Jersey Genesis Third Printing.

By Henry Charlton Beck

Book Overview

Long regarded as folklife classics, Henry Charlton Beck's books are vivid re-creations of the back roads, small towns, and legends that give New Jersey its special character. Rutgers university Press... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• ISBN: B005RQCHN0
• ISBN13: 9780813504377
• Release Date: January 1963
• Publisher: Rutgers University Press
• Length: 317 Pages
• Weight: 0.94 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Henry Beck's love affair with a river and its people

This is without a doubt the most personal of all of Henry Charlton Beck's books about New Jersey; it is truly a labor of love. Beck loved the Mullica River area of south Jersey ("To me the Mullica is the most wonderful of the unrecognized rivers of America."). He had spent years exploring the region and made many friends there. The book is a slow, sentimental journey up the river, from Barnegat Bay to the Forks up past Batsto and Atsion to Berlin, though he is most fond of the section between Chestnut Neck and Batsto. He writes of boatbuilders, fishermen, moss gatherers, and the last generation of salt hay farmers. He has known these people for years and tells their stories well. He also relates historical information - about near forgotten towns like Herman City, Bulltown, and Crowleytown as well as past events when the Mullica was an important shipping point. He says in his preface he almost wrote the book as a novel, and one can feel the emotions of a novelist as the book unfolds: joy and understanding, as well as a certain sadness and reverie (the book was written during WW II and some of the men Beck knew well were overseas fighting). Like an old-timer who tends perhaps to tell the same story more than once, to repeat himself while always emphasizing or pointing out the most significant parts (to him and, with hope in his tone, to the listener, too), Beck makes his way up the river he loves revealing as best he can what makes him love it so much - the people and their character. If sometimes it's hard to feel as enthusiastic as Beck is to visit one more decoy carver or listen to just one more fifth generation resident tell about when that broken down old building across the road there once hosted the best fiddlin' parties in the Pines - well, it's still a pleasure and a joy to accompany Fr. Beck up the river of his happiest memories.

Our Mullica-slip into the nostalgia

I read this book in 1975 and again in 2002. It was like slipping into an old, soft woolen shirt I love to wear on cold winter evenings; it wraps around you like an old friend. Beck does an excellent job introducing us to the "Down Jersey" folk who lived along the Mullica River in simpler times; Charlie Weber, the last salt hay farmer who.."rolls mosquitoes off his sun-armored arms as if he were rolling down his sleeves"; Snapper Cobb,.. "for whom big days are marked by turtles and herring in the tide; Aunt Hattie Ford, who ran an old-fashioned grocery store where locals gathered around a comforting pot belly stove to exchange news and keep company, and where Beck was accepted as a native; and Constant Ford, who would "tramp across the old fields in search of bits of glass, old bricks, and cellar holes, seeking traces of his youth". Like an old friend of ours, Beck invites us along with him as he pokes around in all the hamlets that have held their own since the country was first settled; Lower Bank, Herman City, Green Bank, Crowleytown, Bulltown, and Pleasant Mills. He also treats us to some special forays out into the woods surrounding the river, where he gives us original material on places and things that have lived in Jersey legend since the rum runners ran these woods; Joe Mulliner, "highway robber of the pines"; the Leeds Devil, who.. "like a giant bird of prey, is seen to hover above some silent, star-bespangled pond within the umbrous recess of a cedar swamp"; and the lost town of Aserdaten, which has been swallowed by the vegetation of the mysterious Forked River Mountains. One of the really neat things about this book is that, because it was written in 1945, we get to learn about people and places from two distinct period of time. We learn a little about life along the Mullica during the World War II period, and we learn a lot about life along the Mullica in long times past, as the locals prominent in the late 1930's and early 40's relay their hand-me-down memories to Beck about the major events that shaped the river in colonial times. There are stories about the role of the river in the days of the iron furnaces at Batsto and Atsion, and glass production, moss pulling, pine cone gathering, and of course shipbuilding. The Mullica was an important river during the Revolutionary War, both as a highway for war supplies and a hideout for privateers who harassed and plundered British shipping so much that the British finally sent in several shiploads of well-armed troops to "break up once and for all this privateering along the Jersey coast". For some of the material in this part of 'Genesis', Beck digs information out of the late Gus Schneider, who made it a favorite hobby to collect the legends of British ships and Patriot resistance. Beck meets his match with Gus, for as the locals tell Beck about Gus;..."he don't write like you do....he just digs things up out of the river to prove its all true". All of this is just a glimpse of the wond