Goshen in Camden or Burlington?

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This weekend my son and I found enough time to do a little more exploring around Goshen. We were able to locate a couple of small cellar holes. Nearby a plow line passes through and in the burn sticking up was a bottom of a bottle that looked old. After cleaning it up and a little research on the history of bottle making I was able to determine that the bottle was made between 1845-1870.

The dirt that didn’t clean off is actually the pontil scar from where they held it when they finished the top. Not quite as old as I thought it was when we first found it but surely falls within the cranberry era of the pond.

 

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After finding out the age of that bottle. I got thinking more about the timeline of Goshen. I realized that I haven’t given much thought to the end of it. We know that the Vermeule and Cook maps show the cranberry bogs there in 1887 and 1889. My gut feeling is they didn’t last much past the turn of the century. I couldn’t help but wonder why. I realized that the answer might be right here in the Front Page Articles

Fighting Fire in Waterford – Sept. 16, 1895 – NJPineBarrens.com

www.njpinebarrens.com

That fire might have been the final chapter for Goshen or at least part of it.