GLOUCESTER

See also:

• CITY (through Fr. cite, from Lat. civitas)

CITY  , a city of Camden county, New Jersey, U.S.A., on the Delaware river, opposite Philadelphia . Pop . (1890) 6564; (1900) 684o, of whom 1094 were foreign-born; (1905) 8055; (1910) 9462 . The city is served by the West Jersey & Seashore and the Atlantic City railways, and by ferry to Philadelphia, of which it is a residential suburb . Among its manufactures are incandescent gas-burners, rugs, cotton yarns, boats and drills . The municipality owns and operates the water works . It was near the site of Gloucester City that the Dutch in 1623 planted the short-lived colony of Fort Nassau, the first European settlement on the Delaware river, but it was not until after the arrival of English Quakers on the Delaware, in 1677, that a permanent settlement, at first called Axwamus, was established on the site of the present city . This was surveyed and laid out as a town in 1689 . During the War of Independence the place was frequently occupied by troops, and a number of skirmishes were fought in its vicinity . The most noted of these was a successful attack upon a detachment of Hessians on the 25th of November 1777 by American troops under the command of General Lafayette . In 1868 Gloucester City was chartered as a city . In Camden county there is a township named GLOUCESTER (pop. in 1905, 2300), incorporated in 1798, and originally including the present township of Clemeriton and parts of the present townships of Waterford, Union and Winslow .