I have not done any research in the Wharton Ledgers so must admit I’m not very familiar with them as a source. Presumably they are business/account ledgers of the Wharton family who once owned the land that now comprises Wharton State Forest. In any case, I believe what is referred to in the two entries posted above are a pair of warrants for land deeded to Eli Neild by the West Jersey Proprietors. The 1805 warrant (see West Jersey Surveys CC:19) describes the parcel of land as beginning “on the Easterly side of a Road leading from the Cedar Swamp to Shaines Castle it being the Beginning corner of Seventy acres and a half of land surveyed to Xaverius and Ignacious Woas.” The 1807 warrant (see West Jersey Surveys CC:52) describes the parcel of land as beginning “on the Southwardly side of an Old Road leading from Shaines Castle to an old Causeway at the Forks of Prices and Briants branches.” I have complete copies of both documents.
As I noted in my 23 July 2024 post in the “Origins of Pestletown” thread, the earliest reference I can find to Shane’s Castle is found in one of the four warrants for a total of 300 acres of land deeded to Xaverius and Ignacious Woos by the West Jersey Proprietors in the early 1760s (in the post I attached a copy of one of those original surveys, from April 1761, which depicts and labels “Shains Castle”). As I also noted, Xaverius and Ignacious were not brothers of Sebastian Woos, as is claimed in numerous sources, but his young sons. Sebastian obtained the land in their names since he was a German-Catholic immigrant who could not legally own land in New Jersey under British colonial law (the sons were born in New Jersey and so were considered naturalized subjects of the British Crown who could own land even as children). For more on this see the evidence presented in my article "Corrections to the Family of Sebastian Woos of Waterford Township, Old Gloucester County, New Jersey" in the May 2023 volume of the Genealogical Magazine of New Jersey (I’m happy to email a copy to anyone interested). That article also presents evidence that a lot of the biographical information about Sebastian Woos published in numerous places since first appearing in Prowell’s 1886 History of Camden County is simply wrong or at best questionable (we can probably blame John Clement for that since he appears to be the original source, but other authors have added fanciful embellishments along the way). In that regard, some of the Sebastian Woos bio in the 26 Apr 2014 post above is also inaccurate or suspect since it appears to be derived from the largely dubious article “Shane’s Castle” attributed to John H. Myrose from a 1966 Gloucester County Historical Society Bulletin. I say “attributed to” Myrose since he had been deceased for nearly a decade when that article was published. The article was most likely written by the GCHS Bulletin editor who excerpted the material from a much longer essay by Myrose that can still be found in the Woos Family File at GCHS. Among the few things that are accurate in that article are that Sebastian Woos did build and live in a homestead called “Shane’s Castle” from about 1760, and three of his daughters did marry Harmon Myrose, Eli Neild, and Samuel Crowley (the original settler of Crowleytown)
Since Eli Neild is mentioned more than once in this post, it is worth correcting some longstanding misinformation about him: he was not from Ireland and Shane’s Castle was not named for the area in Ireland that he came from as is claimed in various sources, including John Myrose in “Shane’s Castle” above and John Kelly in the 1984 Camden County Historical Society book The Irish in Camden County. First, Eli Neild did not marry Sebastian Woos’ daughter Martha Nancy until about 1810 (he was her third husband, as she had been twice widowed before marrying Neild). Since Neild did not marry into the Woos family until about 50 years after we find Shane’s Castle mentioned in a 1761 survey, the place certainly was not named for him. Not only that, but extensive evidence I’ve found in my research of the Woos family suggests that Eli Neild was not from Ireland but was a Pennsylvania-born Quaker from Bucks County who migrated to Gloucester County, New Jersey with his father Eli Neild, Sr., about 1798. He was admitted to the Upper Evesham Meeting in September 1798 and purchased land in Gloucester Township in October 1798 (in an area that is now in Winslow Township). In 1805 he began purchasing land in the area that is now Pestletown, eventually becoming the owner of 200 acres of former Woos land as well as several other tracts that made him one of the larger landowners in the area (by the 1830s he owned a significant portion of the land between Clarks and Prices branches). His daughter Mary Neild inherited most of this land and some of it remained in the family of Mary’s daughter Hannah Ann (Neild) String until the early 20th century.
