Crossword Dictionary

TRENTON 

Trenton, city and capital of New Jersey, U.S., seat (1837) of Mercer county, and industrial metropolis at the head of navigation on the Delaware River. It lies 28 miles (45 km) northeast of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and about 55 miles (89 km) southwest of New York City.  The original settlement (1679) by Mahlon Stacy and other Quakers was known as The Falls and later Stacy’s Mills. In 1714 William Trent, a Philadelphia merchant, bought 800 acres (324 hectares) from Stacy’s son and laid out the town, which was named in his honour in 1719. 

On Christmas night 1776, General George Washington led the American army of 2,400 soldiers across the ice-choked Delaware at McKonkey’s Ferry (now commemorated by Washington Crossing State Park), just north of Trenton, and the next morning attacked the 1,500 Hessian troops under Colonel Johann Rall who were quartered in the town. The surprise attack resulted in a victory for the Americans. On January 2, 1777, the British general Lord Cornwallis arrived in Trenton, but Washington withdrew to Princeton, New Jersey, where he defeated a British detachment under Colonel Charles Mawhood. Trenton served as the temporary capital of the United States in 1784 and again in 1799; the city became the capital of New Jersey in 1790.

Potteries have operated in Trenton since 1723, and in the late 19th century Walter Scott Lenox developed an international reputation with the fine china his firm made in Trenton. The railroad, trucking, rubber, plastics, metalworking, electrical, automobile parts, glass, and textile industries are now among the city’s foremost enterprises.