RAHWAY  , a

city of Union county, New Jersey, U.S.A., in the north-eastern part of the state, on the Rahway river and about 20 m . S.W. of New York City . Pop . (189o) 7105; (1900) 7935, of whom 1345 were foreign-born; (1910 U.S. census) 9337 . Rahway is served by the main line of the Pennsylvania railroad, and is connected with neighbouring cities by electric lines . It has wide streets and attractive parks, and is, to some extent, a residential suburb of New York and other neighbouring cities . It has a public library (1864), with upwards of 17,000 volumes, and about r 2 m. distant is the New Jersey Reformatory (1903), to which prisoners between the ages of sixteen and thirty may be sentenced instead of to the State Prison . There are various manufactures . Rahway was first settled in 1720, and was named in honour of the Indian chief Rahwack, whose tribe owned the site and the surrounding territory; it was chartered as a city in 1858 . For many years Rahway was popularly known as Spanktown, and in January 1777, during the War of Independence, a skirmish, known as the battle of Spanktown, was fought here .