Morgan, New Jersey

1912 Railroad Bridge over Cheesequake Creek.

While doing research for this Morgan-NJ.org web site, I came across an April 12, 2006 NJ Transit press release regarding upcoming repairs to be made to the railroad drawbridge over the Cheesequake Creek.  This press release, which by the way was also referenced on Sayreville Mayor Kennedy O’Brien’s blog, indicated $4.7 million was to be spent for “rehabilitation of the mechanism for opening and closing the bridge, as well as other structural and mechanical improvements.”  BTW – Mr. O’Brien was at that time and still is at the time of this posting the Mayor of Sayreville, NJ.  As we now know, politically Morgan is a section of Sayreville.

The part of the press release which was confounding was where it mentioned the bridge “was constructed in 1912.”  That didn’t make sense because the railroad opened in 1875 some 37 years prior.  Some bridge had to have been there at that time!  If you look at the physical location of the site either in person or via an Internet map program which has satellite imagery capability, such as Google Maps, you would see absolutely NO trace of any other bridge ever having been there.  While growing up in the area, no one ever mentioned that there might have been a different bridge at that location previously.  Besides, if the railroad was the primary means of transportation in 1912, how could the railroad even consider impacting operations by doing what it would have taken to build a new bridge, i.e., replacing the bridge, ripping up the tracks, etc.? 

Cheesequake Railroad Bridges from the 1913 Robert E. Lee Land Survey. Image courtesy of the archives of The Thomas Warne Museum & Library of The Madison Township Historical Society in Old Bridge Township, NJ.

Thanks to Alycia Rihacek from, and with the permission of, The Thomas Warne Museum & Library of The Madison Township Historical Society in Old Bridge Township, NJ, this mystery appears to now be solved!  Alycia located a 1913 survey of the Robert E. Lee Morgan property on the north banks of Cheesequake Creek which contains a drawing of a “STEEL BRIDGE” and a “New Trestle” right next to it.  The path of the railroad tracks leading to the “New Trestle” exactly matches the path of the current railroad tracks including a slight curve just to the north.  The location of the “New Trestle” exactly matches the location of the current railroad bridge.  The path leading to the previous swing bridge is a straight line which makes sense since at the time the railroad was built in the mid-1870’s, it would have been easier to build a straight track than curved track.  

What is amazing however is the absolute lack of any physical evidence of the previous swing bridge or the tracks leading to it from the north and especially tracks going south across the marshland toward Laurence Harbor.  It also appears as if the flow of Cheesequake Creek itself was changed to accommodate the then new bridge. 

Does anyone know if the repairs listed in the 2006 press release have been completed?  Mayor O’Brien’s blog indicated, “State officials have assured me this project will be completed by next [2007] summer”.  As of July 2009, the bridge was looking like it needed a new paint job.  Perhaps that wasn’t covered as part of the 2006 maintenance? 

Also of note to the existing bascule railroad bridge is information from the 2003 NJ Transit Annual Report, “Major bridge projects included… underwater repairs to the piers and abutments supporting Morgan Drawbridge on the North Jersey Coast Line”. 

Another amazing and totally unanticipated finding!!!

Frank Yusko's Morgan Explosion DVD

Frank Yusko

Undoubtedly the foremost authority on the T. A. Gillespie Shell Loading Plant explosions of October 1918 is Spotswood High School History Teacher, Frank Yusko.  The series of explosions at the Gillespie Plant, also known as the Morgan Plant, started in a building located in what is presently the residential community of Oak Tree Village and continued over a three day period just weeks before the end of World War I.  Estimates of the number of people killed ranges from a US Senate investigation count of 87 to over 100.  The exact number will never be known.  Reportedly, the combined explosive power of the Morgan blasts was in excess of the uranium bomb detonated over Hiroshima, Japan in August, 1945 nearly 27 years later.

Frank Yusko is a man of many hats: Teacher hat, Fire Fighter hat, Community Volunteer hat, and Documentary Producer hat to name a few. He has received numerous awards and recognitions for his teaching.  While a teacher in South Amboy in the early 90’s, Frank recognized that soon there would be no survivors left who lived through the 1918 disaster so he set about the task of interviewing and recording them.  Later Frank and his Spotswood High School students created the only documentary on the subject Morgan-NJ.org is aware of (available from Visionary Video – click here). 

Mr. Yusko was a featured guest speaker at the Sayreville Historical Society (SayHistory)  and spoke on this subject at the Sayreville Senior Center on Thursday, October 8, 2009.  The audience contained many Morgan-NJ.org readers and the above text was used as a handout to introduce Mr. Yusko!  Wish I was there!  The Sayreville Senior Center is located at 423 Main Street, Sayreville, NJ, right next to the Sayreville Historical Society.

Click on the arrow to the right of the speaker icon below to hear the sounds of an electric powered commuter train traveling south through Morgan on the evening of June 12, 2009. 

As the train comes toward you, you first hear the clicking of the train’s wheels against the track switch located just north of the end of Cliff Avenue.  It is then followed by the “singing” of the rails.  As the train reaches you, the sound volume peaks when the electric locomotive passes by.  As the passenger cars pass, you can hear a different clicking noise caused by small flat spots on the steel wheels hitting the rails.  New wheels with no flat spots do not make this clicking noise.

The recording ends just after the train passes over some type of rail joint (clickety clack).  This is probably the drawbridge over Cheesequake Creek but I don’t know that for sure.  Perhaps someone in Morgan could confirm this?

Heading South Through Morgan.

Passing by Morgan and Cliff Avenues.

Seventy-four times during an average work day a train passes through Morgan either going north toward New York City or going south toward Bayhead.  All of these trains run on the railroad right of way that John Rutus Morgan purportedly sold to the New York and Long Branch Railroad for the princely sum of $1 sometime in the 1870’s.  From the railroads opening in 1875 until their elimination in 1957, steam engines roared through Morgan.  On November 4, 1957, the last steam locomotive pulled the last train north and steam locomotives were wholly replaced by diesel locomotives.  While diesel locomotives still make their way through Morgan, their numbers are significantly less than their electric replacements since the opening of the electrified lines on April 24, 1982. 

When the railroad electrified, not only did they add the towers and the overhead catenary wires which support the overhead electric power wires, they also installed continuously welded rails.  The new welded rails replaced the long used technology of bolting together 39 or 78 foot segments of track with steel plates.  The famous clickety-clack sound associated with railroads was due to the steel train wheels (at least 8 per car) hitting the rail joints. 

These days the railroad is significantly quieter primarily due to three reasons:

1. Electric locomotives are the quietist of the three types of  locomotives (steam, diesel, electric)
2. Continuously welded rails eliminate the clickety-clack sound substituting it with a significantly lower volume rail “singing” sound
3. Very few freight trains pass through Morgan anymore.  Freight trains are typically pulled by multiple diesel locomotives.  Freight cars are shorter than passenger cars; freight trains typically have many more cars than passenger trains the combination of which produces more of the clickety-clack noise.  I remember many a late night trying to sleep when the house would shake as a very heavy and noisey freight train would pass by. 

While the North Jersey Coast Line of the NJ Transit railroad is significantly quieter now when trains pass through Morgan, the view from Morgan and Cliff Avenues is more occluded because of the electrification towers and wires.  Guess there is a tradeoff for everything.

Business Card for John Granato's Tonsorial Shop

A community is not just composed of physical buildings and streets.  Communities which are enjoyable to live in, such as Morgan, are also composed of many other entities such as schools, religious institutions, libraries, parks, service organizations, businesses, etc.  This is the first posting to feature one of the many businesses – still in business – which reside within what we know as Morgan (see the previous posting “Where Exactly Is Morgan, NJ?”).  In fact, this business even lists Morgan in its address! 

The Tonsorial Shop appears to be located almost as an after thought in the same building as a convenience store seemingly disguised as a house.  Its main draw, its heart and soul, is its proprietor, John Granato.  If there is a friendlier person in the world, I can’t name them. 

John undoubtedly knows more about what is going on in Morgan than perhaps anyone else in the community.  Why?  Simple.  John has customers from all corners of Morgan, South Amboy, Sayreville and no doubt many other communities.  He gets to know each new customer as he cuts their hair and establishes a very personable relationship with every one of them when they visit him multiple times a year.  Isn’t that what it’s really all about?  

When I was running to the airport this past July after moving my mother out of the Morgan house she lived in for 50 years, I stopped by to see John.  I had this web site in mind and wanted to speak with the most connected person in the neighborhood. As a kid, I knew him as John the Barber and only really learned his last name when I read the business card shown on this post.  I was flattered, impressed and honored that he actually remembered me all these years later. 

So, if you need to get a touch up or a hair re-”do”, do go see John.  He’s on the northeast side of South Pine Avenue between Lincoln and Madison.  You will be pleased with the outcome and will make a new friend.  Please support your Morgan businesses and let John know that Morgan-NJ.org sent you.

I want to acknowledge someone that has been critical in helping get this web site off of the ground and in subsequently helping fix many of its blemishes.  In addition to having an easily accessible centralized place for all things Morgan, the biggest other motivation for creating this web site was to help me learn how to create and maintain one.  To this end, I wish to thank my remarkable son, Sean, for all of his help and advice both in the initial set up and as a consultant along the way.  Even though he is only 16, Sean has an amazing amount of knowledge of programming and web site design/implementation.  This may by my first web site but he has done many.  We are quite proud of him.

A number of people from Morgan have asked me what “40 Horses” was.  This seems to be a phrase applicable to and unique to Morgan but unfortunately I have no idea what it is referring to.  Does anyone know?

I would like to thank Jennifer Booton, Staff Writer for The Suburban Newspaper, for her very nice article in the September 3, 2009 edition about this web site (and me) entitled “Ex-resident launches site for Morgan history“.  She was a real pleasure to speak with and has an equally pleasant writing style.  Clearly Jennifer has a bright future in her field.  The Suburban serves the communities of Sayreville – which everyone now knows Morgan is a section of – and neighboring Old Bridge.  It is published weekly in traditional newsprint form to your front door on Thursdays and on-line on Fridays.

Another thank you goes to the anonymous person who contacted the Suburban regarding this web site.

An interesting personal coincidence is that in this same issue of the Suburban is a small article about the Sayreville War Memorial High School Marching Band.  I had some of my best times in high school while in this band and still have close friends from it as well.  In fact they are readers of and contributors to this web site!

Liberty Plaque in the South Amboy Post Office.

Local Veterans of the American Revolution.

In William S. Stryker’s “Official Register of the Officers and Men of New Jersey in the Revolutionary War”, the following Morgan family members are listed:

James Morgan, Ensign, Captain of 2^nd Regiment, also State Troops.

James Morgan, Jr., Ensign.

Nicholas Morgan, First Lieutenant, Captain Morgan’s Company, Second Regiment, Middlesex, Lieutenant Commanding Company, Major Hayes’ Battalion, State Troops, mortally wounded December 9, 1782. [Hung by the British while on patrol at Cheesequake].

Daniel Morgan, Private, Captain Morgan’s Company, Second Regiment, Middlesex.

John Morgan, Private, Captain Morgan’s Company, Second Regiment, Middlesex.

It isn’t clear to me how Nicolas, Daniel and John are related to James and James, Jr. but hopefully that will change soon as the family tree gets pieced together.  They are probably cousins.

On a wall in the South Amboy Post Office (08879 – the zip code used in Morgan, NJ!), these same five Morgans are listed, along with 30 other local veterans, on the “Liberty Plaque” which was created as part of the 1976 American Revolution Bicentennial celebration.  The plaque reads, “Erected to honor the memory of the valiant citizens of this community who served in the Armed Forces that won our liberty in the War of Independence 1775-1781”.

Without these five Morgans and thousands like them during those difficult times, where would we now be?  Probably speaking English.

In the Morgan neighborhood I grew up in was a long told legend of “The Chicken Farmer”.  As the story goes, any kid that trespassed on this farm would likely find themselves on the receiving end of a rock salt shotgun blast.  This is an enduring story which survives to this day in the neighborhood and is believed to be based on actual events which predated my days there in the 60’s and 70’s.

The remains of the farm were still there through to some time around the 1990’s.  During one visit home at that time, I noted a brand new neighborhood in its place composed of new streets and beautiful new houses.  The property undoubtedly had been sold off and parceled in the same fashion as the great Morgan family plantation “Sandcombe” had been decades – if not a century – earlier.  One reference indicates that Sandcombe was located on the bluff starting on the north side of the mouth of Cheesequake Creek.  Depending on how big Sandcombe actually was, this farm may have been the last remnants of it.  Interestingly enough, I don’t recall anyone in the neighborhood ever mentioning the name “Sandcombe”.

As great as the new houses were, I couldn’t help but think about “The Woods”, as we called it, which was razed to make way for them.  In those woods were foot paths possibly dating back to pre-Revolutionary Lenni Lenape Indian times and thick growths of mature trees.  Planted in their place in the beautiful new neighborhood were finger thick trees held in place by rubber bands attached to posts.  Trees on crutches!  One would think that keeping some of the large trees intact and building around them would have allowed for a higher asking price but things just don’t seem to work that way.

Any additional information about this enduring salted shot gun legend as well as info regarding “Sandcombe” from any long time current, past or want-to-be Morgan resident is most welcome.  Just click on “Comments” below and leave your message after the tone.

Two peanuts were walking down the street and one was assaulted.