Tag Archives: History

VIRTUAL AUTHOR TALK – Researching the History of a New Jersey House

Have you ever wondered when your house was built, by whom, or what it was used for? Perhaps a house in your town or community is the subject of folklore; is any of it true? Please join us as Douglas McVarish discusses his work “Researching the History of a New Jersey House.” Based on the author’s extensive experience in researching and writing building histories, he will discuss:

  • How to gather information
  • Where to look for information
  • How to organize and interpret the information you uncover
  • Tips on preparing your house history

This step-by-step presentation will certainly awake your inner sleuth and who knows what mysteries you might uncover!

Douglas McVarish is a semi-retired architectural historian/historic preservation. He holds graduate degrees from the University of Virginia and the University of Vermont and has 30 years of professional experience as an architectural historian in the public, private and nonprofit sectors. He worked for five years as a National Register for Historic Places reviewer for the state historic preservation office and most recently spent a year working on a special project under contract to the National Park Service, National Register Office.

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WEBINAR – When Newark had a Chinatown

When we hear “Chinatown,” we often think of New York, San Francisco, or Philadelphia. While these epicenters of Chinese immigration remain prominent today, many cities across the country were home to enclaves of Chinese immigrants.  In New Jersey, Chinese immigrants first settled in Belleville before branching out to Newark due to its proximity to New York City.  Please join us in honor of Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month as Yoland Skeete-Laessig uncovers the history and stories of Newark’s lost Chinatown, which during the turn of the twentieth century, was larger than New York City’s.  Yoland will also touch on how her experiences growing up as a mixed-race child in Trinidad influenced her identity, especially her Chinese grandfather and relatives.

Yoland Skeete-Laessig is a documentarian whose photographs, video and multimedia works are in the print collection of the Museum of Modern Art, African American Museum of Life and Culture in Dallas, Texas, the Alexander Bonin Gallery in Chelsea, the American Express Corporation, The Bilha Museum in Portugal, and The Zimmerli Museum in New Jersey.  She also served as director and co-founder of the Sumei Multidisciplinary Arts Center in Newark, one of Newark’s leading artist run alternative spaces from 1993 to 2015.  She has been a recipient of the Glide Memorial Grant, The Graff Travel Grant, The New Jersey Council on the Humanities Grant and the Melon Grant distributed through New Jersey Performing Arts Center’s Humanities program and The Chinese American Museum in Los Angeles.

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VIRTUAL AUTHOR TALK – Women of the Seas and the Stars

In celebration of Women’s History Month, the library is honored to have historian and storyteller Carol Simon Levin discussed notable women who made careers and discoveries below the waves and above the clouds. Carol portrays Mercury 13 “almost astronaut” Jerrie Cobb to tell the stories of overlooked women who sought to explore realms beyond the surface of Earth, in outer space and the depth of the ocean — astronomers and astronauts, human “computers” and marine scientists who have broadened our understanding of our planet and our universe.

Carol Simon Levin is a professional storyteller and independent historian who specializes in telling the stories of “fascinating women history forgot” through first person portrayals. She is a NJ Council for the Humanities Public Scholar presenting “Reclaiming Our Voice: NJ’s Role in the Fight for Woman Suffrage” which she has also published as an article in March 2020 issue of the Garden State Legacy. She has also authored the book Remembering the Ladies: From Patriots in Petticoats to Presidential Candidates which profiles 69 women — well-known and unknown — who worked tirelessly for women’s rights in America. Carol holds a BA focusing on women’s history and history of technology from Cornell University and a Masters in Library Services from the University of Arizona. She is also the founder of Telling Her Stories.

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Abigail Sharp: New Jersey’s One Witch

The colonial province of New Jersey never tried anyone for witchcraft. The only legal record concerning a “witch” is the lawsuit brought by Abigail Sharp of Woodbridge, New Jersey against Abraham Shotwell.

Sharp v. Shotwell

Courtesy New Jersey State Archives ; Department of State

On May 13, 1727, Abigail Sharp sued Abraham Shotwell for trespass on the case in the amount of £500, citing harm to her business, her reputation, and her social life, as well as exposing her to the threat of unwarranted prosecution. Shotwell had publicly accused her of witchcraft, describing supernatural events he claimed he had witnessed, including her taking the shape of a cat on top of his house and bewitching his horse, which died.

Abraham Shotwell pleaded not guilty. There is no information on the ultimate decision of the case.

The three pages that comprise her lawsuit are the only record we have that the events occurred and it seems to have been forgotten until the case became an object of public interest in the 19th century.

The suit was filed in Middlesex County and is in the collection of Supreme Court case files at the New Jersey State Archives. See “Abigail Sharp v. Abraham Shotwell.” Case 38755. New Jersey State Archives Supreme Court Case Files, 1704-1844. https://wwwnet-dos.state.nj.us/DOS_ArchivesDBPortal/SupremeCourt.aspx. High quality scans of the lawsuit can be purchased from the Archives, or an appointment can be made to view the original in person.

A Transcription of the Lawsuit

Spelling, grammar, and line breaks are preserved from the original.

Courtesy New Jersey State Archives ; Department of State.

Superior Court of the term of May in the thirteenth year of
King George
Middlesex: Abigail Sharp complains of Abraham Shotwell in Custody &
For that, whereas the said Abigail is a good true faithfull
And honest subject of our Lord the King now & hath been
Of good name fame conversation & condition & as Such
As well[?] among her neighbors as other faithfull subjects
Of our Said Lord the King always hitherto hath been
Esteemed called & reputed & soberly modestly & Religiously
From the time of her nativity hitherto hath always lived
Without any scandal or suspicion of felony witchcraft
Inchantment or diabolical conversation with wicked
& unclean spirits or another other hurtfull or unlawfull
Crime whatsoever. Nevertheless, the aforesaid Abraham
Not ignorant of the premises but contriving & malitious-
Ly intending the same Abigail unjustly to injure
Her good name fame & reputation to hurt Distract
From & damage & to cause her to suffer & undergo
The pains & penalties by the Laws of England & of
This province upon those that are guilty of witchcraft
& have commerce & familiarity with unclean &
Wicked spirits ordained to be inflicted the Same
Abraham on the last day of March in the year of
Our Lord one thousand seven hundred & twenty
Seven at Woodbridge within the county of Middlesex
Aforesaid in the presence & hearing of many of the
faithfull subjects of our Lord the King now falsely &
maliciously openly & publickly spoke uttered
& spread abroad of the same Abigail those false [??]
& defamatory English words following namely Nab
Sharp (meaning the said Abigaill) is an old witch &
Had been flying all night & that he saw her (meaning
The Said Abigail) as he was coming home early in
The morning & She was just lighted in a [??] of
Bouns & also that the said Abraham of his further
[next page]
Further malice against the same Abigail. Thereon & that
Same Abigail further to blacken scandalize & hurt
in the manner aforesaid afterwards to wit on the day
& year & at the place aforesaid presence & hearing
Of many of the faithfull subjects of our said Lord
the King now falsely maliciously openly & publickly
Spoke uttered spread abroad & with a loud voice
Published of the same Abigail these other false feigned
Scandalous & defamatory English words following
Namely Abigail Sharp is a witch & that he heard a
Noise on the top of his house & he saw her meaning
The said Abigail in the shape of a cat and also that
The said Abraham of his further malice against the
Said Abigail shown & the same Abigail further to
blacken scandalize & hurt in the manner aforesaid
afterwards to wit on the day year & at the place afore
Said in the presence & hearing of many of the faithfull
Subjects of our said Lord the King now falsely &
Maliciously openly & publickly spoke uttered spread
Abroad & with a loud voice published of the same
Abigail these other false feigned Scandalous & Defamatory
English words following namely Nab Sharp that old
Witch (meaning the said Abigail) bewitched that horse
That lies dead in my field. She meaning the said
Abigail, brought him there just now all mealy from
The mill, by Reason of the Speaking uttering
Spreading abroad & publishing of which several
False feigned scandalous & defamatory English words
The same Abigail – not only in her good name found
Credit[?] & Reputation which she heretofore had is
greatly hurt & worsted but hath been put in danger
Of being indicted of felony & witchcraft & is drawn[?]
Into so great hatred & infamy that all the people
Of this Province do refuse to have commerce &
Society with her & in getting of her livelyhood
& doing of her business she is many ways hurt
[next page]
Wherefore the said Abigail saith that she is worsted & hath
damage to five hundred pounds & thereof she bringeth
this suite.
Wm. Smith Quod[?] plg[?]
[Post script]
Middlesex: So Abigail Sharp puts in her place William Smith her attorney
against Abraham Shotwell in a plea of trespass upon the
Case

Who was Abigail Sharp?

Nothing is known of her origins, the outcome of the case, or anything else at all in any source that I can find.

I have not yet found a published genealogy or primary source that includes an Abigail Sharp that could possibly be her, but there are clues in the lawsuit to her possible identity.

Abigail brought the lawsuit herself, which may indicate she was either unmarried or widowed. Shotwell disparagingly called her an “old nab” in 1727; if she was, say, 50 years old at the time, that would have her born about 1675 or earlier. At that age, she could be a New Jersey native born to one of the early Sharp settlers in East or perhaps West Jersey, or she was herself an immigrant.

There are a handful of Sharp families settled in New Jersey by 1727. My current working theory is she is a sister or cousin to a pair of Sharp brothers who immigrated from Scotland and settled in Woodbridge. Abigail was in the same generation as William and John Sharp. William Sharp married a Mary Smith. Abigail’s lawyer was William Smith; I have not yet confirmed his identity.

It’s also noteworthy that Abigail had the means to hire a lawyer to sue Abraham Shotwell. Abigail Sharp was a businesswoman. She claims in the lawsuit that she suffered not only from a bad reputation as a result of the slander, but that “all the people of this Province do refuse to have commerce & Society with her & in getting of her livelihood & doing of her business she is many ways hurt.” Shotwell also claimed that when she brought him to the dead horse, she was “all mealy from the mill”.

What was Abigail’s business? Did she work at the mill? Woodbridge is the site of New Jersey’s first grist mill, founded by Jonathan Singletary Dunham. Dunham’s daughter married Samuel Smith, and it was their daughter Mary who married the immigrant William Sharp.

In other witchcraft cases, it’s been noted by historians that accusers are motivated by fear of the Other, xenophobia, and jealousy. There is sometimes a financial disparity between the accused and the accuser, with the accuser wanting to take down someone of higher financial status.

If Abigail is a Scot, I wonder whether xenophobia played a part in Shotwell’s accusation (as it did in the Pennsylvania witchcraft trial discussed below); her accuser, Shotwell, was a New Yorker of English descent. Scotland and England at the time shared a long, fraught history of distrust.

If I am able to identify her further, I will update this blog.

Abraham Shotwell, being male with an unusual name, is easier to locate. He is probably if not certainly the Abraham Shotwell who was born say 1692 in Long Island and was of Piscataway when he died in 1757. He would have been in his thirties when he made his accusations, which he had to have known endangered her life. It had been only thirty years since the last witchcraft executions in the future United States, the Salem trials of 1692. While we can say today with hindsight it would have been unlikely for Abigail to be prosecuted for witchcraft, in 1727 it remained on the books as a capital crime.

East Jersey Witch Law of 1668

In the general assembly of East Jersey held in May, 1668, among the dozen “Capital Laws,” is the following law authorizing prosecution for witchcraft: “If any person be found to be a witch, either male or female, they shall be put to death.”

“ITEM.—If any person be found to be a witch, either male or female, they shall be put to death.”

This and other works are available in our list of Historical Compilations of New Jersey Law.

West Jersey, which operated independently and published its own laws, had no such mention of witchcraft in its laws. After 1703, when East Jersey and West Jersey were combined into the new province of New Jersey, the witchcraft law was in effect statewide.

Mount Holly Witches?

The other notable mention of witchcraft is a 1732 article published in the Pennsylvania Gazette on the witches of Mount Holly, who are celebrated today with an annual Witches Ball. Read the article here: https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-01-02-0056.

The absence of any supporting documentary evidence, the jovial tone of the article, and the absence of any personal names as would surely be expected all point to this being a probable fabrication by the Gazette under its editor, noted prankster and joker (among other titles), Ben Franklin. There are those who were more than willing to believe the story, including the author of an 1894 article in New Jersey Law Journal.

New Jersey’s Enduring Witch Heritage

Margaret Mattson, the only woman tried for witchcraft in Pennsylvania, was bailed out by her husband Nils Mattson and son Anthony Nilsson Long to the sum of 50 pounds. She was tried by a jury of mostly English Quakers who found her not guilty of witchcraft, but guilty of “the fame of being a witch” (i.e. she had a bad reputation). Margaret, her husband, and their son were Finns who had endured a traumatic migration to the New Sweden colony in 1654 on an overcrowded ship in which a third of the passengers died. However Nils Mattson prospered and was a landholder when the English Quakers moved in. While their rights to own property were for the most part respected by the English, there was tension as many of the prime locations were already developed by the Swedes and Finns. Many sold their land in Philadelphia, and a number moved to Gloucester and Salem counties.

In February 1684, she and her co-accused were tried for witchcraft in the new state of Pennsylvania’s Provincial Council, with William Penn serving as judge. In the midst of the accusations and trial, her husband sold off his farms in Pennsylvania. After the trial, he and Margaret relocated across the river to Gloucester County, New Jersey to live with their son. Witchcraft was never a crime in West Jersey. Son Anthony Nilsson Long was a prominent man, serving as constable of Gloucester County the same year his mother was tried as a witch across the river. Anthony had five children and there are surely descendants of Margaret Mattson living in New Jersey today.

Lastly, the accused witch of East Hampton, New York, Elizabeth Garlick, spared at trial by John Winthrop Jr. in 1658, has a strong New Jersey connection; most of her grandchildren left Long Island for Cape May and south Jersey when land became available in the 1680s and 1690s. Widespread endogamy means if you have colonial Cape May roots, there is probably a witch grandmother sitting in your tree.

Further Reading

Burr, George Lincoln (ed). “The Pennsylvania Cases of Mattson, Hendrickson, and Guard, 1684, 1701.” In Narratives of the Witchcraft Cases 1648-1706. Vol. 14 of Original Narratives of Early American History, edited by J. Franklin Jameson, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1914, pp. 81-88, https://archive.org/details/narrativeswitch03burrgoog/page/n99/mode/2up

Cohen, David S. “Witchcraft.” Encyclopedia of New Jersey, edited by Maxine Lurie and Marc Mappen, Rutgers University Press, 2004, p. 880, https://resources.njstatelib.org/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&scope=site&db=nlebk&db=nlabk&AN=124913

Hanc, John. (October 25, 2012). “Before Salem, There Was the Not-So-Wicked Witch of the Hamptons.” Smithsonian Magazine, October 25, 2012. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/before-salem-there-was-the-not-so-wicked-witch-of-the-hamptons-95603019/?no-ist

Lee, Francis Bazley. “Some Legal Allusions to Witchcraft in Colonial New Jersey.” New Jersey Law Journal 17 (1894): 169-172. https://archive.org/details/sim_new-jersey-law-journal_1894-06_17_6/page/168/mode/2up

New Jersey Outdoors: archive now available online

illustration of hiker in forest overlooking a road with cars. Caption reads "Green, New Jersey's favorite color. Help Prevent Forest Fires."
illustration of hiker in forest overlooking a road with cars. Caption reads "Green, New Jersey's favorite color. Help Prevent Forest Fires."
Forrest fire prevention poster from the May 1964 issue

New Jersey is far more than just a “garden” state. While well known for its vast network of fields and farms, fresh produce and fruit orchards, New Jersey boasts incredible ecological diversity. Even those who only know New Jersey from the Sopranos have heard of the Pine Barrens. The 1.1 million acre swath of forest and wetland that confounded Chris and Paulie in the episode “Pine Barrens,” was actually the country’s first National Reserve and designated by UNESCO as a single-site biosphere reserve. It is the largest body of open space on the Mid-Atlantic seaboard and home to dozens of rare and endangered species.

Yet even though the Pine Barrens claim some 22% of the state’s land, it is not the only highlight when it comes to New Jersey’s environmental diversity. Our state hosts portions of the Appalachian Trail and the black bears who live along it, streams full of native brook trout, fields where wild turkey roam and song birds compete for blueberries, and homes for marine wildlife all along the Jersey Shore.

illustrated image of a squirrel on a tree
Red squirrel illustration by Reece, from the October 1965 issue

New Jersey Outdoors was created with the idea of highlighting and celebrating New Jersey’s rich environmental heritage. First published in 1950 by the Department of Conservation and Economic Development – the precursor to the modern Department of Environmental Protection – New Jersey Outdoors featured articles on hunting, fishing, and conservation related topics. The combination of photography and illustration by local artists gave each issue a unique personality.

The New Jersey State Library is pleased to provide free online access to its entire collection of New Jersey Outdoors. Issues from 1961-2002 have been digitized in color and are available through the Library’s Digital Collections.

 

Browsing the table of contents reveals the breadth of topics in each issue – from in-depth commentary on particular species, to fishing tips, and profiled conservation projects. The issues also provide a glimpse at how environmental concerns changed over time.

For example, the January 1963 issue features commentary on what could happen to New Jersey’s wildlife and food supply in the event of nuclear disaster. Tensions between sportsman and environmentalists were highlighted in the August 1971 issue – just a year after the first Earth Day and the rise of the new environmental movements. In July/August 1983, an article on urban waterfront restoration projects showed the culmination of years’ worth of work. Peppered throughout the issues are articles on historical and archaeological topics, as researchers explored human interaction with their environment.

Image of man in canoe approaching a campsite
“This is the life”- Harry Grosch.
Camping at Saw Mill Lake in High Point Park, from the July 1961 issue

New Jersey Outdoors was published monthly from 1961-1973, bimonthly 1973-1991, and then seasonally from 1991-2003.  Publication ended in 2003 after the publication of the Department of Environmental Protection’s new magazine, Fish and Wildlife Digest. Fish and Wildlife Digest eventually split into three separate, annual magazines: Hunting and Trapping Digest, Freshwater Fishing Digest, and Marine Digest. These magazines are also available through the Library’s Digital Collections.

Unfortunately, we are missing the earliest published issues (1950-1960) of New Jersey Outdoors from our collection.  Anyone who would like to donate copies of these issues to the New Jersey State Library can contact Deborah Mercer or Caitlyn Cook in Reference Services at refdesk@njstatelib.org.