Ocean County , NJ History

taken from Woodward, E.M., History of Burlington and Mercer Counties. pp. 58-63. CHAPTER X. CANALS AND RAILROADS. "IN Beecher’s Magazine for January, 1872, Judge Lucius Q.C. Elmer published an article entitled ‘General Bernard and Joseph Bonaparte.’ In December, 1823, an act was passel by the Legislature of New Jersey appointing Lucius Q.C. Elmer, Peter Kean, and George Holcombe commissioners for the purpose of ascertaining the practicability and expediency of a canal to unite the tidewaters of the Delaware and Raritan Rivers. There was at that time a board of engineers, organized by virtue of a special act of Congress as a board of internal improvements. This board came into New Jersey, and in conjunction with the State board made a hasty examination of the route previously surveyed, in 1816, by a State commission under John Randel, Jr., Esq. The final result of this examination was that the plan of making the canal a State or national work was abandoned, and in 1830 the Del

taken from Woodward, E.M., History of Burlington and Mercer Counties. pp. 53-58. CHAPTER IX. OLD ROADS AND COURSES OF TRAVEL IN EARLY TIMES — STEAMBOATS ON THE DELAWARE —COLONIAL POST-OFFICES OF BURLINGTON COUNTY. NEW JERSEY, lying between the great sea-ports of New York and Philadelphia, naturally became the great highway of communication, not only between these early villages, but between the New England and Southern colonies. Prior to the coming of the English, the Dutch communicated between their settlements at New Amsterdam and those on the Delaware by an Indian trail. A portion of this "old Indian path" can even now be traced with great accuracy, and vestiges of the inhabitants of the forest, their corn-mills, in bowlders, are still found upon it. The late Hon. George Sykes, in a communication to the author, says,— "The old Indian path from Burlington to Shrewsbury left the Old York road on the farm now owned (1865) by William H. Black, on the north side of