Haddon Township wasn’t always the bustling, busy suburb it is today.
Lenni Lenape Native American Indian tribes used to inhabit what is now Haddon Township back in the 1600s. The once-heavily forested landscape around Newton Creek was cleared for farms, pastures and residential and commercial use after the arrival of European settlers. Haddon Avenue was once a Lenni Lenape trail that ran between the ferry at Cooper’s Point in Camden and Haddonfield.
But some of those woods remained, thanks to an escaped slave named Joshua Saddler.
In the early 1800s, a Saddler escaped from a Maryland plantation, and found work in New Jersey with Josiah Evans, a local Quaker farmer.
Evans bought Saddler from the plantation owner to assure his safety and freedom. Saddler eventually purchased a plot and built a small house. Other African-Americans soon came in and built homes there. A town was soon formed and named Saddlertown.
http://www.courierpostonline.com/article/20121015/NEWS01/310150019/Saddler-s-Woods-restored
Lenni Lenape Native American Indian tribes used to inhabit what is now Haddon Township back in the 1600s. The once-heavily forested landscape around Newton Creek was cleared for farms, pastures and residential and commercial use after the arrival of European settlers. Haddon Avenue was once a Lenni Lenape trail that ran between the ferry at Cooper’s Point in Camden and Haddonfield.
But some of those woods remained, thanks to an escaped slave named Joshua Saddler.
In the early 1800s, a Saddler escaped from a Maryland plantation, and found work in New Jersey with Josiah Evans, a local Quaker farmer.
Evans bought Saddler from the plantation owner to assure his safety and freedom. Saddler eventually purchased a plot and built a small house. Other African-Americans soon came in and built homes there. A town was soon formed and named Saddlertown.
http://www.courierpostonline.com/article/20121015/NEWS01/310150019/Saddler-s-Woods-restored
