Metuchen Edison History Features

Recollections of

Boyhood Days

In Old Metuchen

By

David Trumbull Marshall

Published by The Case Publishing Co., Flushing NY 1930

(Second Edition)- (c) 1930

Civil War Veterans.

There were several Civil War veterans in Metuchen who had lost arms or legs.

Colonel Houghton particularly, used to arouse my boyish admiration. He had lost a thigh and always went around Metuchen and on his daily trips to New York, on crutches.

He always wore a military cloak and with his Napoleonic beard and stylish clothing attracted notice everywhere.

I remember once when he led a Republican parade in Metuchen that he rode his horse with a broad leather band across his good thigh to hold him in the saddle.

David W. Martin was another Civil War veteran whom I knew.

Dave was proud of the fact that he was a direct descendant of John Martin who came from Ipswich, England, to Metuchen in 1636.

Dave once told me of an incident which occurred while he and John Conger, of Metuchen, were marching through the South.

As they came to a certain plantation the inhabitants fled, leaving their dinner, which consisted of a boiled ham, on the table.

The ham immediately became the property of Martin and Conger.

Both Martin and Conger lost a left arm at the battle of the Wilderness in Virginia, May 5th, 1864.

Martin was an inveterate hunter.

Many a time I have seen him holding his light, muzzle-loading shot gun, barrel pointing upward, trying to start a rabbit from the bushes.

Martin fired his gun as one would a pistol. So far as I know he was about as good a shot as the average.

I knew a blacksmith in Metuchen who was a Civil War veteran.

He chewed tobacco incessantly.

He had a mouthful of long, yellow teeth.

One day about thirty years after the war, he told me that many of his teeth were loose, caused by eating hard-tack while in the army. I think some pension agent must have put him up to saying that for nowadays we are taught that chewing hard-tack is good for the teeth.