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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
FILLMORE, 13.9 miles, has one point of interest: the old LINCOLN
FORGE at the junction (R). It is a small building, about the size of a two-car garage on a city lot, and it is, incidentally, used now for a garage by
the tenant of the farmhouse next door. Three of the walls are of rough,
red stone masonry, a full 18 inches thick; an end wall and the roof are
of wood, recently built. Some two centuries ago the little stone shop
housed the forge of Mordecai Lincoln (or Lincon), great-great-grand-father of Abraham. Mordecai was born in Massachusetts in 1686 and married Hannah Salter, a New Jersey girl. The young couple settled in this
neighborhood early in the eighteenth century ; the site of their dwelling has
apparently been lost. A son, John, was born in 1716. He was the great-grandfather of the President.
A few of the old wooden-pegged beams remain, and there is an iron
ring imbedded in the masonry that has been used to hitch horses by many
generations of farmers. No tools of the blacksmith's trade are left, although the shop was maintained until about 40 years ago; Joseph Haley
was the last proprietor. Inside is a sawhorse and a pile of stovewood. Bantam chickens feed from ears of field corn near the door. People who live
in the half-dozen houses that comprise Fillmore know the story of the old
shop, but a mile or so away the farmers and the farmers' wives have never
heard of Lincoln's ancestor.
Fillmore was known in the early 1800's as Varmintown, probably because foxes and other small animals were plentiful in this area.
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