Taunton Mansion

Mimosa Lakes

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Apr 3, 2020
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Yeah, I don't really know about the history of discrimination in Medford Lakes, never saw any problems there myself, and only one person told me that story. But she was quite definite about it.

Janet Todd might have been the mother of my daughter's friend (Jess Todd), don't know. She would be in her late 30's now.

Another of my daughter's best friends lived in Lake Pine. He and his family told us the story of growing up there in the 1970's and 80's. Calista Flockhart - who was later the star of the hit show "Ally McBeal" - was their neighbor and frequently babysat for them. She also went to Shawnee.
Yes, Janet would have been older than me and I'm 61. Likely her daughter. I remember hearing Calista went to Shawnee, but I was already out then. Where did their family live? In Medford or Medford Lakes?
 
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Mimosa Lakes

New Member
Apr 3, 2020
18
26
USVI
Sorry, I see it was lake pine.
Yes, Janet would have been older than me and I'm 61. Likely her daughter. I remember hearing Calista went to Shawnee, but I was already out then. Where did their family live? In Medford or Medford Lakes?
oh, sorry, I see they lived in Lake Pine. There's certainly a number of log cabins in Lake Pine as well.
 

Tanton

New Member
Apr 25, 2010
5
7
Mimosa,

We have a lot of parallel memories of life growing up in the Mimosa, Taunton, Lake Pine area. Although I'm 2 or 3 years younger than you, we definitely had many of the same experiences, (although I spent my summers at Camp Lenape as a Boy Scout from 1971 to 1976). I also remember Eph Tomlinson; I think he drove an International truck/Jeep with the wood panels on the sides, at least one time when he stopped over to our house.

Mimosa said: ..."Artie Lightfine had gone through the ice...for several days, the golf bag Artie got for Christmas, than he had slung over his shoulder and ultimately weighted him down through the ice when he went to retrieve a golf ball"

I was actually just thinking about Artie and the circumstances surrounding his tragic death. In early February I was solo hiking (actually snowshoeing) in the Adirondacks and on my return trip, later in the afternoon I was crossing the frozen Avalanche Lake. Everything went fine, and as I reached the far side of the lake I met a veteran hiker who asked if I would be offended if he offered me a small bit of advice. After assuring him that I would appreciate what he had to say, he suggested this: "While hiking across frozen lakes, especially solo, it is always a good idea to unbuckle all of straps on your backpack. If you do break through the ice, you will surely want to be able to separate yourself from the pack"

I thought, what a great idea.

About an hour later the story about Artie Lightfine and his golf bag popped into my mind.

Although only 6 at the time, I still remember my dad lecturing me and my older brother about the dangers of thin ice.

Mimosa, your photos are great. I have been hunting for photos of the area for about 15 years now and every now and then, something good pops up. I'm dying to find a Photo of "Bob's" gas station, Rips (with the Breyers sign out front), etc.

Loved hearing your memories...

Steve
 
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Mimosa Lakes

New Member
Apr 3, 2020
18
26
USVI
Mimosa,

We have a lot of parallel memories of life growing up in the Mimosa, Taunton, Lake Pine area. Although I'm 2 or 3 years younger than you, we definitely had many of the same experiences, (although I spent my summers at Camp Lenape as a Boy Scout from 1971 to 1976). I also remember Eph Tomlinson; I think he drove an International truck/Jeep with the wood panels on the sides, at least one time when he stopped over to our house.

Mimosa said: ..."Artie Lightfine had gone through the ice...for several days, the golf bag Artie got for Christmas, than he had slung over his shoulder and ultimately weighted him down through the ice when he went to retrieve a golf ball"

I was actually just thinking about Artie and the circumstances surrounding his tragic death. In early February I was solo hiking (actually snowshoeing) in the Adirondacks and on my return trip, later in the afternoon I was crossing the frozen Avalanche Lake. Everything went fine, and as I reached the far side of the lake I met a veteran hiker who asked if I would be offended if he offered me a small bit of advice. After assuring him that I would appreciate what he had to say, he suggested this: "While hiking across frozen lakes, especially solo, it is always a good idea to unbuckle all of straps on your backpack. If you do break through the ice, you will surely want to be able to separate yourself from the pack"

I thought, what a great idea.

About an hour later the story about Artie Lightfine and his golf bag popped into my mind.

Although only 6 at the time, I still remember my dad lecturing me and my older brother about the dangers of thin ice.

Mimosa, your photos are great. I have been hunting for photos of the area for about 15 years now and every now and then, something good pops up. I'm dying to find a Photo of "Bob's" gas station, Rips (with the Breyers sign out front), etc.

Loved hearing your memories...

Steve
Wow, I forgot about the Breyers sign out from of Rips. Now that I think, you couldn't miss it. Re Rips, I remember the deli counter in the back. We would always stop in Sunday afternoon after church for a half pound of boiled ham for sandwiches. I remember the aisles filled with cereal and candy. In the 1960's, a friend and I would often bike or walk, sometimes pulling a wagon with dolls (trolls in my case) to Rips as a place to go, get candy and come back. I remember it being so cold one time we went inside the phone booth outside, closed the door and ate our candy there to get warm before walking back.

I think that is a really neat memory of Artie's death and how it affected your thoughts later in life. Where I live now there are ferries to get to different islands. I never sit inside. Even if its raining. I sit on the top deck so if we capsize in the rough seas I can swim away and not be trapped inside. I have a fear of being trapped, submerged, banging my hands on something above and finding no way to get out. I'm sure it relates back to wondering about Artie and always getting warnings to not go on the ice until an adult checked the thickness. I wondered why if you fell in you couldn't just get back out, but remember being told when you fall in you often move in one direction or another and can't find the hole in the ice to get back out again. Not sure if you remember Robert Neckleman and Wendy Watson. Both lived in Mimosa, both were a little older than Artie, but playing with him on the beach that day. I remember one of them tried to lay day and inch on their stomachs to where Artie fell in, with the other person holding their feet, to see if they could reach Artie and get him out.

I don't have photos of Rips or Bob's that I know of, although we have several albums at home in Leisuretown. My dad loved to take photos and I do know we have photos of Eph on his tractor dredging out what was the lower end of the upper lake by the beach.

When my father died last October, I put photos of his life together for a slide show. You may like two of them. One is of my parents, far left my dad Ernie Bareuther, with Mildred to the left. Then Eva and Larry Hageman, who use to live on the lower lake on Pontiac Drive and then Tom and Helga Manning who lived across from the upper lake and near to Camp Lenape and scout drive, also in Mimosa. This must have been in the early 1970's all standing on our dock overlooking the lower lake. None of them are with us today. The second photo was taken at a Medford-Vincentown Rotary Club meeting in the 1970s. I don't know the gentleman on the far left, but in the middle is Eph Tomlinson and my dad on the right.
 

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Jungle Jim

New Member
Feb 1, 2021
6
5
Virginia, USA
Hello, all, new user here. Thank you to the moderator(s) for allowing me to participate.

I stumbled across this site when Googling "Cranberry House," the old school that was near the intersection of Hopewell Road, Breakneck Rd., and Taunton Blvd., below Blue Lake and Taunton Lake and above Lake Pine. I grew up in the area in the '70s, and I remember hearing kind of a "haunted house" story about the Cranberry House:

The story, as I remember it, was that someone bought the Cranberry House, and when they did, the large attic of the place was nailed shut. The new owners asked someone about it (the previous owners maybe?) and were told something to the effect of, "There's nothing up there, don't bother" or "Don't go up there." So of course they did. When they did, they found old mattresses that were stained with blood. Apparently no one could ever explain the blood-stained mattresses, and the adults seemed to be pretty creeped out about it, though it occurred to me that maybe the mattresses were bloody simply because someone had given birth on them...?

Did anyone else ever hear this story or does anyone know anything about it?

Also, it's interesting that the story about Artie Lightfine should come up. My brother had worked for Bob Lightfine at the gas station across from the Cranberry House, and we too had heard the story about his son falling through the ice. The story as I remember it was that a kid had fallen through the ice (no one knew who) and Bob Lightfine was on the rescue crew, and went to rescue the boy...and unexpectingly pulled up his own son. I used to ice skate a lot as a kid, and I remember my parents saying how dangerous it was to fall through ice because (they said) the current would pull you under the ice and then you wouldn't be able to find the hole to get back out (never mind that there's no current in a lake) so one day when I fell through the ice on Blue Lake, I nearly panicked, remembering my parents' warnings along with the story about Bob Lightfine's son. I fell through, and when I tried to climb back out, the ice kept breaking off. The water was deep -- I couldn't touch bottom -- and it was also cold, so I was afraid that even if I didn't go under the ice, I would quickly lose control over my muscles from hypothermia. And there was nobody else around (I guess they had the good sense not to skate yet). So I started yelling for help, so that at least someone would know I was out there if I fell under the ice. A neighbor came out and told me to use my hockey stick to spread out my weight on the ice and use that to try to climb up, and then spread out my arms and legs as wide as possible to reduce the PSI on the ice. It took a few tries, but eventually it worked. I remember skating back home as fast as I could...and by the time I got home, my pant legs were getting stiff with ice. That was on Christmas eve, if I recall right...

Also remember exploring some of the old ghost towns (I think John McPhee described them in one of his books?) out on the other side of Rt. 206 past Atsion Lake and beyond in the 70s...and snorkeling in the "Boy Scout Lake" above Mimosa Lake, the water in that lake was clearer than the water in any other lake in the area as I recall. Somebody mentioned Braddock Mill Lake ... I remember hearing (again, in the 70s) that game wardens had discovered a colony of water moccasins in Braddock Mill Lake, which was a disturbing surprise to me at the time, since I didn't know they ranged that far north. I remember seeing (and trying to catch) lots of ordinary water snakes, but water moccasins are a whole 'nother ball game, being even more poisonous than rattlers or copperheads...I also often think of going back to West Jersey Bogs (to the east of the then-dirt Jackson Road between Medford and Atco) back in the '70s, where a man named Henry Applegate lived with no electricity, no telephone, no running water. I guess he was the custodian of the place. He lived alone there in an old cabin with a propane refrigerator and propane light fixtures on the walls. I can still see Henry sitting in a chair below a propane light sconce on the wall, shrouded in shadow, with moths bouncing off the lamp chimney and throwing big shadows on the old-timey wallpapered walls in the summer heat, telling stories about "the old times" in the bogs (we visited him in the mid '70s, and I believe he had lived there for 20 years or longer before that)... Visiting him was like stepping back in time, and the place was so wild looking that you never would have believed in a million years that you were just 30 miles or whatever from Camden and Phila... There was also an old abandoned house next to Henry's cabin (I just found it on Google Maps, I can't believe it's still there!), it was falling down, but I remember there were bars on the windows of the basement and this always puzzled me... There were also "wild dogs" that lived back in the West Jersey bogs, or at least that's what my father and his friends called them, but in hindsight, I suspect they were coyotes judging from how they described them ("They always begin to look like German shepherds after a generation or two in the wild!")...

Another interesting fellow I remember was a man named Tim (Brennan maybe?) who I think was an excavation equipment operator and he lived in a cabin near Little Mill Country Club (off Hopewell Road not far from "Stony Mountain"... BTW is that hill still there? and does anyone know how it got there?), it was the strangest place. Dad and I went there to ask permission to hunt on the property, and when we drove up, all these guinea fowl started screaming at us from the treetops. We knocked on the door of Tim's little house there, and I can still see the bullet holes in the door -- at chest level, with the torn teeth of sheetmetal curling outward ("OUTCOMING!") There was an old lake there whose dam had been washed out or the boards taken out -- it was getting overgrown with trees by the 70s -- and I believe that there had once been some kind of amusement park there. It was all in ruins then. There was this old building whose foundation was made out of bog iron -- the building was wide open and empty and uninhabited, and looked long-disused, but there was also a fluorescent light fixture burning in it in the middle of the day. ??? Bizarro. Also, there was a road carved out of the woods nearby, and it was lined with (seemingly) dozens of truck tractors (from tractor trailers) with all the glass broken out of all the windows. (My dad and I went hunting back there and I remember it well.) That broken up safety glass seemed to be six inches deep on the sand road. Again, everything about this place just screamed WHY WHY WHY? None of it made sense. It was surreal.

Then there were the huge parties kids used to have in the woods out at Jungle Jim's and The Maze off Atsion Road in those days, with generators and bands and all kinds of lunatic stuff going on...I remember riding a dirt bike back there one night, and I got turned around and wasn't sure where I was, and somebody in a 4WD just kept following me and following me until it started to freak me out...another time, a friend of mine went to a nighttime keg party out on the Pole Lines off Jackson Road, and he said that when he drove back out, his headlights swept across a guy walking along the road dressed all in black and carrying a bow and arrows...the pines were a great place for ghost stories...

Another weird old story: My brother and I were out at the sand pit off Atsion Road riding around and drinking beer one night around '82 or '83, and my car battery died and we had to walk out. We were walking across the sand pit and all of a sudden here we found something about the size of a golf ball or baseball glowing orange -- like embers from a fire -- but there was no ash from a fire there. We didn't have a flashlight, but we looked at it and looked at it and kicked around it, and we couldn't see any ash or anything that would have indicated a fire. The only thing I could figure was that maybe it was a meteorite? I wish we had investigated it more!

I haven't been back to the area in probably close 35 years, so it would probably be sad to see how much different and built-up it has become...That's a shame about Settler's Inn...that place was a real landmark when I was coming up.
 
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bobpbx

Piney
Staff member
Oct 25, 2002
14,567
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Pines; Bamber area
Good stories Jungle Jim. From 1961 to 1963 I lived in Hampton Lakes, and a 5 year old friend of my younger brother went through the ice of Forge Pond. He didn't make it. I was only 8 at the time, and that was the first death of a person I experienced. It was sad and very strange.
 
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Teegate

Administrator
Site Administrator
Sep 17, 2002
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Jim,

Jungle Jims house now has a sign out front that says Jungle J. I assume it may be his son?? In any event, the road back into the woods by his house now has McMansions and is now off limits.

As for Stoney Mountain, or I should say what most people call Stoney Mountain, it is part of the golf course. The "true or real" Stoney Mountain is in Berlin right on the very edge of Evesham in what use to be deep woods. It now has McMansions all around it but it is still mostly there.

I have a photo I took years ago on top of the hill at the golf course but it is a slide and I no longer have a slide scanner that works with my operating system. I also have one on the true Stoney Mount. I will look for it. I have posted it before.
 
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Jungle Jim

New Member
Feb 1, 2021
6
5
Virginia, USA
Thanks for the info, Teegate. That's funny about Jungle Jim's ... back in the day we never knew who "Jungle Jim" was, nor whether he even existed and it was just a name somebody came up with...

I was looking at West Jersey bogs on Google Maps, and I guess that area was along a sort of "continental divide" between the Mullica, draining into Great Bay, and Medford Lakes / Rancocas Creek, draining into the Delaware. (In fact, the West Jersey bogs appear to drain in both directions...learn something new every day. )
 
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Teegate

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Those bogs were owned by J. Roger Brick and his heirs. They just sold most of it in the past few years. The main one with the building had been rented by hunters for quite a while. The new owner owns this house.

#2
 
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Jungle Jim

New Member
Feb 1, 2021
6
5
Virginia, USA
Yes, that's the place I'm talking about, Boyd. I think we called it "Stony Mountain" but I may be misremembering, it's been a long time. Also, Stone Mountain, GA, may be competing in the namespace...I used to mow lawns for some widows who lived back on Lost Lake just to the NE of that...

Re: West Jersey bogs -- I remember Dad saying that he saw a track in the sand back there that was bigger than his hand. He seemed somewhat put-off by this discovery (and as a lifelong hunter, he was familiar with wildlife)...

Back in the 70s, I remember hearing that swans were getting into the flooded bogs in winter and apparently digging deep holes and really doing a lot of damage. It really was a wild place (and doesn't look like it has changed all that much, judging from Google Maps).
 
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Teegate

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This map is from the History of Evesham Township. The arrow points to Stony Mountain in Berlin just across the Evesham line. I incorrectly added an "e" to the name. Anyway, I have viewed a map that showed Stony Mountain (yellow circle) on the golf course property in Medford. I don't believe that to be correct.

IMG_5492a.jpg
 
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Jungle Jim

New Member
Feb 1, 2021
6
5
Virginia, USA
Growing up, we always heard that there was an "Indian burial ground" somewhere between Blue Lake and King's Grant.

Anyone know anything about that, or do we all grow up with "Indian burial grounds" in our folklore? Or maybe it was just a tall tale our parents told us?

"Kettle Run" ... wasn't there a huge "Kettle Run forest fire" that burned for a week or two around 1972? I remember seeing the smoke for days...
 
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Teegate

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I seem to remember something about a fire. But I did not live in that part of town so I can't be sure.
 

c1nj

Explorer
Nov 19, 2008
289
187
I believe Stony Mountain on the Burlington/Camden County line is called Red Bone Hill now.

I used to sled down the other Stoney Mountain by the golf course.
 

Teegate

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Stony Mount in Camden County is a National Geodetic Survey location and here is the description in 1876.

Coast And Geodetic Survey 1876.

Station is in the township of Waterford (actually Voorhees), about 200 yards West of the line dividing the counties of Camden and Burlington, on the highest part of "Big Stone Mountain," about 2 miles North 32 Degrees East of the Village of Berlin which is on the line of the Camden and Atlantic Railroad. It is on property of Josiah Bishop who resides in Berlin. To reach the station from the railroad station in Berlin, take the road to Taunton, North 50 Degrees East about a mile to where it is crossed by the Cooper Road, then follow the Cooper Road North 20 Degrees West about three-fifths of a mile to where a wood road crosses it, follow wood road in a Northeasterly direction for 725 yards to where a blind road leads off to the left, to the top of the hill. The station is about 50 yards North West of this road. The station mark is a granite post 6 inches square, dresses on top and down it's sides 6 inches, set in hydraulic cement and stones 4 feet in the ground, over a long, round black bottle filled with sand. The station is South 80 degrees West, and 320 feet from a large pine tree which is a corner of the property and has been blazed and hacked several times on all four of it's sides. References- Winston Chew, Harry G. Smith, (Surveyor) and Ezra Stokes, surveyor, all of Berlin.
 
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Teegate

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That is the place. It was really nice there in the 70s when I first visited. When I went more recently not so much with the homes all around it.

More info:

1932

The station is in Waterford Township (Again Wrong), 2 miles NE of Berlin, approximately 200 yards west of the Burlington County line, on the highest point of the summit of the hill formally used as a Boy Scout camp, and on property owned by Howard Wakely.
 
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