While Cranbury Inlet was opened it afforded great facilities for vessels to trade in and out of the bay. As this inlet is laid down on a map of 1755 (Lewis Evans) it is probable that it was opened - broke out from 1750 to 1755. It was closed about 1812. During the war of the Revolution it was much used. The question of the exact year when this inlet was opened has been in litigation in our County Courts in a question involving title to land on the beach in its vicinity; no decisive information was obtained upon trial.

Two or three attempts have been made to open inlets towards the head of the bay. One by a man named Ortley about 1821; after working a long time (three or four years, I have heard it said,) and spending much money on the effort, he finished the work one set day; and that evening he and his friends had a merry time drinking and rejoicing over the completion of the work. But a sad disappointment awaited them in the morning, for the running tide, instead of working the inlet deeper, had made a bulkhead of sand and the inlet was soon filled up.

Another effort was completed about July 4, 1847. A large number of men (about three hundred), under the supervision of Anthony Ivins, Jr., worked about three days to open one opposite Toms River; when they opened it it was at high water in the bay and low water outside; they expected the running tide would work the inlet deeper, but they, too, were doomed to disappointment, as the tides immediately filled it up with sand, again.

Barnegat Inlet is continually slowly shifting and changing, and always has been from our earliest accounts.

Six or seven years ago the old lighthouse washed into the sea, but a new building had already been built in anticipation of this event.

Shrewsbury Inlet (Monmouth county) opened in 1778 and closed in 1800. In 1830 it opened again, but was again closed some thirty years ago.

At Little Egg Harbor a new inlet broke through Tucker's Beach about the year 1800 and Brigantine Inlet closed up.

From the following items it would seem that off Toms River the State of Pennsylvania had salt works and also that there was one there built by Congress.

In the Pennsylvania Council of Safety, Nov. 2, 1776, it was

"Resolved, That an officer and twenty-five men be sent to the salt works at Toms River (erected by this State in Toms River, N. J.) as a guard, and twenty-five spare muskets and two howitzers and a sufficient quantity of ammunition to defend in case of attack."

In Continental Congress, 1776, the President of Congress "was requested to write to Gov. Livingston of New Jersey, for two companies of militia to guard salt works near Toms River."

Mention of Government salt works near Toms River is occasionally met with in ancient deeds and of a windmill connected therewith.

During the war nearly all the salt works along our bay were either destroyed by the British or by storms, (some notice of which will hereafter be given.) Those destroyed by storms appear to have been built up again.

I know of no salt works along our coast of late years, except at Absecon (Atlantic county), some fifteen or twenty years ago, which probably was not much used then.

In the New Jersey Gazette, July, 1778, is a notice from the Board of Proprietors, signed James Parker. President, calling upon owners of salt works along the bay, who wish to buy wood of them from their outlands, to meet them at Freehold in August and they would dispose of it in parcels near salt works.

Said Gov. Livingston, in his message to our Legislature in 1777:

"The Royalists have plundered friends as well as foes; effects capable of division they have divided; such as were not, they have destroyed. They have warred on decrepid old age and upon defenceless youth; they have committed hostilities against the professors of literature and against ministers of religion; against public records and private monuments, books of improvements and papers of curiosity, and against the arts and sciences. They have butchered the wounded when asking for quarter, mangled the dead while weltering in their blood, refused to the dead their right of sepulture, suffered prisoners to perish for want of sustenance, violated the chastity of women, disfigured private dwellings of taste and elegance, and in the rage of impiety and barbarism profaned edifices dedicated to Almighty God."

The following is the testimony of Gallaway, a Pennsylvania Tory of wealth and position, who at first was a Whig and afterwards turned Tory, and had property confiscated to the amount of £40,000 sterling. Speaking of Refugee outrages he says:

"Respecting indiscriminate plunder, it is known to thousands."

"In respect to the rapes, a solemn inquiry was made, and affidavits taken by which it appears that no less than twenty-three were committed in one neighborhood in New Jersey, some of them on married women in presence of their husbands, and others on daughters, while the unhappy parents with unavailing tears and cries could only deplore their savage brutality."

After reading such authoritative statements of the character of these wretches, who will wonder that our ancestors were aroused, determined to drive them from the soil they polluted.

Our ancestors in old Monmouth did all that was possible for brave men to do to bring these villains to justice. Besides those hanged and killed at other places, thirteen were hanged on one gallows near Freehold Court House.

The particulars of the capture, etc., of several of these villains in Monmouth is extant, but not necessary to introduce here, as they are given in some modern works.

At the close of the war the Refugees generally went to Nova Scotia, but some went to the Bahamas by invitation of General Browne. In September and October, 1782, many left New York for Halifax and the Bahamas by his invitation.

April, 1778. About the first of this month the British under Captain Robertson, landed at Squan with a strong force and destroyed a number of salt works on the coast; one building (probably the one near Toms River,) they said, belonged to Congress and cost £6,000. The New Jersey Gazette said of this affair:

"About one hundred and thirty-five of the enemy landed on Sunday last about ten o'clock on the south side of Squan Inlet, burnt all the salt works, broke the kettles, etc.; stripped the beds, etc., of some people there who I fear wished to serve them; then crossed the river and burnt all except Derrick Longstreet's. After this mischief they embarked. The next day they landed at Shark River and set fire to two salt works when they observed fifteeen horsemen heave in sight which occasioned them to retreat with the greatest haste; indeed they jumped into their flat bottomed boats with such precipitation they sunk two of them. One of the pilots was the noted Thomas Oakerson. The enemy consisted chiefly of Greens, the rest Highlanders."

The owners of salt works along our coast must have experienced a streak of ill luck about this time, as a letter in the New Jersey Gazette, dated April 1, 1778, says: "The late storm destroyed many of the small salt works along our shore with all the salt in them." (The storm here referred to must have been of unusual severity. Some accounts relating to it confirm the reports that it caused many shipwrecks on our coast.)

May 22, 1778. A British vessel with a cargo of Irish beef and pork was taken by Capt. Anderson and sixteen men in an armed boat and brought into Toms River. Several other prizes about this time were sent into Egg Harbor. Twenty-one prisoners (13 from these vessels) were sent to Trenton. - N. J. Gazette.

Two brothers named Bowne, and a brother-in-law named Colvin, living in Manchester, Vermont, got into an altercation one day in a field, and the brothers beat Colvin so severely with hoes that he fell bleeding profusely, and the brothers were afraid they had killed him.

The brothers at night went to look after Colvin's body, but it had mysteriously disappeared, much to their surprise. The Bownes were generally suspected of having murdered him, but nothing was done until some seven years afterward, when some bones, thought to be human bones (and afterward found to be sheep bones), were found partly burned; this and other evidence caused the arrest and trial of the Bownes. One was sentenced to be hanged and the other sentenced to imprisonment for life. The chief evidence was a confession of guilt by the younger Bowne who was sentenced to prison, though the elder stoutly denied the accusation. While the two brothers were in jail after trial, a man residing at Polhemus' Mills, Ocean county, happened in New York City and met with a paper containing an account of the trial; while reading it he became convinced that the man said to be murdered (Colvin) resided near him at Polhemus' Mills, with Tabor Chadwick. He sent word to the Vermont Sheriff, who came on privately to Polhemus' Mills, identified Colvin and took him back, arriving at Manchester only the night before the day appointed for execution of the elder Bowne. The villagers at the hotel were earnestly discussing the trial, some justifying it, others condemning it, as no dead body was found, and some insisting that Colvin would yet turn up alive. While thus debating, the stage drove up and the Sheriff and Colvin got out. The latter was instantly recognized and his arrival caused the most intense excitement; guns were fired, bells were rung and people ran through the streets crying, "Colvin has come." The jailer, upon refusing to liberate the prisoners without Judges' orders, was brought to submit by a cannon planted in front of the jail. The younger Bowne, in explanation, said he thought they really had killed Colvin, though he could not account for the disappearance of the body, and he was told he would not be hanged if he confessed. Colvin, always after was partially insane, and returned to this county where he died. He fancied he owned everything around him - otherwise his insanity was hardly observable.

There are people in Ocean county, yet living, who remember Colvin. In the New York Tribune (about 1855 or thereabouts, I believe,) was a long account - two columns - of this Colvin affair taken from the lips of one of the Bownes last living - forty years after the trial. I understand the case is reported in "Greenleaf's Vermont Reports." It must have occurred near sixty years ago.