A Walking Tour of Trenton, New Jersey
The first settlement which would become Trenton was established by Quakers in 1679, in the region
then called the Falls of the Delaware, led by Mahlon Stacy from Handsworth, Sheffield in England.
Quakers were being persecuted in England at this time and North America provided the perfect
opportunity to exercise their religious freedom.
By 1719, the town adopted the name “Trent-towne”, after William Trent, one of its leading landholders
who purchased much of the surrounding land from Stacy’s family. This name later was shortened to
“Trenton”.
During the American Revolution, the city was the site of George Washingtons first military victory.
On December 26, 1776, Washington and his army, after crossing the icy Delaware River to Trenton,
defeated the Hessian troops garrisoned there. The stunning sight of prisoners being paraded out of
town not only gained the Americans highly elusive respect and rejuvenated morale but proved that
Washington was the man who could succesfully lead this revolt. After the war, Trenton was briefly the
national capital of the United States in November and December of 1784. The city was considered as a
permanent capital for the new country, but the southern states favored a location south of the Mason-
Dixon Line.
Trenton was a major manufacturing center in the late 1800s and early 1900s; one relic of that era is
the slogan “Trenton Makes, the World Takes” displayed on the Lower Free Bridge just north of the
Trenton-Morrisville Toll Bridge (the “Trenton Makes Bridge”). The city adopted the slogan in the
1920s to represent Trenton’s then-leading role as a major manufacturing center for steel, rubber, wire,
rope, linoleum and ceramics.
Our walking tour will begin outside the second oldest state house in continuous use in the United
States...
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