EARLY HISTORY OF CAPE MAY COUNTY. 177 



those days, made the demand and pay for casks certain. He died 

 of a pleurisie in 1696. His remains -were interred at the place 

 called Cape May Town, was situated next above now New England 

 Town Creek, and contained about thirteen houses; but, on the 

 failure of the whale fishery in Delaware Bay, it dwindled into com- 

 mon farms, and the grave-yard is on the plantation now owned by 

 Ebenezer Newton. At the first settlement of the county, the chief 

 whaling was in Delaware Bay, and that occasioned the town to be 

 built there ; but there has not been one house in that town since 

 my remembrance. In 1734 I saw the graves; Samuel Eldredge 

 showed them to me. They were then about fifty rods from the 

 Bay, and the sand was blown to them. The town was between 

 them and the water. There were then some signs of the ruin of 

 the houses. I never saw any East India tea till 1735. It was the 

 Presbyterian parsons, the followers of Whitefield, that brought it into 

 use at Cape May, about the year 1744-5-6; and now it im- 

 poverisheth the country." 



" Aaron Learning (the first), of the County of Cape May, departed 

 this life at Philadelphia, of a pleurisie, on the 20th June, 1746, 

 about five o'clock in the afternoon. He was born at Sag, near East- 

 hampton, on Long Island, Oct. 12th, 1687, being the son of Chris- 

 topher Leamyeng (as he spelt his name), an Englishman, and Hester 

 his wife, whose maiden name was Burnet, and was born in New 

 England. Christopher Leamyeng owned a lot at Easthampton, but 

 he came to Cape May, being a cooper, and stayed several years and 

 worked at his trade; and about 1695-6 he died at Cape May, and 

 his land fell to Thomas Leamyeng, his eldest son ; the rest was left 

 poor." 



Aaron Learning was bound to Collins, a shoemaker in Connecticut, 

 but did not serve his time out, and came into the Jerseys at about 

 sixteen years of age, very poor, helpless, and, friendless; embraced 

 the Quaker religion, lived a time at Salem, came to Cape May while 

 yet a boy (in 1703), settled at Goshen, raised cattle, bought a 

 12 



