Hub City History: New Brunswick in 1748

Editor's note: Hub City History is a weekly feature that includes facts about New Brunswick, as provided by the New Brunswick Free Public Library.

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Peter Kalm (1715-1779), a Professor of Economics at the University of Abo, Sweden (now in southeastern Finland) was sent to North America in 1748 to study the vegetation. He toured the Mid-Atlantic colonies in October of 1748. He is quoted in William Benedict's History of New Brunswick in describing the community as:

"The Germans have two churches, one wood and one stone; the English one of wood, and the Presbyterian one of stone"

"Houses were of brick and wood, the wall next the street only of brick, a peculiar kind of ostentation. At each door was an elevation ascended by some steps, a sort of balcony with benches on both sides, where the family sate evenings and took the air and watched the neighbors pass by. The town has only one street lengthways and at its northern extremity there is a street across. One of the streets is almost entirely inhabited by Dutchmen who came from Albany, and so they called it Albany street. They get considerable profit from travelers, who every hour pass on the high road. An inhabitant built a house of the red stone [limestone?], but it soon began to change so much that its owner was obliged to put boards all over the walls to prevent it from falling to pieces." [In tearing down old houses more than one has been found of that description, weather boards over the stone]. We were ferried over the Raritan with our horses. In a dry summer at ebb tide it is by no means dangerous to ride through the river."