MUSSELMAN, Jefferson – the first occupant of Frenchtown's holding cell.
When the mayor and council of the new borough of Frenchtown went shopping for a town hall, one of the driving forces was a need for a “lockup.” In 1874 they bought the old Presbyterian chapel on Second Street and their dream came true.
The cell was ready on Monday, Nov. 8, 1875, when Jefferson Musselman, age about 38, was arrested for being drunk and disorderly.
In 1860 Musselman, a Pennsylvania native, had been a hostler residing at the Railroad House (now the Frenchtown Inn). A hostler is someone who takes care of horses, usually for people staying at an inn, so he probably was live-in help. He served in the Union infantry during the Civil War, then came back to Frenchtown, apparently still combative.
So he was locked into the borough's new cell. However, “he was much too strong for the place,” wrote the Hunterdon Independent, “and would have escaped from its dark confines if he had not been taken out and placed elsewhere. One hinge was broken from the door and the bars at the window were bent by him, and the glass inside the bars were shivered to atoms.”
But we haven't heard the last of him.
In November of 1876 Rutherford B. Hayes won the presidency by one electoral vote even though Samuel Tilden had won the popular vote by a quarter-million votes. Musselman didn't accept it. And he was a man of action.
On Dec. 14 at about 1 a.m. Musselman piled some barrels in the alley that what would later be South Harrison Street. They were just two or three feet from Henry H. Pittenger's store (now Mick Castagna's law office). He then went down the alley to David Worman's mill (now Euphoria salon), which apparently was keeping some late hours, and asked for matches, saying that Tilden had been elected and he was going to have a bonfire and inaugurate him. He was arrested and charged with trying to burn the store.
I know just how Musselman felt. The Electoral College, which doesn't even have a football team, is a bogus arrangement that was set up to please the slave-holding states. Lots of people lived there, but not very many who were allowed to vote. So the electoral system was set up, based on population, to empower the slave states. Musselman, I feel you.
Anyhow, Musselman was put on trial for arson. After the testimony had been given, the judge said the State had not made the case against Musselman and advised the jury to acquit him, and they did.
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Something tells me that more information on Musselman awaits me in the research library of the Hunterdon County Historical Society. That's where the Independent and the Frenchtown Star are preserved on microfilm.
From “Rick's Frenchtown Encyclopedia”
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