Biographies of MIddlesex County, NJ)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

ADRAIN, GARNETT BOWDITCH

(1815 -- 1878)

Contributed by Anna Newell

ADRAIN, Garnett Bowditch, a Representative from New Jersey; born in New York City December 15, 1815; moved with his parents to New Brunswick, N.J.; attended the public schools; was graduated from Rutgers College, New Brunswick, in 1833; studied law in the office of his brother; was licensed as an attorney in 1836 and as a counselor in 1839; commenced the practice of law in New Brunswick, N.J.; elected as a Democrat to the Thirty-fifth Congress and as an Anti-Lecompton Democrat to the Thirty-sixth Congress (March 4, 1857-March 3, 1861); chairman, Committee on Engraving (Thirty-fifth and Thirty-sixth Congresses); was not a candidate for reelection in 1860; resumed the practice of his profession; died in New Brunswick, Middlesex County, N.J., August 17, 1878; interment in Van Liew Cemetery.

Source: Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1771-Present

THE REV. GANO'S EXTRAORDINARY PASS : 1755
By REBECCA SMITH LEE (NGSQ, December 1961, Vol. 49, #4)

When the Reverend John Gano (1727-1804) in his old age set down his Memoirs, he wished that he had spent his life more faithfully in the services of. . . God, and society both civil and sacred. He need have had no regrets.

As a youth he joined the Baptist congregation in his home community of Hopewell, New Jersey, and within a decade made three long evangelizing journeys into Virginia and the Carolinas. He then served as pastor of the First Baptist Church of New York City for 36 years, and assisted in the founding of Rhode Island College, later Brown University.

On 1 January 1776, he enlisted as Chaplain of the 19th Continental In-fantry following the lead of his second son Daniel, who at eighteen was already a lieutenant in the 1st New York Regiment. Chaplain Gano was under fire with his brigade at White Plains and accompanied it on the expedition under General Sullivan against the Northern Indians. He was in his fifty-fourth year when he left the army in 1780.

The Reverend Gano was not ready, however, to settle down in New York City to enjoy his prestige as a member of the Society of the Cincinnati and a Trustee of King s College. Friends in frontier Kentucky urged upon him the necessity of an old experienced minister to take care of a church there, and in 1787 he took his own large family and a number of others down the Ohio on flatboats to settle in the new country. He preached the Gospel diligently to little congregations in Lexington and Frankfort al-most to the end of his life, sometimes speaking as he lay supported in bed.

His Memoirs, completed and published by one of his sons in 1806, relate his youthful missionary journeys in considerable detail and include a quaint souvenir of his travels which he preserved carefully for the rest of his days. It is a traveler s pass that he carried in his wallet on his first independent preaching mission in 1755. He journeyed south that year to assist a little Baptist congregation at Opocken (Opequon) in Berkeley County, Virginia (now West Virginia), at the northern approach to the Shenandoah Valley. There, as he tells us, he received a pressing request from one Mr. Numan, left with some acquaintance in Opocken, urging the visiting minister to continue his mission on up the Valley and into Carolina to aid the Jersey Settlement of brethren on the Tar River. The request pointed out that if he took the road above the mountain he would pass near the Newman homestead, and invited him to stop over for a season of preaching there. Samuel Newman and his wife Martha, who had settled about a decade earlier in the vicinity of the North Fork of the Shenandoah, in what is now Rockingham County, Virginia, were the first Baptists to come to that region. He was a man of means and culture, and an earnest Christian.

When Gano finally reached the Newman house, after being delayed by "a great freshet" in the "first fork of the Shenandoah,: his host sent word around the countryside for people to come and hear the Lord's messenger from New Jersey. The preaching went on, with intermissions, for several days, and "the congregations continued to increase."

Samuel was mightily impressed by the gifts of the young missionary and also much concerned that he was proceeding on a long and dangerous journey without a proper letter of identification and introduction. Such apprehensions were well founded. Not only were the unorthodox sects sometimes treated harshly by the authorities in Virginia but the French War was in progress, and there was real danger that Gano might be taken for a French spy because of his name.

To forestall, if possible, any such hardships, Mr. Newman wrote out a pass for his new friend and, being of a poetic turn, made it elaborate enough to be worthy of "sweet Gano." Then, while he had his pen in hand, he indited also a hymn in Gano's honor, set to easy 8-8 meter, and presented a copy to his departing guest. The Reverend John esteemed it so highly that on his deathbed half a century later he requested that it be sung at his funeral, which was accordingly done by his afflicted widow and a devoted daughter.

Mr. Newman's elegant pass seems worth rescuing from the Appendix of Gano's now rare autobiography chiefly for the light it sheds on mid-eighteenth century travel in America. Its literary merits are slight, but it does enjoy the distinction of being on of the few such documents ever composed in rhyming couplets.

The Following Pass Was Composed by Mr. Newman, on Mr. Gano, when on a journey to Carolina.