A Rutgers was on the jury in the great Zenger trial that establisht the freedom of the colonial press,—"the germ of American freedom." The Rutgers were Sons of Liberty and the Rutgers farm near Golden Hill was one of their meeting places. A Rutgers was a member of the New York Provincial Congress and also of the Stamp Act Congress. Alexander Hamilton was engaged in a famous case when a Rutgers defended herself against a Tory who had taken possession of her property during the Revolution.
It was a Rutgers who drained the marshes west of the old Collect Pond and so laid the foundations for the Lispenard fortunes: a Lispenard married a fair daughter of his neighbor Rutgers. That stream still runs into the Broadway Subway at Canal Street apparently uncontrollable.
One Rutgers fell in the Battle of Long Island, and while the old father died in Albany, the British revenged themselves on the younger brother by making a hospital of his fine house in New York. The owner kept on fighting for freedom during the whole Revolutionary War, distinguishing himself at White Plains.
Henry Rutgers
This was Henry Rutgers, in whom culminated many of the finest characteristics of a noble ancestry. His breadth of view in an age not quite so broad, is well shown in his attitude towards churches and schools. When he decided to open up his farm in the Seventh Ward for building purposes he gave land at Oliver and Henry Streets, at Market and Henry Streets and at Rutgers and Henry Streets for churches, and there was more for the asking, tho only the Baptists, the Dutch Reformed and the Presbyterians took advantage of the offer. The Rutgers Street site became the birthplace of the Rutgers Presbyterian church, beginning May 13, 1798, in a frame building 36×64. In 1841 the present stone church was built, and in 1862, as did others, this organization moved uptown. A Mr. Briggs, who was holding the property for a Protestant denomination, finally tired of waiting and sold the building to the Roman Catholic church, in whose hands it remains.
In 1806 Rutgers gave the land for the second free school, and he succeeded Governor Clinton in 1828 as president of the Free School Society. Before that day education was not a state matter, but left to private enterprise, and the free schools then establisht were for the poor. Rutgers more than once paid salaries and other school bills out of his own pocket. He was a Regent of the University of the State of New York for twenty-four years, and a Trustee of Princeton.