By: Bill Greenwood
MONROE The Bethel Mission is an important historical site worthy of preservation, according to three university professors who study the period before the American Revolution.
However, none could pinpoint its exact location, though many believe it is in Thompson Park.
"I don’t know what’s on the site or where the site is specifically, but the history of that mission is one of the few missions we know of in the Great Awakening period," said Amy Schutt, a teacher of Native American history at the State University of New York College at Cortland. "During that Great Awakening, there was the birth of mission activity."
The present-day location of the mission was called into question after the township and Middlesex County applied for a land swap in which the township would exchange 175 acres of undeveloped land for a 35-acre parcel of Thompson Park on which the Board of Education wants to build a 365,000-square-foot high school. Some say the high school is proposed to be built in an area that is too close to the site, which could compromise its historic value. Others say the mission is actually located near the Jamesburg Borough Hall.
An archaeological survey of the 35 acres completed by Richard Grubb and Associates, a Cranbury-based company, revealed no evidence of the mission on the proposed high school site. The survey was ordered by the state Department of Environmental Protection as part of the approval process for the swap. The DEP has since ordered a review of historical documents.
Jean Soderlund, deputy provost for faculty affairs at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa.; Brooke Hunter, an assistant professor of history at Rider University who specializes in early American history; and Dr. Schutt all spoke to The Cranbury Press over the last two weeks about the mission’s history and its historical significance.
Dr. Soderlund has served at Lehigh as a professor of history, chairman of the history department and co-director of the Lawrence Henry Gipson Institute for Eighteenth-Century Studies.
Dr. Schutt has recently published a book titled "Peoples of the River Valleys: The History of the Delaware Indians," which focuses on the history of the Leni Lenape from 1609 to 1783.
According to the three, the Bethel Mission got its start in May 1746 when the Rev. David Brainerd moved a number of Leni Lenape he had converted to Christianity from a settlement known as Crossweeksung, located in Burlington County, to a new settlement in Cranbury, which was called Bethel. The mission was located 15 miles from Bordentown and two miles northeast of Cranbury, Dr. Hunter said.
The Rev. Brainerd was a Presbyterian missionary from Connecticut who traveled throughout New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey preaching to Native Americans and trying to convert them to Christianity. He has been described as appearing unhealthy, feeble and weak. He was given to coughing fits and occasionally spit blood during his sermons because of a pulmonary condition, Dr. Hunter said.
Dr. Soderlund said the Rev. Brainerd’s plan was to create a town that included a school and a church.
"He wanted the Indians to live close together so that they would pursue agriculture on the English model, attend worship and pursue crafts, such as spinning and weaving cloth," she said. "They would continue to hunt and fish as well."
The Rev. Brainerd died in 1747, but the town continued under the leadership of his brother, John Brainerd. However, the Bethel Indians became involved in the 1754 outbreak of the Seven Years’ War on the Pennsylvania frontier, which led to the town’s downfall. During that time, Colonial authorities required the Bethel Indians to wear a red ribbon on their head to prove they were friendly, Dr. Hunter said.
In 1758, the Bethel Indians sold most of their land to the provincial government in return for a 3,000-acre reservation, known as the Brotherton Reservation, in central Burlington County, Dr. Soderlund said.
She said it appears that many of the Bethel Indians did move to the Brotherton Reservation, of which John Brainerd became superintendent. However, he reported that 40 Indians remained at Cranbury in 1761.
While all three professors said they did not know the exact site of the mission, they said it is an important site to preserve, wherever it is, because it is essential to understanding the lives of 18th-century Leni Lenape Indians living in New Jersey.
"Bethel was an important part of history that demonstrates the persistence of Native Americans in New Jersey well past the time when most historians have thought they moved west," Dr. Soderlund said.
Dr. Hunter agreed, adding that the site serves as a reminder of the various reactions the Native Americans had when approached by missionaries like the Rev. Brainerd.
"(The mission) reminds us that Indians responded to the arrival of Europeans in diverse ways," she said. "Many fled, others resisted and some, like the Bethel Indians, assimilated and attempted to live amongst Euro-Americans as neighbors."
Dr. Schutt said the mission has further significance because it has links to another missionary, John Sergeant, who had a mission in Stockbridge and was working to convert the Mohican and Delaware Indians to Christianity. She said the Rev. Brainerd had worked at the Stockbridge mission prior to beginning his own preaching.
Andy Stout, eastern regional director of The Archaeological Conservancy, agreed that the mission is a significant historical site and said his organization would have an interest in preserving it as a permanent research preserve. The conservancy is a nonprofit organization based in Albuquerque, N.M., that acquires and preserves archaeological sites.
"(The mission is significant) just because of the fact that the (Leni) Lenape were there from 1746 to 1758 in significant numbers and in this interesting time period where they were being converted to Christianity and living more or less a Christian lifestyle," he said.
However, he said, the site would have to be located conclusively and a significant portion of it would need to be intact before the conservancy would take action.
Township Historian John Katerba has said the Monroe Township Historical Society researched the Bethel site in the 1970s and concluded it was located near the Jamesburg Borough Hall.
However, Somerville historian Richard Walling has said the mission was located at the headwaters of the Wigwam Brook, which he says were located in what is now Thompson Park near where the high school is proposed. He said he has 19th-century geological survey maps and a 1953 Middlesex County engineering map that put the brook’s headwaters in the location where the high school is to be built.
Mr. Walling has nominated the mission to the state Register of Historic Places and has threatened to seek a restraining order against anyone doing work on the property.
