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Originally published in 1939
Some of this information may no longer be current and in that case is presented for historical interest only.
Edited by GET NJ, COPYRIGHT 2003
Right from Oxford on a tarred gravel road to the OLD GRISTMILL, 0.2 m., standing in a fork of the road. Built in 1750, it is a four-story stone building, its doors
and shuttered windows set in paneled frames. At the top, where the pulley wheel
to hoist the grain was formerly set, is a bell-gable resembling that of a Spanish
mission; about 25 years ago the mill was converted into a Methodist church. Behind the mill are the RUINS OF OXFORD FURNACE, erected 1742 by Jonathan Robeson and operated until 1884. The stamping and rolling mill is a small, six-story
building, the lower part of stone, the upper of red brick. At the base of a stone
extension in the rear is the viaduct. Oxford residents tell of the ghost that appeared
in 1877, eight months after Jerry Mack was found mysteriously dead near the furnace. Mack, an eccentric, wore ribbons streaming from his hat. His ghost, wearing
the familiar long-tailed coat, appeared to a night shift of three men in the stack
house. "Doomed to wander!" it said. Two of the men left by a window and ran
3 miles to their homes. The third fainted.
High on a hill R. of the fork is SHIPPEN MANSION (private), a three-story,
beautifully proportioned Georgian residence of local stone, its appearance marred
by a frame glass-enclosed porch along the front. It was built in 1754 by Joseph
Shippen and Dr. William Shippen, owners of the blast furnace.
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