Excerpted from The Illustrated Delaware River: The History of a Great American River, by Hal Taylor (Schiffer, 2015). It is available through the author’s website: haltaylorillustration.com which provides a link to Amazon.
If you do not want to get on the wrong side of someone from the small waterfront community of Greenwich, NJ, do not pronounce the name of their town as “Gren-itch,” call it “Green-witch.” It’s not a regional colloquialism, it’s a term of proud resistance dating to the American Revolution when the townsfolk railed against anything English—including the name of their town.
But there is some dispute over the name itself. One line of argument claims it comes directly from Greenwich on the Thames, while another proposes its derivation is from Old Greenwich in Connecticut. If we go back further still, the site’s original name was Cohansey, after the river on whose banks it is located, taken from the name of the local Lenape chief; which can be spelled about nine different ways.
There are other river towns with English origins and similarly strict adherences to their individuality. Mauricetown is one that comes to mind, an old maritime village situated on the Maurice River, northeast of Port Norris. Once again, the pronunciation is not what is expected: “Morristown” is correct, “Moreestown” will be met with hostility.
Greenwich is located in Cumberland County, also English in origin, whose name is borrowed from William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland. The son of George II, he was responsible for crushing the Jacobite Rebellion and Bonny Prince Charlie’s aspirations to the throne in 1746.
Greenwich straddles two bends of the Cohansey River as it winds its way to the upper reaches of the Delaware Bay. It’s a small, tightly knit, peace-loving community, with a population of about 800 residents. There has not been a murder here in over 300 years, possibly because of its passive Quaker influence. Called the Williamsburg of New Jersey, it should be the other way around; Greenwich was established about 15 years before Williamsburg. It has also never been restored like the colonial showplace in Virginia—what you see is what has been there from its earliest days. Change is very slow to take place; people who moved here perhaps 20 years previous are still referred to as newcomers.
Long before Peter Minuit, Captain Cornelius Jacobsen Mey, or even Henry Hudson had seen the Delaware, the Lenape were living here. And not living too badly either, judging from the contents of the Cumberland County Prehistorical Museum in Greenwich. The place is filled with literally thousands of stone arrowheads, spear heads, clubs, various tools, pottery, and other artifacts used for their stone age existence. They subsisted on an abundance of game, fish, and shellfish, and grew maize, beans, and squash. No fabric for clothing, no metal for knives or other tools, arrow heads or cooking utensils; they used what was available—stone, clay, and bone. Understanding their lifestyle makes it easier to grasp how they were so accepting of the early European traders. These oddly dressed, unshaven men brought gifts that were beyond comprehension to the Lenape—bolts of cloth, metal tools, iron cooking pots. And because of their formidable weapons, the Lenape very quickly embraced them as allies.
Several years after founding the town of Salem in 1675, Major John Fenwick proposed establishing a twin colony in the area around the Cohansey composed of “manor lots.” He died before his plan could come to fruition, but Fenwick’s executors followed his wishes. Following a royal template, the main street was to be 100 feet wide starting at the Cohansey River and extending north for one mile. To this day it is still called “Ye Greate Street”—lined with stately trees and homes, mostly all from the colonial era.
