Estell Manor Hiking

What wonderful weather for hiking!  However, I must say it is time to SPRAY! 
Yesterday, a friend, Barbara Spector and I and, of course, Trixie, hiked at Estell Manor in Atlantic County.  We stopped at Wawa for lunch supplies for a picnic at Lake Lenape near Mays Landing.  I would love to know more about the abandoned mill there, and even more, to explore it! 
Estell Manor was wonderful.  We stopped to look at Stephen's Creek from the boardwalk trail which was heavily damaged in the super storm and is in the process of being repaired. 
We were very happy to see a big Birthday Party in the large group area in the parking section of the entrance.  What a great way for a big family to have a party and a reunion at the same time.  The kids were delirious with joy and the parents were grilling and chilling and it made us happy to see them.
Lots of people were on the trails that day, bicycling and hiking.  That's always gratifying.
For info on camping at Lake Lenape call 609-625-8219.  For general Atlantic County Parks info go to www.aclink.org/PARKS
Today, I'm off to the Trenton State Archives, with Barbara Solem, my other hiking buddy, to do some research on my family history.  On my mother's side, there is a long trail back to New Jersey from Philadelphia, where I was born.  The names associated with my mother's ancestry are Cheesman, Garwood, and Jaggard - all very interesting and prominent families in the Blackwood, Turnersville,  Timber Creek area. 
My search started at the Gloucester County Historical Society Library.  Of course, it started years ago with my grandmothers, but then I was helped on immeasureably by ancestry.com, and a distant cousin on the Jaggard side who had done a lot of work already, and, next, hands on searches at Camden County Historical Society in Camden and GCHSL.  I have graphed out two interesting trees and found lots of information, but I've been stalled for a couple of years at 'lost links' spots on both sides - William C. Garwood on my mother's side.  He married Rachel Ann Cheesman and made the Cheesman Garwood link, and the Wrights of Indiana on my father's side.   But like the tides, the interest comes and goes.  William C. Garwood (the eldest of two of the same name, grandfather and grandson) was a schoolteacher at Turnersville, and a postmaster at Blackwood. 
Meanwhile, I hike and the woods restore my spirit!  Spots I love at Estell are the Smith/Ireland cemetery (with brand new imposing wrought iron fencing) and the ruins of the Belcoville plant of 1917,  and always, the glimmer of Stephen's Creek wherever I see it along the trail. 
Happy Trails!  Jo Ann

Quilt Show at the Glo. Co. Hist.Soc. Museum

On Friday, April 26, 2013, three other volunteers from the Whitall House and myself took the self-guided walking tour of Historic Woodbury and ended our tour with the second part of the EXCELLENT Quilt exhibit at the Jessup Hunter Lawrence House on Broad St. which is the Gloucester County Historical Society Museum.  Before I forget, here is an upcoming event there:

My Garden of Quilts - Botanical Textiles, Quilt program by Karen Dever plus quilt exhibit Thurs. May 16 at 7:00 p.m. 

I will certainly be going there for that.  One of the things I admire most at any exhibit at the GCHSM is the level of knowledge and expertise of the curator and the volunteers.  On Friday, were were triple lucky in having two GCHSM volunteers join us who gave us additional insights into the needlepoint samplers and the world of quilting.  Two other guests that day were expert quilters.

My grandmother was a quilter.  I have such wonderful memories of her sewing a quilt stretched out across her bed as the seabreeze blew in the window of her upstairs apartment in Ocean City, NJ.  I have two of her quilts but one is disintegrating - a Sunbonnet Babies quilt that I have used since early childhood and washed innumerable times, sadly.  Also, I have my great-grandmother's sewing maching which is especially poignant to me as both my great-grand and paternal grandmother supported themselves and their families by sewing when they were widowed. 

The day was perfect for a walking tour and I  found the buildings connected to the Green family medicinal empire especially interesting.  There is the Green carriage house, the Green Laboratory and the Green Castle, a former hotel which now sports ominous red signs with white X's on them.  What does that mean?  No one we spoke with seemed to know what those signs portend. 

Anyone who loves history could weep at the continual destruction of our historic landmarks.  The fight goes on.  Schools want to take wooded reserves and make soccer fields (Saddler's Woods), and a church wants to take The Green Castle and demolish it for new building. 

Ah well, it is best to look at the glass half full and enjoy what we have without becoming too distraught about what we are losing (unless we are willing to get involved in the fight - and I'm too old now and tired).

We had lunch at Charlie Brown's, itself a former historic tavern, and I can most heartily recommend the salad bar which is well known in the area for freshness and variety! 

If you are interested in the walking tour, you can get the free booklet, with photos of all the houses and descriptions as well as a map, at the Gloucester County Historical Society Library, which is just behind the Museum and has a parking lot.  This is the best time of the year for historic town walks because you can also enjoy the gardens! 

Happy Trails!
Jo Ann
ps.  Photos were taken and will be added in the new way, as a page added as you scroll down my blog to the bottom. 

Pictures 2013

Well, I think I have found a way to circumvent the problem I had with adding pictures (called "gadgets" on this free blog site)  to go with my posts.  Something had changed in the formatting function and I could not longer add pictures the way I did with my other posts, so I have opted to add a page with pictures on it.  The page is called Photographs 2013, and there is a photo of my sister's shrub arrangement at Michleton Library, for her presentation on Landscape Design, a photo of carnivorous plants at Pakim Pond for Earth Day, and there is a picture of my dog Trixie at Timber Creek park, and finally, a photo of my sister, me and my nephew, the day we began working on my garden. 
Scross down to the bottom of my opening page and you'll find the page entitled Photographs 2013, along with a page on the James and Ann Whittall House.  You can open Photographs 2013 and see the pictures.  I'll add new pages for more photographs as they come up to go with new posts.  I wish I could move that whole "gadget" up further on the page, but it is beyond my ability to figure out how to do that.  Sorry for the inconvenience and I hope you enjoy the photographs. 
Speaking of photographs, for my 'birding friends' I wanted to mention that I saw a wild life photographer at Audubon Lake (in Haddon Heights Park)  yesterday taking pictures of black cormorants in a tree airing out their wings.  The little parks have many wonders to share.

Happy Earth Day 2013

Today, to celebrate Earth Day, my sister and I worked in my garden.  Over the past 25 years, I have planted nearly 250 shrubs and trees, but for the past 5 to 10 years, I did almost no gardening at all, however some of my trees have grown enormous! 
My sister, Susan is a Landscape Designer and recently did a wonderful presentation at the Mickleton Library on Kings Hwy., which, by the way, is in the process of being closed by the municipality.  My sister had always made good use of the library and was happy to give back by doing the excellent presentation.  She will miss the Library when it is gone.
The most interesting part of her presentation, to me, was where she had brought a dozen or so potted shrubs which formed a lovely backdrop.  She would pull two forward and we could observe that they looked identical, and even though they were in the same family, one might grow 30 feet tall and the other 3 feet tall, which makes a great deal of difference if you are planting in front of your bay window! 
In fact, I had planted a lovely little tree next to my outdoor shed, some years back when I still had Christmas trees with root balls.  I couldn't bring myself to kill a live tree for a celebration and then put out its dead, dry remnants on the day after Christmas, so I bought trees with roots and planted them.  That caused a problem on exceptionally cold winters when the ground froze, but we just decorated the tree with items for whatever holiday came up until the ground thawed out again.  One of those trees was a Norwegian Spruce.  It is huge and I can't imagine how tall it will become!
Anyhow, we came close to meeting our goal for the gardening of the day, but not quite.  We did the mulching of the beds, but didn't get to plant the rest of the Lily of the Valley pips that I had bought from amazon.com.
It came to me that I wanted them when I smelled their fragrance outside the Gloucester County Historical Society Library every spring.  They had quite a nice bed of them in the parking lot.  I'm a volunteer there.
Master Gardeners from Whitall House generously gave me pots of them from their own gardens and they are coming up, but I wanted MORE.  I'll plant the pips tomorrow.
I hope you were outside on this splendid day which couldn't have been a better day to remind us of how wonderful our planet is.
On June 5th, I'll be taking a trip to Bartram's Gardens and Chanticleer with two friends.  I'll let you know how that goes.
I haven't visited that many gardens in the past, (Longwood, from time to time, of course) but I go regularly to visit various trees, such as the Salem Oak.  Anyhow I did get to see the Doris Duke Gardens (North Central NJ) before they closed and, as you recall, I visited all the State Parks in SJ last year.  Some years back, I had ventured further north some years ago and also visited The Great Swamp.  This would be a good time of year to go there, while the waters are flowing and the mosquitoes aren't quite out yet.  This is a wonderful time of the year to be in any park!
This week I'll be taking a walking tour of historic Woodbury.  More on that after Friday, April 26. 
Nothing makes me happier than to be outdoors walking in a park or woods.  I especially with my canine pal, Trixie Belden.  I hope you got outside today too!

Second Lecture

The second lecture I attended was about the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall; I'm sorry, I tried to look up the authors of the book, who were presenting the lecture, but didn't have any instant success and I'm under a time constraint here, so I'll simply give you the url to the Gloucester County Historical Society and you can visit there and possibly find the info on the meeting and lecture which was last  night, Wednesday, April 10 at 7:00 p.m.

http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~njgchs/Library.html

They were interesting speakers, the two authors.  I was interested to find out how many times the rooms of the Independence Hall have been gutted and renovated and to see pictures of how radically didfferent it was through the time periods.  Also, there was a clock in the wall made by the Stretch Clock makers who made the clock in the Whitall House.

On the liberty bell the most interesting fact, to me, was that once it went to space and when it came back, the door to its capsule was opened too soon and it sank to the bottom of the ocean,  Not to worry, first of all, there were seven replicas of the bell of which this was one, and also, at some later point, the bell was retrieved from the ocean floor.

One of the two authors of the book Independence Hall and the Libery Bell got his start at the Glooucester County Historical Society, where I am a volunteer.  I've been working on indexing Ruth Page Rogers diary.  She was an Elk Twp. born residendt who became a pioneer Mormon and went to Utah.    I'm also working on the Cutrufello family photographs, a new acquisition which I've mentioned before.  My sister rescued the passport and photographs from the turn of the century through the 1940's from the sidewalk trash and we were so intrigued that we were happy to find a home for them at GCHSL.

Out of space again and the slide bar can't help me get past Dr. Oz, so I'm signing out.  Enjjoy the weather.  I'm on my way to Atsion Lake to hike with my best dog friend, Trixie (who picture I would post if I could figure out the new protocol here) and Barbara Soleem.  I may have to start a whole new page to put my quickly mounting photos up somewhhere.

Two Lectures

Wow the first days of what feels more like summer than spring!  Already the forsythia have flung themselves into bloom and the blossoming trees are clothing their recently black, naked, shivering branches in white and pink finery.  All of this, of course, puts one in mind of gardens. 

Recently on PBS, I saw a NATURE program called What Plants Talk ABout.  It was so interesting, I ordered a copy of the dvd.  No one really wants to hear the plot of a show repeated verbally so I'll just tell you one interesting detail.  Plants send a chemical message into the air, kind of like the old concept of 'miasma,' i think, that notifies a predator that it's prey is on the plant.  That way, the insect eating a plant can be removed by its enemy.
That chemical miasma, pictured in the tv program as a pale green fog, fascinated me.  I read recently that scientist couldn't figure out how elepants miles away could know what each other were doing.  They discovered, eventually that the elephant gave a low vocalizing below our ability to hear, and communicated that way.

The first lecture I attended was on landscaping given at Mickleton Library by my sister, Susan Wright, who is a landscape designer.   It was very well done and I learned more than I can say here, especially as Dr. Oz/s ad is covering  my writing with a pop-up that I can't remove so I can't see what I'm typing.  I may have to go to another entry after this and begin again, so I'll close by saying I'm doing two gardents in one day June 5th on a bus tour with Seniour Citizens United of Camden County, to Bartram's Garden and Chanticleer.  I did actually visit Bartram's Garden before on a Friends Meeting tour when i was a member of the Cherry Street Meeting back in the 1980's but it will be delightful to visit again.  Signing off for this entry - Happy trails - stay outside!  Jo Ann

Largest alligator in the US outside of Florida

Well, I just couldn't get it right - was it the largest alligator in the world?  The USA?  New Jersey - ha ha - I know there are none in NJ, so he'd have to be the largest one north of Florida.  Anyhow his name is Mike - it is actually "?___ something Mike" like Monumental Mike or Mammoth Mike, I can't remember.   Okay, I looked it up Mighty Mike, it is!

This alligator is BIG - way to big for the little puddle and window where he is forced to live.  I'm not a fan of zoos or circuses or aquariums.  I hate to see animals trapped and on display, however, I will say that there was a sign that explained that Mike was slated to be destroyed at a boat landing in Florida until the animal control officer contacted some nature officials and he was captured and moved around to be an ambassador for the alligator world. 

Is he better off?  Who knows, but my pal for the day at the aquarium and I discussed it and I said if I had a choice between being trapped in a small room with books inside a library for the rest of my life or of being shot, I'd take the room and the books.  I hope Mike has a meditative mind, which, by his looks, I think he might.  The Hippos were cool too.

I missed out on wishing everyone a Happy National Walking Day, two days ago.  I walked Audubon Lake, Big Timber Creek park, Newton Creek Park, and Knight's Park, to celebrate.  Walking is my favorite thing to do.  Hope you were out and about too!  Happy Trails!  Jo Ann

Places I should have gone and a place I'm going.

Well, I was punished a couple of times recently for not keeping up with my e-mail.  It takes so long that I've been heading out to walk the dog at Timber Creek Park everyday without turning on the computer.  So I missed a great genealogy and stories presentation at Salem Genealogical Society and last night I missed a presentation by a friend of mine, Carol Suplee at Medford on the history of Willingboro.  I'm really sorry about that.  She is in a writing group with tme and I'm sure it was a fascinating presentation.
http://www.medfordhistory.org/loc/loc.html

Today, I'm headed off to the NJ State Aquarium which I haven't visited in nearly a decade, through two renovations, I understand.  More on that later.

And on the subject of genealogy, my sister was on her way home from work and passed a family clearing out a house and putting all sorts of interesting things on the curb.  She asked if she could look and they said it was all trash and she could help herself.  She found a trash bag filled with family photographs from the 1930-s through the 1950's and a passport for the progenitor and first immigrant of the family Donenic Cutrufello.  There were photos of the family with their tenement garden in the Bronx, and my favorite, a pair of long white gloves and the work card of Martha Cutrufello who worked as a Cabaret dancer; there were two photos of her in color in beautiful ballgowns.

I felt so sorry for the photos and asked at Gloucester County Historical Society if  they knew of a group that would house this material since it documents early Italian immigration into the farmlands of SJ, and they said, generously that they would give it a home!  I was so happy that my sister, Susan Wright, saved this irreplaceable and priceless resource for someone who might be interested in the future.  How sad when a grandmother dies and no one cares enough about the family history to give it a home.

My sister showed them what was in the trash bag, including Domenic Guiseppi's Cutrufello's passport from 1917, and they said "Trash, we don't want any of it." Maybe a family quarrel was behind it.  Who knows.  But the photographs are saved and the gloves. 


http://sj.sunne.ws/2013/03/26/history-of-willingboro-at-medford-historical-society/