Finding Old New Jersey Map

An old new jersey map from 1819 -- Harriet E. Baker's Book of Penmanship & Maps
Harriet E. Baker’s 1819 Map of New Jersey (Harriet E. Baker’s Book of Penmanship & Maps produced at Mr. Dunham Schools in Windsor, Vermont on March 31, 1819. David Rumsey Map Collection)

Thanks to the World Wide Web, public digitization initiatives, and the growth of social media, researchers and curious types have almost unlimited, convenient access to an enormous array of rare historical maps. As these old cartographic renderings, many seldom used or seen, come out of storage vaults and are made available virtually, they allow a vast audience to enjoy, learn, and become more engaged with the past.

The amount of excellent material we have on-demand continues to amaze me. This is thanks to forward-looking heritage organizations and individuals who leverage these 21st-century tools to share materials that wouldn’t be widely seen or used. 

There are many substantial, searchable collections online, the holding institutions providing free open access to the public. In line with this, I consulted the David Rumsey Map Collection for some New Jersey Maps, as I am doing fieldwork there. 

Old New Jersey Map in Book of Penmanship

While searching for detailed New Jersey county maps, I found several helpful items. But one attractive 1819 illustration of the Garden State caught my attention. It came from Harriet E. Baker’s Book of Penmanship & Maps, produced at Mr. Dunham’s School in Windsor, Vermont, on March 31, 1819. Harriet’s book contains some exquisite illustrations, including this old New Jersey Map.

After pausing to examine it, I located several more helpful old New Jersey Maps on the David Rumsey Map Collection site. The curator of rare materials started digitizing his 150,000 maps in 1996 — now, over 116,000 items are online. The curators add new material regularly.  

More Old New Jersey Maps

As for those New Jersey County maps, here is one example. It is the Smith & Wistar 1849 map of Salem and Gloucester counties, available on the Library of Congress website. Users may download high-quality scans of this detailed map.

An old New Jersey Map, the 1849 Salem & Gloucester counties map.
A Map of the counties of Salem and Gloucester, New Jersey, by Smith & Wistar, Philadelphia (1849) (Library of Congress)

For more high-quality maps, here’s a link to a section of my webpage that I use as a resource finder. This page provides links to digital repositories which have richly organized, mostly free information. 

Salem County Cold Case

Salem County Cold Case, an 1874 murder
An article about a Salem County Cold Case, a murder in 1874, published in the Salem County Historical Society Newsletter.

While studying the array of officials who made up New Jersey’s 19th-century criminal justice system, I often pore over aging coroner’s reports, trial transcripts, and police blotters. While doing that in South Jersey, I came across an unsettling Salem County Cold Case, the murder of Abigail Dilks in 1874.

From the beginning, the mystifying case stumped 19th-century lawmen and prosecutors. They swept the fields and marsh for evidence and interrogated the “usual types,” but the investigators failed to find a motive. Also, no one provided even the slightest information that might lead to a credible suspect, so the killer escaped.

The questions that stumped law enforcement lingered for decades, but those faded as one generation gave way to another. Still, the coroner’s verdict remains in the aging book of inquests at the Salem County Clerk’s Office. Abigail Dilks died at the hands of an unknown person in a lonely area of Lower Penns Neck near Harrisonville nearly 150 years ago.

Since true crime stories and unsolved mysteries are popular these days, I wrote a piece about this horrendous murder for the summer 2022 edition of the quarterly newsletter of the Salem County Historical Society. The case had mostly been lost in the recorded histories and written records of Salem County.

The arrow on this 1876 map for Lower Penns Neck Township shows the location of the murder. (Source: Atlas of Salem & Gloucester Counties, New Jersey by Everts & Stewart, 1876, from the West Jersey History Project West Jersey History Project –  Maps from the Everts and Stewart Combination Atlas Map of Salem and Gloucester Counties – 1876 )

“Life in the Past Lane: Delaware Roads,” a New Humanities Program

Delaware Road Maps
Delaware Roads Maps (Source: Wilmington Library)

Delaware Humanities has selected a new program I have been researching for inclusion in the speaker’s bureau and visiting scholar programs. The lecture, “Life in the Past Lane; Delaware Roads,” encourages people to get off the highway and enjoy some of the State’s most scenic, cultural and historic roads — along with the surrounding landscape and resources.

Here’s the description of the program:

With the arrival of modern, high-speed highways, many of Delaware’s scenic routes and the small hamlets and villages clustered around those old corridors are overlooked. This talk explores the character, ambiance, and history of some of these lesser-traveled roads today. These historic roadways are much more than just a line on the map. So come along for an enjoyable trip. You will hear intriguing stories about waterfront towns, agricultural communities, and country hamlets and villages, where discovery awaits you.

Come along and find your road in this talk. Along the way, we will explore science byways, old historic corridors, and the connections between the past and today.

A Delaware Road -- between Kirkwood and Tybouts Corner.
Travel was difficult in mid-March 1923 as this automobile travels along. The road connects Kirkwood and Tybouts Corner. (Source: Delaware Public Archives)
In my Merry Oldsmobile, Sheet Music
In My Memory Oldsmobile, by Edward Gus, 1905 (Source: Historic America Sheet Music, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University)

Maryland Archives Adds Marriage Indexes for Cecil & Dorchester counties

The Maryland State Archives is gradually introducing new online records. And on 6/22/2002, the Archives announced that partial scans of the male and female marriage indexes for Cecil County are available online. The male index covers 1928-1977, while the female index is 1928-1935. Access is free.

For Dorchester, the Archives added the Dorchester County marriage records for 1865-1886

Here’s the link for the Dorchester County Marriage Records.

Dorchester County Marriage index
A page from the Dorchester County Marriage Record Book (Source: Maryland State Archives)