Friendship School

[kbright64]

As I was passing through Tabernacle on my way out to the Pine Barrens, I saw someone working inside the fence at the restored Friendship School. Sensing an opportunity I turned around on Carranza Road and went back. I spoke at length with two ladies who were cleaning up the weeds and generally beautifying the yard around the little school house. Both of them were members of the Tabernacle Historical Society and having lived there myself for many years, we had a lot to talk about.

I asked permission to enter the building to see the interior of this unique structure.

Imagine sitting at these desks in the winter time and trying to keep warm with that little coal stove going.

I regret not having my DSLR on auto focus because the names in the photos are not clear. One of the children in the photo is Gladys DeMarco (1916-1917 school year).

Tabernacle Township's website says this school house was moved from the Foxchase-Friendship area (near Powell Place Road), but after seeing this photo with her name I am convinced this is the genuine school house from Friendship.

Hey Ben, I put in a plug for this website as well and told the ladies they could visit it to learn a great deal about Pine Barrens history.

I continued on my way and ended up walking some sand roads off Tuckerton Stage Road. I picked up just one tick, but otherwise I enjoyed some very nice scenery out there today.

Ken

 

[Teegate]

Very nice Ken! Thanks you for posting the photo's.

Guy

 

[Lost Town Hunter]

Ken,

Thanks for posting the photos of the interior of the village of Friendship Bogs' one-room schoulhouse. It is unfortunate that you did not attend the John McPhee Symposium at Stockton State College yesterday, May 12, for you would have been able to see some of my photos of that village taken in the 1970s, among them a couple showing the school.

As you have surmised the Tabernacle Township's website post about the original location of the school is incorrect. It just so happens that there were two villages in the Pine Barrens of Burlington County called "Friendship," one near Speedwell, the other near Powell Place Road and Tabernacle. The building that you entered initially sat along Friendship-Speedwell Road until it was moved in 1976 in an effort to spare it from the destruction that befell all of the other structures that comprised the cranberry/blueberry village. For many years the schoolhouse sat in the municipal building parking lot in Tabernacle. When a township truck crashed into it in 1984 , it was moved next to the old red brick schoolhouse on Carranza Road, restored, and dedicated in July, 1986.

Gladys Alloway, who attended the school at Friendship, later became a school teacher who taught at Chatsworth. Three generations of Alloways lived at Friendship. Gladys married Tony De Marco, parents of Garfield De Marco, a prinipal owner of the Chatsworth Cranberry Enterprise sold to the NJ Conservation Foundation, a parcel of almost 10,000 acres known today as the Parker Preserve.

Lost Town Hunter