Militia Laws, Immigrant Bashing, a Monument and a Folklorist

May 26, 1668:The first New Jersey Assembly met in Elizabethtown, with fourteen members from East New Jersey and two from the essentially unsettled area of West New Jersey. The Assembly, which was elected by adult male property owners, met for a period of five days, passing militia legislation requiring all men between the ages of sixteen and sixty to muster for “at least four days in the year.” There were supposed to be two days of militia training in the spring and two in the fall, with ten days between each training day. Needless to say, such a schedule did not make for a cutting edge military formation, even though the assembly also prohibited the sale of liquor to militiamen during drills. Other legislation passed included laws against swearing, drunkenness and fornication, as well as providing the death penalty for witchcraft and for “any child above 16 years of age who shall smite or curse his father or mother, except for his own safety.”

May 26, 1851: A German immigrant picnic in Hoboken (one of the most “German” of American cities) was attacked by a gang of American anti-immigrant hooligans known as the “short boys,” who were armed with “guns, pistols, swords, clubs and slingshots.”  The Germans fought back, and the Hudson County sheriff, aided by Jersey City militiamen, eventually brought the brawl under control, arresting more than forty men, most of them Germans.  There were at least four people killed and fifty injured in the fighting. 

May 26, 1886: The Gettysburg battlefield monument to the Twelfth New Jersey Volunteer Infantry was dedicated on Cemetery Ridge. The monument was the first New Jersey monument erected at Gettysburg and was privately funded by veterans of the regiment.

May 26, 1902:   Famed New Jersey folklorist Henry Charlton Beck was born in Philadelphia. From their beginning in the 1930s with Forgotten Towns of Southern New Jersey, Beck’s books and newspaper columns preserved and popularized New Jersey lore for generations to come. They are still in print.