Answers from the Press Answer Guy...
Question:
What is “Herman?” I see it on a road map; It’s on the other side of the Mullica River between Batsto and Green Bank. But I know the area and there’s nothing there but pines.
Answer:
Well, howdy pardner. Looks like you just rustled yourself up a ghost town — there are more ghost towns than just the lonely, abandoned and windblown Colorado mountain villages that live on in the popular mind.
There’s Herman, for example. Or Martha. Or Friendship. All pinoints of nothing in the vast and mysterious heart of New Jersey’s Pine Barrens.
In John McPhee’s landmark book, “The Pine Barrens,” he laid out how Revolution–era settlers found freely available iron in New Jersey’s streams and swamps, leached out of the sandy soil by rain. They built a thriving iron industry, melting the ore with pine–tree charcoal. Workers lived in nearby villages that dotted the region.
But after others found coal and better iron in Pennsylvania in the 1850s, everything fell apart, in just a few dozen years.
After the native paper industry stopped being profitable in the 1890s, followed a couple of decades later by the glass business, the silent, green and numberless pines retook the land that had been cleared by the humans.
Herman is three miles from Batsto, itself a failed iron town. Herman was a real, thriving village for about 20 minutes in the 1800s, says southern New Jersey author Barbara Solem–Stull, who wrote 2005's “Ghost Towns and Other Quirky Places in the New Jersey Pines.”
Lumber and charcoal business partners John Rapp and Luman Wing bought the land with dreams of a big town.
They built 20 houses and a glass factory the size of a football field, and opened in 1873. Workers made glass jars and bottles.
And six months later, Solem–Stull said, a national financial panic wiped them out.
The factory fell over in 1905 and officials dynamited the chimney. But ruins, nothing more than a foundation, can still be seen between the trees off the side of the road.
For 14 byears surrounding the town’s heyday, Solem–Stull said, Rapp’s daughter ran a nearby hotel in what had been her in–law’s house, which was built in 1741. Guests would arrive by steamboat at a wharf along the Mullica River, then climb the hill to the house.
The home remained in the Coster family until 1986, when the state [sic] bought it from Rodney Coster, the last inhabitant.
Sources: Barbara Solem–Stull, Press Research.
This article appeared in The Press of Atlantic City on Sunday, 07 MAY 2006, Section C, Page 1.
For extra credit:
1. Was Herman German?
2. Are there any identifiable “markers” in existence today that delineate the town of Herman?
3. Are there iron/glass slag heaps at Herman, and, if so, what do they look like?
4. Does anyone have (identifiable) glass containers (“Mason Jars”?) that were blown at Herman?
5. Does the former Rapp/Coster residence still exist, and, if so, in what condition?
Question:
What is “Herman?” I see it on a road map; It’s on the other side of the Mullica River between Batsto and Green Bank. But I know the area and there’s nothing there but pines.
Answer:
Well, howdy pardner. Looks like you just rustled yourself up a ghost town — there are more ghost towns than just the lonely, abandoned and windblown Colorado mountain villages that live on in the popular mind.
There’s Herman, for example. Or Martha. Or Friendship. All pinoints of nothing in the vast and mysterious heart of New Jersey’s Pine Barrens.
In John McPhee’s landmark book, “The Pine Barrens,” he laid out how Revolution–era settlers found freely available iron in New Jersey’s streams and swamps, leached out of the sandy soil by rain. They built a thriving iron industry, melting the ore with pine–tree charcoal. Workers lived in nearby villages that dotted the region.
But after others found coal and better iron in Pennsylvania in the 1850s, everything fell apart, in just a few dozen years.
After the native paper industry stopped being profitable in the 1890s, followed a couple of decades later by the glass business, the silent, green and numberless pines retook the land that had been cleared by the humans.
Herman is three miles from Batsto, itself a failed iron town. Herman was a real, thriving village for about 20 minutes in the 1800s, says southern New Jersey author Barbara Solem–Stull, who wrote 2005's “Ghost Towns and Other Quirky Places in the New Jersey Pines.”
Lumber and charcoal business partners John Rapp and Luman Wing bought the land with dreams of a big town.
They built 20 houses and a glass factory the size of a football field, and opened in 1873. Workers made glass jars and bottles.
And six months later, Solem–Stull said, a national financial panic wiped them out.
The factory fell over in 1905 and officials dynamited the chimney. But ruins, nothing more than a foundation, can still be seen between the trees off the side of the road.
For 14 byears surrounding the town’s heyday, Solem–Stull said, Rapp’s daughter ran a nearby hotel in what had been her in–law’s house, which was built in 1741. Guests would arrive by steamboat at a wharf along the Mullica River, then climb the hill to the house.
The home remained in the Coster family until 1986, when the state [sic] bought it from Rodney Coster, the last inhabitant.
Sources: Barbara Solem–Stull, Press Research.
This article appeared in The Press of Atlantic City on Sunday, 07 MAY 2006, Section C, Page 1.
For extra credit:
1. Was Herman German?
2. Are there any identifiable “markers” in existence today that delineate the town of Herman?
3. Are there iron/glass slag heaps at Herman, and, if so, what do they look like?
4. Does anyone have (identifiable) glass containers (“Mason Jars”?) that were blown at Herman?
5. Does the former Rapp/Coster residence still exist, and, if so, in what condition?
