Early European Settlers in Ringwood, New Jersey

The Forges and Manor of Ringwood have passed through many hands. The first European was Cornelius Board in 1742. His ownership only lasted two years but he settled in the valley, establishing the town of Boardville (now under Wanaque Reservoir). Little is known about the next owners, the Ogden family. They called the operation "The Ringwood Company," a name which it has retained until this century. According to Edward Ringwood Hewitt, their operation was not successful, but they owned the property for twenty years.

The following excerpts were taken from Ringwood Manor, Home of the Hewitts, by Edward Ringwood Hewitt, Trenton Printing Co., Inc., 1946.

Cornelius Board, 1740-1742

In 1730 Lord Stirling engaged Cornelius Board, a Welsh miner, to come to America to search for copper mines. The Schuylers were, at that time, profitably mining copper ores at Belleville, N. J. Board failed to find and additional copper mines and settled at Little Falls, where he built a grist mill. At that time the country had been somewhat settled by farmers, mostly of Dutch ancestry, and their farms stretched from Newark to Pompton. The hilly, forest country beyond Pompton was then all a wilderness, with no white inhabitants in it. Indians told Board of the existence of outcrops of iron ore in the hills and showed him the country. He found many large and rich ore outcrops extending over a wide range of country.

Cornelius Board secured fifty acres of land at the outlet of Stirling Lake from the East Jersey Proprietors, as this region was at that time considered part of New Jersey. This title was verified by an Act passed in 1772 to confirm the titles to settlers along the New Jersey boundary just established by the Royal Commission.

In a lawsuit to settle the rival claims of the Wawyanda and Cheesecook Patents, which was tried at Goshen, where both Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr appeared from Wawyanda, James Board, the son of Cornelius Board, testified that his father had built a bloomery and forge at Stirling Lake in 1736, which he later sold to his partner, Ward, and removed to Ringwood in 1740. This seems to establish the date of the beginning of the Ringwood Iron Works definitely as 1740.

Cornelius Board took up the land of the Ringwood valley, and also along the Long Pond River, later building his own house at Boardville, where the Long Pond River and the Ringwood River join. This land later became my own farm. Board built an iron forge at Ringwood in 1740. This was located below the dam of the mill pond beyond the gate entering the Manor House Grounds. Even today, iron cinders and slag can be found in the ground below the dam. I have often snagged and cut my fishing line on the sharp edges of the old cinder lumps in the bottom of the stream below the dam.

Ogden Family (1742-1762)

The Ogden family of Newark bought the forge from Cornelius Board about 1742, and built an iron furnace at Ringwood, which was located where the bank above the old dairy is cut by the present waterfall. The Ogdens called this enterprise "The Ringwood Company". The Ogdens were evidentially not particularly successful in making money at Ringwood. This is easily understood, because it required a large outlay of capital to operate in such a remote district. They finally offered the business for sale by public advertisement in 1762..