1880 Garret Rock May Day Riot

The 1880 Garret Rock May Day riot or 1880 Garret Mountain May Day riot was the “most serious” civil disorder that occurred in the New Jersey region during the 19th century.

For many years Paterson, New Jersey’s mostly Roman Catholic German immigrant community had gathered at Garret Rock, a large plateau at the summit of Garret Mountain in Passaic County, New Jersey near Paterson, in continuation of the ancient German spring festival of “Maying” or ascending a mountain to sing in the rising sun of the first Sunday of May. Fully 3,000 people were gathered upon the plateau by sunrise May Day, 1880. In progress to the festival, a group of the celebrants crossed upon the property of Mr. Dalzell, a local merchant, whereupon Dalzell’s son Robert ordered the inebriated, rowdy young trespassers off the property. A grappling then ensued between Robert and a locally popular 19-year-old newlywed, Joseph J. Van Houten, during which altercation the elder Dalzell shot Van Houten in the abdomen with a shotgun, killing him. On hearing the shotgun’s report, large portions of the celebrants then advanced down the mountain to find Van Houghton shot dead and, then, upon Dalzell and his son Robert, who retreated to the curtilage on the property, where they were arrested by a local constable, but the growing crowd, which was set upon the pair's lynching, thereafter, torched the barn. The elder Dalzell fired indiscriminately upon the crowd wounding a little boy and girl and, further, inciting the mob, whereupon the constable and his prisoners retreated from the blazing barn to the farm’s main house, which the crowd thereafter surrounded. After pelting the house for a time with rocks and bricks, the crowd, still intent upon smoking out the Dalzells and hanging them, also, set it aflame, and the constable and the Dalzells were obliged to again flee to a second house. Paterson’s mayor and sheriff arrived on the scene just as the main house was being put to the torch. By this time, some 10,000 enraged Paterson residents were milling about the countryside.

With the sheriff’s meager forces unable to themselves control the crowd, Paterson’s Mayor Graham and Sheriff Van Voorhies called upon the greatly revered Paterson Roman Catholic priest Father William N. McNulty, the moral authority of whose exhortations to the crowd were sufficient to temporarily quell or distract that mob, while sheriff’s deputies extricated the constable and the Dalzells from the rear of the second house and placed them in a transport coach. To prevent the passengers stoning, this brave Father McNulty, then mounted the roof of the coach. Some few of the mob did still chase and jump onto the sides of the coach as it swiftly fled the scene, but were clubbed off by the constables.

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