Response to Manumuskin, from Another Thread
manumuskin said:
In my opinion the purtiest stretch of open pine woods in south jersey resides on the millville /maurice river twp line.Also our cedar swamps down here need take second place to none.The only thing is our true pine barrens type habitats are mere fragments for the most part with hardwood swamps dominating the lowlands and oak woods the uplands but their still legitimate barrens typ habitats.We really have no pitch pine lowlands habitats that I know of and of course no Pine Plains at all We do have some nice spungs though and of course quite a variety of non barrens habitats such as Bear Swamp and the extensive salt marshes down near the Bay.
Al
Manumuskin,
I’ve taken this thread into another post out of respect for Mrs. Jenkins memory. Agreed. From a geographer’s perspective there is little difference between the upper “Core Area” of the Pinelands National Reserve and its southern counterpart. Before the railroads the southern half of the Reserve was considered the most desolate portion of the State. Barber and Howe (1868: 64) commented that Atlantic County was the most thinly settled of all counties. We have plenty of pitch-pine lowland, as shown in McCormick & Jones (1973)
The Pine Barrens: Vegetation Geography. Historically we had Pine Plains habitat as well:
Just as importantly we have a distinctive cultural landscape, which is alive and well below the Mullica. Richland is a great example of Libby Marsh’s model of a Pinelands ethnic archipelago (Marsh, 1979). It was the only Welsh settlement that I am aware of in the Pines. The tradition is that Richland began as a Swedish outpost at Horse Break Pond along the Cohansey Trail, which is poorly documented. Its gravestones were long-ago removed to build a patio by a local tavern-keeper. Later runaway slaves and other Blacks came here to make charcoal at Stephen Colwell’s coal grounds. After the Civil War, most Blacks moved away to places like Vineland and Atlantic City. Welsh coal miners from Pennsylvania, running from the Molly Maguires, arrived during the 1870s to fill the hole left by the departure of African American colliers.
When the West Jersey Railroad cut through in 1880, the Welsh colliers moved out of Thomas’ charcoal camp (now the celebrated Mojito Field:
http://www.buenavistatownship.org/Unusual_Buena/mojito.htm) and populated the burgeoning village. Welsh residents then invited in Italians from the Trento region who had taken their mining positions in Pennsylvania, rationalizing that anyone who could put up with the Irish would make hardy laborers. Russian Jews opened clothing factories in adjacent Ruskville and Mizpah, with another, Rotham, planned to the north. Christian Russians and Ukrainians settled the south side to poultry farm.
During the First World War Blacks emigrated from the South to take factory positions in Philadelphia and New York. After Armistice, the doughboys returned and wanted their old jobs back, causing racial tension. Rather than return home, many Blacks came to the Pines lured by cheap garden farm plots to live in bucolic bliss. Richland’s Black section, New Rome, was clustered around Colwell's charcoal camp. Puerto Rican farmhands arrived during the 50s, fell in love with the area, and stayed.
An equally tantalizing story can be told for the other Pinelands Villages. They deserve better stewardship. Turning them into 24,200-acres of sewer-serviced growth zone makes no sense at all. In no way does their proposed sewering and redevelopment overlays preserve, protect, and enhance the natural and cultural resources of the Pinelands National Reserve.
Spung-Man
Barber, J.W., and Howe, H., 1868: Historical Collections of New Jersey: Past and Present. Newark. 544 pp. (1975 reprint, The Reprint Company, Spartanburg, SC).
Marsh, E., 1979: The southern Pine Barrens: an ethnic archipelago. In Sinton, J.W., (ed.). Natural and Cultural Resources of the New Jersey Pine Barrens: Inputs and Research Needs for Planning. Proceedings and Papers of the First Research Conference on the New Jersey Pine Barrens, Atlantic City, N.J., May 22-23, 1978. Pomona, NJ: Stockton State College. pp. 192-198.
McCormick, J., and Jones, L., 1973: The Pine Barrens: Vegetation Geography. Research Report Number 3, New Jersey State Museum, Trenton, NJ, 71 pp.
