Did you ever wish you could go back in time? Experience life as your 2nd or 3rd great grandparents did? Just a quick trip – no worries about the pre-antibiotic days where a scratch from a rusty nail could kill you. Your diphtheria inoculation would protect you from the disease that would often ravage Middletown Point families prior to 1923. A toothache on your short trip could wait until you returned – you wouldn’t have to worry about an abscessed tooth getting yanked out with a pair of pliers sans anesthesia. For a day or two, that’s all – want to go?
Getting there would be tricky – no DeLorean outfitted with a flux capacitor – its arrival would be too dramatic and terrorize the current inhabitants of the period you wished to experience. I’d prefer the method Jack Finney set forth in his novel Time and Again (a simply wonderful novel that I can’t recommend highly enough.) That’s the way I’d want to go.
In his account, the U.S. government sponsored a secret project based on the theory that the past still exists and that human beings could reach it if they completely freed themselves from the mental certainty that they belonged in the present. The main character prepared himself by wearing period clothing and instilling in himself an 1880s attitude. He then went to a preserved NYC building, went to sleep, and woke up in 1882. Yeah, that’s the ticket.
So let’s pick a date and place – I personally would choose 1850 Middletown Point. The village was starting to seriously develop, with over 600 residents and a commercial center that catered to the surrounding farms which would ship their goods via schooner up Matawan Creek to NYC. Now for a starting point.
The Burrowes Mansion would seem to be the place to go – it had been on its current location for over 125 years in 1850. Trouble with that, though, is that it operated as the Steamboat Hotel back then. I might lie down to sleep in an empty room in the present and have it occupied by hotel guests who wouldn’t take kindly to a stranger suddenly appearing. So, where to go?
The obvious choice for me is my very favorite place in town – our treasurer Gail Chester’s several acre spread off Mill Road, in the woods abutting Gravelly Brook. As I walk up to her centuries-old residence, the trees surround me and I can feel the age of the place. But for the occasional traffic on Mill Road, I could be in the mid nineteenth century. I look for a solid, vegetation free patch of ground, and lie down for a nap.
I awaken around 3 in the morning to the sound of water turning a mill wheel and realize it’s the Layton grist mill in operation. The air is different, too: the smells of damp earth, wood smoke and nature in general overwhelm me and I’m taken by its freshness. The sound of frogs in the mill pond and insects fills the night.
I look up and am astounded by the brightness of the stars – the blur of the Milky Way is visible, reminding me of my backpacking days in the Gila Wilderness in southern New Mexico 50 years ago. Due to light pollution, there’s a very strong possibility that many current Matawan residents have never seen a sky like this.
As morning arrives, I walk down the path to Mill Road, the former Minisink Trail, and see a wooden bridge over the brook to my right, and head in the opposite direction toward Route 79, designated the Freehold Turnpike in 1850. Residences are few and far between, and I’m struck by the lack of motor vehicle noise which is replaced by the songs and calls of birds.
I recognize the Schenck farmhouse, now 298 Main, but Edgemere Heights is now a farm and orchard. There is no Lake Lefferts – only an enlarged Matawan Creek that is navigable all the way to what is now Route 516. There are tanneries on either side of the road as I approach Middletown Point, and the smell of leather and its processing fills the air. What is now Route 34 is Arrowsmith Road, which dead ends into the main street.
What truly takes me aback as I approach the village are the trees – this is well before the chestnut blight, Dutch Elm disease and other issues that affected the hemlocks, ash and beech. They are huge and everywhere in town. The road is unpaved, dusty and traveled by horse teams and buggies. There are no sidewalks or telephone poles with overhead wires – electricity wouldn’t arrive for many decades. There are no streetlights, and homes rely on candles and oil lamps. No indoor plumbing or sewers – there were wells, cisterns and outhouses for each home.
And the residences were mostly small and plain – rooms weren’t as large; ceilings were lower and doors not as wide – people simply required less space. The large, ornate Victorian residences wouldn’t appear for years.
The people I encounter appear leaner, more weathered and tanned, younger-looking in some ways but older-looking in others because of hard physical labor. They frequent the various merchants that line Main Street – I note that the dentist Aaron Pitman is operating out of 208 Main – now the residence of MHS member Nadine Hemy.
As I walk through the small business district, I see a carriage building establishment, several groceries and hardware stores, a doctor, churches, shoemakers, a tailor, several hotels, Monmouth County’s first financial institution, the Farmer’s and Merchant’s Bank and the office of the newspaper The Democratic Banner. This simple life appeals to me, and I start to wonder if I should stay a bit longer.
Two of the most impressive homes at the end of Main Street are owned by merchant partners Aaron Longstreet and Simon Bray, still standing and now 80 and 76 Main, respectively. I see a “help wanted” sign in their nearby store and wonder if I should give it a shot?
I look back toward the village. A wagon creaks past carrying barrels bound for a waiting schooner on Matawan Creek. Somewhere a blacksmith’s hammer rings against an anvil. The aroma of fresh bread drifts from a nearby kitchen. I smile to myself. Perhaps I’d better not answer that help wanted sign after all. If I stayed too long, I might never want to return. But maybe for a day or two….
— Mark Chidichimo
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