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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
Left on this road is CLARKSBURG, 0.3 miles (200 alt., 300 pop.), a small settlement in which the most imposing structure is BARNEY'S INN (R), advertising
whisky and beer. This well-built and well-kept white, clapboarded hostelry has a
row of squat, fluted concrete columns across the front, a regrettable afterthought.
REDMEN's HALL (L), unpainted for generations, is of enough local importance to
be pictured on post cards sold at the adjoining GENERAL STORE AND POST OFFICE.
The post-card rack is found well to the rear; at the entrance are piled rolls of roof
ing paper, galvanized iron buckets, axes, and a vast tray of arctics and hip boots.
The most important customer of the post office is a local philatelist who gets scores
of first-day covers and buys commemorative stamps by the sheet.
At 6.1 miles, high above the road level, is the rotting frame of WILLOW
TREE TAVERN (R), built in 1781 and until recently used as a residence.
Of rigidly plain lines with a recessed porch, the tavern was a stopping
place in its early years for the four-horse coach between Philadelphia and
Long Branch. The lower floor, then unpartitioned, served as a communal
bedroom for men, women travelers being assigned to rooms upstairs.
Joseph Bonaparte, with a retinue of French servants, was a guest. Old
residents still relate that Bonaparte required his servants to taste every dish
set before him, so afraid was he of being poisoned. Formerly on winter
days farmers of the neighborhood hitched their fastest horses to sleighs
and raced to Allentown, where the last man in paid for drinks. Then.
fortified for a second heat, they raced back to the old Willow Tree, where
the loser treated again. Thus the years passed until 1865, when the tavern
was renamed the Temperance House. Shortly afterward it entered upon a
decline that ended with its sale in 1878 for use as a private home. Handmade bricks laid between the studs are revealed where clapboards have
been loosened. The interior, musty with the litter left by its last occupants.
still has a corner cupboard, a boarded-over fireplace with a simply cut
mantel, and a few hinges and other early hardware. Floors sag, and several
layers of wallpaper are peeling away. Anyone who enters may play Stealing, the last record left, on a cabinet-size phonograph that stands by the
fireplace where Benjamin Franklin once warmed his hands.
At 6.4 m. is the CLARKSBURG METHODIST CHURCH (R), a neat white
frame building erected 1845.
Climbing gently, the road skirts a narrow valley (R), with a view of
the tree-topped ridge to the N.
At 8.1 miles is the old LINCOLN HOUSE (R), advertised by its proprietor,
Viktor Jadowski, as "a historical place, over 200 years old." Much of the
historic flavor has been smothered by the dining-room extension built
around the original dwelling. Mr. Jadowski, formerly chef of the Piping
Rock Club on Long Island, has subordinated his interest in Lincolniana
to the more vital business of feeding wayfarers; he has established no connection between the restaurant and Lincoln, and almost certainly there is
none.
Two hundred yards directly up the hill behind the house, however, is
COVEL HILL CEMETERY, accessible by a grass-grown lane. Seventy-five feet
past the whitewashed gate, almost within the shade of a solitary hickory
tree, is a small mound marked by a chunk of red fieldstone. The roughly
carved legend reads: "Deborah Lincon, Age 3 Y 4 M., May 15, 1720."
Deborah was the child of Mordecai and Hannah Lincoln, great-great-grandparents of the President. Imbedded on the mound is a broken mayonnaise jar, one of the few signs of decoration in this weed-grown plot.
At 9.3 miles stands a rectangular brick building with a slate roof, adjoining
a graveyard (R). This is the old EAST BRANCH MEETING HOUSE,
dated 1816 on a marble block above the entrance but said to have been
reconstructed in that year. Every door and window is securely locked or
bolted; ivy has grown for many years over the boarded-up windows, and
the stump of a sapling in the porch explains why one post is askew. The
building, however, is in excellent condition, despite the unevenly baked
bricks. An unusual architectural detail is the double door, with a single
row of panels on the left door and a double row of panels on the right.
Banks along the road here are overgrown with honeysuckle. Neatness
and prosperity stamp the large dairy farms standing at intervals of half a
mile or so.
At 9.9 miles a milk platform and six houses comprise the settlement long
known as COX'S CORNERS. A bronze tablet on a granite marker (L) relates that the Cox family dealt honorably with the Indians, fought in the
Revolution, and constantly defended civil and religious liberties; the
Coxes don't live here any more.
Left at Cox's Corners on the oiled side road.
Southward, the road takes an almost straight course to the edge of Imlaystown, where it turns L. to the main street.
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