ISAAC EDGE.— The influence of the French revolution was strongly felt in England, and many had imbibed the most radical notions of liberty and equality. Isaac Edge, a resident of Derbyshire, where he was born, Feb. 26, 1777, was one of the most pronounced of liberty-loving Englishmen. Finding that his ideas were not congenial to his neighbors or the Tory government, then engaged in a desperate struggle with France, Mr. Edge, with his wife, formerly Miss Frances Ogden, and infant son, came to the United States in 1801. His business was that of miller, in which he engaged shortly after his arrival in South Brooklyn. In the year 1806 he came to reside permanently in Jersey City, then known as Paulus Hook. At that time there were but three houses in what is now old Jersey City,— the tavern kept by Maj. Hunt, near the ferry at the foot of Grand Street, or terminus of the Newark turnpike; the house of Richard Lyon, near the corner of York and Greene Streets, and the barracks. Mr. Edge started a bakery, and soon did a large business. In those days life in Paulus Hook was simple and quiet. The river washed the sand-hill on the top of which the old fort had been built in the Revolution, and the meadow which lay between it and Ahasimus was crossed by but one road (known as the Causeway) now Newark Avenue. Mr. Edge was naturalized Jan. 26, 1810. He built, near the corner of York and Greene Streets, a residence for himself, and lived in it till it was destroyed by fire, in 1811; he rebuilt it, and the building is now standing. He served as a private soldier during the last war with England, and although not continuously away with the army, at various times he performed active duty in the neighborhood of New York.

Always busy and energetic, he received from the Associates a grant of the block of ground where the Pennsylvania Railroad depot is now built, and commenced the erection of a large wind-mill about one hundred feet east of the present line of Greene Street, which he completed about the year 1815. Mr. Edge imported the mill-stones and machinery, and for years the mill maintained its reputation for the superior quality of its flour and meal. The great September gale in 1821 almost destroyed the mill and seriously damaged the bulkheads, so that Mr. Edge was almost ruined financially, but he restored and improved the mill with iron fans, and it worked till 1839. To make place for the railroad track, it was removed to Southhold, L.I., where it remained until within a few years. A fire finished the work of the mill, and left its reputation to tradition. For years Edge's mill served as a landmark for those approaching New York by the river or from the sea, and it is yet remembered as a distinguishing feature of the landscape at that time by many now living, who would hardly feel complimented if classed among the oldest inhabitants. Mr. Edge lost his wife, formerly Frances Ogden, to whom he was married in Chesterfield, England, and by whom he had eight children, six living at her death. She died in 1839 at the age of sixty-two years. After the death of his wife Mr. Edge was not engaged in active business. He was a great reader and independent thinker, and having an extraordinary memory as a controversialist, he was held in high respect among his neighbors and friends.

Jersey City had grown from a hamlet with a few scattered houses to a large, flourishing city. The railcar had supplanted the stagecoach, and the steamer the easy-going sailing-vessel. It took Mr. Edge thirteen weeks to cross the ocean, a journey he lived to see a Cunarder perform to Jersey City in eleven days.

For years Mr. Edge passed a quiet, retired life surrounded by his family. His sons Isaac and Joseph only were married, and each had brought up a large family; and his daughter Alice had married James Flemming; so, surrounded by his children and grandchildren, Mr. Edge passed the closing years of his life, and on the 7th day of July, 1851, he died at Jersey City, after a continuous residence there of nearly fifty years. He left surviving him his sons Isaac, Benjamin, Washington and Joseph, and his daughters Alice Flemming and Elizabeth Edge, all of whom are now dead except Miss Elizabeth Edge, who is still living in Jersey City a quiet life illumined by unobtrusive charities.

Previous to 1839 the manufacturing industries seem to have been limited to two or three individuals, of whom Isaac Edge, proprietor of the windmill, was one, and Peter Sandford another. At that time Jersey City had next to no transportation facilities, and nothing to induce capitalists to invest in the manufacture of anything more than for home consumption. All the products of Edge's mill were consumed by the few denizens of the "Hoeck," and Sandford's bridge, and dock business, that had been established ten years earlier (1829), was not known outside of old Bergen County. But upon the advent of the New Jersey Railroad and the Morris and Essex Canal new life was given to the "sand-hills" of the Hoeck yet it was not until 1840 to 1848 that manufacturing enterprises, beyond the old pioneers, seem to have taken root in the sandy and marshy grounds of what is now the second city of the State, both as to population and industries.

One after another the railroads, the great populating agencies of the country, began to make the "Hoeck" their terminus; and in 1848 we find that both population and manufacturing industries had increased more than five hundred per cent. since 1829, the date at which Sandford established his works. At present there are a large number of manufacturing establishments of all grades of the various branches of industries, of which we herewith give a few of the leading ones.