising troops for service in the French and Indian War, conscription of Quakers, the Stamp Act, and the Townshend duties. The final outcome of these struggles is well known. New Jersey, in 1776, along with her sister colonies, declared itself free and independent of the British Crown.

  
  The Gloucester County Scene

  "Old Gloucester,” as it is still fondly called, is not the most ancient of New Jersey counties; in fact, it is not the oldest among the Southern New Jersey counties. Salem and Burlington Counties were the first ones organized in the West Jersey Province, with the citizens residing in the third and fourth tenths, the territory between the Oldman’s and Pennsauken Creeks, owing their political allegiance to Burlington. But they were restive with this arrangement. For one thing, they insisted that their population had grown sufficiently large for them to have their own county. Moreover, they objected to making the long journey to Burlington to transact public business.

  Without waiting for the West Jersey provincial government’s sanction, the freeholders, proprietors, and other inhabitants met at Arwames (Gloucester City) in 1686 and created Gloucester County. A constitution was drawn up establishing a court charged with meeting four times each year. Laying the groundwork for a tax program, the first Gloucester Constitution ordered the inhabitants to list their taxable property, i.e., hogs and cattle. In a brief period of time Gloucester had set the governmental machinery in motion by having its officials levy and collect taxes, set boundaries, and hold court. Gloucester County was underway, but Glassboro wag still about 100 years from settlement.

  Incidentally, the Provincial Colonial Legislature, in 1694, got around to making the Gloucester independent action legal. In that year, the parent body enacted a law spelling out the boundaries of Gloucester County. These limits encompassed an area of considerable magnitude, including all of what is now Gloucester County in addition to territory now part of Camden and Atlantic Counties. However, later events resulted in a diminution of Gloucester’s land area. In 1837, Atlantic broke away and established its own county, as did Camden in 1844.

  Meanwhile, once a government had been established, townships were cut out of the Gloucester County territory. In fact, some of these local units had been settled before the creation of the County itself. Significantly many of the early townships were set up near the Delaware River or were located on navigable creeks which gave the inhabitants water transportation access to the Delaware, and hence a direct communication with Philadelphia soon to be a lucrative market place. Thus, Woodbury had its Woodbury Creek; Mantua, the Mantua Creek; Woolwich, the Raccoon Creek; Deptford, the Timber Creek; Greenwich, the Repaupo Creek; Logan, the Oldman Creek; and Mullica Hill and Swedesboro, the Raccoon Creek.

  There were still other Gloucester County communities in business before Glassboro was founded, and they did not necessarily owe their settlement to near proximity to bodies of water. Among these were: Squankum (Williamstown), Fislerville (Clayton), Hurffville, Barnsboro, and Clarksboro. Unlike Glassboro, however, these early settlements were not both landlocked and handicapped with acres of uncleared timber. They had fairly large clearings to attract pioneers.

  Ringed about with settlements, the still-to-be-born Glassboro was, during most of the Revolutionary War, a wilderness of dense trees, broken here and there by a few open patches of very tiny clearings. With this kind of a landscape, actual settlement seemed to be far in the offing.

  
  The Glassboro Settlement

  Dornhangen, Rotterdam, Portsmouth, Philadelphia, Alloway, and Glassboro. Place a timetable beside these names, and they might be mistaken for the itinerary of an ocean-crossing, pleasure cruise. In reality, however, they represent stop-over locations of a kindly, highly religious German family named Stanger as it, in 1768, left the Old World to set up, within eleven years, the Glassboro settlement. The Stanger Odyssey is part and parcel of the Glassboro story.

  
  The Stanger Odyssey

  Conditions in eighteenth-century Germany were unsettled. At that time there was no unified German nation. Rather, the German territory was occupied by a number of autonomous states, probably still recovering from the bitter physical and psychological aftermath of the Thirty Years’ War waged in the preceding century—internecine religious struggles which left deep scars on the German people. In the eighteenth century the Prussian, Frederick the Great, did little to calm the German atmosphere. Bent upon setting up Prussia as the ruling Germanic state at the expense of powerful European and German neighbors, Frederick’s war-like activities kept the land in a turmoil. Eighteenth-century Germany was not, in other words, an environment pleasing to industrious, peace-minded, and economically-ambitious middle-class citizens.

  The eyes of these people turned to the New World. Particularly attracted to the opportunities offered across the Atlantic were the German skilled craftsmen—carpenters, weavers, and glassmakers. These highly skilled Germans emigrated to America in large numbers. It is estimated that in the century preceding the Revolutionary War as many as 125,000 Germans entered the American colonies. Germans skilled in the mysteries of glassmaking were in great demand, particularly in the Wistar Glass Works (Also known as the Wistarburg Glass Works and United Glass Company), established at Alloway, New Jersey. Evidence is available which shows that the German glassmakers heeded this call. In fact, on one occasion, a shipload of 120 German glass men sailed from their native land, about the middle of the eighteenth century, to work in the Wistar Plant. (See the former location of Wistarburg Glass Works to the right)

  The Stanger family might well have been in that boatload. Pious Lutherans, Jacob and Catherine Stanger had produced a large family of seven sons and one daughter. The family was skilled in the art of making glass, so much so that it operated its own glass works in Dornhagen, Germany. Doubtlessly impelled by the unsettled conditions prevailing in Germany, the Stangers decided, in 1768, to answer the call for skilled glassmakers issued by the Wistar Works officials. Unfortunately, the family was unable to obtain badly needed capital from the sale of their factory; the German Government simply refused to let them sell. Their only recourse was to abandon the works and the money its sale would have provided—revenue the Stangers could well have used as they sought new opportunities across the sea.

  Nevertheless, the Stanger family made its way to Rotterdam, Holland, from whence it sailed to Portsmouth, England. At this port, the Stangers boarded the English ship with the gentle name of "Betsy,” captained by a Britisher, Captain S. Hawkes. From Portsmouth, the "Betsy” set sail for the thriving port of Philadelphia. Upon arrival in the Quaker City, the Stangers were required to take an oath of allegiance to their new land and to register their names on the Philadelphia record book, precautions taken by the Philadelphians to keep track of the flood of newly-arrived Germans. It is claimed that the Stangers affixed their signatures in Latin, instead of the German script, a feat which indicated an educational background above the average.

  Apparently the Stangers did not tarry long at Philadelphia. They were anxious to reach Alloway and the Wistar Glass Works, the magnet which had drawn them away from their German homeland. Arriving at the Salem County factory, the older Stanger boys obtained jobs in the glass works, while the two younger boys became glassmaker apprentices, learning the trade from the ground up. At the Wistar Works, the Stanger brothers had an opportunity to recoup their financial resources, to learn the customs of a new land, and to master the English language. This breaking-in period was essential before the family could climb to its former high status in the glassmaking business.

  
  The Wistar Plant Interlude

  Perhaps it might be well to interrupt the account of the Stanger Family Odyssey to focus attention briefly on the Wistar Glass Works at Alloway, an enterprise which wove itself into the fabric of Glassboro’s early history.
  (Read more about the Wistar Glassworks)

  Salem County’s Wistar Glass Factory was the first successful glassmaking establishment in the American colonies; it succeeded, in 1739, after glassmaking ventures in Virginia, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania had failed. The Wistar Glass Factory owed its success to the business acumen of a German born Philadelphian, Caspar Wistar, who had already made a small fortune manufacturing brass buttons. Seeking new financial worlds to conquer, Wistar saw that his next opportunity lay in glassmaking; glass was in short supply in the colonies because of the difficulty of shipping a sufficient supply from England.

  With typical German thoroughness, Wistar planned well. His first step was to select a factory site at present-day Alloway, where sand for the glass and timber for fuel abounded, and where the Alloway Creek provided a convenient transportation artery to the Delaware River and thence to the Philadelphia market place. Next he imported a plant manager and four glassmaking experts from Belgium, whose principal duty was to teach Wistar and his confidants the occult art of making glass. For this service, Wistar promised the Belgians a one-third share in the enterprise’s profits. Finally, Wistar put the finishing touches to his new business undertaking by personally directing the activities associated with purchasing supplies and equipment, furnishing food, and securing workmen. Like a successful financial tycoon, Wistar then went back to his brass button business in Philadelphia and let the experts take care of the glass works.

  The Wistar Plant was an immediate success. Its glass products became famous for the beauty of their design and the distinctiveness of their color. Included in these products were window glass; cafe, snuff, and mustard bottles; and electrifying globes and tubes.

  Products of this high quality naturally attracted attention. In 1752, for example. New Jersey’s colonial Governor Belcher, writing to a friend in Boston, promised to find out the secret of the Wistar Glass Work’s success, despite the tight wall of secrecy its owners threw around their glassmaking art. A short time later the Governor, in a letter to the same friend, confessed that he was unable to pierce the veil of mystery. However, his enthusiasm for the glass industry did not waver, as was evidenced by his advice to his Massachusetts friend to start a glass factory himself, but to keep a sharp eye on London officials, poised to penalize those seeking to export raw materials from England for colonial manufacturing.

  Despite its early success, the Wistar Works began to experience difficulties. Even before his death in 1752, Caspar Wistar complained of the vexatious problems of procuring good clay and additional workmen. Presaging impending financial difficulties, Wistar also petitioned the Colonial Legislature for a tax exemption on his works, a request which was turned down.

  Caspar Wistar died in 1752, and his son, Richard, succeeded him as the directing force behind the Glass Factory s operation. The son’s financial management kept the plant operating on a stable basis until the turbulent events of the Revolutionary War made their presence felt. By 1781 the depressed state of  business visited disaster on the Wistar Works. Richard Wistar died in that year, and, with his death, the furnace fires died out and the Wistar Glass Plant expired after forty-two years of glassmaking.

  Indirectly, the saga of the Wistar Glass Works played a vital role in the early history of Glassboro. The Stanger family, of course, was the connecting link between the Wistar Works and Glassboro’s first settlement. It must not be forgotten that the Stanger brothers worked at Wistar’s for about eleven years, and that the two younger brothers developed their glassmaking skills there. While at the Wistar Plant, the Stangers saw at firsthand how a glassmaking industry could be successfully operated in the colonies. They were privileged to observe glassmaking of high quality and to participate in the making of widely-admired glass products. As mentioned previously, they were given time to adapt themselves to a new way of life, to learn new customs, and to master a strange language. Finally, and perhaps most important, the Stanger brothers, by virtue of their steady thrift habit, were given the chance to build the working capital to establish once more their own glassmaking enterprise.

  
  The Odyssey Resumed

  Little is known as to the possible sites the Stangers examined before finally settling in the Glassboro area. But it is not difficult to understand the reasons which caused them to make their final selection. For a glassmaking enterprise, the Glassboro region had many advantages. In the first place, there was an abundance of timber to provide the wood needed to fuel the furnaces. Fine white sand was plentiful, as were silica deposits and stone for foundations. Clay for the glassmaking pots could be obtained at nearby Chestnut Ridge from the Quaker Collins family. The one possible drawback to the Glassboro site was its inland geographic location, with the absence of a navigable stream for shipping the finished glass products to the outside world and for bringing in needed supplies. But the Stangers discovered that Carpenter’s Landing (now Mantua) was only eight miles away. The German-born family also found that a rough but serviceable road existed, which might be used to haul finished glassware from Glassboro to the Landing on the Mantua Creek, from where it could be transported to the Delaware River. Considering all of these factors, the Stangers made the decision to settle and build their glass works at the Glassboro site.

  On September 23, 1779, Solomon Stanger negotiated with Jacob Gosling of Woolwich Township for the purchase of land. On that date, Stanger paid Gosling 700 pounds for 200 acres of ground which, in the early 1700’s, had initially belonged to Robert Gerrard, one of Gloucester County’s early landowners. Final legal settlement of the Stanger purchase was not made until December 4, 1780, when the last remaining details had been worked out and the deed recorded. But for all practical purposes the sale had been finalized when Stanger handed the 700 pounds over to Gosling, in 1779, and began making intensive preparations for building his glass works. Thus it is evident that Glassboro’s birthday must be considered to be September 23, 1779.

  For those interested in picturing Glassboro’s original two- hundred acres, in terms of present-day locations, the map on the next page (see the map to the right) will be helpful. A Sunday afternoon stroll along the Stanger plot’s boundaries will enable one to visualize Glassboro’s original area. For this jaunt dress should be informal” and safety precautions observed.

  Begin the trip at the intersection of High and Lake Streets where the St. Bridget’s Parochial School now stands. Walk northward on Lake Street, looking for the beginnings of a tiny stream called Chestnut Branch. Cross West Street and enter the property of Glassboro State College by the road that leads back to the maintenance department. Follow the Chestnut Branch stream back of the new College Power Plant and across the College’s new campus until Heston Road is reached. Turn right at this location and follow Heston Road northeast to Delsea Drive. Walk carefully in a southward direction on Delsea Drive to the present Cold Storage Plant. From here, the Stanger property boundary turned sharply to the right and proceeded in a direct northwestward direction to the starting point at Lake and High, a course not directly available to a present-day traveler because of the building impediments.

  The hiker has completed his trip and has walked along the perimeter of the Stanger purchase. Undoubtedly, there are better ways of spending a Sunday afternoon. But to those interested in Glassboro’s beginnings, the stroll can be both interesting and instructive.

  It is realized that the above description of the original Glassboro tract purchase is at variance with virtually every previously-published account. Practically all of the prior publications state that Solomon Stanger purchased land from Archibald Moffett in 1775. Thus, both the date of the transaction and the person from whom Stanger bought the land differ from those given here.

  Thomas W. Synnott, a co-owner of the Whitney Glass Works in the nineteenth century, was probably the authority for the 1775 date and quite probably the source of the contention that Moffett sold the land to Solomon Stanger. For the most part, narrators of Glassboro’s founding have accepted the Synnott data. But a bit of careful research indicates that these facts cannot be substantiated. For one thing, the deed which Stanger received when he paid his seven hundred pounds was dated, September 23, 1779, and the seller named in the document was Jacob Gosling. Moreover, the name Solomon Stanger does not appear on a Greenwich Township tax list until 1780, and one year later his property was valued for tax purposes at 159 pounds and 15 shillings; the valuation was based upon Stanger’s ownership of 200 acres of land, four horses, and two cows. In 1782 the eldest Stanger brother was assessed 117 pounds and five shillings for a glass works and other property. On the same tax sheet, Solomon’s brothers’ names appear for the first time, listed as householders and called upon to pay taxes ranging from eight shillings eight pence to ten shillings two pence. Thus it is evident that the Stanger brothers settled in the Glassboro area and made their first melt in 1781.

  Perhaps enough space has been given to establish the precise date of Glassboro’s settlement. The important thing is that the Stanger brothers built their glass factory and began making glassware. They were fortunate in being able to employ a number of expert glassblowers who had been employed in the abandoned Wistar Glass Works. Solid German names such as Pfotzer, Simmerman, Lutz, Clinker, and Shaffer appear on the Stanger payroll. For a few years the Stanger enterprise prospered, largely because the Stangers and their workmen knew the mysteries of glassmaking as well as, if not better than, anyone else in the young nation. Concentrating on the production of hollow ware in the form of squat, long-necked bottles, the Stangers found a ready market for their products, which they hauled in wagons over bad roads to Carpenter’s Landing. From there the goods were shipped on the Mantua Creek to the Delaware River and then to the Philadelphia market.

  But financial prosperity was never to be the hallmark of the Stangers; disaster struck them when they were barely getting started in their operations. Never the possessors of enough excess capital to weather a fiscal storm, the Stanger enterprise was dealt a staggering blow by an act of the National Government. Seeking to bring a measure of order out of impending financial chaos, the Congress ordered the currency system revalued, setting forty dollars of continental money equal to one dollar of gold. The Stangers had taken paper money in exchange for their glassware. But now they were faced with the prospect of paying their debts with currency which had depreciated to the extent that a Continental paper dollar was equal to about two cents in terms of the revaluated dollar. As men of limited means the Stangers faced an intolerable fiscal problem.

  At this point it seems necessary to explode another long- established Glassboro myth—told and retold in many an account of the community’s early history. According to this tale, the Stangers, unable to pay their debts, were imprisoned in the Gloucester County Jail. In 1781, the sale of their property by the sheriff to Thomas Heston yielded sufficient funds to liquidate their obligations, setting them free to accept employment as workmen in the glass works they had recently owned. This is an interesting item in Glassboro's early history, but hardly an accurate one. In the first place, there is no record of Thomas Heston’s purchase of a glass works as early as 1781, although he did become a part owner in the Stanger Works in 1784. Furthermore, a careful study of bankruptcy and sheriff’s sale records for the period of the 1780’s by the reliable South Jersey historians, Charles Boyer and Frank Stewart, produced no evidence to support the Stanger imprisonment story.

  What did actually happen was the decision of the Stanger brothers to sell voluntarily their property, land, and the Glass Works, in order to obtain the money needed to pay their creditors. The sales operation stretched over a period of three years, from 1783 to 1786. In the latter year, the glass factory ended up in the hands of Thomas Heston and Thomas Carpenter (both men were colonels).

  Thus the Stangers were compelled to sacrifice their hard won enterprise in order to extricate themselves from financial difficulties. Ill fortune seemed to have plagued the Stanger attempts to establish themselves as glass company owners. Apparently this pattern was destined to repeat itself later on in the nineteenth century. As a sympathetic observer wrote: "They (the Stangers) never made great fortunes, but they made good glass and good citizens.”
   

  The Heston-Carpenter Glass Works

  It is intriguing to speculate on the motives that led Colonels Heston and Carpenter to take over and operate the Stanger Works. First, consider Heston’s incentive. It was probably his long familiarity with the Glassboro region which sparked his proprietary interest in the Stanger Glass Works. Colonel Heston, as a member of the exclusive Gloucester Fox Hunting Club, paid many a visit to the Glassboro area, for it was a favorite rendezvous of the fox hunters. When the hunt was resumed after the Revolutionary War, it is probable that Thomas Heston saw the Stanger Glass Works in operation, and actually talked with the Stanger brothers. A man of his executive abilities must have calculated the business possibilities of one day owning the glass works.
   

  ---

  Learn more about Colonels Thomas Heston and Thomas Carpenter

  • The New Jersey Glass Manufactory of Thomas Heston and Thomas Carpenter, Historical American Glass  |  Read more
  • The Kepharts: Col. Thomas Heston by Bill and Mary Kephart  |  Read More
  • Thomas Carpenter, Wikipedia page  |  Read More
  • See Notes on Old Gloucester County, New Jersey see page 153 for information on Colonel Thomas Heston  |  Read More

  ---

  Heston’s partner, Colonel Thomas Carpenter, undoubtedly took an active interest in glass factory operation as a result of the region in which he was raised. For Carpenter was a native and a resident, in his youthful years, of Salem County. As a young man he saw the Wistar Works in action. Endowed with ‘business acumen and ambition, he might well have filed away in the recesses of his mind the thought of his controlling, at some future date, an enterprise of excellent business possibilities, i.e., glassmaking. Of course, for both Heston and Carpenter there was the unpleasant matter of a Revolutionary War to fight. After this chore was over, however, it did not take either very long to fulfill his early ambition.

  Whatever their motives were, Heston and Carpenter took over the Stanger Glass Works. Once in possession they immediately made important decisions which were evidence of their talent for organization and administration. The first was the agreement to divide the basic responsibilities of running the glass factory. It was agreed, for example, that Carpenter would take care of the purely business aspects of operation—logistics and supply. To this end, he ensconced himself, not at the Glass Works location, but at Carpenter’s Landing, which was at the head of the Mantua Creek navigation. Here Colonel Carpenter supervised the forwarding of the plant’s finished glass products to the outside world, after they had been transported by wagon from Glassboro by way of the Carpenter Street-Barnsboro- Mantua road. Carpenter saw to it that the fragile glasswares were carefully packed in boats before sending them on their way to Philadelphia by way of the Mantua Creek and the Delaware River. The Colonel also kept the supplies and equipment moving into the Glassboro plant—items which met the personal needs of the workmen and of the hungry glass furnaces.

  While Carpenter brought in supplies from Philadelphia and probably Woodbury, he also had the sagacity to establish a store of his own at the landing. This man was wise in the ways of business. His purchases of real estate in the Landing area were considerable, so much so that his name was given to the community which later was to be called Mantua. Without neglecting his Glass Work duties. Carpenter maintained business sidelines of his own. There is apparently much truth written by a local historian of Glassboro: "While Colonel Heston was managing the glass works and building up Glassboro, his partner was running his own private business and building up the village of Carpenter’s Landing.’’

  Apparently as long as the glass business thrived. Colonel Heston did not mind his partner’s extra-curricular activities. Perhaps he was too engrossed to pay them much attention. For his responsibility, by the terms of the partnership agreement, was to stay at the home base and push plant production. To this end, he built his home directly across from the works, in the location now occupied by Russell Sturgess, one of Glassboro’s insurance men. From this accessible location, Heston maintained virtually an around-the-clock supervision of the factory. It is probable that the plant’s work schedules were promptly met.

  ---

  Colonel Heston's home

  The home is located at the corner of Main Street, Mullica Hill Drive, and State Street at the folowing map coordinates: 39.706026, -75.110749. The home was across the street from the Heston Tavern and within a short walk to the Heston-Carpenter Glassworks. The Glassboro Historical Society believes the current structure has been modified several times over the years, including the addition of a garage. According to local legend, Heston's original log home is within the walls of the existing structure. 

  ---

  Another wise decision made by the partners, at the outset, was to offer employment to the deposed Stanger brothers. Not practical nor skilled glassmen themselves, Heston and Carpenter were astute enough to realize that the highly-skilled Stangers had much to offer as employees of the Heston-Carpenter establishment. This step was also a wise one in terms of the other workmens morale—the Focers, Lutzes, Simmermans, Clinkers, and Shaffers. These were men strongly attached to the Stangers. More important, they were expert glassblowers, and their goodwill was a company asset.

  There are other evidences which point up the managerial and executive acumen of the partners. Perhaps two illustrations will suffice. The first was the successful efforts of Heston and Carpenter in persuading the Legislature, in 1786, to build a bridge across the Mantua Creek, an achievement which had eluded Archibald Moffett fifteen years earlier. The partners wanted the bridge built as a means of improving their facilities for marketing their wares. Opposition was strenuous and bitter, for both Heston and Carpenter were considered as newcomers to the area, bent upon disrupting navigation on the Mantua Creek. But the partners were men of influence outside of the local area. They enlisted the aid of Gloucester’s leading citizens, including a potential Governor of New Jersey. Their tactics paid off when the lawmakers gave their assent to the bridge construction. In the aftermath of the controversy, Heston and Carpenter added to their already high prestige. More important to them, they advanced the business interests of their glass works.

  Another example of the partners’ penchant for getting things done occurred a few years after they had won their bridge battle. In 1792, the road leading from the Heston-Carpenter Glass Works to Barnsboro was laid out. It was no accident that this improved transportation artery connected with an already established road from Barnsboro to Carpenter’s Landing, where the glass products were loaded on boats bound for Philadelphia. While there is no record of the part played by Heston and Carpenter in promoting the construction of the new road, it is not unreasonable to speculate that theirs was an important role.

  Of course, the main objective of the Heston and Carpenter maneuverings was to make their glass plant a going concern. Their efforts were directed to enlarging the plant and increasing output. Under their management, the Glass Works continued to turn out bottle ware, as had the Stangers. But the partners introduced new products—window glass and flint ware.

  The Heston-Carpenter Works prospered, and the owners reaped the financial rewards. But from a Glassboro historical standpoint, this was not the Colonels’ greatest achievement. More significant and lasting was the fact that Colonels Heston and Carpenter, through hard work and keen insight, proved that glassmaking could succeed and survive. The Revolutionary War hero’s had won a beachhead that their successors enlarged. By this achievement, Heston and Carpenter started Glassboro on its way as a going concern.

  Settlement Life

  Glass had to be made and sold if the infant settlement was to survive. But some attention had to be given to the men who made the glass and their basic needs for shelter, food, and clothing. How were these needs met?

  A first order of business was the clearing of enough land to enable the glass workers to erect their crude homes. In the infant settlement, twelve log cabins were constructed, all in the vicinity of the Glass Works. The following is a graphic description of what the dwellings were like:

  Most of the dwellings were north of the factory, out Main and Carpenter Streets. The houses were built of hewn logs plastered in the cracks, with huge chimneys for the burning of wood, which was plentiful for the homes and for fuel for the factories. Just such primitive dwellings as were and are made all over the freshly settled parts of the county. The houses were later made into barns, then torn down as the owners prospered.

  For food and clothing, the workmen depended upon the store which was built adjacent to the Glass Works. The store was owned and operated by the factory owners, who were in a position to transport staple foods and clothing and supplies from the larger communities such as Woodbury and Philadelphia. Certainly the workmen had no way of going on shopping trips of their own; their dealings had to be made with the company store which stocked non-stylish clothing and plain food such as pork, molasses, flour, and brown sugar. For another essential of life, the factory, the tavern, and the workers were dependent upon the water supplied by the open well and bucket, which were placed in front of the company store.
   

  The Struggle to Communicate

  Once the glass factory had gotten under way and the means of supplying the essential needs of the people had been provided, however primitively, the settlement turned its thoughts to making contact with the communities outside of Glassboro. Road construction was the next problem to be met and solved.

  Before Glassboro had been settled, a rough road had been hacked out of the forest from Mullica Hill to the Glassboro area, following the same path through the region as it does today. It ended on present-day West Street in front of the Franklin Hotel. At this point, another primitive highway thrust its way along what is now called State Street this thoroughfare was called the Malaga Turnpike. The combined Mullica Hill-Malaga Turnpike was the artery taken by residents of the Delaware River region as they made their painful way through forest-shrouded Glassboro to the wooded regions to the east even before the Stangers bought their first piece of land here.

  Before the nineteenth century dawned, two other roads were laid out, connecting Glassboro with the outside world.

  The first was the Glassboro-Barnsboro Road in 1792. This was an all-important highway for the Glassboro settlers, for it represented a first strand of the vital Glassboro lifeline to Carpenter’s Landing. Then, in 1796, a road was built from Glassboro to Little Ease (present-day Franklinville).

  Few if any attempts had been made before the nineteenth century to lay out streets in Glassboro itself. It is probable that Carpenter Street had been straightened and widened, as had the stretch of road from the glass factory to Carpenter Street. This was the route taken by the wagons leaving the Heston-Carpenter Works on their way to Carpenter’s Landing. It certainly must have had top priority in the projects facing the glass work owners. Quite possibly also a roadway from the Glass Works down what is now Main Street as far as present High Street had been cleared, widened, and leveled as effectively as crude tools would permit. The name Wood Street was given to this stretch of road, probably because it was used continually by the glass men as they traveled it on their way to cut and gather wood for the glass furnaces. But as far as other local travel arteries were concerned, the glassmen remained content to travel to and from work along paths and lanes they had cleared for themselves.

  Life in early Glassboro was an isolated affair—people must have felt both hemmed in and cut off from the outside. Only the very brave or foolish would take the chance of making contact with surrounding areas. Conditions on what roads there were gave pause to even the most valiant of souls. Flooded, muddied, and frequently impassable, the roads provided little opportunity for wagon travel.

  Communication by mail was still in the offing, for the Glassboro Post Office was not established until 1822. Very few Glassborites were as lucky as Colonel Carpenter, who, in 1794, received a letter from a Lieutenant Eli Elmer, posted from the Pittsburgh area. Elmer was engaged in the task, under General Frelingheuysen, of crushing the western Pennsylvania farmers who had rebelled at the thought of having to pay the federally-imposed tax on whiskey. In a singularly brief and uninformative letter, the Lieutenant sent this message about one of Glassboro’s own citizens who was serving under him: "Mr. Stanger is well and desires to be remembered and if I had room would I say something respectful of him.” For this news windfall, Colonel Carpenter was forced to make a trip to Woodbury to pick up the letter.

  But there was one place in the settlement where the men could find an outlet for the hardness and dullness of the daily grind of living—at the Tavern situated where the present Franklin House now stands. [ More recently known as the Franklin House, the building was located on the corner of Main Street and West Street. Approximate map Coordinates of the building: 39.706737, -75.110807 The front of this building faced south, toward what is currently West Street. The structure was demolished in 2003. | Read More) Here they gathered and exchanged pleasantries over a glass of spirits or gave vent to the frustrations generated by hard work in the Glassworks. Here they could ply the overnight lodger from the outside with political questions or read a newspaper he had brought with him. Here they could watch the tax collectors going about their unpopular business. Here was a place that pierced the gloom of routine living—a spot where a change of pace might be found.

  Governmental authorities controlled the operation of these eighteenth century taverns through the power of licenses. To own and operate a tavern, a person had to petition the county court, justifying his reasons for requesting a license. He was also required to submit the names of a number of reputable citizens who were willing to vouch for his good character. Typically only persons of stature and respect in the community obtained permits to own and operate taverns. That is why Glassboro’s first tavern was run by Solomon Stanger, from 1781 to 1786. It is the reason why Thomas Heston succeeded Stanger as owner and operator.

  One other outlet remained for the Glassboro male inhabitant in the 1790’s—he could become a member of the county militia. To qualify, he had to be between the ages of eighteen and forty. Membership in this organization gave the militiaman the privilege of wearing a bright uniform and of practicing the firing of a rifle, musket, or firelock at least three times every year. Of course, the Glassboro citizen might pass up this opportunity for some diversion by paying a three-dollar exemption tax.

  Evidently, in 1793, all of Glassboro’s eligible candidates decided to join up, for none of their names appears on the exemption roll. A listing of the Glassboro militiamen provides some idea of the town’s male inhabitants in the early 1790’s: Solomon Stanger Jr., Daniel Stanger Jr., Peter Stanger, Valentine Focer, Jacob Swope, Daniel Clinker, Michael Lutz, Conrad Shaffer, Leonard Shaffer, John Simmerman, Matthias Simmer- man, and Henry Ledden. The role call suggests that Glassboro’s warriors were made up of glassblowers of German ancestry.

   

  The Early Glassboro Church

  There was another side to the early Glassboro inhabitants, a phase of their life far different from that which pictures them whiling away their time over a glass of foreign spirits. Assuredly they frequented the tavern on week nights, but on Sundays they attended church services whenever they were held.

  The Stanger family set an example of devoutness for the community. While employed at the Wistar Glass Works, the Stangers had been faithful members of the Friesburg Lutheran Church in Salem County. Their move to Glassboro ended the association with the Friesburg Church—distance and bad roads posed too great an obstacle. But the Stangers persuaded the Swedish Parish at Swedesboro to supply the Glassboro community with the services of a minister. The Parish responded by sending a Dr. Nicolas Collin, who led the worship at Glassboro one Sunday every month from June to October, holding two services—one in English and the other in German. He was much impressed with the piety and kindliness of the Glassboro congregation. From a practical point of view. Dr. Collin was also appreciative of the fee paid him for each trip—an amount which, exceeded that which his Swedesboro worshipers were willing to contribute.

  Apparently, in 1785, the Lutheran Church in Swedesboro united with the Protestant Episcopal Church, and the Glassboro congregation followed its example. In 1791 the Episcopal Church was built in Glassboro on what is now North Main Street (near the water tower). [This was the first church building and school in Glassboro.] This was a plain, one-room building with no plastering in its interior. (See map for approximate location)

  The Glassboro people now had a church, but they ran into difficulties in getting a supply of visiting preachers from them Swedesboro Parish. Evidentally so many of the Anglican clergy had supported the King’s cause during the Revolutionary War that they thought it wise to retire to Canada and England after the War was over.

  This left a vacuum which the surging Methodists sought to fill. Years later Dr. Jacob Fisler, speaking to a Preachers’ Association in Salem, commented on the Methodists’ proselyting efforts at Glassboro in the 1790’s:

  …There was the Stangers, Focers, Shafers, Clinkers, Simmermans, Sarans, and Lutses members of the Swede church, Swedsborough, but about 1791, the Methodist that was said to be turning the world upside down, and was carrying nearly all before them, from the great stir at Bethel, tried Glassborough, made some move there, but was soon headed—for the old churchmen put down to Swedesborough and informed their minister that these Methodists were disturbing their peace and quiet, up they came and preached or read a few smooth sermons, which killed the work or suppressed it. Father and others of the local preachers or exhorters tried Glassboro time after time with more or less success but was repulsed by the Church ministers the Rev. Cruse and Wilmore and others, until Father and others said they thought the old fellow the Devil sent the ministers to stop the work they did for years.

  Dr. Fisler’s grammar and punctuation were atrocious but he made his point. The Glassboro Episcopalians stirred the Swedesboro Parish to action; the ministers found their way to Glassboro and beat back the Methodist drive for Wesleyan converts. St. Thomas’ little Church survived and remained Anglican.

  
  The End of the Beginning

  The end of the beginning of Glassboro’s early history has been reached. Much had been done from 1779 to 1800 in placing the new settlement on a solid footing. While much remained yet to be accomplished, the early Glassborites had secured a foothold in what was, in the beginning, virtually a wilderness. They began the building of foundations on which following generations built. To these first Glassboro citizens the community owes a debt of deep gratitude.