Gloucester City, a city of Camden county, New Jersey, U.S.A., on the Delaware river, opposite Philadelphia. Pop. (1890) 6564; (1900) 6840, 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 Clementon and parts of the present townships of Waterford, Union and Winslow.
Gloucester City
