HISTORICALLY SPEAKING
From the Allentown Messenger dated June 9, 1932, Mrs. James West’s story of the old school house saved, relocated three times, and since restored near the Washington Township Library.
Last week, you remember we went down reflection’s lane with Josiah S. Robbins to the little whitewashed school house under the great oak on the triangle where West Manor Way merges into the Allentown-Robbinsville highway, where Mr. Robbins began his school days. We turned back the pages of memory’s book to 1848, and the reminiscence was pleasant as we came through the years, and spoke of the times and places and people we knew, and memories both sad and glad of other associations of the school house in the triangle.
From Harvey Hulse we learn that in 1883 his grandfather, Benjamin Hulse, brought his wife and eight children from Imlaystown to the house on the hill beyond where Mr. Hulse now lives. There he established his home and opened his blacksmith shop, and from the recollections of older folks he learned that the old road, then still dimly visible, had turned sharply around the Robbins place and ran due north, merging into the old road that came across from Cabbagetown (New Canton) and passed the Haunted House [where a grove of trees hides the late John Henry House in Matrix Business Park: according to legend, a widow haunts the site, waiting to serve her lost children the breakfast they never had. Curious visitors tell of seeing the breakfast table still set and a searching light.]
As the mills of time turned the years over and over Benjamin Hulse saw his flock to be men and women before he crossed the bar. In time the farm on the hill came into the possession of George, the youngest son, who lived there all his life and reared his family there.
In a sweep of memory down the hill, on the flat beyond, we came to home of a prominent Methodist, Allen Thompson, by Spring Garden Woods. Two daughters and his son, Frank were pupils at the school, where the girls were known among their school mates as the Swamp Angels. Somehow, something has made me think these little girls were very sweet, gentle and shy, very like the dainty anemones of the woods, with dimpled pink and white apple blossom faces, framed about the golden curls. Josiah Robbins particularly remembers Sarah Thompson. She was his school-boy sweetheart.
It was a long time before I knew just which of the woods north of Allentown was Spring Garden Woods, and I still should like to know why it was so named. At last, from memories all tangled up with thoughts of many things, I learned that going from Allentown out Robbinsville way we should take the second right-hand road, follow over the hill, and just beyond the white bridge, on the right hand side of the road is Spring Garden Woods.
The Thompsons moved away form Spring Garden and made their home in Bordentown, and some years later Frank became an engineer, and when here and there a silver thread had come amid the school-boy brown, he sending a fast train down the track. You remember the wreck of Nellie-Bly? It occurred on the evening of February 22, 1901, near collision between the express and a local train running from New York to Atlantic City, and Frank Thompson was killed. The Nellie Bly was so named for the girl reporter who once undertook a trip around the world to test the feasibility of Jules Verne’s "Across the World in 80 Days."
Well, after 1850 James Young bought the Thompson place and began to rebuild and enlarge the house, and the cellar filled with water, but they did not wait for it to dry up or run out; they just built the house over it and went on cutting the abundance of white birch poles about them, for they had their farm to pay for and their family to rear. James Young with his team carted the poles to Trenton, where they made into crates for the potteries. In his absence the sound of the axe in the hands of his wife echoed through the woods, and by the time he returned she had another load of poles ready.
There is a house that stands over near Keith’s Line, a comfortable roomy house, with wide and friendly doorway. About it the maples grow each year a little nearer to the sky, and a line of barns and sheds make a background substantial and complete, and reaching towards the road is a lane that years ago beckoned eager childish feet. I never new all the familythey had lived there long before I was bornand yet I somehow know there are hearts that have precious pictures in the gallery of golden memories of the place I have pictured here in words. This was the boyhood home of Josiah S. Robbins when he went to school in the little whitewashed school house. And we are glad he did go there. We are proud to have had a boy who grew to be a man of such charming personality, high intelligence, and inventive genius in our community. Gracefully he was walked through the lanes of life far beyond the milestone hat marks three score and ten.
Five generations of Robbins family lived on this farm. Perhaps many know it better as the William Burk farm. Mr. Robbins can remember but one teacher of this school, Miss Martha McKee Hutchinson, and when the boys marched out at close of the school day, they politely said "Good-nite, Miss Martha." All but Evans Hulse, who said "Good-nite, Cousin Martha," because the teacher was his cousin.
About 1850 things began to happen about the old school house. Across the road Robert Ford was hauling lumber for the building of a new house there (now the home of George T. Ford). And the talk was about moving the school house to a more central location.
So one fine day they came with the team and the stalk poles, as much as twenty feet long, on the stripped wagon to the school house. (They did not make stalk ricks in those old times. They carted the stalks from field to barn on the poles, and set the sheaves in round stacks near the barnyard until fed to the horses and cattle.)
After the peaked shingled roof was loosened, it was slipped one side at the time on the stalk poles, and the sides take apart at the corners, were loaded on the poles the same way. Thus piece by piece the little whitewashed school house rumbled down the rutty old road towards Allentown. In that far-off time the land south of the Ford home was woods around about a pond and marshes. That was the home of many wild ducks, and a haunt for local hunters.
Like the sad, slow winding of a funeral train, the little school house passed this familiar scene, but it did not go to town. It turned into the first right-hand road, that led by the home of Harriet Bills, at the edge of the harvest home woods. Perhaps you have heard your own dear grandmother say that harvest homes in her time lasted the whole day long. Everybody went, and they cooked a delicious dinner of great abundance and variety, and they had supper too.
By 1875 harvest homes had become an affair of the afternoon, and they hired a brass band, and preachers from the churches of near-by towns made speeches, and they served supper under a big tent. About 1900 while this harvest home woods was owned by James P. Hutchinson, he spent considerable time and money to put the woods in good condition for harvest homes, and because of the little brook running through it, he called it Brook Valley Grove. By this time most folks went to the harvest home in the early evening. Young men with their shinning buggies and smoothly-brushed horses and polished harness brought their best girls, and the older folks came with the children with a team to the family-carriage.
Well, the little school house of 1850 on the stalk poles rumbled on by this scene of so many jollifications, and across the little brook and up the southwest road to the top of the short grade, and there it found a school yard waiting in the corner of Asher Borden’s field.
Historically Speaking is a regular column presented by John Fabiano, president of the Allentown-Upper Freehold Historical Society. For information about the historical society, send e-mail to [email protected].

