For Halloween, some of our favorite haunts

It's Halloween, and New Jersey-based websites are having a field day with posts citing the state's top scary and haunted places. If you're into old graveyards or things that go bump in the night, there are plenty of places where you can satisfy your itch to get a good fright.

At Hidden New Jersey, we generally don't cover the mysterious, spooky and altogether ooky places that are well known to many explorers, but the spirit of the day got me thinking. Of all the places we've been, which ones do I wish were haunted? Or perhaps more accurately, which ones have stories so interesting I'd like the chance to commune with the people who once lived or worked there?

Here are a few I'd like to revisit, this time with a Ouija board or trusty medium:

Site of the explosion

The site of the Kingsland explosion: It was 1917. The United States was on the brink of entering World War I, and Lyndhurst's Canadian Car and Foundry plant was manufacturing munitions for American allies. Saboteurs were afoot, and Tessie McNamara's quick actions were the factor between life and death for her 1700 coworkers as explosions tore the factory apart. Everyone got out safely, but the saboteurs were reportedly never found. Did they go up with the blast?

The seafaring community of Mauricetown: This now-quiet town once was home to what was probably the largest number of sea captains per square acre. I'd love to hear what one of those captains saw on his many journeys to foreign lands, long before airplanes made the world much smaller. What exotic places did he see? What did he think of the native people he met?

Along the Morris Canal

The Morris Canal: whether it's the excavated remains of an ingenious inclined plane, landlocked port towns in Warren County or the canal bed that's been repurposed as the Newark City Subway, this long-dormant technological marvel has tons of stories to tell. A cooperative spirit, say of a mule tender or barge captain, might have a few words to spout about the canal's now derelict state.

The Delaware Bay lighthouses: More than one old lighthouse has a tragic story of a lonely, suicidal keeper living a solitary life miles from shore. To my knowledge, none of the Delaware Bay lights in New Jersey waters have such a tale to tell, but I'd still like to chat with one of the early keepers at Ship John Shoal, Miah Maull or Cross Ledge Light.

Gloucester City's Immigration Station

The Gloucester City Immigration Station: It was first Philadelphia's Ellis Island, then part of a Coast Guard base, then abandoned and now an office building. What were the hopes, dreams and fears of those who were detained here? Where did they ultimately end up?

Earl R. Erdner's warehouses in Woodstown: Simple, sage wisdom is right there on the outside walls, ripe for the reading. I'd love to know if the long-dead Mr. Erdner has any more advice for us from the great beyond.

Alexander Hamilton's room at Liberty Hall: While still a young student, America's first Treasury Secretary was the guest of Governor William Livingston's family in what's now Union Township. He already held ambitions for greater things and was building friendships that would serve him well throughout his career. What was going on in his teenaged mind?

Whatever you end up doing to commemorate All Hallows Eve, have fun! And if you happen to run into the Jersey Devil, give him our regards.

Something fishy: Shad, gambling and the Duke of Gloucester

Researching New Jersey history, I'm often fascinated to find the stories of individuals who, while massively influential in their time, have faded back into obscurity. Maybe they're still talked of regionally, their stories well known in local history, but no longer with the same degree of reverence or scorn as in their day.

One I discovered recently is said to have created what the New York Times of his time described as "New Jersey's darkest disgrace, the most cancerous growth on all her territory. Here every vice is licensed and all that is worst in man or woman is catered to by a horde of men who have lost all that is born in them of decency and of honor and chastity, of all the attributes that make man higher than the beast."

Who was this man, once so reviled but now anonymous? Billy Thompson, or, to his 19th century contemporaries, the Duke of Gloucester. Long time readers might remember him as the politically connected entrepreneur who sold his Gloucester City mansion and property to the U.S. Government for a new Philadelphia immigration station.

Billy Thompson, from a 1893 profile
in the New York Times.

Thompson immigrated to New York at the age of 13 during the depths of the Irish Famine, seeking to forge his own version of the American dream. After a short stint in Boston, he returned to New York and then moved southwest to Philadelphia. A job in the billiards room of the city's Continental Hotel soon evolved into restaurant management and bartending, allowing him to build hospitality and people skills that would serve him well throughout his life. Apparently, it's also where he gained a sharp political sense from the well-connected men who frequented the bars.

Across the Delaware, Gloucester City was already a well-known resort, judged in some eyes as a poor man's Atlantic City. Envisioning the location's greater potential, Thompson leased the Buena Vista Hotel in 1870, developing it into one of the city's most popular inns among politicians and other celebrities. When the owners refused to renew his lease two years later, he simply bought an adjacent plot of land and built his own hotel.

One could say that Thompson's success was fishy from the start. The Delaware being an abundant fishery, the Buena Vista was well known for its planked shad dinners. Again seeing an opportunity, Thompson leased the city's shad farms and bought up about three and a half miles of the coastline along the river. And when the Philadelphia ferry companies refused to extend their hours to accommodate the growing numbers of customers frequenting the Thompson Hotel and restaurant, the entrepreneur bought his own ferries. His 24 hour service proved so popular that it the older company went bankrupt, enabling Thompson to buy controlling interest in it, too. To address the visitors coming by land, he also built his own railroad. Gloucester City was soon filled with pool halls, drinking establishments and "bawdy" houses, sounding a bit like a 19th century Las Vegas.

Not surprisingly, Thompson's growing wealth and success, combined with shrewd people skills, translated to political might. Serving for many years as a city councilman and county freeholder, the Duke of Gloucester became was the most powerful Democrat in New Jersey. Though he was elected to only two terms in the state assembly, he was said to control the legislature from his Gloucester City base.

The most blatant of Thompson's self-serving legislative ventures was the legalization of open gambling, first and foremost to benefit a racetrack on his Gloucester City property. In a classic New Jersey political coincidence, the speaker of the assembly was to be the starter at the track, which likely would have helped Thompson override the governor's veto had most of the Trenton legislators not already been in the Duke's pocket.

By 1890, with the law bent to his will, Thompson used his track to rake in money in just about every way possible. People rode his trains and ferries to Gloucester to stay in his hotel, many of them Philadelphians who flocked across the river to escape their city's restrictive Sunday blue laws. They ate at his restaurant and placed wagers at his track with bookies who paid him sizable daily tributes to take bets. He created a massive local economy in which he was the largest beneficiary by far, and his customers could see it in the form of "Thompson's Castle," the riverfront mansion he built for himself, his wife and 10 children.

The impact of his success didn't go unnoticed, particularly by the strong temperance forces monitoring the excesses of vice and sin on riverbanks. In its scathing assessment of Thompson's excesses, the Times quoted a man who'd been found guilty of stealing from his employer to finance his visits to Gloucester City: "The money for the stolen goods, all I could earn and $60,000 of my wife's money have all gone to pay for Billy Thompson's castle on the Delaware!" Within five years, sentiment changed in Trenton and gambling was, once again, outlawed in New Jersey.

Undeterred, Thompson announced a new, more wholesome attraction for pleasure seekers. He purchased a 900 acre tract of land on Fancy Hill in present day Westville, just down river from Gloucester City, and promised to build a temperance park where churches and religious societies could enjoy all manners of outdoor activities. As in his previous ventures, he arranged for boats to bring Philadelphians to the park and built a rail line from Camden.

Washington Park, as it was called, held just about every kind of wholesome amusement available at the time. In addition to one of the largest Ferris wheels in the country, several carousels and a four-story tall slide/flume ride were there to ride, and several ball fields were available for athletes to play on. Picnic groves and restaurants satisfied hungry park-goers, and at night, fireworks and a light show entertained those who hadn't yet had enough. Tens of thousands of children flocked to the park on designated days when they could enter at no charge.

The park burned to the ground in a 1909 fire, but Thompson rebuilt it, no doubt feeling that he'd finally having found a socially acceptable way to get people to part with their money. By then, though, he'd lost a good bit of his political power along with his wealth and, to some degree, his health. Well into his 70s, he died in Belfast, Ireland, on a 1911 trip back to his birthplace. Escorted to his final resting place by what's said to be one of the city's longest funeral processions ever, Thompson was buried in Gloucester City's Old St. Mary Cemetery.

Finding Billy Thompson today is a bit of a challenge for researchers. Local historians know his name and story -- a good part of Gloucester City's history centers on his works -- but locating information about him anywhere else takes time and patience. For all of his influence, I was surprised to see he didn't even warrant an entry in the Encyclopedia of New Jersey. It all gets you thinking: the names and machinations of all of our influential contemporaries, so powerful now, could and probably will eventually be lost to time, only to be unearthed by curious New Jerseyans of the future.

Ashes to ashes...  We all end up the same, high and mighty or obscure and humble.

Audubon - the man and the town

Many brief biographies fail to mention it, but one of America's earliest and most famous naturalists spent a fair amount of time in New Jersey. As we've knocked around some of the southern counties, I've been pleased to see John James Audubon's name pop up from time to time, along with descriptions of his findings and the illustrations he painted based on the specimens he collected.

John James Audubon,
perhaps recalling his days in New Jersey

If his diary is any indication, he was a bit of a fan of the state, himself. "Dawn in New Jersey in June is worth a better description than I can furnish," he wrote. "Except for the Florida Keys, Great Egg Harbor probably affords the naturalist as varied a field as any part of our Atlantic seaboard." His explorations influenced his drawings of species of owls, warblers, flycatchers, finches and thrushes that have been enjoyed by generations of bird lovers in his Birds of America.

What I didn't realize, though, was that he lived on Cooper Street in Camden for a few years, between 1829 and 1832. Besides making the cross-state trip to Atlantic County, he found his own birding patch about six miles from home, along a stream in what was then Haddon Township. For some reason, short biographies of him don't mention this, despite the fact that he grew up at his father's estate across the river in Philadelphia.

Nearly 100 years later, the community around Audubon's Camden County stream hangout separated from Haddon Township and formed its own government, taking the name of the man who explored its woods and chronicled its wildlife. The great naturalist probably wouldn't recognize his namesake town or what's now known as Haddon Lake as his old stomping grounds, but no doubt John James Audubon would be touched by the honor.

Eloping? Give Gloucester City a try.

Add another one to the roster of people coming to New Jersey to do things that society - or their families - frowned on.

You'll remember that Alexander Hamilton and his son both crossed the Hudson to defend their respective honor due to New York's strict enforcement of 19th century dueling laws. Both ultimately met their demise at Weehawken by their opponents' fire.

Now comes the news that another early American notable crossed the river, this time the Delaware, to avoid public disapproval. This instance, however, was for a much happier occasion.

On November 4, 1773, a 21 year old upholsterer's apprentice named Elizabeth Griscom took the ferry from Philadelphia to Gloucester City with a fellow trainee, John Ross. Hugg's Tavern was their destination, and they were crossing the Delaware to marry, defying the wishes of Elizabeth's parents. Her family were strict Quakers and strongly disapproved of John because he was Anglican, but it's said that young Betsy had a mind of her own and a liveliness that wouldn't be doused by the opinions of others.

It makes sense, in a way, that the couple would have traveled to New Jersey to get married. Though Betsy herself was born in Philadelphia, she had roots east of the Delaware, as her great grandfather emigrated to West Jersey from England in the 1680s. In any case, they returned to Philadelphia after the ceremony, and Betsy may have been expelled from the Quakers as a result of her elopement. The Rosses seem to have managed, however; they started their own upholstering business along with their new life together.

Unfortunately the marriage was to be a short one. In the war for independence, John joined the local militia and died in a gunpowder explosion in 1776. Betsy carried on her own work for the patriot cause, providing sewing services for the Continental Army.

Of course, the legend goes that Betsy's most notable contribution to the cause for independence was the creation of the American flag. Allegedly, George Washington himself asked her to sew the Stars and Stripes, though Bordentown's own Francis Hopkinson is credited by others for having determined the design. The flag seems to have been born of many parents, evolving over the years in which the Revolution took place.

In any case, all that remains of Hugg's Tavern is a small stone monument made from remnants of the old building. It was torn down in the late 1920s to make room for a playground and pool within what's now Proprietor's Park.

A surprise meeting in Gloucester City

I visited the Gloucester City waterfront specifically to check out the old immigration station, but as it turned out, the adjacent park had its own surprises, including a stone marker sectioned off with a substantial metal chain.

Was someone notable buried here? Had this been the site of a historic landing, or of someone's death? I checked out the plaque to find the following:

Since April 1688

The Proprietors of the Gloucester Tenth

have met annually on this spot

to elect members to represent them

in the Council of 

the General Proprietors of 

the Western Division of New Jersey

I'd stumbled upon the most treasured of all Hidden New Jersey treasures: a footnote to a historical footnote.

Who are these Proprietors and what responsibility do they have within West Jersey? The answer is rooted in the late 1600s, when much if not all of the land of the Jersey colonies (East and West) was granted to English and Scottish individuals who likely never set foot in the new world. Known as proprietors, they hired local representatives to ensure their land here was managed appropriately. Thus, the General Board of Proprietors of the Western Division of New Jersey was created in 1688, consisting of representatives of the proprietors themselves. It's arguably the oldest continuously operating corporation in the country, having taken the crown by the four-years-older East Jersey Board of Proprietors when that group disbanded in 1998. Each Board met in their respective Surveyor General’s Office (West in Burlington City, East in Perth Amboy) to discuss landholding matters and determine ownership of any land created within their jurisdictions (by buildup of silt, etc.).

As you can guess, the whole shebang became a bit of an anachronism over time, given that virtually all the land in the state is deeded to someone by now. In fact, well over 100 years ago, newspapers including The New York Times were writing about the ongoing meetings as a curiosity of the past. The former East Jersey seems to have done just fine over the past 15 years without the Proprietors to settle land disputes, but the West Jersey Proprietors continue to meet at the small Surveyor General's office on West Broad Street in Burlington City.

Why, then, is there a meeting place in Gloucester? In the late 17th century, the 21 mile distance to Burlington was deemed to be too far for the area's proprietors to travel for an election. Now it's just a matter of keeping up a 325-year old tradition, maybe mixed with a desire to avoid rush-hour traffic on Route 130. Admittedly, there's not much going on with the proprietors these days -- the job is largely symbolic -- so the Gloucester bunch are basically getting together to vote on who would have to make the schlep if, indeed, there were any business to be done in Burlington. There's not much prestige to being a proprietor, except, I guess, among history enthusiasts, but the ones in Gloucester at least have a park named for them.

Gloucester City: Philadelphia's historic immigrant port of entry

Ask just about anyone where America's "Golden Door" of immigration stood in the late 19th and early 20th century, and they'll bring up Ellis Island. Most Americans, however, don't realize that there were several other, smaller immigration facilities at ports and border crossings around the country. Among them was the port of Philadelphia station at Gloucester City, New Jersey.

The former Gloucester City Immigration Station
is now home to a port-related business.

Standing rather plainly at the city's port, the three-story, white block building lacks the grandeur of its cousin near the Statue of Liberty. In fact, if you didn't know its history, you'd have no idea that it was anything more than a very sturdily-built office building. When I visited to get a lay of the land, I had to do a quick check on the smartphone to compare an old historic photo against the building before me. No plaques or notations give the casual passer-by any indication that within this structure, new arrivals were welcomed into the United States while others were detained before their inevitable deportation.

How did the Philadelphia immigration station end up in New Jersey? It seems to be the confluence of two classic issues: insufficient funding and a well-connected property owner. Immigration officials had long inspected ship passengers at a waterfront facility owned by the Pennsylvania Railroad, expanding the building as the number of incoming vessels and immigrants grew. The city constructed a municipal inspection station at another pier as other shipping lines increased their immigrant transports.

Around the same time, federal officials were looking for ways to relieve overcrowding at Ellis Island, which was regularly seeing thousands more immigrants a day than it was designed to handle. By opening larger facilities at Philadelphia and elsewhere around the country, officials hoped to shunt some of the traffic away from New York. Only problem was, the $250,000 that Congress allocated to open a new facility at Philadelphia was insufficient to buy any of the valuable port property on that side of the Delaware.

In a stroke of dubious luck, an ideal spot was located just on the other side of the river, in (you guessed it) Gloucester City. Politically-connected, headline-grabbing entrepreneur Billy Thompson just happened to own five acres of riverfront property he was willing to sell to the government for $100,000. The self-styled "Duke of Gloucester" was even willing to throw in his own home, an extravagant Victorian mansion which was repurposed as an administration building. The federal government erected the white building to handle the day-to-day tasks of processing new arrivals: inspection, detention, hearings and deportation.

Like its counterpart at Ellis Island, the building was hailed at its 1912 opening as state of the art, with outstanding sanitary conditions and dining facilities that surpassed those in many of the nation's hotels. Detained immigrants, it seemed, would be highly satisfied with their accommodations. On the other hand, no appropriation was made for the construction of a Public Health Service hospital like the one at Ellis; one has to believe that a small infirmary was housed within one of the buildings, with more serious cases sent to local hospitals.

To some degree, the immigration department's plan was a success: at one point, Gloucester City became the second busiest immigration station in the country. However, its prominence was short lived. The start of hostilities in Europe and the onset of World War II dramatically changed the purpose of the nation's immigration stations, and Gloucester's was no exception. Enemy aliens were sent there en route to internment camps in other parts of the country. Others, including crew members of ships bearing German or Italian flags, were held at the station for the duration.

The immigration station closed at the end of the war, and Thompson's old house was torn down in favor of buildings for a new Coast Guard training facility. By 1986, the Coast Guard had moved to newer digs in Philadelphia, leaving the Gloucester City property to stand vacant. Ironically, as Ellis Island was being restored and celebrated, its cousin on the Delaware was being left to rot.

The building's fate improved slightly when the city bought the property for $1 in 1991, as one of the port's larger tenants made the old immigration station its new offices. Nonetheless, plans were soon in the works to demolish the building in favor of a port revitalization program. Alarmed by the possibility of losing a vital landmark, local historians successfully petitioned the state to add the Coast Guard and Immigration Station to the New Jersey Register of Historic Places

It appears that the designation might have actually worked. The rededicated "Freedom Pier" is now home to the schooner North Wind, and if the "Summer 2012" banner I saw is to come true eventually, there will be a restaurant there, too. With any luck, the planned revitalization will get people curious about the history of that big white building and the people who once traversed through it.

Anchors aweigh in Brooklawn: the hidden naval history of Noreg Village

Wrong turns can lead you into some puzzling places, as was reconfirmed to me recently. I was driving along Broadway in Gloucester City, looking for the waterfront and Proprietors' Park, when I overshot and ended up driving through a very compact housing area. Uniformly-designed, smallish stucco houses, both attached and unattached, stood on postage stamp-sized lots along narrow streets barely wide enough to accommodate two cars across.

The neighborhood put me in the mind of company housing, arranged on a modified grid. One road wound against the Delaware River and a small inlet, marking the outside border of the neighborhood. Other roads branched from a central Paris Avenue like veins on a leaf, with names evoking the local geography (Pennsylvania, New Jersey) and World War I (Pershing, Marne). It all seemed to have been planned to get the maximum density of housing into a peninsula hemmed in by river and creek. Might this might have been a quickly-built village for workers at the Gloucester City and Camden shipyards?

A recent look at Noreg Village housing

That, as I discovered later, was exactly the case. Shortly after the United States entered the war in April 1917, the Navy ordered 30 destroyers and other ship components from the New York Shipbuilding Corporation, prompting the company to ramp up work at its Camden shipyard. Additional workers poured into the region to supply labor, but they needed places to live and house their families.

In a strategy that would later be echoed in World War II developments like Winfield Park and Victory Gardens, the federal government financed the construction of homes for about 6500 shipyard workers in a riverside portion of what was then known as Centre Township. Built by the U.S. Shipping Board Emergency Fleet Corporation, the middle-income community was completed in 1917. New residents surged into the neighborhood, which was then called Noreg Village.

In 1923, well after the end of hostilities in Europe, the government held a massive auction of the 450 properties, including some commercial buildings and undeveloped lots. Home prices ranged from $1875 to $4000 for two- and three-bedroom properties described in promotional materials as the "ideal place of residence" for "the highest type of men and their families."

Brooklawn was officially formed as a borough in 1924 when it joined a growing number of hamlets separating from Centre Township by referendum. (Lawnside did the same two years later, rendering its parent township defunct.) Now home to about 2000 residents, its residential stock includes additional homes built to the east of Broadway, the road I'd taken to discover this little-known evidence of New Jersey's contribution to America's World War history.

Trotting along the White Horse Pike

Where in heck did the White Horse Pike get its name? Not being a South Jerseyan, I've long wondered why that particular nomenclature stuck to a road that runs east/west from Atlantic City to the Ben Franklin Bridge in Camden. As far as I knew, the area wasn't home to a herd of albino horses, and the equine population is Camden County isn't particularly high.

Perhaps there was a racetrack nearby?

Maybe a European settler had ridden a white horse down the road in the early days of West Jersey?

Or maybe it's a ghost horse, the Camden County equivalent of the Jersey Devil?

The answer, as I discovered, came from much farther back than the opening of the Garden State Park Racetrack in Cherry Hill (which was on another road, altogether). Chartered as a toll road in 1854, the White Horse Pike originally ran about 14 miles from Camden to the village of White Horse, which had taken the name of the tavern at its center. The White Horse Inn had been built in 1740 along a footpath the Lenapes had reportedly used as their road between the Delaware River and the Atlantic Ocean. It's been theorized that the inn's owner, Elizabeth Bates, named her establishment for the natives' horses.

I drove part of the Pike after my visit to Lawnside, prompted by the WPA Guide to New Jersey. The guide claimed the Inn was operated by the same family for nearly 200 years, with the original sign, complete with a picture of a white horse, still hanging from the porch. Granted, I was counting on a 70 year old description of the place, and lots of things can happen in that stretch of time, but I was cautiously hopeful the inn would still be there. It had, after all, been an important stop on the stagecoach route and the stimulus for the growth of the village. Maybe it wasn't in a county seat, as Mount Holly's Mill Street Hotel and Tavern is, but it sounded as if the White Horse was equally worthy of preservation.

Scanning the roadside at highway speed can be daunting, even when you have to stop occasionally for traffic lights. I saw a muffler man hawking tires in Clementon, but beyond that, it was the usual assortment of chain drug stores, fast food joints and assorted mom-and-pop emporia. Some of those looked pretty old, but nowhere near colonial-era old.

The Quaker Store in Stratford. Nice porch!

Then I saw what I thought could have been the White Horse Inn, sitting at a triangular-shaped plot of land formed by the intersection of Route 30 and Berlin Road. The building looked old enough but had signs stating "Friendly Quaker Store." As I later found out, it's the oldest surviving building in town, having been built in the 1860's on the foundation of the 1740's-era general store. Local preservationists have been working to restore it, and long-time Stratford residents still remember the proprietress and her kindness toward those who needed a little credit until payday.

Still, though: if the Quaker Store was the longest-standing building in the community, that meant the White Horse Inn wasn't to be found. Indeed, later research revealed that it was torn down in the 1970s to make room for a strip mall, likely the one where I stopped to take the photo above.

The White Horse, in Hammonton

Disappointed not to find the White Horse, I kept driving toward Atlantic City, toward Hammonton. Development along the roadside got progressively less commercial and increasingly more rural, with farm fields replacing retail buildings. I'd stopped to grab a sandwich earlier, but I didn't pull into one of the rare parking lots to eat it; there were so few cars in the restaurant lots that I felt it would be rude to take up a spot for a repast I hadn't bought there.

The road had gotten really quiet by the time I drove reached the town limits of Hammonton, the self-proclaimed Blueberry Capital of the World. Traffic undoubtedly picks up substantially during growing season, but in early March there wasn't much going on. When I pulled into the lot of the quiet White Horse Farms to take a photo, I saw a red-tailed hawk dive toward the center stripe of the road and swoop up to perch on the adjacent roadside utility line. Something tells me he does that a lot, without consequence.

At least I found the White Horse, even if it wasn't the one I expected to see. And I discovered quite a few targets for pick-your-own during blueberry season. Elizabeth White would be quite satisfied.

Lawnside: a Free Haven in history

If you drove through the Camden County borough of Lawnside, you'd be excused for thinking it's no different from any other small town in New Jersey. The typical appearance of its shops, schools and modest homes belie its history as the first independent self-governing African-American community north of the Mason-Dixon line.

According to the Encyclopedia of New Jersey, people of African descent began settling in what's now Lawnside in the 1700s. Both freedmen and escaped slaves were drawn to the community, and as the anti-slavery movement grew, Philadelphia abolitionist Ralph Smith began purchasing land in the area. To encourage further settlement in the place he called Free Haven, Smith divided the acreage into lots and sold it to blacks at reduced prices. When a group of former slaves from Maryland joined the community, it became known as Snow Hill, after their former home. The current name of Lawnside was coined in 1907 when the Pennsylvania and Reading Railroad built a station stop there.

All the while, the community was part of the larger Centre Township, with representation on the town council. As it grew to have its own school, churches, shops and distinct culture, it was clear that Lawnside should stand on its own. Through an act of the New Jersey Legislature, Centre Township was disbanded and Lawnside officially became a borough in 1926. To this day, Lawnside's population continues to be predominantly African American and extremely proud of its heritage, as evidenced on its borough seal.

Considering its roots, it's not surprising that the community that became Lawnside made its own contributions to the freedom effort. Nearly fifty men joined the Union Army during the Civil War, likely in the 22nd US Colored Troops that mustered out of Philadelphia. The hamlet was also a stop on the Underground Railroad, and its respected resident minister an agent. Preacher Peter Mott's house was the station, and it's been restored by the Lawnside Historical Society.

When I drove into town, I saw brown historic signs leading to the house, and I wasn't sure what to expect. Over the years, I've come to accept that historic sites aren't always in central locations or even where it might seem logical. Sometimes 20th century development pressures have transformed the acreage around an old farmhouse into the site of compact tract housing. That's what I found when I pulled to the end of a townhouse-lined cul-de-sac to find the Mott farmhouse. Not far away, behind a buffer of woods, traffic on the Turnpike whizzed by. Clearly, a lot has changed since Mott and his wife Eliza bought the property from prominent African-American dentist and Underground Railroad conductor Jacob C. White, Jr. in 1844.

The house is only open on Saturdays, so I wasn't able to go inside, but an informative sign related the facts that local historians have been able to glean about Mott and his property from census records. Listed in 1850 as a laborer, Mott apparently was well-off enough to build a two-story house and hold property worth $600. A respected member of the community, he founded the Sunday School at the Snow Hill Church, which is now known as Mount Pisgah A.M.E.

As I left town for other adventures, I realized that the completely typical appearance of Lawnside demonstrates the success of its founders' vision. More often than not, when people seek equality, they're just looking for the same chances everyone else gets, no more, no less. When it came to Free Acres, it was a place where free-born and formerly enslaved people of African descent could establish a home and raise a family in peace.

A quick stop at the Indian King

A trip to Haddonfield isn't complete without a visit to the Indian King Tavern, so after our find at the Elizabeth Haddon School, we headed back to Kings Highway.

You'd think that an 18th century tavern would stick out like a sore thumb in a suburban New Jersey downtown, and in most towns, you'd be right. Not in Haddonfield. The town's commitment to preserving its colonial look is so successful that we ended up heading out of town before we decided we'd gone in the wrong direction.

At least we had the right road. Kings Highway is one of the oldest throughfares in New Jersey, having been mapped between Burlington and Salem in 1686. Both towns hosted busy ports, making travel between them important, and also adding to the prestige of those communities along the road. Taverns cropped up along the way to feed and shelter travelers and, as we discovered during our visit to Rahway's Merchants and Drovers Tavern, became important forums for public discourse.

We found the Indian King's door closed when we arrived; a gentleman was clearing the front walk of leaves and told us that the museum is usually open on Fridays and Saturdays. Just our luck, though, the caretaker was on site and graciously ushered us inside, to an environment that felt very much like Merchants and Drovers. I wouldn't have been surprised to see a clutch of patriots debating the latest actions of the State Assembly, which met there on several occasions in 1777.

Because we'd dropped by unannounced, I didn't ask for the full story on the site, but what the caretaker told us whetted our appetite for a future visit. Not only was the tavern once the de-facto legislative seat, it was the site of several New Jersey government firsts, including the very first time legal documents declared us to be a state, not a colony. More recently, in 1903, the Indian King became the first historic site to be acquired by the state government.

We'll definitely be back again for the full tour, likely during one of the many events the tavern's Friends organization has slated for the year. According to the caretaker, they're finalizing the calendar now and are likely to hold open houses, a beer tasting and a July 4 reading of the Declaration of Independence. Hopefully they'll update their website as soon as the dates are set.

Elizabeth Haddon: a 21st century woman in colonial New Jersey

"There were reports of crossbills and redpolls at Elizabeth Haddon School in Haddonfield." Little did Ivan know that that innocent sentence would bring up a history lesson about a truly kick-butt woman in New Jersey history.

You might be familiar with Haddonfield (we visited last year to see the Hadrosaurus), the delightfully historic looking community in Camden County, but Elizabeth Haddon, maybe not so much.

Born in England in 1680, Elizabeth came to West Jersey at the tender age of 20. Depending on the source, she was either propelled there by her own desire to make a life in the New World, or was sent there by her father, who'd bought 500 acres of land by Cooper's Creek for reasons unknown. She was the older of two daughters, with no brothers, so if her father was inclined to send a family member to watch over his property, Elizabeth would have been his choice.

In either case, her determination served her well. Within a year, Elizabeth had started a community on the land and erected a house for herself. Comparatively well off, she entertained other Quakers who passed through on their way to Friends meetings in other parts of the region. One of these was a missionary named John Estaugh, whom she'd met several years earlier in England. It seems that she'd taken a liking to Estaugh, and he to her, enough that some have suspected he was a factor in her willingness to make such an adventurous move.

Being a man of the cloth, Estaugh lacked the financial resources the Haddons possessed, and some have surmised that he was cautious in his courting as a result. Elizabeth, however, refused to stand on tradition and proposed marriage, which he accepted. They were married in the fall of 1702, less than two years after she'd arrived.

Together, they managed the Haddon property, which grew over time through Elizabeth's father's continued purchases. He gave the newlyweds the deed to an acre of land for the construction of a Quaker meetinghouse that drew more settlers and assured the community's success. The Estaughs built later built a handsome brick house but had no children of their own, instead adopting her sister's son, Ebenezer Hopkins, to inherit their estate. Elizabeth died at the age of 82, outliving her husband by 20 years.

The town is named for Elizabeth's father (since he was the legal owner, it was Haddon's field), even though she was the driving force in its settlement. Given that the school is named in her honor, I have no doubt that the children of the community become quite aware that today's women aren't the first to make a broad and lasting impact on the world.

As for the birds, well, the crossbills and redpolls were no-shows, but we got something just as good. Perched in a backyard tree high above the rooflines was a handsome adult Cooper's hawk. He might have been the reason behind the dearth of other birds, or maybe not, but if we couldn't find the chase birds, he was a good consolation prize. Birding completed for this location, it was time to see if the Indian King Tavern was open.

Haddonfield: Where dinosaurs still tower

A casual visitor to Haddonfield might wonder what a life-sized dinosaur statue is doing downtown in this historic, upscale Camden County town. Was a Godzilla movie made here? Did a grade school class petition to have their favorite prehistoric creature placed here? What gives?

Hadrosaurus Foulkii sculpture
by John Giannotti

This shopping-district denizen is actually a representation of the Hadrosaurus, the first find of a nearly-complete dinosaur, and the event that put Haddonfield on the paleontological map in the mid 1800s. It's also a demonstration of what a determined young person can do when presented with some pretty neat data about his home town.

First, the discovery. Back in 1858, summer visitor William Foulke heard that some really big bones had been found 20 years earlier in a marl pit behind the home of his host, John Hopkins. Marl was used as fertilizer at the time, and the area was rich in the deposits, which also contained the remnants of the ancient sea which had once covered the area. Being a bit of a fossil hound himself, Foulke hired assistants to help him explore the pit in hopes of finding more bones. They soon hit pay dirt and along with prehistoric shells and other detritus, were able to unearth more bones from this single specimen than other digs had found of any other creature to date. The find was dubbed Hadrosaurus foulkii, and according to a website about the find, the name derives from the Greek words hadros (large, bulky) and sauros (lizard), along with the name of the man who'd originated the search, but it also seems to be named for the town where it was found. The bones were sent to the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, and studies on the specimen there contributed to the Academy's reputation as the foremost authority on paleontology for its time. Foulke eventually found another specimen nearby, Hadrosaurus' predator Dryptosaurus aquilunguis.

For over a century, the site was little known outside scientific circles, and one might even wonder if local residents had any idea it was there. The site had become a dumping ground over the years and was largely in disarray. That all changed in 1984, when Boy Scout Christopher Brees chose it as his Eagle Scout project. Today, thanks to his efforts, the find site is commemorated a small park above a ravine in a residential setting at the end of Maple Avenue in Haddonfield. The site has also been named a National Historic Landmark, and the Hadrosaurus was named the state dinosaur in 1991.

Christopher's family continues to maintain the memorial park, and while it's tiny, it's very pleasant. Beyond a plaque and explanatory signage, the park has a picnic bench on which someone (maybe the family?) has thoughtfully left some accurate and not-so-accurate dinosaur toys. You can also hike down to the ravine where the bones were found, but there's no exact marker of the dig site.