Historic New Bridge Landing preserves a fragment of the Jersey Dutch countryside at the narrows of the Hackensack River, where people lived for thousands of years and where Native American settlement, colonial settlement, American Revolution fighting, and twentieth-century recreation all left their mark. The tidal river supported commerce, nourishment, and industrial power, and some of the earliest colonial families to settle New Bridge included Cornelis and Beertje Matthyszen in 1682, David and Hillegond Ackerman by 1710, Lawrence Pieterse Van Buslirk by 1738, and Jan and Annetje Zabriskie by 1745, while the Demarests lived one and half mile north at Old Bridge. The Zabriskies built a sandstone mansion here, later known as Steuben House, in 1752 and enlarged it in 1767 in a Jersey Dutch building tradition. By the American Revolution, Bergen County's population had become a blended Jersey Dutch society: only one-third claimed Netherlandish descent, Africans comprised one-fifth, Germans another fifth, and English, French, Scotch-Irish, and Scandinavians made up the remainder. In 1710, David Ackerman called the area where the Steuben House now stands Tantewagh's Plain, a variant of the name of Tantaqua, the last great sachem of the Hackensacks. New Bridge served as a battleground, fort, encampment ground, military headquarters, and intelligence-gathering post in every year of the American Revolutionary War, with eleven engagements taking place there. The site also preserves evidence of bondage and servitude, including a 1749 advertisement seeking the return of an escaped enslaved man named Robin and a 1755 advertisement seeking the return of an indentured servant, Paulus Smith, a miller by trade. In 1783, the State of New Jersey gave the confiscated Zabriskie House to Major General Baron von Steuben, who restored the war-damaged house.

Photo: Bill Coughlin

Photo: Bill Coughlin

Photo: Bill Coughlin