Keyport was a steamboat town. The freighters moved vegetables
and timber from the farms of northern Monmouth County, including
Keyport’s own Kearny plantation, to New York markets. Boat
builder Benjamin Terry had his works there, building 50 steamers
from about 1850 to 1870. Once of those, a side-wheeler called
the River Queen, was used by Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S.
Grant during the Civil War. A painting of one of those meetings
still hangs in the White House. On the Keyport waterfront was a
cottage-like building, once a steamboat company machine shop.
When the industry died, the building found a few other uses,
then went vacant. The town claimed it off its tax rolls. In
1974, a group of Keyport locals decided all this history should
not be forgotten. They made a deal to lease the building for $1
a year and in 1976, the Keyport Steamboat Dock Museum opened.
For 36 years, the museum housed and collected 300 years of
history, including the original deed for the Kearny plantation,
dated 1714. Tom Gallo, a th