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Archiver > Dutch-Colonies > 1998-03 > 0891125640


From: EJS1949 <>
Subject: US Postal Service to issue stamp honoring ship built at Joralemon shipyard
Date: Sat, 28 Mar 1998 17:54:00 EST


To all the Joralemon Cousins, Schuylers and others interested in Second River
(Belleville,NJ
For several years a debate has been going on in town arguing that Robert
Fulton was not the first to operate a steam-powered boat, and that credit
should actually be given to the builders and operators of The POLACCA, which
sailed for three miles in the Passaic River in the year 1798.

The Belleville Times Headlines this week read:

A RESOLUTION OF THE LEGISLATURE
Memorializing the Congress of the United States and the United States Postal
Service to authorize a stamp honoring the sailing of the early steamboat
Polacca from Belleville, New Jersey, on October 27, 1798,
WHEREAS:
On October 27, 1798, the first steamboat powered by a steam engine made
in the United States of America was launched in the Passaic River from
Belleville, NJ,
and sailed successfully for a distance of three miles under its own power, and
WHEREAS:
this craft, the POLACCA, was built at the Joralemon Shipyard in
Belleville, and the steam engine was manufactured in the Soho (Belleville)
plant of Nicholas Roosevelt - a collateral ancestor of both Theodore
Roosevelt and Franklin Delano Roosevelt - and that this was the first
American-manufactured steam engine, patented in 1798 by order of President
John Adams,
WHEREAS:
The Soho plant in Belleville, NJ was created by a consortium of prominent
men, among them, Chancellor Robert Livingston of New York, General Philip
Schuyler of New York, John Stevens of Hoboken, Jacob and Louis Mark of New
York and Josiah Hornblower of Belleville, and
WHEREAS:
the sailing of the POLACCA was a significant step in the
industrialization of America, and Belleville, New Jersey, played a significant
role in that industrialization
WE HEREBY MEMORIALIZE THE CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES AND THE UNITED STATES
POSTAL SERVICE TO ISSUE A COMMERATIVE STAMP HONORING THE SAILING OF THE
POLACCA FROM BELLEVILLE ON OCTOBER 27, 1798.

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