In
Their Footsteps
A
brief history of the lives of people
who lived on the property
called Lumberton Leas
by
Os Cresson
©
March 1, 2005
80 Woodside Drive
Lumberton, NJ 09048-5274 |
|
INTRODUCTION
Have you wondered who walked our paths before us here at Lumberton
Leas? And what their lives were like? I did. It started as simple
curiosity and but soon became a need to place myself in space and
time, to know more of the stream of humanity that has swirled around
these acres. This took me back to the first people we know of living
here, the Lenape. And then the first Europeans, the Moore family,
who were here 100 years, and then the Stiles family for 80 years,
and the Sages for 50 years. And then a series of modern families
owned the property coming down to the Lumbleas.
Beyond what you will read in these pages, there is much more to learn.
Did they milk cows every day? What was medical care like? How did they
entertain themselves? Were there local dances? Did they use the library
in Mount Holly? There is much you can do to fill in the story to which
we are adding with our lives. For now, here is some of what we know.
|
|
|
For 10,000 years
the Lenape (Len-AH-pay, “the common people”)
lived between the Delaware and Hudson Rivers. They spoke a dialect
of the Algonquin language. The Remkokes (“many kinsmen”)
band of this tribe, with several hundred members, lived along a large
creek now called by their name. In a fork between two branches of the
creek, 10 miles upstream from the Delaware River, was their principal
village where their chief, Ramkok, lived. On a 1677 map this village
was named Mispenninck. Lumberton Leas is on land that was about 2 miles
away, on the south bank of the southern branch.
The Lenape lived
in a longhouse and huts made of saplings and bark. The families were
organized around
the female line of descent, with
men moving to the woman’s longhouse upon marriage. Here they
carried on much the same range of activities we do today. They sang
and enjoyed the music of flutes, rattles, and drums. The children played
games and the adults told stories. They had community meetings and
religious ceremonies. Nature was sacred for them and they laid their
dead to rest in burial grounds and believed in an afterlife that depended
on how you lived your life on Earth.
The Lenape wore buckskin and furs, carefully sewn and adorned. They
painted and tattooed themselves and wore jewelry. They wove nets and
rope from hemp but made no textiles, not having cotton, flax, or wool.
They made baskets and pottery and stone tools of many kinds. Canoes
were carved from tulip trees, which still grow at Lumberton Leas. The
Lenape planted gardens of corn, beans, and squash and collected wild
nuts and fruits such as strawberries, plums, peaches, cherries, cranberries,
and grapes. They ate roots and tubers and had medicinal herbs and tobacco.
They took many kinds of fish from the rivers such as rockfish, catfish,
shad, sheepshead, sturgeon, and herring. There were also mollusks and
crustaceans, and in the spring they went to the Atlantic coast to catch
the salmon swimming up the rivers. They ate bird eggs and fledglings
and trapped quail and turkeys. In the forest around the village they
hunted rabbit, deer, and beaver. There were also large mammals such
as bear, elk and mountain lions. Life in these woods and rivers was
hard but rich in many ways. |
Notes:
The Life of the Lenape
There are many
books on the Lenape. I found these particularly helpful: The Lenape
or Delaware Indians, Herbert
C. Kraft, Elizabeth NJ: Lenape Books, 1996 (for children as well
as adults); The Lenape: Archeology, History & Ethnography, Herbert
C. Kraft, Newark NJ: NJ Historical society, 1986; The Lenape-Delaware
Heritage, Herbert C. Kraft, Elizabeth NJ: Lenape Books, 2001 (the
most complete, a stunning book). I used two general histories: History
of
Burlington County, New Jersey, Evan Morrison Woodward, Burlington
NJ: Burlington County Historical Society, 1980 (reprint of 1883 edition);
and The History of Burlington, New Jersey, William E. Schermerhorn,
Burlington NJ: Enterprise Publishing, 1927. In general I use three
libraries: the Burlington County Historical Society; the New Jersey
Room in the Burlington County Public Library Headquarters; and the
genealogy section in the library at Burlington County College. I
also
use the internet: ancestry.com; lds.org; and google. |
2.
THE LENAPE AND THE EUROPEANS
The land where Lumberton Leas stands was probably forested although
the Lenape did cut trees and burn the land to make meadows
for deer. There was a network of trails through the forest, often
along the
warmer, southern shore of streams. Sometimes the trails
were in pairs, a low and a high one near the shore and further
back. A major trail
went from Burlington to Mount Holly and south through Lumberton
and Medford to the Atlantic coast at Cape May.
In 1677, along these trails from the Delaware River coast, came word
of the arrival of hundreds of English settlers. For several decades
the Lenape had seen Dutch and Swedish traders come and go but this
was different. The settlers called for a parlay and five peace chiefs
were selected from our area. They were Katamas, Sekappie, Peanto, Rennowighwan,
and Jackickon. On October 10, 1677 these five chiefs sold the right
to live on the land between Rancocas Creek and Timber Creek, from the
Delaware River to the headwaters of the two creeks. In exchange they
received a large amount of blankets, clothing, kettles, tools, food,
tobacco, rum, guns, and bullets. The
result was a disaster. Within 25 years only one small band of Lenape
were left in Burlington County. They had emigrated to
Pennsylvania
and New York, or had died of smallpox, diphtheria, typhoid, malaria,
and influenza. One witness was Mary Murfin who arrived as a small
child in 1678. Since there was a lot of contact with the Lenape,
who brought
her family corn and venison, she grew up speaking their language
as well as she spoke English. She lived among them as a pioneer
settler
for 72 years, raised a family of nine children and became a distinguished
Quaker minister, but, sadly, even she fell prey to the prejudices
of her times. She wrote, "It may be observed how God’s
providence made room for us in a wonderful manner, in taking
away the Indians.
There came a distemper among them so mortal, that they could not
bury all the dead. Others went away, leaving their town.” No doubt there were also friendships. Many early settlers had Indians
living with them as servants. A particularly respected Lenape leader
named Okanickon was buried in the Burlington Friends Meeting cemetery
in 1681 with great numbers of Indians and English in attendance. The Lenape were replaced by thousands of European immigrants who formed
large, interlocking family groups. One such was the Moore family who
bought land on the outskirts of the old Indian village of Mispenninck.
These were the first Europeans to live at Lumberton Leas, but that
is a story for another day. |
Notes:
T
he
Lenape and the Europeans
Three
maps in the Burlington County Historical Society were useful:
Map of New Jersey, Vanderdonck, 1656; A Map of
New Jersey in America, John Seller and William Fisher, 1677;
Indian Trials and Early Paths, Charles S. Boyer, 1938. An historic
marker
at the entrance of Rancocas State Park, in Hainesport gave the
location of the village and the name of Chief Ramkok. The Dutch map
of 1656
names our stream the Kemkockes. A Swedish map of Peter Lindstrom,
drawn about the same time, calls it the Rancoques Kijl. Some
sources call
the village at the fork of the Rancocas, Sandhicky or Sankhikan
but others give that as the name of the band of Lenape living north
of
the Rankokas band. Mispenninck was the name of this village on
one map (Seller and Fisher, 1677), but another placed Mispenninck
in
the Evesham area (Vanderdonck, 1656.) In any case, the largest
local settlement
was about two miles downstream from Lumberton Leas. Charley Johnson
of Lumberton says that when he was a boy you could find Indian
artifacts anywhere the land was high above the creek and flat.
|
#3. THE MOORE FAMILY
OF LUMBERTON
Among the first Europeans to arrive in Burlington was twelve year old
Benjamin Moore on the Amity in 1682. He came with his father of the
same name who did not live long and an uncle Thomas Moore who kept
a tavern in what came to be called Moorestown. In 1693 Benjamin married
Sarah Stokes, the daughter of Thomas Stokes and Mary Bernard. They
were 23 years old.
As
the European population boomed in the early 1700’s, people
pressed into the interior along the rivers that served as highways.
Rivers were so important that you could only own a limited amount of
shoreline in proportion to your total acreage and you couldn’t
own on both sides of the river. They cleared forest for pasture
and set up lumber mills. Where there were no mills logs were simply
floated
downstream. Paths became roads and bridges and ferries were built.
Their farms produced corn, wheat, oats, rye, hay, flax, apples,
peaches, plums, and vegetables. They raised horses, cattle, hogs,
sheep, goats,
and chickens. As well as the farmers there were millers, storekeepers,
carpenters, brick makers, tanners, tailors, teachers, doctors,
ministers, and lawyers.
It was a land of opportunity, but people died young. Parents lost
children and children grew up with stepparents. Large families were
useful. They provided workers with a variety of skills for the farm,
allies through marriage, and caretakers for old age. People married
cousins and neighbors because they knew them and it kept the farm intact
and extended the ring of people you could call on in need. Women went
to live with their husbands when they married, and land was inherited
by the sons with financial arrangements for widows and unmarried daughters. Benjamin and Sarah Moore came to have nine children and 47 grandchildren.
They married into other large, local families with names such as Eayre,
Eves, Fenimore, Gaskill, Haines, Lippincott, Mason, Powell, Wills,
and Woolman. Together they formed a band of the European tribe, as
the Rancocas had been a band of the Lenape tribe. One thing Benjamin and Sarah particularly liked to do was buy land
and they came to be among the largest landholders in West Jersey. They
acquired four large tracts in Burlington County and others in Salem
and Gloucester Counties. In 1747, Benjamin Moore, Carlile Haines, Amos
Wilkins, Enoch Haines, and Amos Austin bought about 2000 acres along
the south branch of the Rancocas Creek from Charles Read who had gotten
it two years before from Thomas Budd, John Prickett, and Levy Shinn
who had surveyed it in 1729. A saw mill, mill pond, and log dwelling
house was included. In a pasture on the farm, near the creek, was a
small log stable, 21' x 25' feet with a loft and mangers. It stood
for almost 225 years, being the oldest such building in Burlington
County when it finally burned down in 1963. This was the first structure
at what would later become Lumberton Leas, and Benjamin and Sarah and
their children and grandchildren provide the first consistent set of
European footsteps for us to follow.
|
Notes:
The Moore Family of Lumberton
A history of the
ownership of this property with pictures and drawings of the old
stable are in
the
Library of
Congress and available online (go to http://memory.loc.gov/ and
search for “Moore Stiles Farm”). The Moore family
genealogy is found in The Benjamin Moore Family of Burlington
County New Jersey
(revised edition), Edmund F. Moore, Woodbury NJ: GCHS, 1998.
It would be nice to know where Benjamin and Sarah Moore and their
family lived before the first Moore home was built in Lumberton
property in
about 1745. Were they members of the library in Burlington City?
What medical illness were common and what medical care was
available? How
did the life spans of men and women compare? When Creek Road
was laid out and what names did it have. So you see, there
is lots
to do!
|
#4. LUMBERTON
LEAS GETS ITS FIRST RESIDENTS
Benjamin Moore
and Sarah Stokes divided the land in Lumberton among three sons.
In 1754 Joseph
and his wife Patience Woolman (the sister
of John Woolman) built their home at what is now 83 Parry Drive.
You can see it from Creek Road west of the entrance to Sage Run,
or from a path beside the building. In 1788 Joseph and Patience’ son
Cyrus and his wife Mary Austin built the house at 1815 Creek Road.
Benjamin and Sarah’s land just south of the creek-crossing
in Lumberton went to their son Samuel and his wife Abigail Eves.
He laid out three little streets with land for a church and cemetery
and sold house lots in what was called “Moore’s Nook”.
Between the properties
of Joseph and Samuel was a tract of 450 acres for the third son,
Benjamin,
Jr. and his wife Rebecca Fenimore (the
great-aunt of James Fenimore Cooper.) Their home, built in about 1745,
still stands at 18 Crispin Road. Here they raised eight children. When
Rebecca died, Benjamin, Jr. married the widow Mary Butcher Allen. Later,
the farm was divided between his sons Bethuel and John. The house went
to Bethuel who lived there with his wife Martha Allen. Their daughter
Martha Moore married Isaac E. Fenimore (her 2nd cousin) who bought
her father’s farm. Their daughter Martha Fenimore married her
stepbrother, Benajah Powell, and they built Powell’s Mill that
gave its name to the stream running through the property.
The rest of Benjamin
Jr. and Rebecca’s farm, including the Lumberton
Leas land, went to their son John Moore. In 1775 he and his wife Hannah
Eayre built the home at 72 Creek Road (the llama farm). Lumberton was
still a small village, with 11 dwellings in 1795, but it had a tavern.
Mount Holly was larger with 200 buildings in 1776. At first there were
few schools; both Benjamin and Benjamin, Jr. signed their wills with
a mark. On the other hand, in 1760 a library was established in Burlington
and in 1777 they had their first newspaper.
In 1811 John Moore and his second wife Sarah Gaskill Powell Lishman
(who had outlived two husbands) sold 100 acres of their farm to his
son Stacy Moore who moved in with his wife Sabilla Austin. They built
a house at what is now 47-49 Woodside Drive that survived until 1987.
Stacy and Sabilla had three children and then she died and he married
Drucilla Tomlin and they had three more children. This was probably
the first family to actually live on the property since the time of
the Lenape.
By 1839 Stacy and
Drucilla wanted to sell the land but two of their sons had moved
away and
the third was mentally ill. Stacy Stiles and
Susannah Ballinger, a young couple with four children, bought the farm.
She was family, being his sister’s daughter. Thus began a new
century in the history of Lumberton Leas, that of the Stiles family.
|
Notes: Lumberton
Leas gets its first residents
There are brief
descriptions of the Moore homes in Burlington County Inventory and
Survey of Historic,
Architectural, and Cultural Resources, Keith W. Betten (ed.),
Mt. Holly NJ: BCCHC, 1979. A group might wish to interview the people
living
in these homes and perhaps take photographs.
Signs
of the old Mill are still visible on Powell’s Mill
Stream near where it passes under Crispin Road.
Some wills
are available for study with lots of pleasant details such as
this by John Moore in 1806: “I give and bequeath to my dear
beloved Wife Sarah Moore all the property She brought with
her & also
the privilege of the West Room below stairs in my mantion
house and also the priviledge in common of the Kitchen, cellar,
pump
and oven,
and also
good oak wood fire ready, cut and halled to the dore of a
suitable length for her fire place, by my son Stacy out of the
Real
Estate herein devised
to him.”
The home built
by Stacy and Sabilla Moore survived until 1987, so there may be photos
somewhere. Are
there people
still alive
who remember growing
up in it?!
|
|
Susanna Ballinger and Stacy Stiles were of the sixth generation
of families that moved into the interior of West Jersey in
the 1680’s.
As far as I know this was the sixth marriage connecting the Ballinger,
Stiles, and Moore families. The Ballingers had two homes on Evesboro-Medford
Road and the Stiles’ homestead was on the North Branch of Pensauken
Creek in Maple Shade (where Stiles Avenue originates today.) The
British army camped there the day they abandoned Philadelphia in
1778 when Stacy’s father, John, was about five years old.
Susanna
was the daughter of Joshua Ballinger and Rebecca Moore (daughter
of John Moore and Hannah Eayre.) Susanna’s siblings
married into the Wills, Haines, Troth, Lippincott, and Wilkins
families. Her first
cousin, Richard Haines Ballinger, and his wife, Mary Ann Haines,
were prominent landholders in the village of Lumberton. Stacy
was the son of John Stiles and Elizabeth King. His sister Matilda
married Richard Edwards and they had five children. Perhaps
this was
the Richard Edwards who, with his brother Joseph, ran one of the
first stores in Lumberton. Stacy’s other sister, Ann, married
Job Haines. Unfortunately, he had an alcohol problem and died
at 36 in 1830 leaving
his widow with four children under the age of seven. Ann died eight
years later and Stacy was appointed guardian of the children. In 1839 Stacy and Susanna Stiles bought the farm on Creek Road. By
now they had three children of their own: Rachel B. (8), John M. (4),
and Stacy C. (2). Sadly, little John was deaf. Lumberton was growing fast. It was the last navigable point on Rancocas
Creek and by 1840 there were 20 vessels making the daily run to Philadelphia.
The post office opened in 1848. Schools, factories, and churches were
built. The railroad came through in 1866. Lumberton was a popular recreation
spot with hotels, restaurants, and taverns near the creek. One of them,
Boxwood Lodge, can still be seen at 516 South Main Street. The village
was incorporated as a township in 1861 and Stacy Stiles served on the
Township Committee from 1868 to 1870. Stacy
and Susanna had five more children: Susanna (born in 1839 one month
after they bought the farm), Rebecca (1844), George (1847),
Serena
(1850), and Henry B. (1855). Stacy’s mother, Elizabeth, was
living with them in 1850 and 1860. Hearing continued to be a problem:
four
of the eight children were deaf and did not attend school (John,
George, Serena, and Henry.) One child died young (George) but the
other seven
siblings lived long lives together on their farm until the early
1900s. Apparently few people wanted to marry into a family with
congenital deafness, but there was one exception. In 1850 a young
girl was a
student
in a school for the deaf in Philadelphia. She will soon join our
story. |
Notes: The Stiles
Farm
From here on, my
primary source of information was John and Miriam Brush’s search
of deeds, wills, and census records done in January, 1998. Their
careful work showed me what
to look for
and is much appreciated.
You
may have noticed that one Stacy sold the farm to another Stacy. This
was a common first name for men in New Jersey. One of
the original proprietors
was Mahlon Stacy. He and his wife, Rebecca Ely, did not have
sons and their daughters continued the Stacy name by giving
it to the grandsons
as a first name. The tradition was taken up by many other New
Jersey families of that time.
One more detail:
Stacy Stiles might have been married before. On October 21, 1824
Stacy married Priscilla Stiles (who had the
same
last name),
according to an index of New Jersey Marriages. She probably
died before 1830 when Rachel B. Stiles was born, perhaps named for
Susanna’s
sister, Rachel Ballinger. I have not found a record of Stacy and Susanna’s
marriage, but he was 10 years older than his wife which is consistent
with this being his second marriage.
|
#6. THE STILES FAMILY
STORY CONTINUES
Charlotte N. Fisher was born in 1833 in Chesterfield, the daughter
of Charles and Julia Ann Fisher. In 1850 she attended the Deaf
and Dumb Institution in Philadelphia, a residential school
for the deaf
with nine staff and 142 students. In 1859 Charlotte married John
M. Stiles. They were both listed as mute. In 1860 they were in
Lumberton with their one year old daughter, Eleanora, who
was not deaf. Ten
years later they were in a house his parents owned at 470 Main
Street with their children Mary Ann (7) and Charles (5) who
were not deaf.
Eleanora (11) had moved to Chesterfield to live with Charlotte’s
parents. Perhaps they wanted her to grow up in a hearing environment.
Then something happened and the little family broke up. From now on
John appears in the records with his parents on the farm or living
alone in the village of Lumberton. In 1880 Charlotte was in New Egypt
in Ocean County with her two younger children. She was listed as the
housekeeper in the home of Andrew Pierce, an unmarried deaf man. Nearby
was Eleanora, now married to Dilwyn Margerum, who had been a neighbor
in Lumberton. They had two children, Julia and Reading. Later, Mary Ann and Charles each married and had children. Charles
moved to Mount Laurel and in 1910 his sister Eleanora, now a widow,
and her children were living next door. Charlotte was in New Egypt
with a granddaughter, Emma Bromell, who was also deaf. In 1920 Charlotte
Fisher Stiles appeared in the records for the last time, at the age
of 86, living with her daughter, Eleanora, and her granddaughter, Emma.
She had endured much. John
continued to live in the village of Lumberton but his parents and
siblings kept a certain distance. In their wills they arranged
for him to have the use of the house on Main Street and an income,
but they did not give any property or money directly to him. John’s
son, Charles, was appointed to administer his father’s estate
when John died in early 1919. Back
on the Stiles farm, Rachel, Stacy, Susanna, Rebecca, Serena, and
Henry lived out their long lives together. Finally, the last
member of the family was 80 year old Susanna, living in the farm
house with
a servant and a friend. She asked to be buried in the Easton Burial
Ground on Fostertown Road with her parents, grandparents and siblings
and this was done on October 28, 1919. She left small bequests
to a hospital, a home for aged women, and a children’s home
in Burlington County, and to The Estaugh, a corporation recently
established to operate
a Quaker retirement home in Haddonfield. A new wave of European immigrants had been making their way to Lumberton
during the last years in the lives of the Stiles siblings. Names such
as Kandraecki, Seborawsky, and Protosewitsz appeared in the census
rolls. This determination to build a new life brought us the next occupants
of the old farm house on Creek Road. |
Notes:
The Stiles Family Story Continues
Useful information
is found in a chapter of The Stiles Family in America (Henry Reed
Stiles, Jersey City: Doan & Pilson, 1895, pp. 632-650.) This
is mainly about a large Stiles family of New England and New Jersey
that is unrelated to our Stiles but the book includes a chapter on
Stacy’s family. Interestingly, the two Stiles families now
living in Lumberton
Leas come from the other part of the book!
I also received
assistance from Leon Stiles who is creating an archive of everyone
who ever carried that name.
Eleanora Stiles
may have been conceived before the marriage of John and Charlotte
on July 24, 1859. On September 10, 1860 she was listed as one year
old (the practice was to give the age in months if the baby was less
than one year old.) Similarly, in 1870 Eleanora was listed as 11
years old.
Mary Ann had a
son, Sidney Stryker, who was born out of wedlock in Plumsted Township,
Ocean County, on October 11, 1881. Perhaps his father died before
he was born, since there was a man of the same name, born c. 1849,
in the census records of 1850 and 1870 in Middletown and Shrewsbury
Townships, Monmouth County. After Mary Ann married William Bromell,
her son Sidney remained with her (in 1910 and 1920, but not in 1930).
In the past, deaf
people were identified as such in census and marriage records. The
terms used were deaf, dumb, mute, or idiotic. This stopped after
about 1900. We only know that Emma Bromell was deaf because the 1910
census taker wrote “DD” in the margin, following the
tradition of an earlier day. |
#7. THE SAGE FAMILY
AND THE PEACH ORCHARD
Joseph Protosewitsz was born in Poland in 1866. Three years after he
was born there was a revolution in Poland and Russia took over the
area where he lived. Many Poles came to the United States after that,
particularly to Pennsylvania for work in the coal mines. Joseph Protosewitsz
arrived in about 1887 and became Joseph Sage. He appears in the record
for the first time in the 1900 census in Mount Laurel, NJ, working
as a farm laborer and living with Albert and Esther Roberts. Margaret
G. Sage was born in Ireland in 1876 and emigrated in about 1892.
Maggie and Joe were married in 1903. In the 1910 census they were
living in Mount Laurel on Marne Highway near Hartford Road. Their
children were Joseph Boyd Sage, age 5, born in Pennsylvania, and
Robert Gilmore Sage, age 3, born in New Jersey. Later, Sarah was
born in 1914 and Stanley in 1918.
Two doors away on Marne Highway were Eleanora Margerum and Charles
F. Stiles, two of the children of John and Charlotte Stiles. In 1921
Joseph and Maggie bought the Stiles Farm from the estate of Susanna
Stiles and the Sage family lived here for the next 50 years. They also
acquired the Joseph Moore farmhouse on the other side of Creek Road
in what is now called Sage Run Development. Finally, in 1951 Maggie
died and Joseph followed in 1955. They were buried in the Brotherhood
Cemetery on Marne Highway near the Route 541 Bypass. The Brotherhood
of America was a beneficiary society organized to provide financial
support for its members in times of need. Of
the next generation, only Gloria Sage, the widow of Stanley, is alive
today. She is a cheerful woman who likes to talk of the
old days,
but she says her in-laws rarely spoke of their lives before coming
to Lumberton. The Sage children attended school on Chestnut Street
in a new building that was considered quite luxurious because it
had four rooms for eight grades, plus a cafeteria and nurses
quarters in
the basement. The principal was Florence Walther, a small, feisty
woman known for dragging big boys around by the ears. Several
of Joseph and
Maggie’s grandchildren and great-grandchildren still live in
the Lumberton area. They enjoyed visits to the farm and hunting and
fishing here. Sadly, during a heat wave in the 1960’s a piece
of broken glass started a fire that destroyed several farm buildings
including the old log stable. In 1970 Robert and Frances Sage sold the farm to William and Sara
Bowman Haines. They planted a peach orchard that was productive for
25 years. Bill Haines was a member of the New Jersey State Senate,
the last active farmer elected to that body. Every fall he arrived
in Trenton with baskets of peaches and apples as gifts for his colleagues.
During this time the old farmhouse, built in about 1815, was rented
out to tenants. It soon became run down and had to be abandoned. Bill
Haines died in 1996, but his widow, Sara, is still living in Moorestown. From 1982 to 1995 the peach orchard was owned by a company called
Creek Road Farm. Surprisingly, the land was farmed by Tak Moriuchi.
Tak and his wife, Yuri, were among the founders of Medford Leas where
they still live. Thus we near the completion of the history of the
land on which the Lumberton Leas community was established. |
Notes:
The Sage Family and the Peach Orchard
The
property search done by John and Miriam Brush told me a lot about
the 20th century owners of
the Lumberton Leas property. Census records filled in more and
then Gloria Sage and her nephew Robert G. Sage, Jr. were kind enough
to
speak with me.
The middle names of the first two Sage children, Gilmore and Boyd,
may point us toward Maggie’s maiden name. On the record
of her burial she is listed as Margaret G. Sage, but the G. may
refer
to a second given
name rather than her maiden name.
I was also able
to speak briefly with a grandson of William and Sara Haines and with
Tak Moriuchi about his memories of working on this
property. The good folks at the Lumberton Historical Society put
me in touch with
local people who remembered the old Stiles farm and the Sage family.
There is a lot more still to be done. We need a search for pictures
of the farm and its buildings, and it would be pleasant to invite
the Sage
and Haines family members to visit us and reminisce.
|
#8. MEDFORD LEAS ARRIVES IN LUMBERTON
Jack and Priscilla Bier of Medford were looking for a site for
their dream house when they bought the land in Lumberton from
Creek Road
Farms in May 1995. The peach trees were no longer bearing fruit
and were taken out. The plan was to put the house where the
Community Center is now. Then circumstances changed and they
decided to stay
where they were and sell the land. Meanwhile, Medford Leas was
thinking
about increasing the variety of housing they offered by building
homes for people 55 and over. They wanted to broaden their appeal,
create their own future market, and add youthfulness and vitality
to life on the main campus. A member of the Lumberton Planning
and Zoning Board put the Bier’s in touch with Medford
Leas and a sale soon followed in May 1997.
For
Medford Leas the land had the advantages of location, size, and price.
It was somewhat isolated from its neighbors and there
was a
creek and woodlands. Some issues had to be worked out because the
planned house lots were small. Permission was needed to have the
houses near
the street, without sidewalks, and with smaller than normal trees
in the yards. It helped that each resident had access to a large
amount
of communal land. For safety, Creek Road had to be widened at the
entrance and a retaining wall was built on the other side, and
then rebuilt
a few months later when it began to shift. We needed a sewer pumping
station with a generator for emergencies and a drainage basin to
hold rain water and release it slowly into Powell’s Mill Stream. Who
were the people particularly responsible for creating Lumberton Leas
as we know it? There were the board members of The Estaugh and,
in the Medford Leas administration, Lois Forrest and Kate Kwiecinski.
The Project Manager was Bill Murphy, Director of Maintenance at
Medford Leas. Bob Gutowski of Morris Arboretum did the initial design
of
a winding road with homes on either side, small private yards,
a large
common area in the center, and plenty of woodlands. The trail system
was laid out by Ted Gordon, a local expert on pinelands biology.
John Schweppenheiser, Jr. was the civil engineer responsible for
lighting,
landscaping, mapping and, with Bill Murphy, zoning approval. The
architect was John G. Martin and Gary Gardner was the builder.
John Siminski’s
team did the gardening and Tom McKenna’s housekeepers did
the final cleaning. Marianne Steely, Marge Sagett, and Judith Fenimore
found people to live here. These are just a few of the hundreds
of
people whose labors produced the 42 buildings with 110 living units
that is Lumberton Leas today. The first residents arrived on June
10, 1999 and they kept coming. There are about 180 of us here now,
leaving
footsteps for others to follow.
As we near the end of this survey of those who have gone before us
on this land, it is time to look back at what we have learned and consider
what we might do in the future. That is the project for next month. |
Notes:
Medford Leas arrives in Lumberton.
Most of the information
in this chapter came from conversations with Jack Bier, Lois Forrest
and Bill
Murphy. Several others contributed bits and pieces which is typical.
Throughout the last year of work on this project, I have been
peppered by comments and suggestions. This has been a huge help.
|
#9.
WHAT’S NEXT?
Looking
back at this survey of people who lived on this property during
the last 300 years, it is surprising that we did find
out a little,
and the little we know tells us a lot about the people’s lives,
and yet there is still so much that could be learned. We know something
about the Lenape, and four generations of Moores, and three generations
of Stiles (who were cousins of the Moores), and three generations
of Sages, and the people who later owned the property but did not
live here. Unfortunately, there are some serious gaps. We don’t
know how the land passed from the Proprietors to Budd, Prickett,
and Shinn in 1729. There is a mystery as to the family of Elizabeth
King Stiles, Stacy’s mother, who lived here in the 1850s and
'60s. People rented the farmhouse in the 1970’s but we don’t
know who they were. And so on.
In
a family, it is not uncommon to find an activity that members contribute
to over many generations. We at Lumberton Leas have the
advantage that “generations” pass
unusually quickly. New people who might pitch in keep joining the
family. Projects can gradually build up over time.
Here are some topics Lumberton Leas residents could take on for further
study. (Surely you can think of more!) The Lenape: The lives of the
Lenape before the arrival of the Europeans, how they used the Lumberton
Leas land, and where the local villages were. Their lives immediately
after the arrival of the Europeans, and since then. Entertainment:
How the farm families on this property entertained themselves over
the years, the music they listened to, their dances and games and celebrations.
Education: Where the local schools and libraries were and what they
were like. Medical Care: What illnesses people had and how they were
treated. Who were the local doctors were. The problem of alcoholism.
Crafts: The skills of the people who lived here. Farming: The crops
and farm animals and the tools and farming methods. Clothing: What
people wore and how this changed through the years. Food: What they
ate and their recipes. Religion: Where they worshiped. The Local Village:
How the surrounding community developed. The effect of wars and changes
in the economy. Town celebrations. Natural History: The plants and
animals that live here now and have lived here over the years. How
the soil and the ecology and the weather has changed. Photos And Paintings:
We could look for photographs and paintings of this property and its
buildings. We know of a few and there are many places to look for more.
Interviews: A delegation could interview people who used to live here
or who owned this property and they could be invited to visit us. If
one of these topics interests you, let others know – you
may have allies! Lumberton Leas News is a good way to keep in touch
and it is open to publishing longer reports in serial form. This
can be our contribution to those who follow in our footsteps. |
Notes: What's Next?
Much of the research
for this history was done in the following five locations: the New
Jersey Room of the Burlington
County Library; the Burlington County Historical Society; the
Genealogy Collection of Burlington County College; the Lumberton
Historical
Society;
and the deeds office in the Burlington County building in Mount
Holly. On the computer I used www.ancestry.com, www.usgenweb.
com, http://genforum.genealogy.com,
and internet search engines. This can be done on a computer reserved
for genealogy research at the Burlington County Library. Also,
the Medford Leas Family History Group meets in the meeting room
on the
3rd floor of Haddon, 4th Wednesdays at 3pm. The contact person
is Russ Haley, 654-3286. And of course I simply asked questions.
A lot
of people
helped and it was a lot of fun.
|