“Redemption is possible, and it is a sign of a civilized society” - Greg Boyle
This is the 10th episode in an exploration of the life of Commodore Robert F. Stockton, the founder of Sea Girt. This one discusses the arc of his older brother Richard, while Robert finds a wife.
Robert Field Stockton was ordered to the unglamorous job of charting waters near southern ports for the Navy. The tedious sounding and recording depths seemed like a punishment for his liberal interpretation of orders, and for creating diplomatic entanglements.
While in port in Charleston, SC he met his life partner, Harriet Maria Potter, the only daughter of James Potter. Potter was a plantation owner and merchant who had earned a fortune in Georgia rice.
Potter and his father acquired land from planter after planter, all along the Savannah River, buying up mortgages and foreclosures, collecting thousands of acres. His Colerain Rice works processed the rice and he ran a very efficient operation. Stockton had found a new mentor, and the union of the two powerful families would be his new focus. In loving Maria, he had to overcome his new father-in-law's ownership of over 500 slaves. He was still dedicated to the American Colonialization Society’s cause. Liberia survived several early crises and other states formed societies. The Duke, still head of the NJ Bar, pledged money to start a New Jersey Colonization Society with Robert as President. Robert F. Stockton would maintain the position that he did not want the slave trade, but accepted each state’s right to decide the slavery issue.
When Stockton married his Maria, James Potter built him a fine house across the street from Morven in Princeton. If he could not inherit the family estate, he would have a great view of it, and a place of his own. Morven was to go to his older brother.
With first Honors in his class at Princeton, Richard IV was a top lawyer. Strong-tempered, he argued badly with his father, and left home, resolving not to return to Morven until his father was dead and he could come into his inheritance, or he earned his fortune some other way.
Richard flourished outside of the shadow of The Duke. He did well, settling in the new state of Mississippi, far from Morven, practicing law and easily besting his southern-trained competition. He earned a state supreme court judgeship and left his practice to serve as State Attorney General. As a judge, he presided over a case where five free black boys were kidnapped off Philadelphia’s streets and sold into slavery. He emphatically ruled that they needed to be returned to Philadelphia. Richard Bell wrote their story in Stolen: Five Free Boys Stolen Into Slavery and Their Incredible Journey Home.
As he matured, Richard made some peace with his father writing home that he was on circuit, but also bragging about his superiority. His home base was Natchez, a gentile town with a literal underbelly. Up on the hilltop, plantation owners owned grand homes and raced horses. Natchez Under-the-Hill was a boat landing town considered in 1820s as “The most licentious spot on the Mississippi River”, where “the only thing cheaper than the body of a woman was the body of a man”. - Natchez: Friends of the River
His practice of being a gambler and an arguer would get him in hot water.
American Tact Society lecture on Gambling 1820
Therapeutic baths have been a treatment since at least Hippocrates. SPA is an acronym: ‘Salus per Aquam’, meaning ‘health from water’, and the Roman army spread the practice throughout Europe. The water cure was in a revival in Europe. In America, Gideon Putnam developed Saratoga Springs in upstate New York.
He first built a three-story tavern in 1802 near Congress Spring and soon hotels were being erected for people to “take the cure”. In the next few years, Hot Springs Arkansas, Warm Springs NC, and Columbia Springs Mississippi all developed around the same theme of healthy rejuvenation.
For Richard Stockton IV, this last retreat would prove anything but healthful. He went to relax at a mineral springs resort, Stovall's Springs. This ad appeared in the local paper just before he visited in the summer of 1826:
“COLUMBIA SPRINGS – The public is again respectfully invited to turn its attention to these celebrated Springs, the waters of which have been found, by experience, to be efficacious in the preservation of health, and also a powerful auxiliary for the restoration of that invaluable blessing, to convalescents from acute diseases. The virtue of these waters, the salubrity of the atmosphere, and the very extensive and improved style of the accommodations since last year, will, it is confidently believed, ensure to the visitants a more desirable retreat than is to be found in this section of the United States. The mineral qualities of these waters have been tested by scientific gentlemen, and although the exact proportion of the ingredients was not accurately established, enough was ascertained to prove them highly medicinal. The predominant quality of the water is diuretic; the tonic and aperients qualities are considerable; in short, these waters promote the different secretions, by imparting tone and vigor to the system.”
“The Columbia Springs are situated near the bank of Pearl River, about two miles from the town of Columbia, and sixty-five miles from Covington, surrounded by a country remarkable for its health and the salubrity of its atmosphere. Large and commodious buildings, both for individuals and families, in addition to those of last year, are in a state of forwardness. Warm and cold baths, shower baths, &c are in readiness: Preparations are also making for the different species of fashionable amusements, practiced at such places; while a place of retirement is reserved for persons of serious and contemplative habits. The river and creeks, in the immediate vicinity, abound with fish of various descriptions, and the forests with game. The surrounding country is level and agreeable, and the roads are generally good.”
Charles Stovall had run the premier resort in the early 1800s even convincing the state capital to move to Columbia Springs for a time in 1821, before Jackson was created by the Legislature.
“Warm and cold baths, shower bath are in readiness. Visitors enjoyed more than bathing, they also hunted, fished, played billiards and raced horses. Rates of Boarding- By the month, $20.00; by the week, $6.00; per day $1.00; horse per month, $15.00. An ample supply of the best of wines and spirits the New Orleans market affords, well kept for the accommodation of visitants”.
While vacationing at Columbia Springs, at the Stovall Springs Hotel, Richard was part of two heated arguments that occurred at the same time.
The first argument was between two men from Mississippi, Allison Ross (a planter) and Mr. Reddings. Stockton then argued with John Payson, a merchant who in some reports was described as a Bostonian lawyer. The suspicion was that gambling caused both fights.
The pairs agreed to duel. Stockton served as “surgeon” in the Ross/Reddings fight which was with muskets. Joseph Shewell Gibbs, a lawyer was second for Reddings and took up the weapon for him.
Reported in the newspaper Genius of Liberty in early October:
“A duel took place on Tuesday evening last, at four o’clock, between Col. Jos. S. Gibbs, of this town, and Mr. Allison Ross, of Jefferson county. They fought with muskets, loaded with fifteen buckshot, at thirty paces distance.
Col. Gibbs was wounded in the left hip, and in two places between his hip and knee, but met with no injury to the bone. Mr. Ross received a buckshot in the left breast, a little below the nipple. He did not fall, but his wound is considered the most dangerous. The fires were exchanged within two seconds of each other. Mr. R.’s being the first, Mr, G, shot as he was fading. They fought on the Louisiana bank of the Mississippi, opposite the Grand Gulf.”
Both men eventually died of their injuries.
Despite witnessing the earlier duel, Stockton did not settle his differences with Payson and they faced off in New Orléans a few months later in February 1827.
A letter from cousin John Pintard to cousin Samuel Bayard would indicate that Stockton was in the wrong.
“In error as he was, it is a consolation that he did not thirst for the blood of his antagonist. His catastrophe will be a sore affliction to his mother...”
Shot dead, (conflicting reports had him shot in the head or the heart), Richard was found with a letter in his pocket indicating he would not fire on his opponent, because his own conduct had been “rash and wrong from the beginning". He would find his redemption in the afterlife.
His father fell ill within the year and died at Morven on March 7, 1828.
The resort never recovered from the brutish behavior and the three killings, and the hotel shuttered its doors and Stovall was dead by 1830.
Robert Field Stockton, the second son, was consoled by the fact he was now both the first son and the heir to Morven. He brought his new in-laws to Princeton and started his family. He and Maria would have ten children together.
Drawn largely from ‘Sea Girt: The last Town at the Jersey Shore’ - Vincent Dicks