Peggy Clevenger of Pasadena

Ben Ruset

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I wonder how she would even end up in a church cemetery if she didn't have any money, unless either she had purchased a plot beforehand, had a family plot, or had some relative pay for it. If a relative paid for it then why not a stone?

Not only that, but Wrightstown is pretty far away from where her cabin was.
 

ecampbell

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Jan 2, 2003
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Then where would they put her?
You can only get buried in a church cemetary if you had money? Just sounds bass ackwards. Were there pauper cemetaries?
 

Ben Ruset

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Yes, in a pauper cemetery. Or, back then, you could be buried on your own property or family property. Can't do that nowadays.

They were going to bury John Bacon's body in the middle of the road at Jacobstown after he had been shot.
 

yonaguni

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Sep 3, 2007
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Peggy had a husband william he may have been buried there and he may have had a stone...looks like there were alot of clevenger's in south jersey..the guy who did the find a grave list just wrote me his list is 43 yrs old its what he wrote down when he walked the cemetery ...so in the last 43 years 90 % of the stones vanished....But the reports seems accurate that all say she is in wrightstown but wrightstown was once known as penny town..so could there have been another wrightstown which is now under another name
 

yonaguni

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Sep 3, 2007
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Ahh look at this....Peggy Clevenger and her husband, Bill. Supposedly Bill, who died in 1872, told Peggy that if he found conditions of the next world as they had been described to him, strange things would soon happen close to home. Bill assured Peggy that if his new stomping grounds were as hot as he had been led to believe, he would cause the water of an open well near their house to boil day and night. The legend recounts that on the night after Bill passed on, the water in the well began to bubble and steam, just as he had foretold. According to one poster, on a message board, "The well no longer exists. Its walls long ago caved in and the place where it once was has been forgotten. One old resident of Pasadena was careful to emphasize the fact that the story was not all fable. Henry Webb swore to us that he saw the well. Henry said it continued to boil, now and then, until its walls crumbled. Peggy is well remembered, too. Despite the fact that she lived back in the pines, far beyond the Plains, she was a fairly wealthy woman. Her mistake was in an unholy joy with which she showed all who plunged through to the little hamlet a stocking filled with gold which soon became the envy of the whole community. .......

The boiling well story is new to me...but look at this

"the owners of the Halfway House hotel and tavern that was a stagecoach stop between
Mount Holly and Tuckerton in the 1800's.

Legends say the owner was Peggy Clevenger, wife of Bill Clevenger.
We have been informed by another researcher that her actual, or maiden
name was Deborah Platt, daughter of Samuel Platt and Elizabeth
Horner............'

hmmmm.....
 

Ben Ruset

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ben where was her cabin..what is it today

According to the other thread, her cabin was on the "Old Shore Road" (Route 72) between Mount Misery and Cedar Bridge. I would imagine that today her cabin would be nothing more than sawdust.

What source is it that is saying that Peggy Clevenger's maiden name is Deborah Platt? Why would she change her first name?

Deborah Platt ran a hotel, later known as Boyd's Hotel, which was located a little north of the intersection of 539 and 70.

From Place Names of Ocean County by Vivian Zinkin:

* Boyd's Hotel, vill

For Samuel Boyd, proprietor of the hotel. Just when a community developed at this point is not known, but Pinetown, the name by which this place was called in 1839, suggests that the earliest tavern name, Pine Tavern, may have coincided with or stimulated the later establishment of this vill. Loc. in the NW part of Manchester Tp.

Former names: Pine Tavern, 1811; Debby Platts, 1839; Hilliards, 1839; Old Pinetown, 1839; Platte Place, 1872; Boyd's Tavern, 1872.

Incidentally I just went looking for my pics of Boyd's Hotel in the Gallery here and for some reason the Ironsides Gun Club pics show up instead. Looks like quite a number of the old galleries that I had are all messed up. There's nothing standing at the hotel site now, and it's private property.
 

Teegate

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Here is a snippit of a Joseph Cox survey that I found when I acquired the Hanover Furnace tract survey info. I spend hundred's of hours exploring the woods with this and found the stones along this line. This confirms that the map I have shows the exact location of the Clevenger home.

Working backwards from 21 to 20 (cut off) I worked backwards from the stone N17.30 West 244.28 chains and it landed right on a Hanover Tract corner. Exactly on it. It is very humbling to realize how accurate they were dragging a 66 foot long chain through the woods.


clev.jpg




Here is the map. It shows the stone and the P. Clevenger home location. Trust me when I say there is nothing there. It also is private property.


img283.jpg



Guy
 

yonaguni

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Sep 3, 2007
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A platt family member doing genealogy list her as a family member...interestingly samuel platt her father may have been from new hanover,,next town over from wrightstown..there is alot of platt family in the jacobstown cemetery too.peggy maybe a nick name,it does link up with her owning a inn...She married late to a clevenger

Teegate what date do they give for her home being there and burnt down
 

yonaguni

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Sep 3, 2007
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There is a Methodist cemetery in julistown too..worth looking into..Teegate has anyone tried to find the well..it should still be there buried but still there..its past of the story worth finding
 

yonaguni

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jerseyman Well weirdnj has its fans and detractors ..its really a living example of the creation of urban myth..how people start and idea and how that idea though oral tradition becomes a believed fact..they dont really care if the story has historic truth its how the story is not seen or talked about..yet many now consider weirdnj a good historic reference..mainly because places now gone seem to only be photographed by weirdnj explorers ..historians tend not to document buildings even if they have some historic value or not..if they do the photos remain unseen be the public...weirdnj helps those stories reach the people..the state historic archive begs weirdnj to help them get their photos out so people can see them...Summing up weirdnj is a cornucopia of factual stories and just urban myth and just plain crazy thats what makes it great
 

woodjin

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Nov 8, 2004
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The boiling well story is new to me...but look at this

".

I was always under the impression that the story of the boiling well, next to her demise, was the most popular tale concerning her. Beck places Bill Clevenger's death in 1872, yet Jerseyman, in typical fashion, has produced a document giving 1857 as the death date for Peggy. An inconsistancy typical of oral tradition I suppose. In fairness, Beck often surprises us with his accuracy when you least expect it.

Yonaguni, Beck had noted that the walls of the well had long since caved in. Either way, it would have been typical to fill in a well on abandoned property. Good luck on your search for her grave site, though I suspect it will be difficult. I don't think finding it would validate the legend any, as her existence seems pretty well documented. But it would be cool to find wouldn't it?

I have always wondered about the location of Gallagher's spring, also in the pasadena area.

Guy, you told me years ago that you located Peggy Clevenger's house (on paper) and I always wanted to look into the area myself. You had mentioned that it was on private land. Did you see anything there at all? A non-native tree? Anything?

Jeff
 

Ben Ruset

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jerseyman Well weirdnj has its fans and detractors ..its really a living example of the creation of urban myth..how people start and idea and how that idea though oral tradition becomes a believed fact..they dont really care if the story has historic truth its how the story is not seen or talked about..yet many now consider weirdnj a good historic reference..mainly because places now gone seem to only be photographed by weirdnj explorers ..historians tend not to document buildings even if they have some historic value or not..if they do the photos remain unseen be the public...weirdnj helps those stories reach the people..the state historic archive begs weirdnj to help them get their photos out so people can see them...Summing up weirdnj is a cornucopia of factual stories and just urban myth and just plain crazy thats what makes it great

The argument against WNJ is the same one that Henry Charlton Beck was up against when he was writing his books. He was documenting "folklore" and not necessarily verifying every fact. 70+ years later that comes to trip people up as they read what Beck wrote in his books and take it as fact, when in fact it isn't. There's many, many things he got wrong. (That's not to say that his books aren't great, it's just that you have to take a lot of what he has to say with a grain of salt.)

The other thing is the stories of ghosts, demonic possessions, UFO's, and whatnot really shoot holes in the credibility of the magazine. Again, WNJ is entertaining and fun to read, but I don't know a single historian that would take it seriously.
 
jerseyman Well weirdnj has its fans and detractors ..its really a living example of the creation of urban myth..how people start and idea and how that idea though oral tradition becomes a believed fact..they dont really care if the story has historic truth its how the story is not seen or talked about..yet many now consider weirdnj a good historic reference..mainly because places now gone seem to only be photographed by weirdnj explorers ..historians tend not to document buildings even if they have some historic value or not..if they do the photos remain unseen be the public...weirdnj helps those stories reach the people..the state historic archive begs weirdnj to help them get their photos out so people can see them...Summing up weirdnj is a cornucopia of factual stories and just urban myth and just plain crazy thats what makes it great

Every issue of Weird New Jersey carries photographs and articles about historic sites that are often in extremely fragile condition. The publicity the magazine gives to these sites promotes increased visitation, which, in turn, brings irreparable degradation of the site. A good practical example is the Brooksbrae Brick Works in Pasadena. I remember visiting the site as late as the end of the twentieth century and the roof panels were still in place on the drying tunnels and the structures were not completely marred with paintball residue and graffiti. Now the site is almost completely destroyed, thanks in large measure to the several articles in WNJ dedicated to highlighting the old brick works. As a professional historian, “historic truth” means a great deal to me. WNJ will NEVER be found cited in my professional work as a “good historic reference.” I have documented the history of many buildings not considered “historic” by others in the field. You say, “the state historic archives begs weirdnj to help them get their photos out so people can see them.” Really? I know most of the people who work at the New Jersey State Archives and I have never heard any of them mention providing historic images or even modern images to WNJ, let alone begging the magazine editors to publish them. In my own summation, I will say that Weird New Jersey promotes fakelore and tall tales without promoting good documentary historical research to either confirm or refute the stories.

Jerseyman

P.S. Please see the thread that I started on Peggy Clevenger for additional factual information on the woman and her family.
 
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