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    Downshore From Manahawkin to New Gretna
    Downshore From Manahawkin to New Gretna
    Downshore From Manahawkin to New Gretna
    Ebook203 pages1 hour

    Downshore From Manahawkin to New Gretna

    By The Publications Committee of the Ocean County Historical Society

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    About this ebook

    A unique area exists along the western shores of Little Egg Harbor Bay and Great Bay between the communities of Manahawkin and New Gretna.


    These towns, located in the southern coastal section of New Jersey have a rich and charming history. From the beginning, the region was rich in natural resources, providing fish, clams, oysters, lumber, and cranberries for early settlers. The communities also enjoyed a temperate climate and navigable harbors, leading to the development of shipbuilding and trading as early industries. Because of the isolation of the Tuckerton area from the larger population centers of the state, its small-town flavor and way of life were allowed to endure. Many of the occupations of the settlers of the early 1700s survive to this day. Downshore from Manahawkin to New Gretna seeks to capture the charm of the little towns in this region, the character of the people who settled here, many of whose families still remain, and the lifestyle lived in harmony with this pastoral environment during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateSep 1, 1997
    ISBN9781439622025
    Downshore From Manahawkin to New Gretna
    Author

    The Publications Committee of the Ocean County Historical Society

    The Publications Committee of the Ocean County Historical Society has worked together with members of four local historical societies to create this collaborative history of the Tuckerton area. The 200-plus vintage photographs included in this volume have been drawn from the archives of these societies as well as the collections of the Barnegat Bay Decoy and Baymen's Museum and the Ocean County Historical Society, ensuring a diverse and balanced presentation. The efforts of this group in compiling such a significant and broad collection of historical images and information will surely be appreciated by generations to come.

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      Book preview

      Downshore From Manahawkin to New Gretna - The Publications Committee of the Ocean County Historical Society

      meetings.

      Introduction

      We are told that the only constant is change. Our country’s growth and progress is a record of that change. When a community, a custom, or a way of life is seemingly idyllic, we often wish it were possible to freeze it in time, to somehow prevent this inevitable change. Such an idyllic way of life exists, though it is quickly disappearing, along the marshy shores of Manahawkin and Little Egg Harbor Bays and the fresh water streams like Cedar Run, Mill, Westecunk, and Tuckerton Creeks, and the Bass and Mullica Rivers. This area extends from 20 miles north of Atlantic City to 110 miles south of New York City. It reaches on the west into the great pine barrens which cover a large portion of all of southern New Jersey.

      The communities of Manahawkin, Cedar Run, Mayetta, Staffordville, West Creek, Parkertown, Tuckerton, Little Egg Harbor, and New Gretna march along Route 9 from north to south. Even tinier settlements such as Spraguetown, Mathistown, Cranmertown, Giffordtown, and Galetown used to exist but their names have been absorbed by the larger towns.

      Settlers began arriving here in the very late 1600s and early 1700s. Some came to hunt whales from the barrier island and moved inland; some came for timber. Others started farms and worked the waters of the creeks and bays. They were an intelligent, energetic, creative, and resourceful people who successfully wrested a living from this new land. From the bay came fish, oysters, clams, salt hay, and waterfowl. From the pine barrens came pine and white cedar, charcoal, glass, bog iron, moss, and other products of the woods. Gunning brought visitors to the area.

      In 1698, gentlemen from upper Burlington County were the proprietors of surveys of land in Little Egg Harbor. Henry Jacob Falkinburg, an interpreter for the European settlers with the Native Americans, bought land comprising Osborn and Wills’ Island (Tuckerton). Next came Mordecai and Edward Andrews to settle on the west and east banks of Tuckerton Creek. A man from Shrewsbury Township, Joseph Parker Sr., settled in today’s Parkertown in 1721. A Joseph and his wife, maybe the father of the Parkertown settler or maybe no relation at all, had been granted 240 acres in 1675 in Monmouth County.

      Westecunk Creek, a favorite Native American haunt, attracted the Spragues, Gaskills, Seamans, Bartletts, Willitts, Cranmers, and the Pharos, to name a few. Joseph Willitts was deeded 900 acres in 1706, and Gervas Pharo moved from Springfield, New Jersey, to West Creek shortly after 1706.

      Salt hay is pitched from a wagon by Charles Weber Jr. of Lower Bank. The hay is cut, raked in windrows, put on wagons, and taken ashore and stacked. Farmers grazed their cattle on the salt hay meadows in the summer and used the hay for winter feed and bedding. In the 1840s, it was used for making wrapping paper, for mulching crops, and for packing glass, pottery, and bricks. (Courtesy William Augustine Collection, Rutgers University.)

      Manahawkin, the place of good corn, attracted its first white inhabitants about 1723. The banks of Manahawkin Creek—later Manahawkin Mill Creek, and now simply Mill Creek—were the site of the first settlers’ homes. Nicholas Brown, who died about 1724, was one of the earliest persons to own land here. He was followed quickly by the Haywoods, Fitzrandolphs (later just Randolph), Cranes, Pangborns, Courtenays, Johnsons, Pearsons, Pauls, and Southards.

      The construction of the Garden State Parkway in the 1950s, the opening of casinos in Atlantic City in the 1980s, and the migration of hundreds of people from the cities of metropolitan New Jersey beginning in the 1950s have caused a population explosion in Ocean County. That wave of growth has now reached the Manahawkin to New Gretna area. Families with surnames different from those which predominated for almost three hundred years have taken up residence here.

      It has been this societal change that caused the members of the Ocean County Historical Society to consider preserving the heritage and lifestyle of this area through a pictorial in the Images of America series published by Arcadia. We hope that Downshore: Manahawkin to New Gretna will serve as a valuable source of information and as a vignette documenting the lives of these very resourceful people for the area’s present and future inhabitants.

      One

      Downshore Life

      The Jersey shoreman, as each generation has passed, has sharpened his diversified skills and pursuits and has used his intellect to create a satisfying life for himself and his family. The area in which his ancestors chose to live provided an environment that encouraged woodland pursuits, manufacture of iron and glass; fishing, farming, and the cultivation of cranberries; gunning amidst an unbelievable number of wild fowl; and designing and building boats to match a perceived need and development of navigation skills. In this photo, Daniel O’Neill is setting out duck decoys. Philadelphia-born and a plumber by trade, he moved to Tuckerton from Audubon during the 1929 Depression. He quickly adapted to the shore lifestyle, becoming a clammer, duck hunting guide, and charter boat captain. He owned the 38-foot bateau Marion and sailed from Willow Landing dock on Green Street, along with the Smith brothers, Claude, Joseph, and Ralph—all natives of Tuckerton. (Courtesy June LeMunyon.)

      Sphagnum moss was gathered in the white cedar swamps of South Jersey with a long-toothed rake known as a moss dray and was dried in a cleared area called a moss landing. As the top of the moss dried, it was turned until it was mostly dry. It was then ready to be baled. After a few days, moss which formerly weighed 200 pounds had dried to a mere 15 pounds. Sometimes the moss was draped to dry over cedar hassocks, the gnarled and knobby roots that poke out of the swamp water at the tree’s base. (Courtesy William Augustine Collection, Rutgers University.)

      Dried sphagnum moss is being pressed by Sam Ford of Greenbank in a moss press. Most moss presses were homemade but of the same general design. The moss was pressed into 2-foot bales, held together with wire, and covered with burlap. The moss is antiseptic and was used for bandages during World War I. Later it was used as a packing material for flowers and plants. (Courtesy William Augustine Collection, Rutgers University.)

      Arthur W. Kelly, photographer, relinquished his camera to pose for this duck-hunting shot with his favorite retriever, Mingo. Born in West Creek in 1869 and the son of Myles and Rebecca (Willits) Kelly, he attended and then taught at the West Creek School, studied law, and served as principal at West Creek for two years. After passing his bar exams, he married Anna Haywood. While living in Monmouth County, he recorded the scenes of his childhood in West Creek at every opportunity.(Courtesy A.W. Kelly, Esq.)

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