den's Maple Shade History Website

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Maple Shade Historical Society Beginning PDF

Schoolgirl Samplers-

Sampler images at den's OneDrive cloud

Maple Shade in October 1908-

Article from the Moorestown Republican newspaper October 21, 1908

Senator Robbins visits Maple Shade. (Headline cut off of scan) Eugene Hill was on the Chester Twp. committee which was mostly of Moorestown people and met in Moorestown. The old Moorestown and Camden Turnpike was discontinued in 1907 when bought by the County.

My bike rides observations of East Main Street-

I saw a old photo of the Roberts monument on its 1/8 acre lot with level ground with grass surrounded by a wrought iron fence.

The South side of Main Street down to about Givnish Funeral Home is higher that the north side of Main Street so originally there was a slope there where Main Street is cut out of the side of the hill.

Everyone knows the gun club is up on a hill and the Roberts monument is up on a hill, but look they're at the same height as the VFW.

The parking lot for Givnish Funeral Home has been somewhat flattened out compared to when the American Legion was on that corner with its uphill yard with two cannons on it.

Let's look at the area where the Roberts family bought a 1/8 acre lot across from the brickyard house on John Mason's farm. The brickhouse is like 2 feet below street grade on the north side of Main Street.

I don't bike up the hill into Maple Shade from Moorestown. It was hard when I was a kid but at least then I could make it. That was referred to as "brickyard hill" for a while in the past. I saw at least one newspaper article where they said pranksters greased the trolley tracks up brickyard hill and then the trolley slipped and couldn't make it up the hill.

Now picture the land was grooved out in the side of the hill when they put Main Street in. (The Market road was laid out as a straight line from Moore's Town to Cooper's Ferry in 1794.) We do not know all of the geometry of the land due to the brickyard which owned the land on both sides of Main Street which it bought from Joseph Walton (Cabinet maker) who's brother-in-law Thomas Lippincott (A Roberts) was a brickmaker. The brickyard had to have removed much clay from the land then the highway did more. But the top of the ridge looks closer to Main Street perhaps than from the top of it all on South Pine Street where the old farmhouse of the Roberts was.

It was a ridge so John Mason's farm on a 1877 Hopkins map is called "Pleasant Ridge Farm."

-Den

Here is quoted from Asa Matlack Sr.'s notes on Colestown-

Summer Cottages-

To get out of the cities part of the year many people had summer cottages. Most of Maple Shade's Barlow Built Bungalows were mostly built in 1922, 1923, and some in the following few years. I do not know how many were used as summer cottages. I would imagine there was a time during the One Acre farm years there were many "shacks" first used before a bungalow was built.

Summer cottages were anything from a shack to a mansion. I couldn't find it last time I looked but I remember seeing in a Camden newspaper that Alexander Mecray was staying at his summer house in Maple Shade. My one grandmother was from "money." (They didn't do the dishes. The help did them. They had a car when hardly anyone else did. etc.) I saw an old photo of her as a kid on the porch of a bungalow in Pennsauken. I said Grandmom I thought you said you were rich. That bungalow looks like mine. She said I didn't understand. That was her Aunt's summer cottage house who lived in Philadelphia. I have a few photos from my other grandparents of a house they built in Cinnaminson in the early 1920s which sat on a few cinder blocks at each corner and clearly had many building issues which would not pass inspection today!

I saw a few mentions of summer cottages in Maple Shade in newspapers. I did oral history of the east Moorestown area and the Miller family would come in the summers and had a shack with bunk beds and would drink beer and the kids soda and they would stake out the area where their "dream house" would be built.

Another topic- There is also Camden's industry which helped early Maple Shade's population to be addressed.

New Jersey School Legislation from the 1800s-

Some selected passages at den's OneDrive

We learn many things from these school reports. We learn that the front small room at the Little Red Schoolhouse was a coat room. (Then called a cloak room)

Coat rooms, no out houses and ventilation were several issues in the 1800s.

Another "conclusion" people would have is debunked. It has in the roots truth but when we see blacks attending school with whites in the late 1800s photos one would "conclude" that this was due to many Quakers in the area and also several teachers known to be Quakers so that is the reason. Wrong. It was the law. When the school was in the Township of Chester tax district after 1894 Moorestown was also in Chester Twp. and had a "Colored School."

It was considered honorable for a town to have a colored school and even Quakers thought so. That law was actually brought up later many years later in a court case which ended segregation. one source

Also in records is the people in each school's tax district starting in 1871 after the Free School law (Public School system). I got the 1873 list from the 1873 Chester Township Tax Assessor's book which years ago was at Moorestown Library. When I was at NJ State Archives in Trenton I read the list of the books they have on microfilm and that was one of the few books they were missing and I told them it was at Moorestown Library and the lady didn't look happy at all with that.

Mark K. Lewis at Phil's Camden website

A plaque for an addition to the school that was on North Poplar Ave. has in the center- Mark K. Lewis.

I already knew of this name due to many of one lot of the first year of the Maple Shade Progress said Mark K. Lewis on them in hand writing. The other half had copies with Theodore Sauselein written on them. There was even mentions of Mark K. Lewis in a copy or two. But this must be for the father- The newspapers are from 1916 and 1917.

They have been published in "The Progress of Maple Shade" book.

It's the son who was killed.

Early Barlow & Co.-

This letterhead or billhead paper is in an old MS Fire Company Treasurer's book. This is the early Barlow & Co. pre Barlow Building and Barlow Built Bungalows. Most all of the tracts listed are not owned by the Barlow family. Hang in there before printing the paper out as I have 400 DPI and 600 DPI scans which I will post later.-
Barlow/BarlowCoEarly.jpg

Historical News-

Historical Society member Mike Geden (who is also in the VFW) had his old dog tags from the Air Force returned to him. Someone found them at the beach with a metal detector and mailed them to him.

Two Subdivision Extensions-

When you are on Frederick or Thomas Ave. and at the point where they curve at an angle toward Center Ave., you are entering the "Orchards Extension." When you are on South Forklanding Rd. between Crawford Ave. and Mill Rd. you are on what was referred to as "New Forklanding Road" and Crawford "Old Forklanding Road" as Crawford Avenue was S. Forklanding Road on the Shuster Tract until the plan of the "Shuster Extension."

South Fellowship Road, Maple Shade from a Chalkley Matlack note book.

New pages-

Pioneers Lands page
Maplewood Apartments Land

I Had to re-do some of my Perry Frisby page (top write up)
Cause originally done in 2008.
I could trace title chains but didn't have right focus in the page. Something like that.
Thorne Family and Perry Frisby

-den

I was looking at West Jersey History Project and downloaded the Clement re-drawn old surveys and found this and extracted the PDF page- Reuben Burrough land in 1828

Rose Ave. is where the "Old Moorestown Road" is which was the road from Schoolhouse Lane at Kings Highway to Cooper's Ferry referred as the old Market Road. The map shows the Chesterford Schoolhouse on the "New Moorestown Road." The grist mill at the end of "Rose Ave" although the Alden Park segment is probably curved a little. It shows Joseph Burrough's old saw mill near the creek that crosses Church Rd near the school. It shows the Custard Stand lot once the tollgate house lot was originally Burrough's land but Charles Coles sold it to the Stiles family who owned the Levi Lippincott and high school land. This happened after a road would go through as to clean up the boundaries, and not have a small portion of one person's land on the other side of a road. It shows Thorne land owned by Perry Frisby a colored farmer and Asa R. Lippincott- a Thorne descendant. This is a redrawn survey with update notes done by John Clement.

As Jackie Gleason would say, "How sweeeeeeet it is!"

Here is another John Clement survey drawing of the Samuel/ Enoch Roberts land. The Public Road is Mill Road and right where it meets the creek near Rt. 38 was the Roberts' saw mill. Nearby was Leconey's grist mill.- Roberts land

That is about the two best pages which pertain to the Maple Shade area. Both are in Book 4. There is a few more Burrough land pages (also in Book 4). Clement's surveys are mostly all Camden County. Well he does have a few Burlington County ones in the Pines area I believe.

From Moorestown Historical Society's Facebook site. The current bridge is now being repaired.