Mark and TrailOtter:
I've been enjoying checking in from time to time and reviewing the progress you've made on your research. Not to spoil your fun, but I thought I might be able to assist you in your efforts to document the hamlet of Chetwood.
Francis B. Chetwood, an attorney from Elizabeth, Union County, served as the first elected president of the Raritan & Delaware Bay Railroad. As TrailOtter found in the Ball estate record, William Allen conveyed the Martha Furnace tract to Chetwood in 1859. Prior to this acquisition, Chetwood purchased 23,000 acres as agent for the New York broker Joseph D. Beers. This land included the Jones Mill and Union Forge Tracts. When Chetwood gained control of the Martha Tract, he renamed it the Oswego Tract and subdivided the land into 34 sections or parcels. Chetwood reserved about 300 acres at the site of the old furnace for himself and then sold off most of the remainder between 1860 and 1863 to Amory Edwards, a retired silk merchant and land speculator. Some historians suggest that Chetwood acquired the Martha Tract because the original route of the R&DB would pass right through the land. However, by the time Allen conveyed the land to Chetwood, the R&DB already realized that this routing would not work and began planning a more westward route for the tracks.
Sometime in 1862, Chetwood had platted his new community, named for himself. During the same year, Benjamin F. Clark applied for a post office under the name "Chetwood." That postal facility opened on 29 January 1863. In his application, Clark indicated that the town contained about a dozen families with more planning to move into the nasccent hamlet. Located about eight miles northwest of New Gretna and off the primary mail route, Clark offered to carry the mail to and from New Gretna "…at no cost to the Post Office Department."
Clark remained postmaster at Chetwood until 16 December 1864, when Ruth Drew succeeded Clark in that role. The Chetwood Post Office continuing serving the few families living nearby until 4 June 1866, when the Post Office Department ordered the office discontinued. Francis B. Chetwood died in 1875, which likely doomed the fledgling community to ignobility. An 1882 New Jersey Gazetteer describes Chetwood as:
"Chetwood (Burlington County), a hamlet on the Oswego River, opposite the hamlet of Oswego."
Regarding the material in Pierce's book, I think old Arthur may have confused Harrisville with Martha when he mentioned the two-mile figure, for the same gazetteer just cited describes the community of Oswego as:
"Oswego (Burlington County), a hamlet on the Oswego, the upper part of the Wading River, 2 miles above Harrisville, and 8 miles s.s.e. of Harris."
While the East Plains certainly contain clay deposits, I have never found any documentation of a brickyard or even a clay pit in the immediate area of Martha Furnace. A review of literature from the New Jersey Geological Survey, including the 1836, 1840, and 1856 interim reports, along with George H. Cook's comprehensive 1868 volume, Geology of New Jersey, failed to describe any type of clay works in this area.
Best regards,
Jerseyman
I missed that reference when I first went through "Iron in the Pines" and it now has my curiosity. I went online to look through the maps at Rutgers and 'Chetwood' appears on this map from 1890 - it appears to be in the same location as Martha, up the road from Harrisville.
