1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Hackensack

HACKENSACK, a town and the county-seat of Bergen county, New Jersey, U.S.A., on the Hackensack river, 13 m. N. of Jersey City. Pop. (1890), 6004; (1900), 9443, of whom 2009 were foreign-born and 515 were negroes; (1905) 11,098; (1910) 14,050. It is served by the New York, Susquehanna & Western, and the New Jersey & New York railways, both being controlled by the Erie Company; and indirectly by the West Shore (at Bogota, 1/2 m. S.E.). Electric lines connect Hackensack with Newark, Passaic and Paterson, and with New York ferries. The town extends from the low bank of the river W. to the top of a ridge, about 40 ft. higher up, from which there are good views to the S. and E. Hackensack is principally a residential town, though there are a number of manufacturing establishments in and near it. Silk and silk goods and wall-paper are the principal manufactures. In 1905 the value of the town’s factory product was $1,488,358, an increase of 90·3% since 1900. There are an historic mansion-house and an interesting old Dutch church, both erected during the 18th century; and a monument marks the grave of General Enoch Poor (1736–1780), an officer in the War of Independence, who was born at Andover, Mass., entered the Continental Army from New Hampshire, and took part in the campaign against Burgoyne, in the battle of Monmouth and in General Sullivan’s expedition against the Iroquois. Hackensack was settled by the Dutch about 1640, and was named after the Hackensack Indians, a division of the Unami Delawares, who lived in the valleys of the Hackensack and Passaic rivers, and whose best-known chief was Oritany, a friend of the whites. Hackensack is coextensive with the township of New Barbadoes, first incorporated with considerably larger territory in 1693.