Henry Charlton Beck - More Forgotten Towns of Southern New Jersey

The Clevenger brothers of Clayton held on to the inherited molds, and so Clevenger glass still emerges from the old plant, hidden away at Vine and Linden Streets. The late Allie Clevenger (seated) with the veteran glass blowers he gathered around him to make Jenny Lind, Booz, and other bottles and pitchers.

WHEN Forgotten Towns of Southern New Jersey made its appearance in 1936, the late Nathaniel R. Ewan, who in his lifetime was president of both the Camden and the Burlington County historical societies, went hurriedly to the library in Moorestown and borrowed a copy.

It was the policy there, as in most communities dominated by the Society of Friends, to make a charge for books of fiction. Nonfiction could be borrowed free. My friend, Miss Hannah Severns, then the librarian in Moorestown, later confirmed the rumor I had heard, that Nat had read Forgotten Towns with what seemed to be incredible speed and had returned the copy to the library almost at once as if by mistake he had taken out a naughty novel. What was more, placing the book with some ostentation before Miss Severn, he also presented a fee.

"But, Mr. Ewan," the librarian quietly protested, "there is no charge-this is nonfiction."

"My money says what it is," replied the man who later became a good friend of mine, and he strode out of the library, fuming.

I have given you the anecdote as I have repeated it publicly many times-and, naturally, without any flight of imagination such as Nat imputed to what was my first book of nonfiction all those years ago. I often have wondered what Nat's reaction was when, only a year later in 1937, More Forgotten Towns of Southern New Jersey, the book you are reading now, made its debut.

I must presume that this was adding insult to injury, for soon I began to hear reports, some of which I hope were exaggerated, that Nat Ewan was flavoring his historical addresses here and there with criticism of the Forgotten Towns books-and their upstart author. Apparently my besetting sin was making history popular by seeking out and recording New Jersey legends that established historians like to shrug aside. Screwing up my courage, I made an appointment with Nat Ewan and went to see him.

I soon learned that Nat Ewan was an ardent defender of the dry-as-dust school, sworn, sometimes through habit, to accept moth. ing until every "i" is dotted, every "t" crossed, and every detail run to earth no matter what its significance, if any in the end.

"With all due respect," I told Nat Ewan, when he had listed his complaints, "you have no regard for legends at all. Many of your friends are prone to look down their noses at oral tradition. Folklore, what the people say, means nothing to you-unless there is a document, a newspaper clipping, or someone with a name to back it up. By implication you are saving that most people consciously have lied to me and that others, when asked questions, have made up what they did not know. But what about the selftrumpeted historians who are determined to keep history for the few by locking it up except on appointed occasions or deliberately making it dull. A few of us are trying to make New Jersey history more alive than it was made for us...... I quickly apologized for my vehemence.

For a long time Nathaniel R. Ewan, may God rest his soul, failed to appreciate such a point of view. He would write me long letters and I would reply, and then, after a while, I think I converted him to the processes of research by trial and errorweaving together the stories of those who are willing to talk and then recording the additions and alterations of others who remember, even if only to compete with others in the family or someone on the other side of town. I told Nat not long before he died that much historical information that he had collected was filed away awaiting fragments that would never turn upand I feel certain that I was right. Many manuscripts of which Nat spoke to me as "in preparation" have disappeared_

I agreed with Nat on several points, and he agreed, finally, on my cardinal argument that whatever else was in error, forgotten town books were the result of honest reporting, the record of what people handed down because they believed it to he true, one generation to another. In New Jersey it is safer to consider even the tallest story possible, rather than wait for proof that long ago went down an old road or out a -little river to the sea.

IVasked Nat Ewan if he would prepare for me, page by page, comments on all that he had faulted, and I found his six pages of copy in my overflowing files not long ago. Many of the errors he listed were variants, differences of opinion, and, in some in stances, assurances that I had lingered and laughed with the wrong people. It was clear that some who had been friendly to me were on Nat's special annoyance list in the country he knew so well from his days as a salesman of his father's Ewansville products, cider and vinegar.

In his notes on Forgotten Towns of Southern New Jersey Nat argued that corn liquor was "not common" in the Ong's Hat region; that there was no evidence of a license granted for an inn at Batsto; that the mansion at Batsto, much remodeled by Joseph Wharton, should not be called "venerable," and that some family names had been misspelled-some of these were typographical errors, but others I had found in graveyards where tombstones in the same family lot bore different spellings. Examining More Forgotten Towns, now reissued much to my delight, Nat went on in the same vein, with the exception that by this time he was more inclined to offer additions as well as alterations. I know that I accepted too quickly assertions about the Old York Road, and about a tower that was said to have been a part of old Fort Billings, and bricks that came from England, and I was as confused as the kinsmen of the old forge and furnace operators. I am fully aware that the methods with which I began, and on which, I hope, I have improved with later researches, later books, and still later editions, are not yet perfect. No methods are, and nearly all the authors of printed sources I have consulted have admitted as much.

The important fact now is that, even as Nathaniel R. Ewan all but conceded, history and folklore are closer together than ever in New Jersey. Thousands of newcomers, as well as members of old New Jersey families, are not only displaying an avid interest in the state in which they work and live but are prying open the long-dark cupboards, catching history by its folklore "coattails." I have more than ample proof of this with every day's mail. To have a part in helping the new New Jerseyan see the New Jersey it was given to me to find thirty years ago is a very special honor all by itself.

HENRY CHARLTON BECK