Tom M
To answer your question on Apple Pie Hill, I must pose another on the Jersey Central that might even stump Jerseyman! Is Charles K. Landis, Vineland’s founder, working behind the scenes to develop Fruitland and Wheatland? I know Landis liked the name Fruitland since he later tried to start a new county with that name. Landisville was to be its county seat.
Attached is an excerpt from a little known quirky atlas map (Hopkins, 1873: 23, Combined Atlas of the State of New Jersey and the City of Newark). It shows rectilinear road patterns of East Fruitland and Fruitland, railroad era land speculation. I suspect the latter to be agricultural lands. The brick pillars are probably related to an even later real estate scheme. Could you imagine vineyard terraces rising up Apple Pie Hill?
Cheers!
Spung-Man
Spungman:
You and I have had a short conversation on the possible involvement of Charles K. Landis in Fruitland and Wheatland. For those who read these forums, I have not come across any evidence in my research for Landis’s direct involvement in Fruitland or Wheatland. Colonel William C. Patterson incorporated the Fruitland Improvement Company under the general laws of New Jersey on 27 November 1866, a day after he filed his paperwork with the Secretary of State’s office. I remember examining the corporate charter and the Division of Revenue, but, at this point in time, I do not remember who served as incorporators and my notes are waiting somewhere in a bin here to be filed (I am way behind in my filing!!). Patterson was serious enough about his enterprise to seek out and hire civil engineer Walter Wright Greenland, a resident of Huntingdon County, Pennsylvania, as the manager of Fruitland. Greenland remained here until 1871, when he returned to Pennsylvania and engaged in logging. During his time at Atsion, Greenland served as the postmaster of Atsion under President Johnson and as an elected Burlington County Freeholder. For more information on Patterson and Fruitland, please see this thread in the forums:
http://forums.njpinebarrens.com/showthread.php?t=3212&highlight=Patterson
The New Jersey State Legislature approved an act to incorporate the Wheatland Manufacturing Company on 4 April 1873. The initial incorporators included Daniel Townsend, Amos Falkenberg, Job H. Falkinburgh, Ebenezer N. Townsend, and Jesse L. Townsend. The stated purpose of the Wheatland corporation was “…manufacturing and selling terra cotta ware, and other goods, and carrying on business incident thereto….” The enabling legislation also granted the company the right to “…purchase, use, hold, possess and enjoy such real estate as may be necessary or expedient, for the purposes of said corporation….” This language did NOT provide the Wheatland Manufacturing Company with the right to serve as a real estate developer. However, the
Annual Report of the Comptroller of the Treasury of the State of New Jersey…for the Year ending October 31st, 1873, states that the legislative act for Wheatland was, for reasons currently unknown, an “inoperative act.” Perhaps the financial panic of 1873 removed the opportunity to properly fund the project and the incorporators failed to pay the proper filing fees. At some point, those men interested in the Wheatland enterprise tried again, filing papers for the Wheatland Improvement Company to sell real estate. The second corporation also did not pan out and the state legislators approved an act in 1893 rendering the corporation’s charter null and void. Finally, when the second corporation did not work out, a group of incorporators filed incorporation papers with the New Jersey Secretary of State on 23 September 1888 for the Wheatland Manufacturing and Improvement Company. The new corporation’s charter included language for the right to plat building lots on its ground and sell lots. The Wheatland Manufacturing and Improvement Company filed at least three plans of their proposed “Pasadena” development with the Ocean County Clerk’s Office in Toms River.
Now, getting back to Charles K. Landis, I would suggest that Fruitland and Wheatland both represent copycat projects, seeking to build on Landis’s success in Vineland without Fruitland and Wheatland necessarily and directly involving Landis. Remember that Landis sought to establish a utopian community in Vineland, but no evidence exists that the founders of Fruitland and Wheatland possessed a similar utopian philosophy. Furthermore, while the railroad provided the most common element between the three planned communities, Landis only owned the line from Atsion south, incorporaing it as the Vineland Railway in 1867 and completed construction two years later. This places Fruitland on the Raritan and Delaware Bay/New Jersey Southern and Wheatland on the Central Railroad of New Jersey, temporally and geographically speaking.
If you want to research any potential Landis involvement, a visit to the Vineland Historical and Antiquarian Society for reviewing his diaries and other papers might yield a mention of these two developments. You should also check all of the corporate filings on microfilm at the Division of Revenue in Trenton. As I stated before, I have not found any evidence to-date tying Landis to either Fruitland or Wheatland.
Oh, BTW, the brick pillars at Apple Pie Hill are associated with the sanitarium(s) that once stood there.
Best regards,
Jerseyman
