At 10:40am on Monday June 12, 2023, my companions and I left Princeton behind and headed for Trenton, the capital city of New Jersey. During my travels in recent years with my photographer and Bob Moldenhauer, I’ve been all around Trenton, but never in the city itself. I had high expectations as I love seeing state capitol buildings, plus I knew there were a couple of other historic sites on Tom’s agenda that we had planned to visit as well. However, as we approached Trenton at around eleven o’clock, my thoughts were elsewhere – like 30 miles to the southwest in Philadelphia. I knew we had tickets for a 3:20pm tour of Independence Hall and I was antsy to get there.
As soon as Tom had parked our vehicle along West State Street close to the New Jersey State House, the first thing I noticed was construction equipment and fencing was everywhere near the building. I also didn’t have a warm and fuzzy feeling about the area we were in either. Some of the nearby buildings seemed to be in disrepair, there was trash and litter all along the sidewalks, and some of the locals we saw walking around surely made my companions leery of leaving some their belongings locked in the Explorer. I was very happy I wasn’t one of the ‘belongings’ left behind.
Tom and Bob followed signage around the construction and into the State House Annex building where they hoped to find a way inside the State House itself. In my mind, this wasn’t just another state capitol building, it was where Woodrow Wilson presided as Governor of New Jersey from 1911 until 1913. As a matter of fact, three days after Wilson officially left office as governor, he took the Oath of Office as our 28th President of the United States.
Once inside the Annex Building, my companions got lucky and quickly hooked up with a young woman named Francesca Bottini, who agreed to take the three of us on a private tour of the State House. After she took us to an area where we had the “best view of the dome”, Francesca led us on a lengthy hike through a series of hallways and up and down floors until we ended up inside the State House where we got to see the rotunda, the General Assembly room, and the Governor’s office, which was where Woodrow Wilson had worked for two years.
During our tour, Francesca mentioned a couple of interesting facts about the State House, which was the third oldest in continuous legislative use in the United States. The three of us learned we were in the State House that was closest to another state’s border, as Pennsylvania was about a mile to the south across the Delaware River. While the building was originally constructed in 1792, large legislative wings were added roughly 80 years later. However, after a huge fire in 1885 had destroyed a lot of the interior, the building underwent a huge renovation that included a new dome and rotunda. The latest renovations to the building began in 2017 and were to wrap-up sometime in 2023.
I’ve been to a lot of capitol buildings throughout our country and the one in New Jersey was mediocre at best, even with the Woodrow Wilson connection. Perhaps it would’ve ranked higher on my list had we been able to walk the grounds and see the building’s exterior better. My companions thanked our gracious host, Francesca Bottini, for her time before we made our way to the Explorer. During our long walk back to West State Street where Tom had parked, I kept wondering if the shady clientele in the area had left our Explorer alone or if we’d find it ransacked. Luckily everything was the same as we had left it, which I attributed to our Divine Entity who rode shotgun in the vehicle during our tour.
The second of our three Trenton sites was located only one-half mile to the east of the State House, and it was one that Tom and Bob had last visited in 1991. Once we were parked in a small lot dedicated to the Trenton Meeting of Friends, I was removed from the camera case where I saw a two-story cream-colored house trimmed in green and maroon. While that building was constructed in 1739 and used as a meeting house for local Quakers, it was occupied by British Dragoons in 1776. After the Dragoons were given the boot by the Continental Army led by General George Washington, some of George’s brave soldiers stayed in the house later in the Revolutionary War. When the war was over and the British went home with their tail between their legs, the Quakers returned to their meeting house and have stayed there ever since.
While the house was historically cool, it wasn’t the focus of our visit. Located next to the Friends Meeting House was a small burial ground that featured the gravesite of George Clymer, one of the 56 Signers of the Declaration of Independence. I heard Tom and Bob as they talked about their 1991 visit to the grave and how they had dodged raindrops during their entire visit. Although it wasn’t raining when we arrived on that Monday morning, the sky had grown overcast and it appeared we might get wet at some point during the day.
My friends guided me directly to the small headstone and footstone that marked the gravesite of George Clymer, who was actually a Congressional delegate from Pennsylvania and not New Jersey. Clymer was an interesting Founding Father as he was quiet and rarely debated in the Continental Congress, yet he was one of only six delegates who signed both the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution. After he was elected to the first United States Congress in 1789, Clymer tried very hard, but unsuccessfully, to regulate the importation of slaves into the country. On the flip side, George was once a minor slave owner himself, albeit because he inherited an enslaved person when he was seven years old.
The primary reason Tom, Bob, and I do our best to pay tribute and recognize the Signers of the Declaration of Independence is because of their unselfish acts of courage under the direst of circumstances during the formation of our great country. When they signed their name to the bottom of that historic document of freedom, they each pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to break away from Britain. And George Clymer was no different. After he signed the Declaration, he used his own funds to help reorganize the Continental Army, which greatly improved conditions for the American soldiers. For his efforts, the British ransacked his home while his wife and kids hid in a nearby woods.
George Clymer died at the age of 73 on January 23, 1813 at his Summerseat estate in Morrisville, Pennsylvania, which was directly across the Delaware River from Trenton. The patriot had selected his final resting place in Trenton because of his shirttail association with the Society of Friends.
While there was no loud clamor for Clymer during our 15-minute visit to the Friends Burying Ground, we left George behind and headed for our third and final Trenton site – which had another George connection. We found the Alexander Douglass House, which was situated alongside Mill Hill Park, after a short two-block drive south of Clymer’s grave. Once known as the Bright-Douglass House, the historic building once sat in several different locations before it found a home where it was renovated and preserved.
Tom carried me up to the front of the small, yellow, two-story wood-framed dwelling where I posed for several photos. That very house was built around 1766 by Jacob Bright, who in turn sold it to Alexander Douglass, a quartermaster in the Continental Army, three years later. It must have been an honor for Douglass when General George Washington used the home as his headquarters prior to the Battle of Princeton on January 3, 1777.
All in all, the Alexander Douglass House was a disappointment, even though George Washington once slept there. The area seemed unkept to me, plus the park where the house resided looked like a potential gathering place for some less-fortunate individuals, which Trenton seemed to have more than its fair share of.
Our visit at the Alexander Douglass House was short and sweet and I was happy when we were safely back in our vehicle. We were in our ninth day of the trip and had visited a countless number of towns and cities, and in each one, I felt at home and welcomed. But Trenton was different. Even though Francesca at the State House was very friendly, everyone else we crossed paths with seemed cold and distant – unless they were asking my companions for a handout. While I can’t speak for Tom or Bob, I for one was extremely happy when our time in Trenton, New Jersey had come to an end. During our visit, it had become very clear to me why Governor Woodrow Wilson chose to live in Princeton rather than in the Capital City. It was obvious the citizens of Princeton have pride for their city, while that didn’t appear to be the case in Trenton.
It was nearly 12:30 in the afternoon and I watched as my companions plotted their alternate route to Philadelphia. Under normal conditions, we would’ve immediately crossed the Delaware River into Pennsylvania and then we’d go south down I-95 into the City of Brotherly Love. Instead, Tom and Bob decided to stay on the New Jersey side of the river until we were just east of Philly, then we’d take the Benjamin Franklin Bridge over the Delaware and into downtown Philadelphia. While that alternate route was six miles longer, it kept us out of the massive traffic congestion caused by the bridge collapse we had been warned about.
I had to laugh to myself when Tom fired up the engine of the Explorer because I heard his trusty Siri navigational system, and I use the word “trusty” very loosely, tell him to head directly for the bridge and go over the Delaware River from Trenton. At that moment, I heard Tom as he verbally chastised his virtual assistant: “Siri, what the hell is wrong with you? Do you have your head where the sun doesn’t shine?” I nearly fell out of the camera case when Siri replied: “I won’t respond to that!” In my mind, she couldn’t respond because her head was already up there.
Onward to Philadelphia, the cradle of American Independence, and I couldn’t wait to get there; and get there on time. All thanks to a little help from my friend – a friend not named Siri.
