SPRING
2002 Gideon Peaslee
Mickleton MM[The following, written by Gideon Peaslee in 1915, comes to us through the graciousness of Chris Knisely of Mickleton MM.—Ed.]
olomon’s Graveyard is located near Wolfert Station, West Jersey Railroad, on a plot of land granted by Solomon Lippincott to the Society of Friends to be used for meeting and grave lot purposes. A meetinghouse was built about the year 1740, and the graveyard was enclosed by the present brick wall about 1850. In the yard are many unmarked graves; on those marked we observed the names of Bennett, Brown, Clark, Conley, Derault, Gorden, Goldey, Hanes, Justice, Lewis, Ridgway, Rulon, Richards, Simpson, Scott, Schofield, Vanleer, Warrington, Wilson, Lippincott, Yeager. Some of these were not members of the Society of Friends. The meetinghouse was burned near the close of the eighteenth century. William P. Haines informed me that his grandmother Haines told him that when she was a girl and went to meeting one morning with her father, they found the house on fire. The caretaker, who lived at some distance, had built a fire in the early morning which destroyed the house. Her father was William White who then lived on the farm owned by Gloucester County and now used for almshouse purposes. William White, in addition to farming, did surveying and conveyancing; his exquisite penmanship with a quill pen appears upon many deeds written about the year 1804. His son, Samuel White, father of the late Elizabeth B. Cawley, of Woodstown, was also a farmer and surveyor. William White later built the house at the corner of Main and Elm Streets, Woodstown, N. J., now occupied by Charles A. Wright. There, in the latter part of their lives lived William White and his wife Mary, of whom Jacob M. Lippincott, Sr., beautifully wrote, “Mary White was a Friend in precept and practice, and was scrupulously obedient to the intonations of the still small voice in her social and business relations as in the plain and simple garb she wore. The tiny frill that edged her cambric cap, and the spotless handkerchief about her neck and shoulders and pinned across her bosom made her look as Pure and Sweet as the cake and candy in her little store. 'Aunt’ Mary she was to all the children who came to the adjacent school, ever greeting them with smiles that magnetize and kind words that never die. She was a banker, too. Over her counter into her safety fund, we eagerly passed our pennies, ha’-pennies, fi-pennies bits and 'levies.’ And she as deftly put them into her great pocket in the side of her dress, giving us for certificates of deposit, chunks of gingerbread, sourballs, secrets, mint-sticks, liquorice, etc. But best of all were the sticks of 'lasses' candy. In this we all agreed; that none of our mammas, grannies or aunties made ginger bread or 'lasses' candy so good as she.
“In the one shop window and on the counter were temptingly displayed in large pewter platters luscious squares of ginger cake and long twisted sticks of light yellow, delicious molasses candy that would crackle, crumble and dissolve in the mouth, and trickle down the throat like some Celestial ambrosia of fabled repute. I can almost taste it now and feel the long remembered delight it gave more than three-score years ago, and with all the pathos of Eliza Cook exclaim:
“Oh! dear to memory are those hours
When every pathway led to flowers;
When sticks of peppermint possessed
A scepter’s power o’er the breast;
And heaven was round us while we fed
On rich, ambrosial ginger bread.”“Eliza’s cake tickled her palate in her English home but had she been a Jersey girl and spent her childhood here, where she could have crunched those marvelous crystallized molasses sticks, methinks her muse would have higher soared and her lyre have resounded with a still more joyous strain.
“Mary White is not in the candy trade now. She died long ago. Her premises passed to other bands, have been enlarged, occupied and patronized by other generations who knew her not. The old one-story brick schoolhouse that stood hard by has been replaced by a more commodious structure, and the happy childhood that issued from its one projecting portal with shout and laughter, and scattered over the playground at recess, engaged at tag, corner-ball, sky-ball, rock and 'Ant’ny over,' or in little parties sat in the shade of the tall poplars, standing like sentinels in front and rear, or clustered around the little store on the corner of Main and Elm Streets, are all dispersed or dead, save here and there a hoary-headed survivor like myself.
“Multitudes of other children in succession have since thronged the old schoolroom while it remained, and the new Bacon Academy erected in its place, and the ample playground with their little joys and sorrows, and at the little store found a ready receptacle for their pennies, nickels and dimes for the new-fangled confections of the day; but solferino, chocolate or chewing gum never gave such a luscious, lasting sense of delectation as the home made ginger bread and molasses candy, or left the memory of a more genial face and kindly heart than its maker and vendor, Mary White.”
After the destruction of Solomon’s Meeting-house, when they were preparing to build a new meeting-house and were looking for a more central location on the “King’s Highway,” William White, compass and staff in hand, planted it in the ground, with the remark, “Here is the place for a meeting-house,” and there the present building was erected at Mickleton in 1798.(1)
About 1681 the General Assembly at Burlington passed an act to survey and set forth a public highway between Amboy and Burlington, and thence to Salem, along the Indian trail through the primeval forest. This was destined to become a very important highway as it was laid six rods, or about 100 feet wide, and connected the capitals of East and West Jersey, Amboy and Burlington and long before the advent of railroads it was a much traveled thorofare between New York and Philadelphia. When my father, Amos Peaslee, was a boy, he lived near Bordentown (1825) and enjoyed going to that place to that place to see the stage coaches arrive from New York and transfer passengers to boats for Philadelphia. From Burlington the Highway was laid through Mount Holly, Moorestown, Haddonfield, passing near the home of Elizabeth Haddon, for whom the place was named; thence on to Timber Creek, which it crossed on a bridge a little farther up stream than the present structure; thence through Westville on to Woodbury, crossing that creek a little below Broad Street, near the present home of ex-Surrogate Livermore, on through Woodbury, diverging a little from Broad Street. At the south end of the town it passed over line of present road to Mantua, until near the tollgate, where it took a southeasterly course by way of Parkville Station to Mantua Creek, crossing the same beside the present bridge passing on through Mount Royal, Clarksboro and Mickleton. About 400 yards below the latter place it took a southeast course to avoid Craft’s Hill; then by a circuitous route it passed within about a half a mile of Solomon’s Graveyard, on by the present house of Walter Heritage and house of John Brown, grandfather of Theodore Brown, which was located in the rear of the present home of the latter; thence by Dutchtown schoolhouse, and on by the former home of Governor Stratton to Swedesboro, crossing Raccoon Creek a little up-stream from present bridge; Thence from Swedesboro, passing through Sharptown to Salem. John Pierson, born 1805, who lived to be a little over one hundred years old, told me he had traveled the old road when a boy with his father. The road was straightened to its present course in 1812. It originally ran quite near the Stratton house.
Probably many of your readers have heard the oft-told romance which it is said occurred along the old highway between Parkville Railroad Station and Mantua Creek. In Elizabeth Haddon’s hospitable home many English Friends were entertained, who felt concerned to come to this country on religious visits. Upon this important occasion a company of Friends started from Haddonfield on horseback to attend meeting at Salem. In passing through the ravine, which is still discernible just south of Parkville Station, her saddle girth became loose (?) accidentally. She called upon John Estaugh, a young minister in the company, to adjust it. After the others had passed on, and they were alone, she took the opportunity to tell him, “She believed the Lord had sent him to this country to be a life companion for her.”(2) It took the young man rather unawares. He told her, “The Lord had commissioned him to perform an extensive religious visit, and could not give her proposition much attention until the visit was accomplished.” After performing the religious service he returned; their marriage resulted in 1702; they lived happily together until his death in 1742. About 1744 she wrote some account of the life and religious labors of John Estaugh, published by one Benjamin Franklin, a printer in Philadelphia. I saw in Haddonfield recently a copy of the publication.
Samuel M. Janney, in his “Memoirs of Friends,” says of Elizabeth Haddon, “Her father having lands in New Jersey, proposed to settle upon them, and sent persons to make suitable preparations for their reception but being prevented from coming, his daughter Elizabeth, then a maiden less than twenty years of age, came over with her father’s consent, and fixed the habitation where he proposed to have settled. She was endowed with good natural ability, which being sanctified by divine grace, rendered her eminently serviceable as a benefactor of the poor, a sympathizer of the afflicted and an influential member of religious society.”
Gideon Peaslee
Clarksboro, N. J., Ninth month, 1915
- On lands donated by Samuel Tonkin and Samuel Mickle, one mile and a half east of the site of Solomon’s Friends’ Meeting-house.—Cushing & Sheppard.
- Her station in life being so much above his, her advances were not regarded improper.
RETURN TO TABLE OF CONTENTS
Last modified:
Wednesday, February 18, 2004 at 08:19 AM
