Pointville
I am very interested in any pictures from this area. My interest in pinebarren history and folklore started in the Pemberton Twp. area and progressed outward with every book I read. I was looking at a pictoral history of Browns Mills in the library just the other day and was amazed to see a photo of a large hotel where a WaWa now is located.
Oji and folks:
Pointville takes its name from the star-shaped intersection in the center of town:
The community dates to the late eighteenth century and began life as Scrabbletown in Hanover Township. Thomas Gordon’s 1834
Gazetteer of New Jersey describes Scrabbletown as follows:
“hamlet of Hanover t-ship, Burlington co., 10 miles E. from Mount Holly and 12 S.E. from Bordentown; contains a tavern, and 6 or 8 cottages; in a poor, sandy, pine country.”
On 3 December 1857, a post office opened in Scrabbletown, but carried the name Pointville. Daniel F. Gibbs served as the first postmaster, but on 1 May 1861, Joseph M. Reeves replaced Gibbs due to a change in political parties at the White House. Here is a list of the rest of the postmasters:
December 9, 1874—George N. Warren
January 14, 1879—Harry C. Squires
April 1, 1884—J. Lytle Allen
July 28, 1885—Thomas Vaughn
May 11, 1889—Jonathon H. Harker
August 4, 1891—Frank F. Ent
September 16, 1893—Ellis Cramer
January 25, 1898—Thomas McIntire
May 24, 1909—Maggie E. Lewis
September 16, 1917—Joseph D. Glassberg
November 27, 1922—Katherine P. Harker (acting)
December 27, 1922—Katherine P. Harker
May 29, 1925—Post Office Discontinued-Service to Browns Mills
David Moore opened the tavern during the closing years of the eighteenth century and stood at the northwesterly angle of the roads to Wrightstown and Jobstown. In 1817, William Heaviland held the license to operate the tavern and three years later, Jacob Gaskill took over. In his license application, Gaskill described the tavern house as “on the road leading from Wrightstown to Abraham Brown’s Mills, two and one half miles from the former place.” His 1827 application refers to the surrounding community as Cherry Valley, a name it retained for approximately ten years. William Gaskill operated the tavern in 1852.
John Borden maintained a store in this village early in its existence. Albert Allen purchased an old school and converted it into a store, which subsequently passed through several owners. Someone erected another store in 1872. D. Woodward constructed a store here in 1881. Woodward also operated the hotel during the 1880s. The community now boasted of a population totaling 150, the three stores and a hotel, a church, a schoolhouse, and about 30 dwellings.
Moving into the twentieth century, Pointville became a beehive of activity as the United States entered the First World War. Various organizations assumed control of the various buildings in the settlement to serve soldiers undergoing basic training at Camp Dix, which installation surrounded Pointville.
Pointville remained intact following the end of World War I:
but its population began to leave in 1925, providing the rationale for closing the post office. The United States accelerated the removal of Pointville from the landscape when it began to ramp up for the Second World War. The War Department acquired all of the land and buildings in Pointville to expand now Fort Dix. The only thing that remains is the Pointville Cemetery from the old Saint Paul’s Methodist Episcopal Church:
This church began with meetings being held in the school for several years. In 1849, the congregants erected its first frame edifice measuring 40 feet by 30 feet at a cost of $1500. The faithful replaced the original building with the one depicted on the post card during the late 1880s or early 1890s.
Today, the cemetery is an plot of ground surrounded by cyclone fencing within the Fort Dix installation.
This, in a nutshell, is the story of Pointville.
Best regards,
Jerseyman
__________________
scriptor rerum Nova Caesarea
Dei memor, gratus amicus
